Month: January 2017

Geopolitical pundits were caught by surprise last Thursday when Donald Trump told ABC he would “absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people”, a statement that was has been viewed as a precursor to further escalation of US intervention in the region. They were just as surprised overnight when instead of challening Trump’s decision to potentially send more troops into Syria, Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow may support the US initiative to establish so-called ‘safe zones’ for refugees in Syria, but added that the plan would require close cooperation with the UN and approval from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

“If this is about the people who were forced to leave their homes by the conflict, […] getting their basic needs covered, […] then I think that the idea to create areas within Syria for those internally displaced could be discussed with the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees and other organizations,” Lavrov said cited by RT.

Lavrov said the American proposal to create secure areas for refugees within Syria was put forward in the context of migrant flows to the neighboring countries, the Middle East, as well as Europe, and “at the end of the day, the US.”

He noted that the US initiative is completely different from what Western countries proposed at various stages of the Syrian war. “There have been ideas of creating some areas where an alternative Syrian government could sit, and use those areas for regime change.” Such a scheme was seen in Libya, where the establishment of an alternative government in Benghazi was used as a pretext for the Western-led invasion to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Lavrov explained, adding that the Libyan intervention went ahead despite no green light from the UN Security Council.

While promising, the proposal would require negotiations with Damascus to agree on the principles of creating such safe zones on Syrian territory, Lavrov added.

However, just hours after his interview, the narrative regained some sense of normalcy after the state-run Sana news agency published a statement from the government pouring cold water all over the proposed plan, and saying that any attempt to install safe zones without its consent would constitute an “unsafe action” that is a “violation of Syria’s sovereignity.” Syria’s foreign ministry and the United Nations refugee agency had agreed on the issue during a meeting in Damascus, SANA said.

According to a document seen by Reuters, Trump is expected to order the Pentagon and State Department to craft a plan for setting up the safe zones, a move that could risk escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria’s conflict.  Rebel backers including Qatar have welcomed Trump’s support for safe zones, and Turkey says it is waiting to see the outcome of the U.S. president’s pledge.  As noted previosly, cCreation of safe zones could ratchet up U.S. military involvement in Syria, including increased U.S. air power to enforce “no fly” restrictions and ground forces to protect civilians in those areas.

But where things again take a twist for the bizarre, is a report over the weekend from Al Arabiya according to which news has been circulating on the internet since Friday stating that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is experiencing serious health problems. The website reports that according to some media outlets said that Assad had suffered a stroke; while others said that he was shot and has been taken to Damascus Hospital for treatment. Some details:

France’s Le Point, speculated that Assad might have been assassinated by his personal Iranian Bodyguard Mehdi al-Yaacoubi, going so far as to say that he shot him in the head.

 

Lebanese newspaper, al-Mustaqbal, quoted “reliable sources” as saying that Assad suffered from a cerebral infraction and was transferred to Damascus Hospital where he is being treated under high security.

As for the Saudi newspaper Okaz, Assad is suffering from a “brain tumor.” He tried to cover up his illness through short and frequent appearances. According to its sources, Assad is being treated by a Russian-Syrian medical team on a weekly basis, adding that he has undergone medical tests when he was in Moscow in October.

Furthermore, pro-Syrian regime Lebanese newspaper al-Diyar reported on Friday that Assad suffered from a stroke, but later denied the news.  There were also rumors that Assad is at the American University Hospital (AUH) in Beirut. However, Al Arabiya contacted the hospital and no information on the issue was given. Al Arabiya has also tried to contact Damascus Hospital, but there has been no response.

On the other hand, in a statement carried by the Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic page on Facebook, Syrian authorities said that such rumors were incorrect.

While the rumor remains unsubstantiated, the death of Assad is sure to complicate any political resolution in Syria, as it would immediate promp both sides in the proxy war to present their handpicked candidates ahead of an election for the country’s next president as suddenly the political – and not military – process will become the pathway to decide who has veto rights over any potential Qatar nat gas pipeline crossing the nation and entering Europe. If so, expect Rex Tillerson to be very busy over the coming months as Syria once again becomes a primary object of US diplomacy in the middle east.

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 Via The Daily Bell

 

Journalists Look Awkward in the ‘Opposition Party’ … The opening days of Donald Trump’s presidency are forcing the traditional news media to choose between squarely reporting on the president and more directly challenging him when he makes statements that are demonstrably false. The strategic choice between a watchdog mission and an active opposition must be made mindfully. Otherwise the media will find itself tacking back and forth between objectivity and persuasion, an approach that could squander both aims.

This article makes the point that Donald Trump is forcing mainstream media to choose between reporting on the president without overt bias or challenging him when he says something  they believe is false

The media to a degree has been focusing of challenging Trump.  But this involves making determinations that go beyond objectivity.  This is something that Trump seemingly understands. Either he is a liar or those commenting on his positions are going to be represented fairly straightforwardly

By presenting his facts his way, Trump is giving the mainstream media an unpalatable choice. Either it abandons its so-called objectivity, or it lets Trump make his points as he wishes to

More:

In American political culture, paradoxically, calling someone a liar doesn’t make it sound like you’re the truth-teller. It makes it sound like you’re engaged in a debate.

Of course, should the traditional media choose to go back and reassert its objectivity, that strategy has limits as well. It’s naive to believe that the Trump-supporting public will accept the newspapers’ version of objective truth in the face of Trump’s repeatedly asserted views. The president’s supporters will embrace their version of facts — “alternative facts,” as Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway unforgettably put it.

This is something we have noticed ourselves. Newspapers in particular are becoming more and more opinionated. It has everything to do with Trump.

There is nothing wrong with opinionated media. Opinionated media’s heyday was actually pre-Civil War when everything was relatively opinionated. Publications had points of view and these points of view were reflected in every part of the paper.

Today, mainstream newspapers are having a hard time reporting on Trump without casting aspersions on his viewpoints. But these same publications are not stating that they have departed from their previous objectivity

Thus these newspapers are running articles that sound anti-Trump.

Aljazeera carries an article: “A Million Britons Want to Cancel Trump’s State Visit.”

One from the Guardian:  “Theresa May Is Ahead of Trump in Undermining the Refugee System.”

And The Wall Street Journal: “Trump Immigration Ban Sows Chaos.”

These articles could certainly have been written more objectively though even objectivity itself is questionable. Objectivity itself has to have a touchstone. In other words, someone has to decide what is objective.

If you are writing a paper in Palestine, advocating the removal of at least some Jews might be seen as relatively objective. In the West, however, removal of at least some Jews from some parts of Palestine would be seen as something certainly other than objective.

Many have used the preoccupation with objectivity in the West as a way to denigrate the Western approach to reporting on the news. What is going on now is that even the pretense of objectivity has been removed. The lack of objectivity is now visible even to Western readers.

Trump has used this as a way to denigrate Western news. His perspective, shared by millions of Americans, is that presenting a point of view without stating is outright misleads the reader.

We’ve written in the past that the negativity of the press toward Trump is something he will have trouble overcoming. But this may prove to be an effective way of fighting back, and one he has adopted purposefully.

Given the way news has evolved since the Civil War, Trump is at least partially correct. Newspapers should probably inform readers if they are going mix editorial coverage with hitherto “objective” journalism.

Conclusion: But even the most “prestigious” newspapers are not doing this currently. As a result they are losing even more readers. This trend will continue until newspapers take some sort of definitive action. And even then it might not help much. Right now they are playing into Trump’s hands. 

Other stories:

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On Saturday night, President Trump signed an executive order promoting Chief Strategist Steve Bannon to the “principals committee” of the National Security Council — while, according to the New York Times, downgrading the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, who will now attend only when the council is considering issues in their direct areas of responsibilities.  The move puts Bannon, a former Navy surface warfare officer, admiral’s aide, investment banker and media executive, on the same level as Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

The rapid rise of Bannon has come as a shock to many political pundits even though he played a key role throughout Trump’s campaign and is thought to be the key architect behind several of the recent executive orders signed by the new administration as well as Trump’s fiery inaugural address.  In an interview last week attacking the media, Bannon clearly demonstrated the brash attitude that likely ingratiated him with the President and secured him a top spot in the Trump White Hosue.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while … I want you to quote this … The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States. … The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong … The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign … Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: They were outright activists of the Clinton campaign … That’s why you have no power … You were humiliated.”

Of course, it didn’t take long for various political pundits to criticize Trump’s decision to add a political strategist to the National Security Council with Leon Panetta saying “the last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where they’re talking about national security.”

“The last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where they’re talking about national security,” said Leon E. Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defense secretary and C.I.A. director in two Democratic administrations.

 

“I’ve never seen that happen, and it shouldn’t happen. It’s not like he has broad experience in foreign policy and national security issues. He doesn’t. His primary role is to control or guide the president’s conscience based on his campaign promises. That’s not what the National Security Council is supposed to be about.”

 

That opinion was shared by President George W. Bush’s last chief of staff, Josh Bolten, who barred Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser, from N.S.C. meetings. A president’s decisions made with those advisers, he told a conference audience in September, “involve life and death for the people in uniform” and should “not be tainted by any political decisions.”

Bernie took to twitter to call the move “dangerous and unprecedented” while saying that “he must be removed.”

Steve Bannon sitting on the National Security Council is dangerous and unprecedented. He must be removed.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 30, 2017

Meanwhile, even Susan Rice, who gained fame by going on numerous talk shows in the wake of the Benghazi attacks to blame an offensive YouTube video for the death of a U.S. ambassador, among others, decided to chime in on the decision:

This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intell to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK? https://t.co/Mmyc139w3M

— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) January 29, 2017

While all the motives behind Bannon’s promotion are not clear, many in the media are speculating the move is designed to diminish the role of Nation Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, whose son was previously fired from the Trump campaign after publicly embracing the PizzaGate conspiracy theory.

People close to Mr. Bannon said he is not accumulating power for power’s sake, but is instead helping to fill a staff leadership vacuum created, in part, by Mr. Flynn’s stumbling performance as national security adviser.

 

Mr. Flynn still communicates with Mr. Trump frequently, and his staff has been assembling a version of the Presidential Daily Briefing for Mr. Trump, truncated but comprehensive, to be the president’s main source of national security information. During the campaign, he often had unfettered access to the candidate, who appreciated his brash style and contempt for Hillary Clinton, but during the transition, Mr. Flynn privately complained about having to share face time with others.

 

Mr. Flynn “has the full confidence of the president and his team,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said in an email. Emails and phone calls to Mr. Flynn and his top aide were not returned.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon still regard Mr. Flynn as an asset. “In the room and out of the room, Steve Bannon is General Flynn’s biggest defender,” said Kellyanne Conway, another top adviser to the president.

 

But it is unclear when the maneuvers to reduce Mr. Flynn’s role began. Two Obama administration officials said Trump transition officials inquired about expanded national security roles for Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner at the earliest stages of the transition in November — before the younger Mr. Flynn became a liability — but after Mr. Flynn had begun to chafe on the nerves of his colleagues on the team.

So, what is the over/under on Flynn surviving the first two years?

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The Islamic Republic of Iran conducted a nuclear ballistic missile test on Sunday, US officials told Fox News. This would appear to be yet another apparent violation of a United Nations resolution and President Obama’s much-heralded nuclear deal.

As Fox reports, the launch occurred at a well-known test site outside Semnan, about 140 miles east of Tehran.

The missile was a Khorramshahr medium range ballistic missile and traveled 600 miles before exploding, in a failed test of a reentry vehicle, officials said.

 

U.N. resolution 2231 — put in place days after the Iran nuclear deal was signed — calls on the Islamic Republic not to conduct such tests, however, this is at least Iran’s second such test since July. The resolution bars Iran from conducting ballistic missile tests for eight years and went into effect July 20, 2015.

 

Iran is “called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,” according to the text of the resolution.

 

The landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers does not include provisions preventing Iran from conducting ballistic missile tests.

Iran claims its ballistic missile tests are legitimate because they are not designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

Here’s how Gen Matthis would handle the threat of Iran…

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This is all very well and good. The IMF have made demands to their puppets in Greece, which if not met, will result in the entire EU bailout to crumble to pieces. Most assuredly, this would result in markets reeling from the shock — plunging freely towards the pits of hell.
 
The condensed version of the aforementioned crisis, which is definitely beginning to loom, has to do with lack of progress by the Greek government to balance a budget.
 
Should the IMF pullout, Germany has stated that a new deal would need to be voted on by national parliaments. The world is a much different place now, than when the last bailout was forged. With nationalism running high across Europe, there’s no guarantee that a new Greek bailout will pass now, at least not without drama.
 
The result of this chicanery is a notable divergence between German bonds and the PIGS (Portuguese, Italian, Spaniard, Greek).
 

 
The spread between Portuguese and German bunds is now 372bps.
 
Source: BBG

Almost two-thirds of the actions creditors have demanded for the disbursement of the next tranche of emergency loans have yet to be completed, the government conceded in a memo discussed between Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and bailout auditors last week in Brussels, a person familiar with the matter said.
 
Even though the memo laid out a series of commitments to ensure the work will be completed, creditors said the proposals weren’t good enough, a separate official said. The people asked not to be named as the contents of the memo haven’t been made public.
 
Europe’s most indebted state is locked in talks with officials representing the European Stability Mechanism, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF over the terms attached to the loans keeping it afloat since 2010.
 
IMF staff said in a draft report obtained by Bloomberg that the current structure of Greek public finances is “fundamentally inefficient, unfair, and ultimately socially unsustainable,” adding to doubts about whether the Fund will eventually re-join the Greek bailout. Euro area governments — notably Germany — have said failure to get the IMF on board would require a new agreement, which needs to be approved by national parliaments.
 
In addition to asking for a lower income tax threshold and pension cuts for current retirees, a demand the Greek government doesn’t accept so far, the IMF is also pushing for the European creditors to off more debt-relief measures.
 
“We believe that Greece’s debt burden can be manageable if the agreed reforms are fully implemented,” a spokesman for the euro area’s crisis fund said Sunday.
 
A European official told reporters in Brussels last week that Greece must resolve the standoff by the next meeting of euro area finance ministers on Feb. 20, before as many as five European nations hold elections that will make negotiations politically difficult.

 
Greek stocks plunged today by more than 3.5%.
 

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

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Following last night’s deadly shooting at a Quebec City mosque which killed six people and wounded eight, two suspects were under arrest and according to press reports have been identified: one is a French-Canadian and the other was of Moroccan heritage. One suspect was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, a French-Canadian, the other as Mohamed Khadir, who is of Moroccan heritage although his nationality was not immediately known.

Reuters adds that at least one of the suspects in the attack by two gunmen was a student at nearby Université Laval. Université Laval is the oldest French-language university in North America, with 42,500 students.

Police declined to give details of the suspects’ identities or possible motives for the attack during evening prayers at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. “Legal procedures are now underway and we cannot make any comment on the identity of the suspects,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police national security superintendent Martin Plante told a news conference. He added the suspects, both men, were not previously known to police.

One suspect was arrested at the mosque, where police were called at about 8 p.m. local time, and the other turned himself about an hour later, Quebec City Police Inspector Denis Turcotte said. Police said they were confident there were no other suspects involved in the attack. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier called the shooting “a terrorist attack on Muslims.”

As observed previously, the shooting came over the weekend that Trudeau said Canada would welcome refugees, after U.S. President Donald Trump halted the U.S. refugee program and temporarily barred citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States on national security grounds.

More details about the victims:

Five people were critically injured in the mosque attack and remained in intensive care, three of them in life-threatening condition, a spokeswoman for the Quebec City University Hospital said on Monday. Another 12 people were treated for minor injuries, she said. A father of four, the owner of a halal butcher near the mosque, was among those killed, said Pamela Sakinah El-hayet, a friend of one of the people at the mosque.

 

The mosque concierge was killed, as was Ahmed Youness, a 21-year-old student, El-hayet told Reuters. One of El-hayet’s friends, Youness’ roommate, was in the mosque at the time of the shooting. He was unharmed, she said, but in total shock.

 

Ali Assafiri, a student at Université Laval, said he had been running late for the evening prayers at the mosque, near the university in the Quebec City area. When he arrived, the mosque had been transformed by police into a crime scene.

 

“Everyone was in shock,” Assafiri said by phone. “It was chaos.”

While the motive for the shooting was not known, incidents of Islamophobia have increased in Quebec in recent years. The face-covering, or niqab, became a big issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election, especially in Quebec, where the majority of the population supported a ban on it at citizenship ceremonies. Pope Francis offered his condolences to Cardinal Gerald Cyprien LaCroix, Archbishop of Quebec, who was visiting Rome on Monday.

Police launched an investigation last June after the severed head of a pig was left in front of one of the doors of the mosque, wrapped in cellophane with bows, ribbon and a card that read, “bonne appétit.” The incident took place during Ramadan, a month-long celebration during which Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset. Muslim dietary laws forbid eating pork at any time. Three weeks later, an Islamophobic letter entitled “What is the most serious: a pig’s head or a genocide” was distributed in the vicinity.

In the neighboring province of Ontario, a mosque was set on fire in 2015, a day after an attack by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris.

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In what will likely be interpreted as the latest “test” by the Kremlin to gauge western military preparedness, Reuters reports that Russia has quietly unleashed the biggest military build up targeting the Arctic since the fall of the Soviet Union.  “It is part of a push to firm Moscow’s hand in the High North as it vies for dominance with traditional rivals Canada, the United States, and Norway as well as newcomer China.” It is also part of the ongoing scramble for resources above the commodity rich arctic circle.

Russian servicemen of the Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in a military
drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near Murmansk, Russia January 23, 2017.

As Reuters notes, under Putin, Moscow is scrambling to re-open abandoned Soviet military, air and radar bases on remote Arctic islands and to build new ones, as it pushes ahead with a claim to almost half a million square miles of the Arctic. It regularly releases pictures of its troops training in white fatigues, wielding assault rifles as they zip along on sleighs pulled by reindeer.

“History is repeating itself,” Vladimir Blinov, a guide on board the icebreaker Lenin, which is named after communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, told a recent tour group. “Back then (in the 1950s) it was the height of the Cold War and the United States was leading in some areas. But we beat the Americans and built the world’s first nuclear ship (the Lenin). The situation today is similar.”

The expansion has far-reaching financial and geopolitical ramifications: “the Arctic is estimated to hold more hydrocarbon reserves than Saudi Arabia and Moscow is putting down a serious military marker.”

The Arctic, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates, holds oil and gas reserves equivalent to 412 billion barrels of oil, about 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Low oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine mean new offshore Arctic projects have for now been mothballed, but the Kremlin is playing a longer game.

Some more details: according to Reuters, Russia is building three nuclear icebreakers, including the world’s largest, to bolster its fleet of around 40 breakers, six of which are nuclear. No other country has a nuclear breaker fleet, used to clear channels for military and civilian ships. Russia’s Northern Fleet, based near Murmansk in the Kola Bay’s icy waters, is also due to get its own icebreaker, its first, and two ice-capable corvettes armed with cruise missiles.

“Under (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev and (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin, our Arctic border areas were stripped bare,” said Professor Pavel Makarevich, a member of the Russian Geographical Society. “Now they are being restored.”

The build-up has been noticed in Washington. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, in a written submission following his confirmation hearing, described Moscow’s Arctic moves as “aggressive steps” and pledged to prioritize developing a U.S. strategy, according to Senator Dan Sullivan.

Naturally, Russia’s military expansion poses a dilemma for Trump, who wants to repair U.S.-Russia ties and team up with Moscow in Syria rather than get sucked into an Arctic arms race: it is guaranteed that US neocons will be scraming bloody murder unless Trump somehow responds to the US expansion.

The build-up is causing jitters elsewhere. As reported two weeks ago, 300 U.S. Marines landed in Norway this month for a six-month deployment, the first time since World War Two that foreign troops have been allowed to be stationed there. And with memories of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea still fresh, NATO is watching closely. Six of its members held an exercise in the region in 2015.

Ships moored in the Northern Fleet’s Arctic headquarters of Severomorsk, Russia.

Previously, the Soviet military packed more firepower in the Arctic, but it was set up to wage nuclear war with the United States not conventional warfare. Arctic islands were staging posts for long-range bombers to fly to America. But in an era when a slow-motion battle for the Arctic’s energy reserves is unfolding, Russia is creating a permanent and nimble conventional military presence with different and sometimes superior capabilities.

Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, is presiding over the re-opening or creation of six military facilities, some of which will be ready by the year’s end. They include an island base on Alexandra Land to house 150 troops able to survive autonomously for 18 months. Called the Arctic Trefoil, officials have said they may deploy military jets there. MiG-31 fighters, designed to shoot down long-range bombers, or the SU-34, a frontline bomber, are seen as suitable.

 

Moscow’s biggest Arctic base, dubbed “Northern Shamrock”, is meanwhile taking shape on the remote Kotelny Island, some 2,700 miles east of Moscow. It will be manned by 250 personnel and equipped with air defense missiles. Soviet-era radar stations and airstrips on four other Arctic islands are being overhauled and new ground-to-air missile and anti-ship missile systems have been moved into the region.

 

Russia is also spending big to winterize military hardware. “The modernization of Arctic forces and of Arctic military infrastructure is taking place at an unprecedented pace not seen even in Soviet times,” Mikhail Barabanov, editor-in-chief of Moscow Defense Brief, told Reuters.

Barabanov added that two special Arctic brigades had been set up, something the USSR never had, and that there were plans to form a third as well as special Arctic coastal defense divisions. “Russia’s military activity in the Arctic is a bit provocative,” said Barabanov. “It could trigger an arms race.” Of course, Russia’s military activity could be simply seen as a preemptive move to western expansion in the region, as telegraphed by the recent build up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

* * *

Meanwhile, Russians are delighted by this latest “arms race.”

In Murmansk, home to Russia’s icebreakers and just an hour from the Northern Fleet’s headquarters, the prospect of an Arctic renaissance is a source of pride. The city is steeped in Arctic and military history. The conning tower of the Kursk submarine, which sunk in 2000 after an explosion, looks down from a hill above the port. And in central Murmansk, scale models of dozens of icebreakers crowd the halls of the Murmansk Shipping Company, while sailors, wrapped in great coats, barrel along its streets.

For Russia, the issue of militarizing the Arctic boils down to a simple equation: we have to do it before others do.

“These Arctic bases are on our territory. Unlike some other countries we are not building them overseas,” said Denis Moiseev, a member of the Russian Geographical Society. “Other countries are also very active in trying to push their borders towards the North Pole. Our army must be able to operate on all our territory in extreme conditions.”

 

One country regularly mentioned as an unlikely Arctic rival is China, a close Moscow ally, which has observer status on the Arctic Council, the main forum for coordinating cooperation in the region, and is starting to build its own icebreakers.

 

Politicians are keener to discuss a commercial Arctic push. New roads and a railway are being built and ports overhauled as Moscow expands its freight capacity and, amid warmer climate cycles, readies for more traffic along its Arctic coast. It hopes the Northern Sea Route, which runs from Murmansk to the Bering Strait near Alaska, could become a mini Suez Canal, cutting sea transport times from Asia to Europe. But while the route’s popularity inside Russia is growing, relatively high transit costs and unpredictable ice coverage means it has lost some of its luster for foreign firms.

Grigory Stratiy, deputy governor of the Murmansk Region, told Reuters there was strong interest in sea route from Asian nations however and that new icebreakers would allow for year-round navigation in the 2020s. “Whatever the weather, the Northern Sea Route will be needed. Its use will definitely grow,” said Stratiy, who said Russia was keen to attract foreign investment to the Arctic.

When asked about his country’s military build-up, he smiled. “There’s no reason to be afraid I can reassure you,” he said, saying it was driven only by a need to modernize.

“Russia has never had any aggressive aims and won’t have them. We are very friendly people.”

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