Greenland, headlines, and Russia’s day-to-day Arctic statecraft

Greenland is grabbing the headlines in global politics in early 2026. Simultaneously, a familiar drift is evident in recent Anglophone Arctic writing: Greenland has become the shorthand for Arctic geopolitics. The Greenland story is undoubtedly important, but that framing can obscure the prosaic reality of the High North.

The Arctic is also being remade by something less cinematic and even more consequential: Russia. With 53 per cent of the Arctic coastline being Russian, Russia is an important Arctic state, if not the most important. The Arctic is also equally important to Russia. The Arctic is the most important geopolitical space for Russia, as it is the gateway to the Atlantic. Arctic also hosts the highest concentration of Russian nuclear weapons on the Kola Peninsula and its Northern Fleet (Arctic Today, 2026). The Russian Arctic is a critical driver of its economy, contributing 7 per cent of Russia’s GDP (IECCA, 2025).

The largest Arctic power, Russia, inherently has its own day-to-day statecraft in its far north. Ports in Murmansk that decide what can be shipped and when through Russian Arctic waters. Ice-class fleets like the Russian state-of-the-art Rosatomflot’s nuclear icebreaker determine which routes are commercially plausible. Resource megaprojects at the Taymyr and at the Gaydan Peninsula that lock in infrastructure for decades. Subsidy systems, labor regimes, and safety rules that shape who can work there and at what cost. To understand the Arctic’s strategic future, one must give Russia primacy in the region.

In the background, far away from Moscow, while analysts can debate how much Trump’s comments on Greenland benefit Russia, there is no doubt that they do (Reuters, 2026). As allied leaders rallied behind Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, Putin quickly used a Kremlin speech to argue that Western diktats are losing their grip and that raw power politics is returning (Reuters, 2026). Trump's words have naturally made the other NATO allies anxious and fearful; a less united or weaker NATO plays in Russia’s favor. It is crucial at this juncture to examine the Arctic’s most powerful state.

Why revisit Arctic 2035 now

For examining Russia in the High North, its “Arctic 2035” strategy is worth revisiting now. In 2020, the Kremlin adopted two key texts: first, the Basic Principles of State Policy in the Arctic zone through 2035, and later, the Strategy for Developing the Arctic Zone and Ensuring National Security through 2035 (Kremlin, 2020; Kremlin, 2020). However, these were pre-war documents, written before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and before sanctions and political rupture became the defining features of Russia’s relationship with the West. Another defining feature of the region since then has been Finland and Sweden joining NATO, making all the remaining seven members of the Arctic 8, with the obvious exception of Russia, NATO members.

An assessment of the Arctic 2035 sits just after the strategy’s first implementation phase and early enough to observe course corrections. An audit of this nature can clarify what the strategy stack promised, the document delivered, and where constraints have forced certain trade-offs.

Arctic exceptionalism and Russia among peers

For decades, buzzwords like “Arctic exceptionalism” and “High North, Low Tension” have dominated our thinking of the Arctic in the post-Cold War era as a geopolitical space (Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2017; Norwegian Government, 2023). The idea that the region rewarded technical cooperation in, say, science and climate, and pragmatic compartmentalization, even when politics soured elsewhere around the world. That never meant the Arctic was an apolitical space or devoid of hard political calculus in the form of military buildup. It meant that institutions, habits, and constraints often pushed competition into quieter channels.

The Arctic Council is a classic example of Arctic peace. It became a high-level forum for cooperation, but it is explicitly not a body for military security issues. That design did not remove rivalry. But it nudged states toward a vocabulary of infrastructure, safety, environmental protection, and responsible development, even when the stakes were strategic. But the days of thinking about the Arctic as a zone of peace are on thin ice.

Russia’s involvement in the Arctic is unique for another reason. In many other regions where Moscow exerts influence, such as the Caucasus and its western neighbor, Belarus, it deals with states whose bargaining position is weaker and, to some extent, under Russian influence. But the Arctic is different. Here, Russia sits alongside sovereign peers, all of them liberal democracies and tied to NATO. Even when cooperation frays, Russia’s Arctic policy is still read against shared legal baselines and under constant scrutiny.

That is why Russian strategy documents are unusually useful in the Arctic. They are signals to other states, to investors, and to Russia’s own agencies about what the Kremlin thinks is feasible.

What “Arctic 2035” promised and why it may strain

Let's start with the Basic Principles. They set out six national interests that operate as a compact statement of Russian purpose in the Arctic (Nord University, 2023). They frame the Arctic as a place where sovereignty must be protected, where cooperation remains desirable, where the region should serve as a strategic resource base, and where the Northern Sea Route should develop into a competitive national transport corridor. The document also stresses environmental protection, Indigenous livelihoods, and improving the quality of life in the Russian Arctic.

The Basic Principles set out the balance Moscow wants to project: security and development, hard assets and human welfare, extraction and stewardship.

The same document also defines the threats to Russian national security. The threats are somewhat surprising to those who think of Russia as a hard military state. Not all threats defined are external. Depopulation in the bitterly cold region counts as a security problem. Weak infrastructure counts as a security problem. Slow geological exploration counts as a security problem. Delays in NSR infrastructure, icebreaker construction, and rescue capabilities also appear in that threat picture. In other words, state capacity is part of national security. For Moscow, a Russian Arctic that cannot be populated, supplied, and connected is an Arctic where sovereignty is harder to sustain in practice.

What stands out in the document also speaks about the Russian state culture. The document treats certain implementation failures as security vulnerabilities. Missed deadlines for Northern Sea Route infrastructure, rescue and icebreaker fleets are not presented as routine bureaucratic delays. They are framed as risks to national security.

Early expert readings of the documents already suggested where this bundle of promises might strain. Janis Kluge and Michael Paul observed structural constraints, such as inadequate funding and permafrost thaw, that are expected to affect 70 per cent of Arctic infrastructure (SWP Berlin, 2020). Especially permafrost reframes “development” in the Arctic as maintenance and adaptation, not only construction, and it raises the cost of every promised kilometer of road, runway, pipeline, and housing.

A later structural reading by the NATO Defence College sharpens Moscow’s hierarchy of priorities (NATO Defence College, 2021). It argues that, despite rhetorical attention to socio-economic development, the strategy continues to prioritize extraction and export via the NSR, the build-out of NSR infrastructure, including the controversial dual-use facilities, and the strengthening of Arctic defenses. It also flags ambitious job targets and the tension between permanent settlement goals and the incentives for rotational labor. The audit question, then, is not whether the strategy contains social promises. It is whether those promises survive contact with fiscal and logistical trade-offs.

Here, it is tempting to treat the post-2022 conditions as a master explanation for any implementation gap. Massive sanctions and procurement constraints explain a part of the shortfall. Yet the analytical payoff is higher for an audit like this if we avoid the “shock explains everything” shortcut. Moscow’s 2020 strategy stack already anticipated bottlenecks (U.S. Naval War College, 2020). It framed infrastructure delays as security threats and placed a heavy burden on complex logistics and expensive assets.

The targets of Moscow were contested even before the later disruptions. Putin’s 2018 national goals set a target of quadrupling NSR cargo volume to 80 million tons by 2024, and Kluge and Paul reported disagreement in Moscow over this target, some describing it as unrealistic (Kremlin, 2018; SWP Berlin, 2020). They also reported Rosatom’s estimate of US$11.7 billion in required NSR investment, with the state expected to shoulder one-third (SWP Berlin, 2020). These figures do not, by themselves, prove overreach. However, they do show that “Arctic 2035” was never a low-cost plan. It demanded sustained funding, competent coordination across agencies and firms, and a long-term commitment to technological reliability.

External reporting at the time of adoption noted clear expectations that hydrocarbon and LNG projects would scale up in tandem with the growth of the Northern Sea Route (SWP Berlin, 2020). An S&P Global report projected increases in the Arctic share of Russian oil and condensate production and substantial growth in Arctic LNG output by 2035, alongside rising NSR shipments relative to a 2019 baseline (S&P Global, 2020). The report does make the central logic clearer: the strategy’s development narrative is anchored in resource exports, with connectivity largely serving that export model.

Recent talks in Moscow about revising the 2020 strategy sharpen our question. There were reports that suggested Russian officials were preparing a new long-term plan for the Arctic zone and that a draft decree outlining a strategy through 2050 had been prepared, citing sanctions and an evolving military and political situation (Jamestown Foundation, 2025). Russian government-facing outlets similarly note work to adjust the planning horizon to 2050 (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 2025). It is therefore now evident that the state is reassessing feasibility, priorities, and messaging.

Milestones and delivery: what the record shows

The Strategy’s indicators are written in a way that almost invites scrutiny. Baselines are stated publicly. Milestone values are also visible to everyone. The early milestones include a 2024 step intended to demonstrate acceleration. The first place tension becomes visible is in the cargo of the Northern Sea Route.

For NSR cargo, the Strategy uses a baseline of 31.5 million tons in 2019 and links the 2024 step to the logic of a 2018 presidential decree, while later milestones are presented as 90 million tons by 2030 and 130 million tons by 2035 (U.S. Naval War College, 2020; U.S. Naval War College, 2020). Against that scale, the most visible operator reporting for 2024 puts total cargo traffic at 37.893 million tons, marking a record year in that series, with 92 transit voyages and more than 3 million tons of transit cargo (Atom Media, 2025). Two things appear to be true at once. Growth exists, and it is measurable. Yet the magnitude looks more like an incremental climb than the kind of discontinuity the 2024 step implies.

A second check on the Northern Sea Route is hard to ignore because it directly challenges the Strategy’s headline claim that the route is becoming a corridor of global significance. The cleanest test, because it can be checked, is Europe to Asia style international transit.

Independent voyage and cargo reconstruction for 2024 indicates no Europe–Asia “international transit” voyages that year (CHNL, 2024). Most of what is counted as “transit” is described instead as Russia-to-China crude and bulk. That reading also aligns with broader commercial reporting (Reuters, 2024). An analysis highlights that non-Arctic-to-non-Arctic transit remains small by global standards, and that major container lines remain cautious due to ice uncertainty, environmental concerns, geopolitical risk, and dependence on Russian services (Financial Times, 2025). Global shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company has also rejected the NSR, citing similar concerns (The Economic Times, 2025). It suggests a route that primarily functions as a national export logistics system, rather than an open transit lane widely used by third-party global carriers.

A second hard test for Russia sits in Arctic-zone LNG, where the Strategy is unusually specific. It sets a baseline of 8.6 million tons in 2018 and a 2024 milestone of 43 million tons (U.S. Naval War College, 2020; U.S. Naval War College, 2020). Open reporting through 2024 is estimated to place Arctic LNG output at around 20 million tons, while shipment-based tracking is estimated to put Yamal LNG exports at 21.2 million tons (Reuters, 2024). These figures are not necessarily measuring the same thing, so the comparison needs to be handled with care. Still, the broader point holds. Unless other Arctic LNG projects were exporting at scale, the 43 million ton milestone is difficult to square with what is visible in open reporting.

Arctic LNG 2 can therefore be the missing hinge (Oxfordenergy). The record used here describes repeated disruptions, including the April 2024 suspension amid sanctions and tanker shortages, and reports that stress storage limits and tanker bottlenecks (Reuters, 2024). These constraints are tightly tied to the availability of Arc7 ice-class tankers and sanctioned components (Reuters, 2025). They sit at the direct causal link between production targets and export reality. In that sense, the gap is not simply about ambition. It is about whether the LNG transport system can function under sanctions-era conditions.

Reporting also describes workarounds to keep flows moving, including proposals for ship-to-ship transfers in the Barents and Bering Seas, as well as ongoing transhipment logistics supporting Yamal exports (MarineLink, 2024 ; gCaptain, 2025). At the same time, capacity limits show up in the wider shipbuilding picture, including reporting of cancellations of large orders tied to LNG-linked shipping and the broader difficulty of sourcing advanced vessels and components under sanctions pressure (Maritime Executive, 2025; MarineLink, 2025).

Fleet renewal is crucial in the High North and is handled on two levels in the Strategy. The visible layer is icebreaking, including Project 22220 nuclear icebreakers and the Leader-class idea (Windows, 2020). The less visible layer is the supporting system, which is extremely important in the hostile Arctic environment and makes a corridor credible for day-to-day operations, including search-and-rescue, towing capacity, hydrography, and the enabling of projects such as fiber-optic cables along the route. As of January 2026, a clear marker is that a fourth Project 22220 icebreaker, Yakutia, is described as entering Atomflot in 2025, with additional hulls under construction and timelines extending into 2026, 2028, and beyond (Interfax, 2025). Taken together, the picture is mixed. Icebreaker renewal continues. The wider ecosystem that makes icebreaking a reliable commercial system appears more constrained, especially when tankers, rescue assets, and service infrastructure become the limiting factor (gCaptain, 2025).

The Strategy also sets social targets with 2024 milestones, including life expectancy at birth in the Arctic zone rising from 72.39 (2018) to 78 (2024), a migration growth rate improving from –5.1 (2018) to –2.5 (2024), and unemployment holding at 4.6 (2019) and 4.6 (2024) (U.S. Naval War College, 2020). In this session, consistent end-2024 and end-2025 values for these specific Arctic-zone aggregates were not reliably accessible. For that reason, they are left unscored here rather than approximated. This is not a way of sidelining the social pillar. It is a basic methodological limit. The strategic relevance remains because the policy stack repeatedly treats demography and quality of life as security-relevant vulnerabilities rather than optional add-ons.

From milestones to power: what the Strategy is really doing

However, the strategy stack does not separate development from power. At its core, it is a document about state power. The Basic Principles foreground sovereignty and military security, frame the route as a competitive national transport passage, and embed security institutions, including military groupings and the FSB Coast Guard network (Govinfo, 2020). The Strategy similarly situates deterrence structures in the Arctic zone. Through January 2026, this posture of sovereignty-through-development is most visible in five areas discussed below.

First, rule-setting is as important as, say, ships, and Russia’s control is exercised through regulatory authority. The route runs through permits, reporting obligations, and ice requirements under the NSR administration regime. That structure shapes who can use the route, and under what conditions, which technically makes the NSR a corridor one can use on Russian terms.

Second, there is institutional centralization around a state operator. In 2018, Russia assigned operator functions for route infrastructure development to Rosatom, including links to the nuclear icebreaker fleet and plans for ports and container lines (Rosatomnewsletter, 2025). This concentrates corridor governance in a single state-linked actor rather than in a plural commercial market that can align industrial policy, security requirements, and commercial access.

Third, military presence is framed as deterrence and corridor protection. Reports argue that since 2005, Russia has reopened Soviet-era Arctic bases, modernized capabilities, and increased exercises, leaving NATO states trailing Russia in regional presence, while linking these moves to the protection of Arctic interests, including Arctic route infrastructure (Reuters, 2022). There is an expectation that energy-sector and military priorities will be protected when budgets tighten; that logic sits comfortably with that expectation, even if the exact balance varies across sources (SIPRI, 2025).

Fourth, legal engagement remains part of the toolkit where Russia formalize advantage. The legal analysis notes that on 6 February 2023, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf issued recommendations regarding Russia’s Arctic submission under UNCLOS, alongside later revised submissions and ongoing delimitation needs where claims overlap (Belfer Center, 2023; United Nations, 2023). Reports stress that CLCS recommendations are scientific and technical, do not resolve overlaps, and do not delimit borders themselves (United Nations). Even so, continued engagement signals an effort to pursue advantage through formal procedures amid wider political turbulence.

Fifth, multilateralism after 2022 becomes selective. The Arctic Council remains the key non-military governance institution. After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a Canadian official statement is described as recording that the other founding states paused participation and later pursued a limited resumption of work without Russia (Government of Canada, 2022). Some practical cooperation can still persist in technical and environmental domains despite political ties freezing. The pattern is not a clean break. It looks more like constrained pragmatism in some areas, alongside intensifying strategic competition.

Conclusion

If there is a single lesson from reading the Arctic 2035 document at almost its midpoint, it is that Russia’s Arctic project is not best understood as a choice between economics and security. It is an attempt to fuse them. The strategy stack frames development as a means to make sovereignty durable, and sovereignty as the condition for development. That is why ports, permits, fleets, rescue capacity, and the institutional machinery around the Northern Sea Route sit so close to questions of deterrence and national security. Even the social promises are framed in that register. Depopulation, weak infrastructure, and delays in critical capabilities are treated as threats rather than as unfortunate side effects.

The record through January 2026 suggests that this sovereignty-through-development model is working most clearly where export revenue and administrative control reinforce each other. The Northern Sea Route is operational and growing, but the growth appears incremental rather than transformative. The strongest version of the “global corridor” claim remains hard to sustain when international transit in the Europe–Asia sense is thin and when the route’s traffic is dominated by Russia-linked export flows. The LNG story points in a similar direction. Yamal’s scale is real, yet the gap between the strategy’s 2024 milestone and what is visible in open reporting is difficult to ignore, and Arctic LNG 2 shows how quickly the model can be bottlenecked when shipping, technology access, and specialized logistics tighten under sanctions.

None of this necessarily implies strategic collapse. It does, however, underline a pattern of uneven delivery. Icebreaker renewal continues, but the broader ecosystem needed to make the corridor routine for global carriers appears more constrained. Social targets remain central on paper, yet the public data needed to score them cleanly is not consistently accessible, which should temper confident claims about that pillar. At the same time, the political context has moved sharply since 2020. Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession, the rupture after 2022, and now the open talk in Moscow of extending Arctic planning toward 2050 all signal that the state itself is reassessing feasibility and messaging.

For that reason, the midpoint audit matters less as a verdict and more as a baseline. It clarifies what the 2020 strategy promised, where the state has protected delivery under stress, and where capacity constraints have forced quieter trade-offs. It also makes a practical point for Arctic analysis in 2026. The region cannot be read only through the drama of Greenland or the North Atlantic. Russia’s Arctic is being built, regulated, and defended in ways that shape the strategic future of the High North, even when the headlines point elsewhere.

Manashjyoti Karjee is a researcher in international relations with a focus on Arctic geopolitics and security. He currently works at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia (ASIA) and has
worked on Arctic research with the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), New Delhi. He has also been associated with The Arctic Institute, writing on Arctic security and great power competition.

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