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