The development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) by Russia and China since the 2010s, made possible by a warming climate, is real, as is the strengthening of Russian military capabilities in the Arctic.
Here are the main things to know about how Russian and Chinese presence in the region could develop.
- Northern Sea Route -
Russia considers the Arctic essential to the growth of its trade with Asia, including to counterbalance the effects of Western sanctions on its oil and gas, which were imposed after the Kremlin's 2022 assault on Ukraine.
Moscow wants to maximise shipping through the NSR, where ships can sail through more easily due to melting ice caused by climate change.
The route runs along Russia's Arctic coastline, which is far away from Greenland. Moscow hopes it will increase transport of Russian oil to South East Asia by connecting the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
To that end, Russia has built the world's only nuclear-powered icebreakers, vessels capable of clearing thick ice on the route to open the way for cargo ships.
Several months after launching the Ukraine campaign -- Russia's main focus in the last four years -- Moscow said it still intended to develop the route and has approved an investment plan of around EUR20 billion ($23.4 billion) until 2035.
But for now, trade via this route remains expensive and complicated.
Its volume is far from the hundreds of millions of tonnes of goods that pass through the Suez Canal each year.
In 2025, 37 million tonnes of goods were transported via the NSR, a 2.3 percent decrease year-on-year, according to official data quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.
China launched its Polar Silk Road project in 2018, an Arctic version of its transnational infrastructure initiative.
Beijing aims to become a "polar power" by 2030 and has established scientific research stations in Iceland and Norway.
- Russia strengthening Arctic forces -
Militarily, the Arctic region is also a strategic priority for Moscow.
"Russia never threatened anyone in the Arctic," President Vladimir Putin said in March last year.
"But we are attentively watching the development of the situation, building an adequate response by strengthening the possibilities of our armed forces and modernising military infrastructure," he added.
In 2021, Moscow announced it had built a 3.5-kilometre (two-mile) runway capable of accommodating all types of aircraft -- including nuclear-armed bombers -- on the Franz Josef Land archipelago in Russia's far north.
In 2019, the Russian army also said it deployed the latest generation S-400 anti-aircraft systems in the Arctic and opened a new radar base on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.
In September 2025, the Russian Northern Fleet, which is responsible for Russia's Arctic regions, conducted new military exercises involving troop landings and firing from ships and nuclear submarines.
In the Arctic, China's military presence, while modest, has also grown, mainly in collaboration with Russia since 2022.
In 2024, Russian and Chinese bomber planes conducted a joint patrol at the junction between the Asian and American continents, not far from the US state of Alaska.
China also operates a number of icebreakers that are equipped with mini submarines, which are capable of mapping the seabed and are potentially militarily useful.
Beijing also has Arctic observation satellites, which it insists have scientific aims.
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