Comment archive

Thursday, 3 Apr 2025
Putin’s Warpath Goes Through Arctic

Russia’s war against Ukraine is stuck in a rigid deadlock. The prospect of agreeing on a ceasefire, which had appeared within reach a couple of weeks ago, has, however, become distant and blurred.

Wednesday, 30 Oct 2019
Confronting and engaging Russia in the Arctic takes resolve and patience

The celebration of the anniversary of liberation of Kirkenes by a Russian operation (called the “Tenth Stalin’s shock”) was properly solemn and impeccably good-neighborly, even if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov found it necessary to voice criticism of Norwegian policy. Russia also found it opportune to stage a large-scale exercise ...

Tuesday, 16 Apr 2019
Putin talks the Arctic talk and fingers the missile stick

The fifth Russia-sponsored international forum “The Arctic – Territory of Dialogue” was staged last week in St. Petersburg, and President Vladimir Putin used the occasion to demonstrate his particular interest to the Arctic matters. He was joined on the panel by prime ministers of four North European states – Finland, ...

Thursday, 8 Mar 2018
Putin's virtual missiles create real risks

Surprise is a political technique Russia’s President Vladimir Putin excels at, and he did not miss the occasion to spring big surprises during his annual address to the parliament, on 1 March. The first half of the speech contained a rich menu of economic and social promises, but Putin’s delivery was ...

Wednesday, 1 Nov 2017
The Svalbard tragedy illuminates the downside of heavy militarization of Russia's Arctic policy

Taking ownership of and “conquering” the Arctic are themes Russian authorities love to amplify. But sometimes, the harsh Northern reality interferes. The crash of an Mi-8 helicopter in Svalbard (Spitsbergen), last Thursday (October 26), with eight lives lost, was one such occasion. Norway launched a rescue operation within 30 minutes, ...

Thursday, 8 Dec 2016
Russian Foreign Policy Concept is vague on the Arctic

Russia has found itself in a very different international situation than that envisaged by its basic documents in 2013, so there was clearly a need in revising its Foreign Policy Concept – and President Vladimir Putin duly approved a new one on 30 November 2016. The Concept is more assertive ...

Wednesday, 15 Jun 2016
Moscow keeps promising responses to NATO activities

Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary to President Vladimir Putin, is generally not known for eloquence. But his comment last week (June 7) about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s exercises in the Baltic region stands out both for its convolutedness and uncharacteristic meekness. His point, reproduced by all Russian mainstream media, ...

Friday, 19 Feb 2016
With Russia overextended elsewhere, Arctic cooperation gets a new chance

Can the United States and Russia actually cooperate in the Arctic? It might seem like wishful thinking, given that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asserted that there is in fact a “New Cold War” between the two countries in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. Many people—at that conference and elsewhere—see the idea ...

Monday, 31 Aug 2015
Russia's Arctic illusions

Russia appears firmly set on its course of militarization of the Arctic. In a region where economic activities are mostly declining and where environmental challenges are on the rise, Russia appears to be engaged in a one-sided arms race. It is glaringly obvious to observers outside the Kremlin that Russia’s ...

Wednesday, 29 Jul 2015
Arctic fishing and Russian Maritime Doctrine

Many Arctic watchers were glad to hear about the agreement on prohibiting fishing in the newly-opening waters around the North Pole, signed a couple of weeks ago in Oslo by Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the USA. Indeed, it was a significant step in protecting migrating fish stocks – but ...

Thursday, 18 Jun 2015
EU is paying attention to Arctic security matters

EUISS has just published a report entitled Arctic Security Matters concluding that the EU, “as a distinctly ‘soft’ security actor”, could play a useful role “in attempts to build up mutual trust and to give assurances that military assets in the Arctic create stability”. The bottom lime is “While much of ...

Tuesday, 9 Jun 2015
Russia's accident-prone air might

I made an argument about Russia’s weakening and vulnerability in Brookings’ blog Order from Chaos, suggesting, in particular, that What is less obvious for many Russia-watchers is that the military strength demonstrated so pompously on the Red Square during the May 9 Victory Day parade is also in decline. In ...

Monday, 1 Jun 2015
Clash of exercises in the High North

International Air Force exercises Arctic Challenge 2015 are going on in the High North with Norway as the lead nation and 9 states (including, remarkably, Switzerland) participating with squadrons of various jet fighters (as well as NATO AWACS E3 planes). Russia found it necessary to respond with snap military exercises of ...

Monday, 20 Apr 2015
Rogozin's escapade grows into a political crisis

It was entirely possible for the Russian Foreign Ministry to downplay the minor scandal around Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin surprise visit to Spitsbergen, but instead the choice was for making a full-blown crisis. It was quite embarrassing for the Norwegian authorities that they learned about Rogozin’s arrival to Longyearbyen ...

Friday, 17 Apr 2015
Everybody is afraid of our vastness

Not a word about the Arctic could be found in the transcript of President Vladimir Putin annual Q&A session, perhaps except the rather abstract assertion that “everybody is afraid of our vastness”  (Kremlin.ru, April 16). It is certainly not the vastness as such, but rather the vast increase of Russian military ...

Friday, 6 Mar 2015
Discussing the Arctic matters in Ottawa

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu provided a useful point of departure for my presentation and discussions in Ottawa on current Arctic matters, asserting that Russia is facing “a wide range of potential security challenges and threats” in the Arctic and is ready to use military means for countering those. It ...

Thursday, 12 Feb 2015
Rogozin for the Arctic viceroy?

It has become clear that the plan for establishing a super-ministry for the Arctic has been reduced to setting a government commission, which according to some lobbyists in the Duma, would put security first (Arctic-Info, February 11). Kommersant (February 6) reported that Dmitry Rogozin is approved as the head of ...

Monday, 19 Jan 2015
Discussing Arctic issues in Brussels

Last Thursday (as it happens, right before the terror alert), a brainstorming session on Arctic matters was organized by the EU Institute for Security Studies, and I am glad to be a part of this undertaking. Juha Jokela from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs is in charge of this ...

Monday, 5 Jan 2015
The Arctic comes into the new Russian military doctrine

The new military doctrine approved by President Putin on December 26, 2014 is actually not that new; Defense Minister Shoigu opted for limiting his mark to a few minor and symbolic revisions, against many far-reaching statements on the background of the Ukraine conflict. One of the changes that has attracted ...

Tuesday, 16 Dec 2014
Denmark challenges Russia with the Arctic claim

Denmark (together with Greenland) delivered on Monday the claim for expanding its continental shelf in the Arctic by 895,541 square km to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (the impeccably prepared submission is filed on the UN CLCS website). The statement from the Danish Foreign Ministry ...

Friday, 21 Nov 2014
New Arctic ministry to answer for the void in Russia's Arctic policy

Rather uncharacteristically, President Vladimir Putin did not mention the Arctic at all at the meeting of the Russian Georgraphic Society (he made himself the chairman of its board five years ago) – or at the gathering of the Russian Popular Front (mobilization against Western sanctions was the main theme). On the background ...

Thursday, 23 Oct 2014
Putin steals the Asia-Europe show - and brings big disappointment

The most recent Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit attracted a sizeable crowd of world leaders to Milan last week (October 16–17), but the formal agenda was overtaken by the efforts to manage the violent conflict between Russia and Ukraine and facilitate dialogue between presidents Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko. The European ...

Thursday, 16 Oct 2014
Russian military keep conquering the Arctic

Guns are not quite silent in the devastated Donbass, and Putin’s order to withdraw troops from the border area is no different from his several prior zigzags in manipulating this conflict, so that no real redeployments are taking place. What is happening in this pause, is the new spike in ...

Monday, 29 Sept 2014
What about Rosneft new discovery?

The Arctic ice has reached its seasonal minimum, and it is now clear that 2014 is the sixth lowest on the satellite record, but still quite a lot icier than 2012. It is exactly in this optimal “window” that Rosneft has announced that the drilling from the Unviersitetskaya platform in ...

Monday, 15 Sept 2014
High season for military activities in the High North

The new round of US and EU sanctions targets very specifically exploration projects in the Arctic, so both Exxon-Mobil and Statoil announce postponements and cancellations in their respective partnership plans with Rosneft. The Western majors hardly have ay regrets about it – doing business in Russia in general, and with Rosneft in ...

Friday, 29 Aug 2014
Russia talks against militarization of the Arctic - and goes for it

As Russian tanks roll into Ukraine, President Putin promised to act according to the international law in the Arctic. In the same breath, however, he reminded that US strike submarines are concentrated “near Norwegian shores” and their missiles could reach Moscow in 15-16 minutes. The commitment to upgrading the military ...

Thursday, 21 Aug 2014
Russian August in the Arctic

August is a particular month in the Russian political calendar: It was the Kursk day last week, and this week – it is day of tanks in Prague (21 August 1968) and the day of tanks in Moscow (19-22 August 1991). These days, tanks are rolling over the streets of ...

Monday, 11 Aug 2014
The Kursk day

Tommorow is indeed the Kursk day – it was on August 12, 2000 that the proud but unfortunate submarine sunk after an explosion on board during exercises in the Barents Sea. This picture of its crew (from a BBC documentary) marks a moment of remembrace. It is rather striking that on ...

Sunday, 3 Aug 2014
The sanctions and the Arctic

In the debates on the impact of tougher sanction imposed by the US and the EU last week, one of the key issues is the scope of problems that Russia will encounter in developing the “green” oil and gas fields in the Arctic.  The Economist calls it Arctic Chill, and many other media speculate ...

Monday, 7 Jul 2014
Ministry for the Arctic affairs?

A project for setting a ministry for the Arctic region – similar to the recently created ministries for the Far East, the North Caucasus, and the Crimea – is under consideration in the government, according to Nezavisimaya. Any bureaucratic analogy with the Crimean issue should better be avoided, but the article ...