On 7th and 8th October 2023, two ships criss-crossed the Baltic Sea. One was a 169-metre-long, Hong Kong-registered cargo freighter called the Newnew Polar Bear, capable of carrying up to 1,638 standard containers. The second ship was a Russian vessel—the Sevmorput, one of only a handful of nuclear-powered merchant ships to have ever been built—which appeared to be acting as the Chinese ship’s escort.
The pair were on an odd course. They had docked on 6th October at Baltiysk, in Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave that hosts the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet—but the Chinese container ship did not deliver or collect any cargo, as might have been expected. Instead, it went back and forth across the Baltic, accompanied by the Sevmorput. After a stop in St Petersburg, it passed by the southern tip of Sweden, travelled north along the coast of Norway and sailed off towards the Russian Arctic port of Arkhangelsk. While docked there in late October, it received special permission to sail the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from the Northern Sea Route Administration, an entity controlled by Russia’s nuclear power company, Rosatom.
The NSR is the 3,500-mile sibling to Canada’s Northwest Passage. Extending from the Kara Strait to the Bering Strait, it spans Russia’s exclusive economic zone and connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is around 6,000 miles shorter than any non-Arctic route between Asia and Europe, and thus has the potential to save shipping companies and their customers a great deal of time and money.
Until recently, the difficulties of Arctic navigation and the limited season in which the passage was navigable meant the route was of little practical interest. Sailing it still requires specially adapted ships and a Russian icebreaker escort, which makes the journey slow and expensive. Today, however, the Arctic’s ice is melting, and the Northern Sea Route is taking on a new importance.
The documentation issued to the Newnew Polar Bear during its stop in Arkhangelsk revealed that while the ship was busy in the Baltic, its registered owner had changed. When the vessel had arrived in St Petersburg, after a six-week return trip that began in Shanghai in August, it was the Hainan-based company Xin Xin Yang Shipping (the name translates as “New New Shipping Line”) which hailed the journey as a first step in establishing a regular container service that would use the passage through Russia’s Arctic waters. But shortly after, the New New Shipping Line was replaced by Torgmoll, a Russian-registered Chinese logistics company with offices in Moscow and Shanghai.
Under its new registration and with its icebreaker escort, the Newnew Polar Bear then sailed across the Kara Sea and through the Vilkitsky Strait, setting off eastward along the northern Siberian coast and out through the Bering Strait into the Pacific.
The journey might have passed as just another sign of the growing interest that global shipping firms, and Chinese shipping companies in particular, are taking in the potential of an open Arctic. The New New Shipping Line is highly active in the field: the company completed seven Arctic voyages between July and December 2023, and said that it planned to expand its operations in the polar north. But the Newnew Polar Bear’s Baltic excursion—one of those seven voyages—was about to become notorious.
As the ship and its Russian escort left the Baltic, serious damage was discovered to two subsea telecommunications cables—one between Estonia and Finland and another between Estonia and Sweden—as well as to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia. Finland would have to rely on imported liquefied natural gas until the Balticconnector could be repaired. Authorities in both countries began urgent investigations into what had happened.
The movements of the Chinese and Russian vessels on 7th and 8th October immediately attracted attention; they matched the time and place of the damage. An investigation then revealed the long drag path of an anchor, which Finnish Navy deep sea divers eventually discovered on the seabed in the Gulf of Finland, next to the damaged gas pipeline. Finnish police noted that the Newnew Polar Bear appeared to be missing its port side anchor when it reached Arkhangelsk, and later confirmed that paint from the anchor had been found on the compromised pipeline. The police had tried, unsuccessfully, to contact the ship.
On Norwegian sovereign territory, a Russian state-owned mining company hoisted a Soviet flag
By late October, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the Chinese container vessel was its focus, but said that it was “too early to tell” if the anchor had been dragged deliberately or through incompetent seamanship. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, responded with a call for an “objective, fair, just and professional” investigation. Some months later, Finnish authorities were still waiting for promised cooperation from the Chinese on what had become a criminal matter. As the Estonian defence minister, Hanno Pevkur, told Sweden’s national broadcaster, “If the anchor hung loose for more than 100 nautical miles between the damaged cables and pipeline, it is difficult to accept that it was just an accident.”
Definitively attributing responsibility in cases of undersea infrastructure sabotage is notoriously challenging. Both China and Russia insisted on their innocence. But Nato, on the alert after the disputed sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2023, did not seem convinced. The alliance announced it was stepping up its Baltic Sea patrols—increasing surveillance, reconnaissance and drone flights and dispatching four Nato minehunter vessels to the area.
As the importance of undersea infrastructure has grown, so too have the security implications of interference, along with suspicions of increased Russian grey zone warfare. Some 97 per cent of global communications depend on subsea cables, which every day carry around $10 trillion worth of financial transfers. Since 2021, there have been eight unattributed yet suspicious cable-cutting incidents—and more than 70 sightings of Russian vessels behaving unusually—in the waters around Europe and the North Atlantic.
In response, Nato agreed, at its 2023 Vilnius summit, to set up a special network focused on “identifying and mitigating strategic vulnerabilities and dependencies with respect to our critical infrastructure, and to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state actors”.
Although China has also invested heavily in its undersea capabilities and is suspected of cutting two cables that connect mainland Taiwan to the Matsu Islands last year, the Baltic episode was the first time that a Chinese ship had come under suspicion in this part of the world.
China’s presence in the Arctic is not new, but it is growing. The country has been party to the Svalbard Treaty, which regulates the Norwegian archipelago of the same name, since 1925. This gives it the right to explore certain areas of the Arctic, but Beijing seeks more power.
The Polar Silk Road: estimated Arctic route of the Snow Dragon
Source: Arctic portal
In 2013, claiming the status of a “near Arctic state”, China became a permanent observer at the Arctic Council—the decision-making body for the region—and continues to push for full membership. In 2018, the country argued that the Arctic has a “vital bearing on interests of states outside the region”, and that such states are therefore entitled to conduct scientific research, navigation, overflights, fishing and the laying of subsea cables and pipelines in the area.
Beijing also claims the right to exploit the region’s resources and to promote the incorporation of the Arctic into its Belt and Road Initiative, by encouraging the development of a “Polar Silk Road” that would link China to Europe through the Arctic Ocean.
China has cultivated relationships with Iceland, Greenland and other Nordic countries. In 2010, China provided Iceland with a currency swap of more than $500m, as Reykjavik’s banking system teetered in the wake of the financial crisis and its relationship with the European Union soured over disputes around fishing. The same year, Denmark signed trade and development deals with China worth $740m. In 2011, the governments of Greenland and Iceland, as well as Denmark’s ambassador in China issued statements in support of China’s bid for permanent membership of the Arctic Council.
Questions of security and some suspicions over China’s intentions were never entirely absent. An attempt by a Chinese multimillionaire in 2011 to buy 300 square km in northwest Iceland raised concerns that China was trying to establish a strategic foothold in the Arctic. The Icelandic government vetoed it.
Yet China’s investment and trade potential holds a powerful appeal. Wen Jiabao, who was Chinese premier at the time, visited Iceland in 2012 to sign a memorandum of understanding that included joint plans in petrochemicals and thermal energy. China subsequently joined the Arctic Circle, an organisation set up by Iceland to promote cooperation and dialogue. Iceland and China signed a free trade agreement in 2013, and together founded the China-Nordic Arctic Cooperation Symposium.
China’s original vision of the Polar Silk Road was a network linking the whole of the Arctic from Russia to Canada, Greenland and Alaska, based on the potential of the NSR. In 2012, an icebreaker called Xue Long (Snow Dragon) was the first Chinese vessel to sail this polar passage into the Barents Sea, then return in a straight line from Iceland to the Bering Strait via the North Pole. The following year, Yang Huigen, then the director general of China’s Polar Research Institute, predicted that by 2020 as much as 15 per cent of China’s international trade would be shipped through the Arctic. For towns along the route, China’s trade promised new prosperity, as the Arctic was transformed from a frozen backwater to an important logistics hub.
China’s turn to hardline power politics under Xi Jinping and its support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have cast a chill on enthusiasm for China’s presence in the Arctic. Greenland has suspended the mining licence of General Nice, the first Chinese company to own a major mining project there, and its parliament has since passed a law that bans uranium mining and the mine’s development. Greenland also rejected a Chinese offer to finance and build two airports, perhaps judging them to be rather too close to an American airbase—which has missile-warning and space-surveillance systems—that it hosts. In 2016, on security grounds, the Danish government vetoed a deal by General Nice to buy an abandoned mining station. In May this year, a private owner put up for sale 630 square km on the Svalbard archipelago—Norwegian sovereign territory where a Russian state-owned mining company in June hoisted a Soviet flag. A Chinese buyer reportedly showed interest in the sale, but the Norwegian government vetoed it.
China’s partnerships with Russia, though they carry a measure of mutual mistrust, have been smoother. In 2017, Russia endorsed China’s Polar Silk Road. China has invested more than $90bn in the Russian Arctic in the past decade, including in oil and gas exploration. China also helped to fund the building of Russia’s Yamal liquefied natural gas terminal. But as tensions rise between Nato and Russia, strategic confrontation is putting China’s economic ambitions at risk.
The Arctic has long been a strategic region. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States maintained a strategic presence there, because the shortest missile route between the two was to fly across it. Today, Russia’s Northern Fleet accounts for about two-thirds of the Russian Navy’s nuclear strike capabilities, and is protected by sensors, missile systems and coastal defence systems.
Until recently, the standoff was relatively static. The US maintained surveillance and missile warning systems, and kept a careful watch on the movements of Russian submarines. The polar region was frequently referred to in security circles with the Norwegian expression “high north, low drama”.
But today, a series of interlocking crises with global implications is unfolding in the Arctic. Climate change and Russian aggression and the western response to it are generating new military tensions. As the ice melts, a contest is developing for control of new surface and undersea routes, as well as potentially exploitable minerals and fishing resources. It takes the form of resource competition and grey zone warfare.
European and US security and intelligence officials note that Russia could block commercial shipping lanes or military vessels en route to Europe at what’s known as the GIUK—Greenland, Iceland and UK—gap, a potential maritime choke point that separates the Norwegian and North Seas from the open Atlantic. “In the High North, [Russia’s] capability to disrupt Allied reinforcements and freedom of navigation across the North Atlantic is a strategic challenge to the Alliance,” a communiqué from the 2023 Nato summit noted.
The security implications of the melting Arctic also feed back into profound global effects. The Arctic is a critical regulator of the climate through what’s known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), a three-dimensional ocean current system in which warm water flows northwards on the ocean’s surface while cold water sinks and is carried back towards the equator.
It is a long cycle within the Atlantic Ocean that redistributes heat from the tropics to the Arctic, influencing regional and global climates along the way. It depends on the difference in temperature between frozen Arctic seas and the waters in tropical zones. The global ocean has absorbed 90 per cent of the excess heat that human activity has created, but this is now causing these temperature differences to narrow. Fears are growing that the ocean’s circulatory system could weaken, or even fail. As sea ice melts, dark ocean water is exposed; it absorbs more sunlight, thus reinforcing and accelerating the warming.
Climate scientists continue to draw attention to unprecedented phenomena: marine heatwaves that speed up the loss of sea ice, thawing permafrost that releases methane (a highly potent greenhouse gas), uncontainable boreal wildfires that send millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They point to signs that ocean circulation is weakening. This pattern could have catastrophic impacts on human and animal life and food security. In July 2023, a paper in Nature Communications pointed out what the authors claim are signs of an approaching tipping point, and suggested that there is a 95 per cent chance of an Amoc shutdown between 2025 and 2095.
There are doubts about Nato’s capacity to match Russia’s fleetof icebreakers, ice-class warships and submarines
If Amoc fails, Britain would become colder and wetter, while the world’s tropical zones would become even hotter. Ocean life would suffer massive disruption and loss, and the global impacts would include forced migration and food insecurity.
Monitoring these potentially catastrophic processes in the Arctic was, for 25 years until 2022, a collaborative international effort shared between the eight states that are members of the Arctic Council: Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the US and Iceland. In addition to the member states, there are six permanent member organisations that represent the Arctic’s original, indigenous inhabitants. There are also 13 states, including the UK and China, that are registered observers, along with several intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations.
But when Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the Arctic Council’s meetings were suspended, cooperation on critical scientific work which required input from Russia broke down. Limited cooperation has since resumed, but the council no longer meets as a political body, because there is no procedure for expelling a member state.
Russia has a larger share of Arctic real estate than any other nation, but as a result of the accessions to Nato of Sweden and Finland, the alliance and Russia are now more evenly balanced on this critical frontline. Moscow’s most important strategic weapons are stationed in the Arctic, and between 2014 and 2019 it built more than 475 military facilities there.
In 2022, Russia published a maritime doctrine that argues the Arctic is now a site of global military and economic competition. It asserts as major goals maintaining what it sees as Russia’s leading position, the “wide exploitation” of the region’s mineral reserves and the definition of the NSR as Russian internal waters, to facilitate the export of Russian commodities to Asia. The Arctic already accounts for nearly 20 per cent of Russia’s GDP, a value the country seeks to defend in military and strategic terms. Missing from Russia’s doctrine, however, is mention of the impact that climate change will have on these assets—even though thawing permafrost and rising seas will affect Russia more than most countries.
Moscow appears to view climate change as a process which creates economic opportunities in resources and logistics, but also reinforces the need to cement Russian dominance. It has responded by revitalising its military bases to solidify its control of the region, and by seeking Chinese capital to develop new industrial facilities. For China, access to the Arctic depends on Russian icebreakers and permission to sail the NSR. Access remains contingent on its relationship with Russia, despite Beijing’s assiduous efforts to win over smaller Arctic states.
The war in Ukraine, however, has complicated China’s efforts to broaden its appeal in the neighbourhood. Nato has named China as the principal enabler of Russia’s continuing aggression in Ukraine, a view reinforced by the many joint Russian-Chinese military exercises that have continued, uninterrupted, since the invasion in February 2022. For Russia, the war in Ukraine brought Nato’s frontier right up to its border. It also brought Russia’s Arctic bases into direct war service.
Late in the evening of 25th May, three Russian Tu-95MS long-range bombers took off from their airbase. At 7am local time on 26th May, the Ukrainian air force released a message on Telegram claiming that 12 cruise missiles launched from those bombers at Ukrainian targets had been shot down. The bombers had flown a long way from what had recently become their base: Olenya, on the Kola Peninsula inside the Arctic Circle, only 150km from Russia’s border with one of Nato’s newest members, Finland.
When Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, these same warplanes were based at Engels airbase, near Saratov, just 600km from the Ukraine border. But in May 2023, after Ukrainian drones scored a direct hit on the Engels airbase, the bombers were relocated out of reach. Now they fly bombing missions directly from their Arctic base, which also houses the submarines and surface vessels of Russia’s Northern Fleet. Even that base may not be safe, it turns out: on 27th July, according to the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, Ukrainian intelligence sources announced that a Ukrainian drone had destroyed a Russian Tu-22M3, a long-range supersonic bomber, on the Olenya airbase.
The increased strategic tensions in the Arctic have been visible in an intensive series of military exercises. Not only is Russia flying long-distance aerial attack missions out of its Arctic bases; both Russia and Nato have been war-gaming a potential military conflict.
In March of this year, Russian forces in the Northern Fleet headquarters of Severomorsk rehearsed a response to an incoming drone attack. The same month, Finnish and Swedish soldiers crossed into Norway to take part in “Nordic Response”, a joint air, ground and naval exercise that involved 20,000 soldiers from 13 countries. The US then delivered more than 200 units of equipment and 300 containers for “Immediate Response”, a follow-up exercise in Finland in May involving Norwegian, Finnish and US troops.
Despite the simulations, there are doubts about Nato’s capacity to match Russia’s fleet of icebreakers, ice-class warships and submarines. Finland and Sweden, Nato’s newest members, bring additional military capacity to the alliance, but little of it is naval. Canada, an important Arctic state, spends less than Nato’s target sum of 2 per cent of GDP on national defence. It also does not have a published strategy for the Arctic, despite having discovered Chinese monitoring buoys in the Northwest Passage.
Russian submarines can still travel beneath the ice and through the GIUK gap to the Atlantic Ocean, where key data cables and shipping routes are vulnerable to attack, or to the Baltic, where data cables and energy pipelines lie across the sea floor. As offshore wind power grows, the energy cables that carry the output to the shore and the turbines themselves have become targets. If they are hit, conflict could escalate: “Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure will be met with a united and determined response,” Nato leaders threatened in Vilnius in 2023.
In the US, it is the Chinese presence in the Arctic that has attracted attention. In its 2022 Arctic strategy, Washington responded to Beijing’s “expanded slate of economic, diplomatic, scientific, and military activities” by calling for an increased US military presence in Alaska and Nato nations, expanded military exercises and a commitment to rebuilding its icebreaking fleet.
How quickly Nato nations can respond with equipment needed to operate in the Arctic is an open question. What is undisputed is that the story of the Arctic is taking a new and dangerous turn.
