"Arctic states need to increase their military presence as a show of strength to send Russia a signal that it cannot come into the Arctic unimpeded."
A common refrain from those with interests in the Arctic, or as some call it, the High North, is “High North, low tension.” It appears that Russia did not get the memo. Recently, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who leads Moscow’s commission overseeing Arctic projects from 2015-2020, and has been sanctioned by the European Union, United States, and Norway,arrived unannounced in the Norwegian island of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. Russia’s planes have also almost collided with commercial airliners in the skies above Sweden and Denmark and it has increased warplane flights off of the coast of Norway. Russia is also modernizing its equipment to deal with its share of the Arctic—about half—including the development of Arctic rescue robots. Russia, for worse, is starting to dictate the course of events in the Arctic.
No comments:
Post a Comment