Blog: Rhetorical or real, is Russian expansionism threatening the Arctic? | Alaska Dispatch
►http://www.adn.com/article/20141028/rhetorical-or-real-russian-expansionism-threatening-arctic
Russia Today triumphantly reports that Russian military bases will span the country’s entire Arctic coastline by the end of 2014, “just a year after Moscow announced its ambitious plan to build military presence in the region.” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claims, “By the end of the year we will already deploy most of our units in the region — from Murmansk to Chukotka.” Severomorsk, the city that is the headquarters of Russia’s Northern Fleet, will be the core of the new Joint Strategic Command along with the new strike force. Thousands of kilometers to the east, Tiksi, in the Sakha Republic, will serve as the base for Russia’s Arctic Air Force. Airfields are also reportedly being brought up to speed in Vorkuta, a coal-mining city in the Komi Republic, and Anadyr, at the country’s eastern edge. An article in another state-owned Russian news agency, ITAR-TASS, quoted President Vladimir Putin: “The fact that we restore it — what was lost. I’ll see,” referring to the restoration of all of these former Soviet military bases in the Arctic. This fixation with getting back what the Soviet Union once had, from Crimea to Arctic military bases, is no passing fancy of the Russian leader. A map of Soviet naval bases on Wikipedia, however, illustrates just how much work he might have cut out for him in returning Russia to a Soviet level of military presence in the Arctic, as the USSR invested a significant amount of money and resources into constructing military bases.