Russia’s better performance in the Arctic than America

The Russian news agency Sputnik reported this Sunday that there is a wide gap between the ability of Russia and the United States to operate in the Arctic region.

John Miles, a Sputnik reporter specializing in politics, economics and international affairs, said that as the U.S. armed forces are restructured to conduct large-scale battles against adversaries such as Russia and China, U.S. lawmakers are pushing to pay attention to the Arctic again; which has been ignored by other countries for a long time.

General Gregory Guyot, who heads the US Northern Command, warned that the US is seriously behind Russia in the number of icebreakers needed to ensure navigation in frozen waters, especially in the Arctic.

The U.S. still has one heavy icebreaker in the Arctic, Guyot said, while Russia has about 40, according to a congressional hearing of the U.S. Armed Services Committee this week.

As tensions escalated with Russia amid the war in Ukraine, which is directly supported by the US, the focus shifted to the Arctic. Russia has the longest coastline in the Arctic among other countries in the world, and it also has a large border with America in the Arctic Ocean in the state of Alaska.

There is speculation that the Arctic could be the main theater of war in the future, but the US needs to significantly expand its fleet of icebreakers to compete in the frozen region.

Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska drew the attention of US lawmakers to one point last fall, saying: “We need to make sure we’re trying to fill a very large gap in icebreakers.”

Sullivan added: China’s ability to develop icebreakers in 2025 exceeded our capabilities, while this country is not even a country in the Arctic and does not share a border with it.

According to Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of the Russian presidency, as the largest Arctic country in the world, this country considers the Arctic region to be of strategic importance. For this reason, Russian icebreakers are specially designed and increasingly powerful to penetrate the Arctic sea ice, opening up routes for more conventional ships.

Russia has nearly a dozen heavy icebreakers with nuclear engines. Russia is the only country that has used nuclear icebreakers so far. Arctic and Siberian nuclear ships are classified as the two most powerful icebreakers in the world, which ensure safe navigation in the Russian part of the Arctic Ocean and along the Northern Sea route.

The North Sea route is located in Russia’s exclusive economic zone and is supposed to be included in Russia’s economic plans in the future. The North Sea route allows cargoes to reach their destination faster than the Suez Canal route.

It is worth noting that Russia is looking to develop the North Sea route as Russia’s most important transportation corridor in order to increase its export potential and create effective logistics routes that reach Southeast Asia.

After the imposition of Western sanctions, Moscow is increasingly looking to develop the road to provide an economic lifeline, as more than half of the Arctic coast is on Russian territory and two million people live there, half of population of the region; which are sitting on a huge wealth that is estimated at thirty-five trillion dollars and are connected to the countries of Norway, Sweden and Iceland in Europe and Canada and part of Alaska in America.

Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard has been asking for more funding to focus on the Arctic for more than 20 years, but congressional action has been repeatedly delayed.