High season for military activities in the High North

The new round of US and EU sanctions targets very specifically exploration projects in the Arctic, so bothExxon-Mobiland Statoilannounce postponements and cancellations in their respective partnership plans with Rosneft. The Western majors hardly have ay regrets about it – doing business in Russia in general, and with Rosneft in particular, becomes bad for business and damaging for reputation. Russian counter-sanctions include deployment of OMON special units into the IKEA shopoutside Moscow. As far as the Arctic is concerned, there is the seasonal peak of military activities, including thevoyage of the Northern Fleetships along the Northern Sea Route, which is not having an ice-free year. What is new this year is theexperiment with transportingtwo nuclear submarines from the Far East to Murmansk. The two submarines in question (both Akula-class, project 971, one built in 1989, another – in 1995) were waiting repairs for a number of years, and now the order was issued to load them on a huge transport ship and bring along the Sevmorput to the Zvezdochka plant near Murmansk.