Latest news with #RussianArctic
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
China Has an Arctic Strategy. America Needs One, Too
With the return of the Trump administration, the concept of great power competition has seen something of a renaissance. To its credit, the view of China as a predatory global player that emerged during President Donald Trump's first term in office was perpetuated by his successor, Joe Biden. Even so, recent months have seen strategic competition between the United States and China in everything from strategic minerals to trade expand to virtually every corner of the world. But one place where real competition hasn't yet kicked off in earnest is the Arctic. It's certainly true that the Trump White House grasps the strategic importance of the region; during its first term in office, it reopened Arctic waters for drilling as part of a robust America First energy policy, and there's now a broad understanding among administration officials that the area is one of vital national interest. Still, it's fair to say that U.S. attention to the Arctic hasn't kept pace with that of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Aerial view of the icebreaker Kaptain Khlebnikov sailing near Baffin Island which is melting due to global warming. Aerial view of the icebreaker Kaptain Khlebnikov sailing near Baffin Island which is melting due to global warming. Getty Images Back in 2018, the government of Xi Jinping issued its official Arctic strategy. That document framed the PRC as a "Near-Arctic State" and outlined a broad vision for engagement and investment in the region. Since then, China has become a stakeholder in Russian Arctic projects like the Yamal LNG pipeline and a deep-water port in Arkhangelsk. It has made inroads among other Arctic states as well by establishing research facilities in Iceland and Norway's Svalbard peninsula. Studies have estimated total Chinese investments in the Arctic to total in excess of $90 billion to date. To what end is a hotly debated topic. A recent study by Harvard University's Belfer Center has argued that those investments are decidedly more modest than advertised, and less significant than many assume. National security experts, though, warn that the PRC's inroads are the prelude for an expanded, multi-domain strategy designed to make the Arctic a real domain of competition. The stakes are massive because the region is strategically vital for a range of military, economic, and geopolitical reasons. One is the Arctic's growing significance as a maritime trade route. Melting ice and changing climate have opened up new and shorter shipping routes like the North Sea Passage (along Russia's coast) and the Northwest Passage, through Canada's Arctic territories. That has made the Arctic an increasingly important component of global commerce. Over the past decade, the Arctic Council estimates, the number of vessels transiting the area has increased by 37 percent. Another stems from its strategic location. Situated at the center of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic is the shortest route between North America, Europe, and Asia. Another strategic competitor, Russia, has established numerous military bases and monitoring stations there, effectively militarizing the "High North." In response, both the United States and NATO have steadily expanded their Arctic presence in recent years. Yet another stake is energy potential. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic holds some 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. That puts it roughly on par with Russia, in terms of energy wealth. "What China is doing in the Arctic should be a wake-up call for us to accelerate the work we started," Julia Nesheiwat told Newsweek. According to Nesheiwat, who served in the last Trump administration, first as U.S. Homeland Security advisor and then as commissioner on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission: "It is a major strategic challenge. We are seeing growing Chinese activity, and increasing collaboration between Russia and China, in an effort to gain access to Arctic resources and minerals." Nesheiwat suggested a series of concrete steps, from expanding the U.S. ice-breaker fleet to enhancing our Arctic diplomacy to stepped-up regional exercises with NATO partner nations. The job won't be easy. The White House currently has an overflowing foreign policy plate, with issues ranging from Russia to the Israel-Hamas war. Nevertheless, Nesheiwat said we need to parlay our understanding of the importance of the Arctic into a real long-term vision for America there. China, after all, clearly has one, and officials in Beijing are working toward making it a reality. If they succeed, it will have real consequence—not just for Arctic security, but for global commerce and economic prosperity more broadly. Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-08-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
My beat-up camera can never be replaced by a phone
If my camera could speak, she'd have stories to tell. The places she's been, the things she's seen, the punishments she's endured as my trusty companion. Big-boned and positively geriatric at the age of 15, she bears the scars of misadventures aplenty, scratches and dents and faded markings where my trigger-happy fingers have erased her dial mode symbols. This girl has fluttered her shutter-eyelashes at world wonders, captured a lifetime's worth of exploits through her goggle-eyed lens. Shrimp-pink flamingos reflected off the Atacama Desert's improbably blue lakes. Blink. Ten million fruit bats erasing twilight in remote north-western Zambia. Blink, blink, blink. The world's original bungee jumpers climbing a towering platform, tying vines around their ankles and springing earthwards on Vanuatu's remote Pentecost Island. Ah, she nearly missed them. Clad in some sort of polycarbonate material and sealed against inclement weather, my Canon tolerates extreme temperatures. As Siberia's minus 37-degree cold (windchill not included) crushed my bones, she snapped snappily, somehow intuiting the will of my numbed fingers. Long after my iPhone battery had died of hypothermia, she continued to record in high definition the hoons doing burnouts in their Ladas on frozen Lake Baikal, along with my daughter's snow-burned cheeks and frosted eyelashes. Though she barely breaks a sweat in furnace-like conditions, humidity is a proven nemesis. Cold-blooded though she is, her singular eye couldn't outstare the equatorial steam as we tracked western lowland gorillas in the Congo Basin. As sweat bees lapped the perspiration from my face, a cataract bloomed across her lens, rendering snaps of this otherworld in rheumy streaks of green. Those photos remind me of the wispy light she captured the night she saved me from certain injury. Travelling in a monster-sized swamp buggy in the Russian Arctic after midnight, we spied the aurora borealis. Our driver stopped, we clambered out. In the darkness, I lost my footing on the swinging footstep and tumbled onto the road almost two metres yonder. Mercifully I didn't lose hold of my camera: she absorbed the impact, safeguarding me from a snapped wrist. Dusting off her buckled lens, I flipped her switch and lifted her purring body to my cheek. Blink, blink, she fluttered, showing me the dancing skies through her undaunted eye. Loading My camera has been good to me, but I haven't always treated her right. I once knocked her off a bench while cruising on Uganda's Lake Mburo. So intently was I staring at the bubbles streaming behind us – a sure sign of a submerged hippo – I didn't hear her fall. Small mercies: she landed inside the tinny. I dusted her off, lifted her viewfinder to my eye, and attempted to extend her lens. It wouldn't budge. The zoom mechanism had seized – just as the hippo emerged at a distance, head thrown back, jaws yawning, water drops spattering his body in a rainbow shimmer. Snap, crackle, fizz. Back home in Sydney, I deliver my battered charge to the camera doctor, who is kind enough not to remind me of all the other times he's nursed her back to health. The close call brought back memories of the old girl's predecessors. The analogue camera my parents gave me when I was a journalism student, which was later stolen during a house robbery. Its replacement, which I gifted to my vintage-loving daughter for her 21st birthday. And the replacement's successor, my first digital camera, which I accidentally drowned in the Amazon. Not in the river, mind, but in the dry sack in which I'd thoughtlessly placed a loose-lidded water bottle before heading off into the world's biggest rainforest on a photographer's dream adventure.
The Age
02-08-2025
- The Age
My beat-up camera can never be replaced by a phone
If my camera could speak, she'd have stories to tell. The places she's been, the things she's seen, the punishments she's endured as my trusty companion. Big-boned and positively geriatric at the age of 15, she bears the scars of misadventures aplenty, scratches and dents and faded markings where my trigger-happy fingers have erased her dial mode symbols. This girl has fluttered her shutter-eyelashes at world wonders, captured a lifetime's worth of exploits through her goggle-eyed lens. Shrimp-pink flamingos reflected off the Atacama Desert's improbably blue lakes. Blink. Ten million fruit bats erasing twilight in remote north-western Zambia. Blink, blink, blink. The world's original bungee jumpers climbing a towering platform, tying vines around their ankles and springing earthwards on Vanuatu's remote Pentecost Island. Ah, she nearly missed them. Clad in some sort of polycarbonate material and sealed against inclement weather, my Canon tolerates extreme temperatures. As Siberia's minus 37-degree cold (windchill not included) crushed my bones, she snapped snappily, somehow intuiting the will of my numbed fingers. Long after my iPhone battery had died of hypothermia, she continued to record in high definition the hoons doing burnouts in their Ladas on frozen Lake Baikal, along with my daughter's snow-burned cheeks and frosted eyelashes. Though she barely breaks a sweat in furnace-like conditions, humidity is a proven nemesis. Cold-blooded though she is, her singular eye couldn't outstare the equatorial steam as we tracked western lowland gorillas in the Congo Basin. As sweat bees lapped the perspiration from my face, a cataract bloomed across her lens, rendering snaps of this otherworld in rheumy streaks of green. Those photos remind me of the wispy light she captured the night she saved me from certain injury. Travelling in a monster-sized swamp buggy in the Russian Arctic after midnight, we spied the aurora borealis. Our driver stopped, we clambered out. In the darkness, I lost my footing on the swinging footstep and tumbled onto the road almost two metres yonder. Mercifully I didn't lose hold of my camera: she absorbed the impact, safeguarding me from a snapped wrist. Dusting off her buckled lens, I flipped her switch and lifted her purring body to my cheek. Blink, blink, she fluttered, showing me the dancing skies through her undaunted eye. Loading My camera has been good to me, but I haven't always treated her right. I once knocked her off a bench while cruising on Uganda's Lake Mburo. So intently was I staring at the bubbles streaming behind us – a sure sign of a submerged hippo – I didn't hear her fall. Small mercies: she landed inside the tinny. I dusted her off, lifted her viewfinder to my eye, and attempted to extend her lens. It wouldn't budge. The zoom mechanism had seized – just as the hippo emerged at a distance, head thrown back, jaws yawning, water drops spattering his body in a rainbow shimmer. Snap, crackle, fizz. Back home in Sydney, I deliver my battered charge to the camera doctor, who is kind enough not to remind me of all the other times he's nursed her back to health. The close call brought back memories of the old girl's predecessors. The analogue camera my parents gave me when I was a journalism student, which was later stolen during a house robbery. Its replacement, which I gifted to my vintage-loving daughter for her 21st birthday. And the replacement's successor, my first digital camera, which I accidentally drowned in the Amazon. Not in the river, mind, but in the dry sack in which I'd thoughtlessly placed a loose-lidded water bottle before heading off into the world's biggest rainforest on a photographer's dream adventure.
Daily Mirror
15-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
Security guard buried alive after 85ft sinkhole opens up in Russian Arctic
Security guard Aruzat Lukyanenko, 59, is missing presumed dead after a giant 85ft sinkhole opened up beneath her while at work - her family said she was supposed to have the day off A female security guard has been 'buried alive' after a 85ft sinkhole suddenly opened up beneath her. Aruzat Lukyanenko, 59, vanished two and a half weeks ago while working inside a small metal booth on a mining site in the Russian Arctic. Rescuers, who have been unable to dig deep enough to find her, have now called off the efforts at a depth of almost 70ft. It comes amid fears the heavy digging equipment could trigger a deadly new collapse at the copper and nickel ore mine. The sinkhole is estimated to be at least 85ft deep, enough to fit a nine-storey tower - but may be even deeper. The reason for the collapse is said to be thawing in the frozen permafrost soil, reportedly caused by climate warming. The missing woman's niece Sabina Suendikova said: 'It's scary to think that we will never find our aunt.' 'The question is how the employer allowed her [to be in a booth here] knowing the risks and dangers…without taking any measures to prevent them.' There had been previous sinkhole collapses in the area, she said. Ms Lukyanenko's role as a security guard was to warn people not to venture onto ground that might sink. 'We have been searching for our aunt for 17 days,' her niece said. 'Today we were told that the search will be stopped until Thursday, because there is no [suitable] equipment.' Another niece, Radima, said: 'She wasn't supposed to work that day at all — she had a day off. She was asked to replace a colleague, and she agreed.' But on the phone before the ground collapse she 'seemed to have a premonition of trouble', said her relative. The regional prosecutor's office said: 'The booth was standing on the ground. 'At some point, this whole area of ground together with the booth fell at least 25 metres. There was no void [below the surface]. It probably all happened because of the thawing of the soil, that is, the permafrost melted.' It's not the first tragedy involving sinkholes in Russia, and in 2019, two men boiled to death after their vehicle fell into a sinkhole filled with boiling water. The incident unfolded in the city of Penza, located 340 miles south of Moscow. After the water supply was halted to the area, emergency services were able to retrieve the victims' bodies. The local Ministry of Emergencies said the car "fell as a result of the ground collapsing."
New Indian Express
05-06-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Russia's Pearl Harbor? Ukraine's Operation Spider Web an attack of astonishing ingenuity
On June 1, Ukraine launched one of its largest ever drone-based operations on Russia, striking five airbases deep inside Russian territory. Following this, the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement, "Today, the Kyiv regime staged a terror attack with the use of FPV drones on airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur Regions. All terror attacks were repelled. No casualties were reported either among servicemen or civilians. Some of those involved in the terror attacks were detained.' Ukraine, however, stated that at least 40 aircraft had been damaged, specifying that these included nuclear capable Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers earlier used to 'bomb Ukrainian cities'. Russia's Defence Ministry only confirmed that 'several aircraft caught fire.' Two of the airbases struck, Olenya and Belaya, are around 1,900 kilometres and 4,300 kilometres from Ukraine. The first is located in the Russian Arctic and the other in Eastern Siberia. The operation is also one more example of just how rapidly technology and innovative thinking are changing the battlefield. Operation The Ukrainian media claimed that the large-scale special operation was conducted by the SBU, Ukraine's Special Security Service. The planning and preparation started 18 months ago. Russia has highly capable air defence systems and so, it was impossible to strike it from Ukraine. Hence, a plan was made to hit Russia from within Russia, thereby bypassing its air defence wall. The operation has been launched under a special operation, code-named "Pavutyna" or "Spider Web", aimed at degrading Russia's long-range strike capabilities. Ukraine reportedly planned the attack for a year. The drones were packed onto pallets inside wooden containers with remote-controlled lids and then loaded onto cargo trucks, with the crates being rigged to self-destruct after the drones were released. These cargo trucks then smuggled the drones into Russia, blending with normal Russian highway traffic. The trucks were camouflaged with wooden structures, likely posing their payload as cargo shipments, such as lumber or construction materials. Some of these may also have had false license plates or forged documents to pass Russian checkpoints unnoticed. As an added advantage, Russia's vast road network and relatively porous internal transport system make it hard to monitor every vehicle. The trucks were then apparently driven to locations near airbases by drivers who were seemingly unaware of their cargo. Finally, the drones were launched and set upon their targets. Roofs of the wooden cabins carried by the trucks were opened by remote control, with the drones being simultaneously launched to attack Russian air bases. Once launched, these aerial vehicles relied on GPS/inertial guidance systems to fly autonomously toward distant Russian airbases. The drones were adapted to first-person-view (FPV) multirotor platforms, which allows the operator to get a first-person perspective from the aerial vehicle's onboard camera. Apparently, Ukraine used NATO-supplied satellite data and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to identify the exact positions of Russian bombers, gaps in radar coverage, and safe launch zones deep inside Russia. Videos circulating online show the drones emerging from the roof of one of the vehicles involved. A lorry driver interviewed by Russian state outlet Ria Novosti claimed that he and other drivers tried to knock down drones flying out of a truck with rocks. "They were in the back of the truck and we threw stones to keep them from flying up, to keep them pinned down," he said. Using 117 drones, Ukraine was able to reach regions thousands of kilometres from the front, compared to its previous attacks,which generally focused on areas close to its borders. Once the drones were launched from within their territory, Russia's defences had very little time to react, as the aerial vehicles bypassed border surveillance. The SBU stated that the strikes had managed to hit Russian aircraft worth $7billion at four airbases. The cost curve, using relatively cheap systems to destroy billions of dollars' worth of Russian combat power, has also been turned on its head. Evaluation The idea behind Operation 'Spider Web' was to transport small, first-person-view drones close enough to Russian airfields to render traditional air defence systems useless. President Zelensky said the attack 'had an absolutely brilliant outcome' and dubbed it as 'Russia's Pearl Harbor', one that demonstrated Ukraine's capability to hit high-value targets anywhere on enemy turf, dealing a significant and humiliating blow to the Kremlin's stature and Moscow's war machine. 'Our people operated across several Russian regions in three different time zones. And the people who assisted us were withdrawn from Russian territory before the operation, they are now safe,' the Ukrainian President stated. Dr Steve Wright, a UK-based drone expert, told the BBC that the drones used were simple quadcopters carrying relatively heavy payloads. However, in his view, what made this attack "quite extraordinary" was the ability to smuggle them into Russia, and then launch and command them remotely. This, he concluded, had been potentially achieved through a link relayed through a satellite or the internet. Although the full extent of the damage from these Ukrainian strikes is unknown, the attacks showed that Kyiv was adapting and evolving in the face of a larger military with deeper resources. As per Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, 'If even half the total claim of 41 aircraft damaged/destroyed is confirmed, it will have a significant impact on the capacity of the Russian Long-Range Aviation force to keep up its regular large-scale cruise missile salvos against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.' Conclusion This will undoubtedly go down as one of the most sophisticated covert operations of the Russia-Ukraine War so far. Ukraine, though outgunned by Russia, has responded by developing a cheap and sizeable inventory of attack drones. The innovative use of these drones has now been clearly exhibited, showcasing the strategic value of this asset. Nations treat their airspace as sovereign, a controlled environment that is mapped, regulated, and watched over. Air defence systems are built on the assumption that threats come from beyond national borders. Operation 'Spider Web' exposed what happens when countries are attacked from within. The drones flew low, through unmonitored gaps, exploiting assumptions about what kind of threat was faced and from where. In low-level airspace, responsibility fragments and detection tools evidently lose their edge. 'Spider Web' worked, not because of what each drone could do individually, but how the operation was designed. The cost of each drone was low but the overall effect was high. This isn't just asymmetric warfare, it's a different kind of offensive capability for which nations need to adapt. Beyond the battlefield, the impact of this operation is perhaps even more significant. What 'Spider Web' confirms is that the gaps in airspace can be used by an adversary with enough planning and the right technology. They can be exploited not just by states and not just in war. The technology is not rare and the tactics are not complicated. What Ukraine did was to combine them in a way that existing systems could not see the attack coming. Drones in low-level airspace are now a universal vulnerability and a defining challenge. It is difficult to keep out drones with unpredictable flight paths. The operation showed how little the margin for error is when cheap systems can be used precisely. As demonstrated, the cost of failure can be strategic. Though the consequences of the attacks on Russian military capabilities are difficult to estimate at this stage, their symbolic significance is important for Ukraine, as it has been facing setbacks on the battlefront. Ukraine, which has banked on expanding the use of domestically produced drones during the ongoing conflict, has now surprised Russia and the world with this new approach. However, the attacks are unlikely to alter the political calculus of President Putin or change Russia's belief that it holds an advantage over Ukraine, and that it sees a weakening resolve in some of Ukraine's allies. There is no doubt that this attack will go down as one of the finest out-of-the-box ideas of this conflict rendering the entire air defence system sterile and raising huge questions regarding the management of airspace with repercussions far beyond the conflict.
