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Russia’s northern frontier

The Russian North

Russia is developing a new strategy on the Arctic. In a meeting with the national Security Council yesterday, President Medvedev highlighted the region as vital for Russian national and economic interests.

Location

Yesterday’s meeting in the Kremlin comes just few days after the whole powerful Security Council assembled in the far northern Franz Josef Land for a session.

On the agenda is the development of a new basic document on Russian state policies in the Arctic in the period until 2020. The strategy will be a cross-cutting document covering the work of several ministries and state agencies. The division of the Arctic shelf is a point number one, a press release from the Security Council reads.

Shelf delineation

One of the first tasks will be the strengthening of international legal determination of the Russian Federation’s outer borders in the Arctic”, the press release states. “In this process, multilateral and bilateral inter-state cooperation will be of particular importance”, the council document adds. The Security Council members — all of them powerful men in key state posts — also highlight that the Russian priorities in the region is “an active extraction of natural resources in the region, development of transport and border infrastructure, as well as information and telecommunications”.

State programme

The new strategy document will be based on the “serious financial resources of a state programme on the region”, the Security Council reports in a press release. A first draft document is to be presented by government by December 1, newspaper Vedomosti reports.

The Arctic strategy comes as Russia is preparing new documentation on the extension of its Arctic shelf, expected to be handed in to the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea by 2011.

In a the press release, the Security Council underlines that Russia “will have to protect its borders, but that conflicts will be resolved in line with international law”.

Russian Arctic zone

The enhanced Russian focus on the Arctic covers not only offshore areas, but also the country’s Arctic land areas. A part of the strategy is also the new definition of these territories. The Ministry of Regional Development will be commissioned with the elaboration of a concept on which northern regions to be entitled to special state support and subsidies.

Today, ten federal subjects adhere to the Russian Arctic.

 

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Russia to boost its presence in Arctic 15 September 2008