As the polar ice caps melt, Russia and China are leading the race to control the lucrative and strategically important shipping lanes and natural resources of the High North.
On 14 December 2017 Vladimir Putin gave his annual end-of-year media conference, which lasted nearly four hours and was televised across Russia. The British and American media focused on Putin’s unsurprising announcement that he was going to run for re-election in 2018. A far more interesting story went largely unreported.
Only a few days earlier Putin had returned from the frozen wastes of Siberia, nearly 400 miles north of the Arctic …read more
Source: New Statesman
