Press review: Russia opens Northern Sea Route to West and Jerusalem envoy heads to Moscow

MOSCOW, June 10. /TASS/. Russia may allow Western countries to use its Northern Sea Route, and experts weigh in on the outcome of Sunday’s election in Armenia. Meanwhile, Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem is headed to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. These stories topped Wednesday's headlines in Russia.

Russia will not ban Western countries from using its Northern Sea Route (NSR), Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic Alexey Chekunkov told Izvestia. According to him, the situation in the Middle East may lead to increased shipments via the NSR, with, say, China planning to raise its freight transit through it to 20 million metric tons by 2030. Experts believe that the United States and Europe, too, could seek transit of energy and raw materials using the shipping corridor. Meanwhile, Russia is planning to build 10 new nuclear-powered icebreakers and deploy a space system to develop the NSR.

Further down the road, Europe and the United States could theoretically take an interest in the NSR as a backup and partially faster Asia-Europe/North America route, Pavel Anisimov, Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Sciences at Russian State Humanitarian University, or RGGU, told Izvestia. He noted that the higher the risks of blocking or destabilizing flows through the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, the more valuable alternative routes become for global players. "Primarily, energy resources (LNG or oil), raw materials and, in the future, high-speed container shipping may be of interest if Russia ensures year-round navigation and predictable tariffs," the expert argued. According to him, Western traffic overall has been hampered by geopolitics, including sanctions, a legal dispute over the status of the route, costly icebreaker escorts and environmental issues.

Political analyst Denis Denisov maintained that the use of the NSR by Western countries could be negotiated after resolving the Ukraine conflict and key regional security issues. However, the NSR has the potential to serve as a major shipping route for the West, he added.

In the short term, Western countries may request Russia’s approval to use the NSR only in a critical situation, for example, if all logistics routes through the Middle East are closed. Perhaps this issue will be raised if talks on the normalization of Russia’s relations with the EU and the United States are held in the future. Meanwhile, Russia has so far fully reoriented international transit along the NSR to China, India, and the UAE, which