The US Navy will begin regular patrols off the Russian coast in the Arctic in the near future.
According to RBC, citing a statement by US Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite, Washington will have to "act more persistently" in the Arctic in the near future. The American authorities are dissatisfied with Russian and Chinese "claims" in the region.
"The sea routes in the North are becoming navigable, the US Navy is going to guarantee our partners freedom of navigation", - the minister said in a statement.
Now Russia in the Arctic has a clear advantage in the United States in terms of the number of icebreakers, while the American side declares that it has a reserve of submarines.
Recently, the Arctic has become the subject of interest of several states at once. The Russian Defense Ministry believes that the aggravation of contradictions is fraught with an armed conflict in the region. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Russian side intends to defend national interests and engage in further development of the Arctic region.
In November last year, it became known that Russia applied to the UN Commission with a request to determine its outer boundaries of the continental shelf in the Arctic. However, lawyers of the Fund for the Protection of Investors' Rights in Foreign States consider this procedure not mandatory and even dangerous for the country's economic interests. According to lawyers, Russia has historical legal grounds for securing the Arctic sector of Russia (including the continental shelf) in its jurisdiction.
The rights to the Arctic sector, which connects the North Pole with the extreme left and right points of the Russian Federation, were proclaimed by Tsarist Russia, and in 1926 by the Soviet Union, and for a long period of time they were not disputed by anyone. Meanwhile, in 2010, the Russian Federation signed an agreement with Norway, ceding part of its Arctic sector to it. As a result, our country has lost both vast territories and 300,000 tons of fish per year. Promises to admit Russian fuel and energy companies to the subsoil remained promises. The damage from another Agreement - between the USSR and the United States on the demarcation line of maritime spaces from June 1, 1990, according to the Accounting Chamber back in 2003, amounted to at least $ 2 billion. Then the agreement was called inappropriate "interests of Russia in the field of fishing". As a result of the signing of the document, Russia lost an area in the Bering Sea comparable to the territory of several European states.