Western Arctic countries joined in solidarity in the sanctions policy directed against Russia
In most cases, this directly contradicts their economic interests, but the latter play less and less role in the globalizing West, giving way to ideologically motivated attitudes “coming down” from Washington.
A number of major commercial players that have been involved in the development of Russian resources beyond the Arctic Circle for years have announced their withdrawal from the Russian market and curtailing their participation in Russia’s Arctic projects. All this made Russians think about replacing international investors and revising the prospects for such projects in world markets.
At the same time, for fear of secondary sanctions, many non-Western and non-Arctic states were forced to join this policy, including such an important partner of Russia on Arctic issues as South Korea, which played a significant role in the construction of ships for the polar commercial fleet of Russia.
In general, it must be stated that restrictive measures have directly affected a number of Russian Arctic projects – since many technologies and components are of Western origin, the implementation of these projects has slowed down. Those of them that existed only in plans of varying degrees of detail are now in question.
China played a special role at the intersection of politics and economics in the Arctic.
Occupying a cautious position in the Russian-Western conflict, the PRC is taking advantage of the situation to extract maximum benefits.
Beijing continues to be the beneficiary of major oil and gas projects in the Russian Arctic, while receiving Russian strategic goods on preferential terms. However, at the same time, China is distancing itself from Russia, including in terms of economic cooperation beyond the Arctic Circle. Chinese transit through the NSR has been halted, and Chinese companies are failing to deliver equipment for key projects (such as Arctic LNG 2).
Deformation of development processes, chaotic restructuring of plans and reshaping of international logistics – such trends characterized Russia’s Arctic affairs in the international economic dimension.
Captain Arctic
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