Interfax: Militarization of Arctic region is overdramatized – Russian experts

MOSCOW. Nov 28 (Interfax) – Experts of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) see no reason to speak about the militarization or a threat of military confrontation in the Arctic region.

“This is taken as part of usual measures of each state to ensure its interests, including the military element,” RIAC president Igor Ivanov told a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday answering a question from Interfax on the expansion of the military presence of Russia and the United States in the region.

The U.S. Navy command earlier expressed its intention to work out measures aimed at accelerating the implementation of programs on building up a presence in the Arctic region. The U.S. in particular plans to develop satellite and communication systems and ensure the presence of its warships in the Arctic region.

Russia has restored the Temp airfield on the New Siberian Islands and states its plans to resume air patrolling of the Arctic region and create a unit of ice-class patrol boats.

“This is a normal means of support and interests that a state has in a certain region. That is why I would not dramatize this and characterize such actions on behalf of Russia or other Arctic states as the militarization of the Arctic region,” Ivanov said.

“It seems to me that it is in the interests of Russia and not only Russia but also other Arctic and non-Arctic states that the Arctic region becomes a region of development and cooperation rather than confrontation and conflict,” he said.

Ivanov also noted the importance of “paying attention to the development of international legal norms of cooperation and the resolution of issues in the region prior to the active development of resources in Arctic.”

The Arctic states have reduced their military presence in the region seven – ten times over the past 20 years, said Andrei Zagorsky, a RIAC expert and the head of the disarmament and conflict settlement section of the International Security Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ World Economy and International Relations Institute.

“There is an obvious intention of every state to expand its presence in the Arctic region for the resolution of new security problems in the region rather than for military confrontation,” Zagorsky said.

“Armed forces of almost every Arctic state fulfill not only purely military tasks but also the ones related to operative action in emergency situations such as search and salvation operation at the sea,” he said.