The Arctic

The Arctic Ocean is ringed by eight states, and for thirty years they kept it apart from their other quarrels: a council of all eight, borders settled by lawyers, joint rescue and research. The ice is now melting four times faster than the world is warming, opening sea routes, seabed and minerals. Russia, which has half the coastline and keeps most of its nuclear missile submarines there, was shut out of that cooperation after 2022. Seven of the eight states are now in NATO. China has arrived as a shipper and investor, and the American president wants Greenland.

Where it stands · September 2026

On 3 September Norway seized a Russian Arctic ship to enforce a 4.2 billion dollar compensation claim by Naftogaz against Russia. European Union leaders met on 14 September to set a new Arctic policy. On 22 September the United States signed an Arctic security deal with Denmark and Greenland and announced it would build two new military bases in Greenland. On 23 September Trump signed the Arctic security pact with Denmark and Greenland.

What the dispute is about

Security. Russia's northern bases protect the submarines that guarantee its ability to strike back in a nuclear war. NATO's northern members see the same bases as the threat to the Atlantic sea lanes. Each side's reinforcement confirms the other's fear.

Routes and resources. Russia treats the passage along its coast as national waters to be used under its rules and with its icebreakers. Others call it an international route. The same ice that is melting covers oil, gas and minerals that coastal states mean to extract.

Who counts as Arctic. The coastal states agreed in 2008 that the region was theirs to manage. China, the European Union and others with no coast say an ocean that shapes the world's climate and trade is everyone's business.

Greenland. The largest island, Danish and self-governing, which an ally now says it must control.

How each side explains it

Moscow's account

The Arctic is where a fifth of Russia's exports come from and where its strategic deterrent lives. Russia rebuilt bases that had rotted since Soviet times, on its own territory, to protect them. The West then ended all cooperation, brought Finland and Sweden into its alliance, doubled the length of NATO's border with Russia, and holds its largest exercises within sight of Murmansk. It seizes Russian ships and cheers strikes on Russian plants. Russia threatens nobody in the north and will defend what is its own.

In our coverage

NATO encirclement/provocation is the aggressor; Russia responds defensively →85 headlines
Covered by:TASS (EN) · RT · TASS · Global Times · China Daily · CGTN

The account of the NATO Arctic states

Russia militarised the Arctic first: new bases, new brigades, tests of nuclear-powered weapons, jamming of navigation signals over Norway and Finland, cables cut on the seabed. Finland and Sweden gave up two centuries and seventy years of neutrality because of what Russia did to Ukraine. The allies are late, short of icebreakers and surveillance, and catching up. China's "polar silk road" along Russia's coast adds a second rival with a state's patience.

In our coverage

What each account leaves out

Moscow's leaves out that its build-up began in 2007, long before Finland and Sweden thought of joining NATO, and that it was its own war in Ukraine that brought them in and ended the cooperation it misses.

The NATO states' leaves out that, seen from Murmansk, seven Arctic states in one alliance around the base of Russia's second-strike force looks like encirclement; that Russia's Arctic ground brigades were sent to Ukraine and largely destroyed, so the threat on land is the lowest in decades; and that the one open threat to an Arctic ally's territory has come from Washington.

Beijing's leaves out that by its own doctrine its civilian research and its military are not separate, and that its Arctic partner of choice is the state under the heaviest sanctions in the world.

The ledger

Russia

Wanted: its northern bastion secure and its sea route in use.
Gained: Chinese and Asian shipping, a first year-round ambition.
Paid: every Arctic neighbour now in a hostile alliance, Western partners and technology gone, and drones reaching its Arctic plants.

The NATO states

Wanted: the north covered.
Gained: Finland, Sweden and a standing Arctic mission.
Paid: the end of the one forum where they and Russia managed the region together, and a dispute over Greenland inside their own alliance.

China

Wanted: a route and a presence.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

militarisation / defence of national territory
Northern Sea Route / international strait
near-Arctic state
High North, low tension
encirclement
polar silk road
Arctic exceptionalism