Ambassador-at-Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, senior official of the Arctic Council Nikolai Korchunov in an interview with RIA Novosti spoke about the advantages of the Northern Sea Route (NSR)
Korchunov said that the incident with the largest container ship Ever Given in March this year proved the importance of developing other global transport routes and clearly demonstrated the shortcomings of existing sea corridors.
“The Northern Sea Route is 40 percent shorter than the transport route through the Suez Canal and has a number of advantages, including political ones. Its shorter length reduces not only time, but also fuel costs, which contributes to minimizing the anthropogenic impact on the environment”, – the diplomat stressed.
According to him, in recent years there has been a positive trend of growth in the volume of transported cargo along the NSR and development of shipping that has a positive impact on the northern territories, trade, tourism and contributes to raising living standards in the Arctic.