Russia seeks to protect the NSR and to defend North Pole approaches from the perceived threat of NATO’s expansion. Such ambitions go against the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and could also put NATO and US interests at risk.
Geographically, Russia’s central Arctic comprises the long stretch of the AZRF along the NSR and the four main archipelagos (Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands) from the Kara Sea to the Laptev Sea and to the East Siberian Sea. This vast area is also the gateway for Russia’s access to the North Pole.
Russia’s military posture in the central Arctic
The central Arctic constitutes a soft underbelly where Russia’s sense of military vulnerability is strongest. Here, the Kremlin has two key priorities: 1) controlling and protecting the NSR; and 2) defending Russia’s North Pole approaches.
Controlling and protecting the Northern Sea Route
The administration, development and protection of the NSR and its economic assets are of paramount importance to the Kremlin. Russia wants to ensure its full and comprehensive control over the access and passage of surface vessels, as well as to regulate any ‘foreign activity’ in the sea and air approaches of the central Arctic.
Control over access explains why Moscow is seeking to strengthen rules on transit through the NSR and is taking a militarized view of traffic passing through it. This stance is linked to recent legislation regarding management of the NSR, which aims to give it exceptional legal status. Provisions that have been proposed to date effectively turn Russia’s central Arctic into a ‘hugely expansive area’ under Russian control and no longer a maritime area managed through the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) under freedom of navigation principles and norms.
Control over access explains why Moscow is seeking to strengthen rules on transit through the Northern Sea Route and is taking a militarized view of traffic passing through it.
For almost a decade, Moscow has been strengthening its operational control over passage through the NSR. A list of stringent rules and regulations seek to restrict access, passage and navigation of foreign-flagged vessels in the NSR. Passage through the NSR for foreign flags also entails heavy fees, tolls and bureaucracy – these rules greatly benefit internal lobbies and vested interests, most notably including the sole operator of the NSR, Rosatom.
Such ‘rules’ are clearly in violation of UNCLOS provisions on freedom of navigation and ‘innocent passage’. Yet, Moscow justifies them by keeping a unique interpretation of Article 234 of UNCLOS, also known as the ‘Ice clause’. Article 234 refers to the right of a coastal state to increase its control over ‘ice-covered areas within the limits of the exclusive economic zone’. Russia’s extension of its control over the surface of ice-covered waters along the AZRF relies solely on its own interpretation of Article 234 by introducing exclusive and discriminatory regulations that go against UNCLOS. Finally, recent constitutional changes giving primacy to national law over international law further create the impression that the NSR is indeed under Russian domestic regulatory control.
Defending North Pole approaches
Russia has a militarized understanding of access to and passage through the NSR. Its military presence in the central Arctic enhances perimeter defence and the defence of approaches from both sides of the AZRF, giving Russia increased situational and domain awareness over the NSR.
Russia’s attitude towards the central Arctic and the North Pole explains the multiplication and hardening of air-defence capabilities, early-warning systems and domain-awareness capabilities deployed on the archipelagos across the NSR. Russia’s disparate network of forward bases, airfields and outposts there represents a mix of civilian and military installations for search and rescue (SAR) operations, maritime domain awareness (MDA) and border protection. Currently, priority is given to strengthening existing infrastructure, rather than developing new installations.
In line with the Basic Principles of Russian Federation State Policy in the Arctic to 2035, official rhetoric claims that the network of civilian and military installations aims to ‘respond promptly to possible threats to the safety of navigation’ and to ‘increase the security’ of the NSR. However, for over a decade, the refurbishment and building of military infrastructure along the NSR has been ‘designed primarily for performing air-space defence functions’.
Installations were built with off-the-shelf military hardware to save costs and time, but their primary function is to support Northern and Pacific Fleet operations in terms of transit, protection, logistics and resupply along the lifelines of the AZRF. Russia has also been laying trans-Arctic fibre-optic cables along the NSR to link military installations across the AZRF – which could be used to monitor submarine activity – and has recently deployed Arktika-M remote-sensing satellites to enhance domain awareness.
The NSR is only navigable seasonally, not year-round, and does not represent a convenient transit route for military vessels. This means passage through the NSR still largely has an expeditionary purpose for Russian fleets. Nevertheless, training increasingly focuses on the protection of NSR assets, including amphibious assault landings, and on controlling its airspace.
Finally, control over the NSR gives Russia increased defence in depth against a multitude of perceived threats. With an emphasis on air defence, early warning and domain awareness, Russia seeks to defend North Pole approaches from US strategic bomber overflights across the North Pole, from US ballistic-missile defence in the region and from increased subsurface presence.
Chokepoints and flashpoints of tension in the central Arctic
Russia’s posture and deployments in the central Arctic have the direct consequence of slowly shaping a security dilemma for Russia over the continued management of the NSR under current provisions, as well as putting NATO and US interests at risk.
Upholding the ‘Ice clause’
As climate change continues to adversely affect the AZRF, Moscow will find it increasingly hard to justify the exceptionality of the domestic status of the NSR under UNCLOS Article 234. Indeed, seasonal sea-ice reduction across the AZRF will make the ‘Ice clause’ irrelevant, therefore undermining Russia’s interpretation of the NSR’s status and exclusionary navigational rules.
The Kremlin might fear increasing challenges to Russia’s exclusive passage and internal navigation rights by the US and NATO. Recent strategic documents denounce attempts by foreign states to ‘revise basic provisions of international treaties’ and to ‘use climate change as a pretext to limit and contain Russian development and control’ over the AZRF.
‘Great power’ propaganda pieces are regularly published in the Russian press, claiming that the US or NATO will soon challenge Russia’s interpretation of the ‘Ice clause’ by conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) through the NSR, with the ambition to ‘storm’ the NSR or even to ‘privatize’ the Arctic.
The Kremlin might fear increasing challenges to Russia’s exclusive passage and internal navigation rights by the US and NATO.
This situation would reportedly allow NATO (and the US in particular) to test innocent passage/freedom of navigation under international maritime law through surface or submarine deployments (see Chapter 6). FONOP concerns are particularly prevalent with regard to the Kara Strait in the European Arctic, as well as the Laptev and Sannikov Straits by the New Siberian Islands.
Risks for NATO and US regional installations
Russia’s posture and aggressive rhetoric over the NSR are creating risks for NATO and US installations in the region, as well as in the North Atlantic SLOC and the GIUK and GIN gaps. Indeed, according to defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s main objective is ‘to not let [the Americans] into our Arctic’.
Russia creates risks for NATO and US assets primarily through its air coverage in the central Arctic, especially with aviation groups and naval aviation, hypersonic delivery systems, naval coastal infrastructure, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and electronic warfare capabilities. Russia is currently strengthening its air superiority assets (mostly Su-34 fighters/bombers and MiG-31 interceptors) and its air defence divisions across the NSR (notably the 3rd Air Defence Division in Tiksi).
Russian military capabilities are an issue for US and NATO assets at the Thule air base in northwest Greenland (which is within reach for Russian combat aircraft), the US Eielson Air Force base in Alaska, the US naval air station at Keflavik in Iceland and the Bodø air station in Norway, among others. Furthermore, the deployment of the Sopka-2 radar complex is a critical piece of Russia’s surveillance architecture in the central Arctic region, enabling detection of US military activity from Alaska, as well as threats coming from across the North Pole.
