Russia’s strategy to control Arctic resources

Left behind after the fall of the USSR, the Arc­tic has once again become a stra­tegic pri­or­ity for Moscow since Vladi­mir Putin came to power. Rich in hydro­car­bons and crossed by cru­cial mari­time routes, the Far North now crys­tal­lises ten­sions between major powers. But the inva­sion of Ukraine and West­ern sanc­tions have upen­ded Rus­si­an ambi­tions in the region. Flori­an Vid­al, a research­er at UiT The Arc­tic Uni­ver­sity of Nor­way, ana­lyses the eco­nom­ic and mil­it­ary stakes of this stra­tegic space that could become a new front between Rus­sia and the United States.

TRUE

Since Vladi­mir Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin’s interest in the Arc­tic has only grown. After hav­ing been largely aban­doned fol­low­ing the fall of the Soviet Uni­on, Moscow has regained con­trol of this area, as its great stra­tegic poten­tial, par­tic­u­larly in terms of hydro­car­bons, has revived its polar ambi­tions. Indeed, 80% of the gas and 60% of the oil pro­duced on Rus­si­an ter­rit­ory comes from the Arc­tic region.

The exploit­a­tion of lique­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) on the Yamal Pen­in­sula in the Kara Sea is undoubtedly sym­bol­ic of the suc­cess of the pro­gramme to rein­vest in the region. How­ever, this flag­ship pro­ject remains depend­ent on the devel­op­ment of com­mu­nic­a­tion infra­struc­ture ded­ic­ated to the trans­port and export of resources. The devel­op­ment of the North­ern Sea Route and its ports have been envis­aged in tan­dem with the exploit­a­tion of the Arc­tic sub­soil. Until the inva­sion of Ukraine, the strategy had been suc­cess­ful: hydro­car­bons gen­er­ated 50% of fed­er­al budget rev­en­ues, while the Arc­tic con­trib­uted 17% to nation­al GDP.

UNCERTAIN

There are two major caveats to the Kremlin’s geo-eco­nom­ic pro­jec­tions. Firstly, there is no deny­ing the struc­tur­al trends in soci­ety, which are par­tic­u­larly evid­ent in the north­ern­most parts of the coun­try. The demo­graph­ic decline is a strik­ing example of this, affect­ing even urb­an centres such as Mur­mansk, whose pop­u­la­tion has been stead­ily declin­ing since the late 1980s.

Secondly, the large-scale inva­sion of Ukraine and the bar­rage of sanc­tions against Rus­sia are, unsur­pris­ingly, ham­per­ing invest­ment and the pro­gress of ongo­ing pro­jects. Rus­si­an com­pan­ies are find­ing it dif­fi­cult not only to export, but also to access the West­ern tech­no­lo­gies they need for pro­duc­tion. For example, Novatek, which oper­ates the Yamal LNG and Arc­tic LNG 2 pro­jects, depended on the Ger­man group Siemens for the sup­ply of gas tur­bine gen­er­at­ors and vapour gas compressors.

With the imple­ment­a­tion of sanc­tions in the bank­ing sec­tor, which tar­geted invest­ment pro­jects in the energy sec­tor in the region since the annex­a­tion of Crimea in 2014, West­ern coun­tries have slowed down Russia’s fin­an­cial cap­ab­il­it­ies, which has attrac­ted only lim­ited invest­ment des­pite a shift towards BRICS+.

FALSE

This state­ment is par­tially inac­cur­ate: the mil­it­ar­isa­tion of the Arc­tic is not a new phe­nomen­on. Its ori­gins date back nearly a cen­tury, with the early estab­lish­ment of a mil­it­ary pres­ence in the region. The North­ern Fleet was offi­cially estab­lished under Stal­in before the Second World War. It should be noted that region­al ten­sions were, in many respects, more intense dur­ing the Cold War than they are today.

TRUE

Since 2005, the Rus­si­an author­it­ies have undeni­ably stepped up their mil­it­ary pres­ence in the Arc­tic by reopen­ing former nav­al and air bases dat­ing back to the Soviet era. In addi­tion to mod­ern­ising exist­ing bases, new infra­struc­ture has been cre­ated. Led by the Min­istry of Defence, this dynam­ic has trans­formed the region into a ver­it­able tech­no­lo­gic­al show­case, dis­play­ing cut­ting-edge mil­it­ary equip­ment (hyper­son­ic mis­siles, latest-gen­er­a­tion com­bat air­craft, etc.). Fur­ther­more, on the Kola Pen­in­sula, the North­ern Fleet has also been mod­ern­ised. Its nuc­le­ar cap­ab­il­it­ies have been strengthened by the con­struc­tion of new sub­mar­ines. All these devel­op­ments serve a clear object­ive: to assert mil­it­ary superi­or­ity and stra­tegic dom­in­ance in the area. Today, the Nor­d­ic coun­tries recog­nise this estab­lished state of affairs.

UNCERTAIN

A sig­ni­fic­ant por­tion of the Rus­si­an army’s con­tin­gents in the Arc­tic have been mobil­ised for the war effort in Ukraine. The capa­city of con­ven­tion­al forces in the region has been con­sid­er­ably weakened by the destruc­tion of mil­it­ary equip­ment and sig­ni­fic­ant losses among com­bat units. The coast­line, which stretches for more than 24,000 kilo­metres and is dot­ted with islands and archipela­gos, makes it a dif­fi­cult area to cov­er. To address these dif­fi­culties, one of the options being con­sidered is the deploy­ment of an armada of drones along the coast. At the same time, a massive recruit­ment drive for 50,000 sol­diers has also been announced to achieve a force of 80,000 sol­diers in the Len­in­grad Mil­it­ary Dis­trict, the region between Saint Peters­burg and Murmansk.

TRUE

Aware­ness of this new mil­it­ary real­ity emerged dur­ing Don­ald Trump’s first term in office. Mike Pom­peo, then Sec­ret­ary of State, did not hes­it­ate to describe the increased Rus­si­an and Chinese pres­ence in the area as a joint threat to the United States. With the need to rebuild capa­city, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has pur­sued a policy of re-engage­ment in the region, cham­pi­on­ing free­dom of nav­ig­a­tion and com­mit­ting to the devel­op­ment of a new fleet of polar icebreak­ers – the United States cur­rently has only two.

Pres­id­ent Trump’s volat­il­ity and con­tro­ver­sial announce­ments, par­tic­u­larly his aggress­ive approach towards Green­land, could con­trib­ute to cre­at­ing a cli­mate of insec­ur­ity in the region. One imper­i­al­ist impulse could trig­ger anoth­er. Rus­sia, for its part, has its eye on Sval­bard, a Nor­we­gi­an archipelago. The risk now is that the region will enter into a trans­ac­tion­al, bilat­er­al approach based on power rela­tions, where­as since the end of the Cold War it has been dis­tin­guished by its insti­tu­tion­al frame­work based on multilateralism.

FALSE

In this region, which is less prone to con­flict, cooper­a­tion remains the pre­ferred approach. In fact, the Arc­tic states may be temp­ted to pre­serve the achieve­ments of the post-Cold War era, in par­tic­u­lar the Arc­tic Coun­cil, which could serve as an inter­face for resum­ing dia­logue in the future. Eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­larly in the joint exploit­a­tion of Arc­tic resources, could provide a basis for under­stand­ing between Wash­ing­ton and Moscow, thus offer­ing lever­age to pre­vent any mil­it­ary escalation.

Interview by Alicia Piveteau