Russia's Rush To The Arctic

The Arctic: Where The U.S. And Russia Could Square Off Next -- Uri Friedman, The Atlantic

A closer look at Moscow's claims in the northern seas

In mid-March, around the same time that Russia annexed Crimea, Russian officials announced another territorial coup: 52,000 square kilometers in the Sea of Okhotsk, a splotch of Pacific Ocean known as the "Peanut Hole" and believed to be rich in oil and gas. A U.N. commission had recognized the maritime territory as part of Russia's continental shelf, Russia's minister of natural resources and environment proudly announced, and the decision would only advance the territorial claims in the Arctic that Russia had pending before the same committee.

After a decade and a half of painstaking petitioning, the Peanut Hole was Russia's.

Russian officials were getting a bit ahead of themselves. Technically, the UN commission had approved Russia's recommendations on the outer limits of its continental shelf—and only when Russia acts on these suggestions is its control of the Sea of Okhotsk "final and binding."

Read more ....

My Comment: The Russians are operating with the same modus operandi as China .... but less confrontational. It is also helps (from Moscow's perspective) that everyone else does not have same military assets as the Russians have (the U.S. included) in the Arctic.

As regular readers of this blog know .... I am a skeptic when it comes to global warming (especially in my part of the world in Canada). And while the arctic ice cap has grown considerably in the past year there-by dashing hopes of an ice-free Northwest passage, it does not mean that maritime borders and territorial claims are going to stop .... claims that I predict will only intensify..