Eco-talk and military activities

I have not been able to give due attention to this blog during spring (blame Ukraine) but now I want to upgrade it to a proper PRIO blog, with the link to Facebook, certainly.

What has caught my attention recently was Putin-chaired roundtable on the safety of Arctic development in St. Petersburg on June 5. The tone – the theme of full transparency and eco-stability was in the focus – was certainly very different from the “hard security” focus of theSecurity Council session in mid-April.

However, even in the environment-centered debates, the issue of increasing the military presence is emphasized, like for instance, inthis article in Nezavisimaya, which argues for more bases and refers the “second strike” doctrine.

Sweet-talking about cooperation, Russia goes ahead with the military build-up, and the CEO of “Vysokotochnye kompleksy” enterprise reveals in this interviewthat the Pantsyr-C1 (SA-22 Greyhound) air-defense system (combines guns and missiles) is tested for the deployment in the Arctic. It is rather ironic that semi-official mediacomplains that Norway goes too slow with re-starting military cooperation with Russia. The paratrooper from the 98th Airborne Division (Ivanovo) in this pictureseems not too worried about the views of Arctic neighbours.