RUSSIA AND THE ARCTIC

In an application to the United Nations, Russia has renewed its claim on 436,000 square miles of Arctic territory. Russia’s previous claim was rejected in 2002 by a UN commission on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry now says it has ‘ample scientific data collected in years of scientific research.’ The area which Russia claims extends 350 nautical miles from beyond its shoreline.

The move is likely to be diplomatically fraught as it seems certain to provoke the ire of other Arctic-bordering nations. The United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark also have territorial ambitions in the Arctic region and have rejected Russian claims to the area, which is thought to hold up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves.

Reacting to Russia’s claim The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade & Development, said: ‘All Arctic Ocean coastal states are committed to the orderly resolution of any overlaps of continental shelf and reaffirmed this commitment in the Ilulissat Declaration in May 2008.’

The declaration referred to by Canada was enacted to block any new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean, and contains an additional pledge and caveat for ‘the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims.’

There have been increasing rivalries in the region, exacerbated by climate change, as melting northern ice caps have allowed more opportunities for nations to explore and expand in contested areas.

These renewed territorial claims come in the midst of what has been described as the worst state of relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War, particularly with the ongoing conflict and tensions in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatist rebels and the pro-European Ukrainian government. NATO has openly accused Russia of actively sending troops to support the rebels.

Russia’s expansionist ambitions in the north are not new. In 2007, a Russian submarine dropped a canister containing a Russian flag on the ocean bed of the North Pole in what appeared to have been a provocative publicity stunt to rile its Arctic neighbours.

• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty that delimits continental shelf claims, allows countries to claim an exclusive economic zone up to 200 miles from their coastline or as far as their land territory naturally extends from shore beneath the sea.
• Russia is seeking to demonstrate that two underwater features, the Lomonosov Ridge and the Mendeleev ridge, are natural geological extensions of the Russian continental shelf.
• Vladimir Putin has described the Arctic as a region of Russian “special interest,” and has expanded Russia’s military presence in the high north to secure its claims in the region.