Russia‘s arctic projects: expectations and reality

• Main Authors: Zalesova, Olga, "Арктика история и современность", ежегодная международная научная конференция 3; 2018; Санкт-Петербург
• Format: Text
• Language: Russian
• Published: ПОЛИТЕХ-ПРЕСС 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Northern Sea Route
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18720/spbpu/2/id19-119; http://elib.spbstu.ru/dl/2/id19-119.pdf

After the dissolution of the USSR the role of the High North in domestic policy greatly diminished, while the Soviet achievements in the Arctic exploration and study were almost forgotten. The new era for the Arctic began after Vladimir Putin became President of the Russian Federation. Along with creation of new legal and regulatory base and revival of polar researches, Russia launched several promising projects in its Arctic zone. The article is devoted to the overview of some promising projects which have already been commenced in the Russian Arctic, including the megaproject of the Northern Sea Route development, ―Project-22220‖ for the construction of newgeneration nuclear icebreakers, railway system ―Belkomur‖, multimodal transport system ―Northern latitudinal way‖, infamous liquefied natural gas production enterprise ―Yamal-LNG‖ and projects of offshore hydrocarbon fields development – ―Shtokman‖, ―Prirazlomnaya‖ and ―Universitetskaya-1‖. This paper gives comparison of the expectations expressed before implementation of each of the projects started to what has been accomplished till now. All the projects examined are headliners directly or indirectly connected to infrastructure development of the Arctic zone of Russian Federation. The conclusion offers possible solutions to overcome the most prominent problems of Russian Arctic projects implementation – high costs and incoordination of the contracting parties.