Surrounding the Arctic Council
Source: iStock.com/Chansak Joe
On September 19, the Arctic Council marked 30 years since its founding. Over the past few weeks, Russian officials have offered their assessments of the state of affairs surrounding the Council.
At a briefing in Moscow on September 18, Vladislav Maslennikov, director of the European Affairs Department at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Russia’s senior Arctic official at the Council, set out the problems. He also said that the EU intends to pursue escalation in the Arctic, a course he traced to the European Arctic Summit held in Finland on September 13–14.
Working Honestly
Russia is ready to resume the full-fledged work of the Arctic Council if the other members act honestly. So writes Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his article International Cooperation in the Arctic: Challenges and Opportunities, published on the arctic.ru portal on August 31.
“Russia is ready to resume the full-fledged work of the Arctic Council if the others act honestly, on the basis of mutual regard for the legitimate interests of all participants,” Lavrov wrote.
He stressed, however, that Russia is “also ready for the scenario the NATO countries are now playing out in the organization, attempting to discuss Arctic problems without Russia within their own narrow circle and thereby, in essence, steering matters toward the discrediting and marginalization of the Arctic Council.” “For that case we have the territory, the logistics, the technology, and reliable partners in mutually beneficial projects to carry out Russia’s plans in the Arctic with confidence,” the minister said.
A Rusty Car?
The states Russia worked with for decades within the Arctic Council are not prepared to behave rationally today. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko made the point to reporters in Vladivostok on September 1, on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.
Speaking at the same forum, Maslennikov reached for a mechanical comparison:
“The Arctic Council has been effectively idle for a fifth year now. And it would probably be apt to compare this to a car that stands in a garage for years without moving,” he said during the session International Cooperation in the Arctic: From Strategic Dialogue to Joint Projects. “That is, the mechanisms stagnate and rust, and some of it grows obsolete.”
Any Alternatives?
All members of the Council, Russia included, “declare their aspiration to preserve it, and the hope that the organization will come out of a hibernation lasting almost five years nonetheless remains,” Maslennikov said at the September 18 briefing, according to TASS.
“At the same time, substituting other formats with a different membership for the Arctic Council is hardly possible,” he noted, “since this venue presupposes first and foremost discussions between the Arctic states and the indigenous peoples living in the High North, who unquestionably hold certain prerogatives in the region.”
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