Arctic nations are shoring up their security and sovereignty in the Far North. It’s even a ballot box issue in Canada. But what’s quietly unfolding in the Russian Arctic also warrants our full attention; the stakes are higher than one might expect.
Russia’s Arctic is resource-rich; the remote region has vast reserves of hydrocarbons, immense deposits of rare earth minerals and metals and provides access to the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s northern coast, a far shorter shipping route between Asia and Europe.
In February, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and floated the idea of American companies returning to Russia to collaborate in joint projects in the Arctic. A few weeks later, Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on economic cooperation, posted on X: “The Arctic is too important for Cold War-style politics.