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Russia’s growing plot to weaponize and monetise the Arctic, turning the once pristine and peaceful polar region into the ‘battleground of the future,’ has been told to the West to ‘wake up.’
Vladimir Putin has been building airbases, missile launch pads, radar stations, and naval yards north of the Arctic Circle for years, but the region is set to gain renewed importance now that Russia has been hit by Western sanctions over the Ukraine war, which has also tarnished Russia’s reputation as Europe’s second-most powerful army.
According to a new report from the Civitas think tank, the High North is perhaps the only region where Russia can now claim to be a military superpower, a fact the Kremlin is likely to exploit as it seeks to plunder an estimated $30 trillion in natural resources from the frozen earth and open up new trading routes exposed by melting sea ice.
Putin, who is cash-strapped as a result of the sanctions, is almost certain to turn to China for help in achieving his goals, giving Beijing a backdoor into a region it has long wanted to control but does not have a claim to. The pair, perched atop the world, could pose a threat to the West across three continents and the world’s two largest oceans.
The UK is now being urged to reach out to allies with competing claims to the region, including the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, to form a new CAUKUS alliance, similar to the AUKUS deal with Australia, deploying military might, including nuclear submarines, into the Article Circle as a show of strength to both Beijing and Moscow.
‘We need to wake up to the threat posed by Russian expansion in the Arctic – while all eyes are on Ukraine, Russia is testing new-age nuclear subs and hypersonic missiles in the Arctic and building up its presence in the region,’ said Rob Clark, a soldier-turned-military expert who authored the report.
‘Vladimir Putin has previously instructed his generals that the Arctic is where “practically all national security” for Russia is concentrated. With a Russian ensign, the Russians can control new so-called “polar corridors” to dominate world trade by establishing up a vast military arsenal in the Arctic.
‘Russian-Chinese energy cooperation is well established, and potentially vast natural mineral assets worth up to $30 trillion open the path for Vladimir Putin to build up Russian wealth with his pals in Beijing while shutting down new global trade routes.’
‘NATO must secure its northern flank, and the United Kingdom must station an ambassador in the Arctic to monitor Russian operations.’
The presence of Russia in the High North is nothing new. Josef Stalin once referred of the ‘Red Arctic,’ which was prized by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union for its vast natural resources, and where he established dozens of military bases.
As the Soviet Union disintegrated, however, interest decreased, and in 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev designated it a ‘zone of peace,’ signaling the end of military expansion and the beginning of collaboration with the West on scientific research initiatives.
Putin has a different plan. At a meeting in 2014, he declared the region to be the “concentration of almost all aspects of national security – military, political, economic, technological, environmental [and] resources,” echoing the Soviets and Imperialists who came before him.
He’s reopened more than 50 Soviet-era Arctic bases since then, including airfields, radar stations, freight ports, missile launch pads, and navy yards.
Others have been expanded, including at least 18 airfields on the Kola Peninsula, which is located about 200 miles east of Finland and is home to the majority of Russia’s military forces in the region, including the Northern Sea Fleet’s headquarters, a large portion of its nuclear forces, including bombers and missiles, and supply stations for bases further north.
Some have been modified to accommodate Moscow’s cutting-edge military technologies. Last year, the Plesetsk Cosmodrome was used to test Russia’s latest satellite-killer missile, and it was recently used to launch Sarmat-2, the country’s newest nuclear missile capable of striking any country on the earth.
According to sources from the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, other locations have been converted to house new hypersonic Tsirkon cruise missiles, while submarine ports in the Kola Peninsula are thought to be home to Poseidon nuclear drones.
The drones are massive – 65 feet long and designed to be fired from an even larger submarine that has yet to be completed – that can pilot themselves to a target and detonate with a force of two megatons, thousands of times the size of the Hiroshima bomb, and are designed to inundate nearby coasts with a radioactive wave.
Hundreds of new bases have also been constructed, including at least five significant airfields in the North-East Passage, a maritime route connecting Europe and Asia that is becoming increasingly accessible due to melting sea ice that previously made it impassible.
Russia intends to make this a feasible and profitable alternative to the existing shipping lanes that go around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean, or via the Mediterranean and around the Arabian Peninsula via the Suez Canal. Even the quickest journeys further south would be cut in half by traveling north.
China is also eager to establish this route, which would allow its commerce ships to avoid the Strait of Malacca, a strategic bottleneck shared by the US-allied countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Though the route is not yet widely used, Moscow has demonstrated that it works: in 2009, two German cargo ships used it to go from South Korea to Rotterdam, escorted by a Russian icebreaker.
In order to open up the sea lanes to more trade, Moscow introduced a regulation in 2013 requiring all icebreakers utilizing the route to fly the Russian flag, which requires them to be registered and pay fees in Russia.
Laws mandating Russian commanders on board ships navigating the route, levying tolls, and requiring all journeys to be preregistered are expected to follow. A move like this might bring in billions of dollars in income – Egypt collected $6.3 billion in tolls from the Suez in 2021 – and give the Kremlin control over a significant portion of global trade.
And that isn’t the only way Putin intends to profit from the region. By far the Arctic’s most valuable asset is buried beneath its frozen soil: Natural resources worth an estimated $30 billion, include enormous undiscovered quantities of oil, natural gas, and rare earth minerals, which are essential in the creation of contemporary technology.
Projects are currently in the works. Gazprom, Russia’s largest energy company, signed a $400 billion deal with China’s CNPC in 2014 to supply gas over a 30-year period through the Power of Siberia pipe network.
In 2013, the two companies agreed to ship liquefied natural gas from a new field on the Yamal Peninsula to Beijing, with Moscow expected to authorize the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline from the same location into China in the near future.
In 2013, Beijing committed to invest $11.5 billion in the development of these gas reserves, and Russia dropped its long-standing resistance to Beijing being granted ‘observer’ status at the Arctic Council, the region’s main governing body. In what is likely to be a sign of things to come, China was granted the status the same year, despite the fact that its nearest region was 930 miles away.