The Arctic Council has no future without Russia – experts

On May 11 Russia handed over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council to Norway. A year ago, in May 2022, the Western countries that are members of this intergovernmental organization suspended their work due to the situation in Ukraine, refusing to participate in events in the second year of Russia's chairmanship in the organization.
For their part, experts, as reported by goarctic.ru, are confident that without Russia's involvement, the Arctic Council will not be viable.
Nikolay Doronin, Chairman of the Board of the Arctic Development Project Office, commented on the results of the two-year work of the Arctic Council.
"It was an unprecedented chairmanship in the history of the Arctic Council. Ignoring, prohibitions and provocations on the part of other participating countries in relation to Russia. Moreover, it began a few months before the start of a special military operation," Doronin said. - The main result of the Russian presidency is the conclusion that in the development of the Arctic we must rely, first of all, on our own strength and resources. That the logic of good-neighborly relations is collapsing under the pressure of the geopolitical interests of the military-political bloc. In two years, Russia has managed to comprehend these phenomena and work out sovereign strategies. This includes a plan for the development of the Northern Sea Route until 2035, the renovation of Arctic cities, and the monitoring system for permafrost soils. There is no future Arctic Council without Russia. Nobody has been able to deceive geography."
Meanwhile, a number of foreign experts in an interview with Reuters correspondents, noted the importance of Russia for the activities of the organization uniting the Arctic states.
"We must preserve the Arctic Council, the most important international forum for cooperation in the Arctic," said former Norwegian Foreign Minister Eyvind Vad Petersson.
Svein Vigeland Rottem, senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, believes that the establishment of cooperation between other Arctic Council member countries and Russia should begin with the normalization of Russian-Norwegian relations, and this can happen in the future, even despite the expulsion of fifteen Russian diplomats from the Norwegian capital in April 2023.
Aya Kemnits Larsen, a member of the Danish Parliament from Greenland and chairman of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, said that the Arctic Council will inevitably have to engage with Russia, even if it is not possible right now. "I don't see the future of the Arctic Council without Russia," Larsen stressed.
The Russian side emphasizes its openness to dialogue. "Russia has fulfilled all its obligations under the chairmanship. <...> We have all witnessed that it is impossible to think about the development of the Arctic without Russia. <...> We are completing our chairmanship in a state of openness to all states that are ready to engage in the development of the Arctic in the name of peace," said the head of the Ministry of Regional Development Alexei Chekunkov, speaking in the State Duma.
Nikolay Korchunov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Chairman of the Committee of Senior Officials of the Arctic Council, said earlier that ensuring Russian interests in the Arctic is based on interaction with those foreign partners who are committed to constructive cooperation and advocate for the sustainable development of the entire Arctic region.

Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished