Russia Is Militarily Dominating The Arctic, Working With China, As US Slips Behind: Study

Russia is winning the race to dominate the Arctic region, growing its footprint at the top of the world, and with China’s help to boot… That’s the conclusion of a new investigative Wall Street Journal report, which features interactive graphics and maps.

The Arctic has long been understood by international powers as a politically neutral part of the globe, and in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was even some cooperation between the United States and Russia on things like developing and regulating Arctic fisheries, as well as environmental preservation concerns.

But as we’ve long documented, a new ‘race’ for Artic dominance has heated up simultaneous to the Russia-Ukraine war, and accompanying US sanctions targeting Moscow, as well as Chinese entities willing help skirt Washington’s punitive measures. Thrown into the mix, and likely to complicate ratcheting geopolitical tensions, is President Trump’s declaration that he wants to buy Greenland.

Russia already has a distinct advantage which comes by way of geography, given it has always possessed the largest Arctic population of any of the nations bordering the Arctic Ocean.

Russia’s Arctic bastion and territorial claims – it has geography on its side, which could be part of the motivating factor in Trump’s eyeing Greenland for US control:

NATO actually currently has five more military sites in total than Russia, but the Russian military’s bases are far larger. The Simons Foundation Canada has documented in a fresh study that Russia has 32 “continuously attended military sites” in the Arctic region as of 2024.

Notably the outposts located Franz Josef Land, Kotelny Island, and Wrangel Island are able to house up to 150 ground troops each.

One of NATO’s founding members, Norway, maintains 15 “continuously attended military sites”. And per The Simons Foundation report, other NATO members have as follows:

• United States: 10 Arctic sites
• Canada: 8 Arctic sites
• Denmark: 3 Arctic sites, which are in Greenland
• Iceland: 1 Arctic site

Still, Russia’s military has warned that “the Arctic is a region for potential future conflict” amid the global build-up there, according to Russia’s Commander of the Northern Fleet, Aleksandr Moiseyev.

The spread of Arctic bases over time, screenshot via Wall Street Journal:

As for China-Russian cooperation in the far north, the fresh WSJ report observes in the following:

That support has been prominent in the Arctic, where Chinese companies are significant investors and equipment suppliers in Russian energy projects including the Yamal LNG and Arctic 2 LNG projects. 

Russia, in return, has been shipping fuel to China using its so-called shadow fleet, by which sanctioned vessels make illicit deliveries of Russian oil to markets in Asia. Last year saw a record volume for transit cargo through the Northern Sea Route from northwestern Russia to the Bering Strait, according to Rosatom, the Russian agency that oversees the waterway. Almost all of that cargo went from Russia to China, and more than half was crude oil. The total volume remains a fraction of crude-oil traffic through the Suez Canal: While the northern route’s shorter distance can cut transit times by two weeks, sea ice remains a treacherous obstacle despite shrinking ice cover.

How Russia is winning the race to dominate the Arctichttps://t.co/7QzCY8h9F9
Sea-ice cover in the #Arctic has lost an area the size of Argentina in under 50 years, increasing the number of high-latitude ship voyages through a region where #Russia has built military dominance pic.twitter.com/t4gTaMg2PD

— Geopolitics (@PhilipCMead) February 3, 2025

Hopefully, under the new Trump administration, Russia and the US can go back to some level of friendly cooperation and keep the territory ‘neutral’ – rather than a ground of competition which could see eventual military confrontation over Arctic turf.