Lukas Wahden

Песков в ответ на «бумажного тигра» Трампа назвал Россию медведем Накануне Трамп заявил, что экономика России находится в «ужасном состоянии», назвав страну «бумажным тигром». Песков в ответ указал, что Россия скорее не тигр, а медведь и «бумажных медведей» не бывае...

Kremlin speaker Peskov in response to Trump calling Russia a "paper tiger": No, we are a "bear" on the international stage. Похоже, задел за живое...

www.rbc.ru/politics/24/...

Icebreaker diplomacy The US faces serious questions about the relationship between defence procurement, national security and re-industrialisation

Great icebreaker explainer in the @financialtimes.com featuring Peter Rybski
www.ft.com/content/e1cd...

Building on this theme, despite strenuous efforts by Right-leaning commentators to claim that the AfD is the party of German youth, in North Rhine Westphalia among under-25s it sits well behind the CDU, SPD, Hard Left Linke and the Greens

Linke in particular are building momentum among young voters

Rising Nato military spending to cause huge spike in emissions, report warns Pollution could be on par with annual emissions generated by Brazil as experts warn of climate effects of war

Reminder of why it's a bad idea to stick to monodimensional definitions of security. Even if military buildups increase security perceptions in the short term, they tend to undermine security in both the traditional and non-traditional sense in the long term

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Russia's planned go-it-alone orbital space station, the ROS, will be controlled from the complex once constructed.

The complex will house sub-enterprises of Roscomos alongside private space companies and Moscow Mission Control. The hope is to build synergies between the various organisations.

Путин открыл комплекс зданий Национального космического центра Президент РФ Владимир Путин в субботу в рамках празднования Дня города Москвы открыл комплекс зданий Национального космического центра (НКЦ).В церемонии принимали участие мэр Москвы Сергей Собянин, пе...

Putin opened a large new building complex housing a National Space Centre in Moscow on Saturday. www.interfax.ru/moscow/1047127

No, Russia is not building a new Arctic military base on American land The 'National Interest' resuscitates a fringe 1980s conspiracy theory on Wrangel Island

I've written an angry but fun response to that National Interest article about how Russia is "building a new Arctic military base on American land." 66north.substack.com/p/no-russia-...

Миллер заявил, что проект "Сила Сибири 2" фактически уже реализуется Проект поставок газа в Китай "Сила Сибири 2" фактически уже реализуется, подтвердил председатель правления "Газпрома" Алексей Миллер.Одним из первых участков будущего газотранспортного коридора является 410-километровый отрезок от компрессорной станции "Аганская" в ХМАО до КС "Вертикос" в Томской области.

Gazprom's Aleksei Miller: Power of Siberia 2 pipeline is "basically already being built", supplies to come from the gigantic Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye gas field on the Yamal peninsula in the Russian Arctic. Construction is allegedly underway in the Jewish Autonomous Region. www.interfax.ru/business/104...

Europe Mulls Weaker LNG Terminal Rule for Russian Gas Phaseout The European Union is considering backtracking on a proposed ban on providing terminal services to Russian liquefied natural gas suppliers, potentially weakening a plan to phase out the gas purchases ...

One step forth, two steps back. EU apparently just can't rid itself of Russian LNG. The time to cut Russian suppliers off was three years ago. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

85% of respondents are anxious about national control, and agree that Canada "must use its Arctic sovereignty or it will lose its part of the Arctic." 72% of northern Canadians want the government to spend more on defence in the Arctic.

Publications — OPSA Use this space to add a brief description of your project.

@opsarctique.bsky.social have conducted a large survey among inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic. Most notably, a plurality of northern Canadians consider the U.S. the most serious threat (37%) to their region, with Russia arriving second (35%) and China a distant third www.opsaquebec.ca/publications

Norway’s Labour party wins election after seeing off populist surge Success for party of the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, despite increased support for rightwing Progress party

Norway's Labour party sees off far right challengers in a national election. For the rest of the European Arctic, this provides predictable conditions in Oslo, perhaps the most pivotal capital of the region www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Probably an attempt to signal to the US that Europeans are happy to step up defence commitments wherever requested by D.C., but also to show European support for Greenland's right to political self-determination

Large-Scale Exercise in Greenland with NATO Allies In September, there will be increased military activity in and around Greenland as the Danish Armed Forces conduct training with allied forces during exercise Arctic Light 2025. The aim is to strength...

The Arctic Light 2025 exercise on Greenland has kicked off, including troops from Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway. The NATO framing is ambiguous. www.forsvaret.dk/en/news/2025...

Newest U.S. Icebreaker ‘Storis’ Conducts Extensive Patrol Along Russian Maritime Boundary in Arctic The newest U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker, Storis, continues a sweeping Arctic patrol along Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Along the way it also monitored Chinese research vessel activity off the coas...

The USCG icebreaker Stories is currently tracing Russia's claimed Arctic EEZ boundary in move that mirrors recent Sino-Russian behaviour near Alaska gcaptain.com/newest-u-s-i...

It's probably too sensitive - there are many overlapping U.S./Russian interests in the Arctic, far away from the European theatre. Trump has been trying to leverage these in negotiations w/ Putin (think Alaska summit). If talks break down, or China makes further inroads on NSR, maybe. Otherwise, no.

The "Polar Star" base turns 11 next month, so it isn't all that new.

I'd expect tensions over divergent U.S./Russia positions on whether the Northern Sea Route should be treated as internal waters (where transit can be restricted under the law of the sea) or international waters (where it cannot)

Worth highlighting - again and again - the fundamentally different military responses by Russia to Finnish NATO accession vs. Ukraine's unsuccessful NATO aspirations.

The full-scale invasion has never been about NATO, and monocausal arguments focused on alliance expansion fail to convince.

Satellite Images Show Russian Military Buildup Near Finland – NYT - The Moscow Times Russia is expanding its military infrastructure near the border with Finland, in what NATO officials describe as the early stages of a long-term buildup, The New York Times reported Monday.

This is part of an ongoing military buildup along the border with Finland. Finnish officials fear a possible tripling of Russian troops in the region, within five years of a potential ceasefire in Ukraine www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

Russia Will Build Fortifications on the Border With Finland - Militarnyi Russia has announced the start of construction of fortifications on the border with Finland.

Following the launch of NATO's new Allied Forces Northern Europe HQ near the Finno-Russian border in early September, Russia plans to build fortifications along the border fence militarnyi.com/en/news/russ...

Still, Wrangel could become another case study for how parts of the U.S. right are resuscitating historical imperialism in the service of modern Arctic geopolitics. This time, however, with the aim to gain footholds to thwart China's naval encroachments in the northern Pacific and Arctic ocean.

Wrangel Island Controversy Resurfaces With a Vengeance As the long-running dispute between Moscow and Tokyo over the status of the Kuril Islands (“Northern Territories dispute”) shows, Russian officials and commentators tend to react hysterically to any s...

It has essentially remained undecided by the 1990 agreement, with international lawyers disagreeing on the solidity of Russia's 'de facto' sovereignty. But for the moment, the State Department still asserts there is no U.S. claim. jamestown.org/program/wran...

[...], then the British Empire, and eventually, with his mission bound for failure, the U.S. But Washington ignored his request. The "status" of the island also didn't change in 2014, with the building of a Russian base.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson - Wikipedia

The National Interest article contains a few misrepresentations, as is often the case with pieces peddling territorial claims. For one thing, Arctic explorer Stefansson never "raised the U.S. flag" on the island. He first tried to claim it for Canada [...] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjal...

The U.S. State Department never pushed Russia over the status of the islands, and in 2003 officially confirmed that no American claims exist. No official statements have been issued by Washington since then. 2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs...

Военные ВВО открыли "Полярную звезду" на острове Врангеля в Арктике Арктический модульный городок "Полярная звезда" открылся на острове Врангеля. Это первый городок такого типа, введенный в эксплуатацию в Арктике, еще один на мысе Шмидта находится в стадии сборки.

In 2014, Russia established a star-shaped military base on the island under the Eastern Military District. The base has a permanent population and small orthodox chapel. Russia deems the island an important point for monitoring the Northern Sea Route's eastern entry point. ria.ru/20141022/102...

USSR–USA Maritime Boundary Agreement - Wikipedia

The U.S. and Russia never formally signed a treaty on Wrangel or other Arctic islands. But the 1990
USSR-U.S. Maritime Boundary Agreement virtually ignored Wrangel (and other) islands, establishing the future U.S.-Russia border between Little and Big Diomede. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR%E2...

Système naturel de la Réserve de l'île Wrangel Situé nettement au-dessus du cercle arctique, le site comprend la montagneuse île Wrangel (7 608 km2), l’île Gerald (11 km2) et une zone maritime. Wrangel n’a pas été recouverte de glaces durant l’âge...

A Russian nature reserve (заповедник) since 1976, Wrangel was once home to the last surviving population of wooly mammoths. It has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 2004. whc.unesco.org/fr/list/1023/

But Soviet settlers predominated since then. In the 1930s, the island allegedly fell under the control of a murderous mini-dictator, Konstantin Semenchuk, whose sentencing to death in Moscow helped launch the career of Stalin's favourite prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky. web.archive.org/web/20070312...