NARYAN MAR, Nenets Autonomous Area, August 6 (Itar-Tass) — The development of the Arctic region should be accompanied by strengthening military and border security in the region and creating systems to prevent emergency situations, secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said.
Speaking at the Security Council’s visiting session on Saturday, Patrushev said a decision taken by the Russian Security Council in 2008 had started the work on developing the potential of the Arctic region.
In 2008 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the Artic region was becoming a key strategic resource base in the 21st century. Commenting on Medvedev’s wording, Patrushev said, “This requires a package approach, an integral policy, thoroughly verified and thought-out decisions on the development of Russia’s Arctic zone, primarily the transport and social infrastructure.”
He recalled that Russia had approved the Fundamentals of the State Policy in the Arctic Region till 2020 and determined measures to form a development strategy on the Russian Arctic region and a state programme. “Today the government is implementing measures to realise the Fundamentals of the State Policy. The government is ending efforts aimed at working out a development strategy on the Russian Arctic region in order to ensure national security,” the secretary of the Security Council said.
At the same time, he said, “In all documents the development of the transport infrastructure is a priority task in the Russian Arctic region in order to ensure national security.” “We should link efforts aimed at improving the transport infrastructure to resolving problems related to strengthening military and border security and cope with the consequences of possible emergency situations in the entire Arctic region,” Patrushev stressed.
In his words, the development of “dual-purpose facilities at the Northern Sea Route for the benefit of temporary stationing of combat ships and vessels of the Navy, the Border Guard Service will reinforce our military and border security”.
The imperfection of the transport infrastructure in the Arctic region hampers the development of the region, Patrushev said.
“This infrastructure does not meet necessary requirements for protecting Russia’s national interests,” he said.
“The insufficiency of present-day systems for transporting the Arctic shelf’s mineral resources reduces the investment attractiveness of the country’s main resource base,” he stressed. In his words, the terminals, Varandei and Prirazlomnoye in the Pechora Sea, as well as the merchant navy for taking crude hydrocarbons out of these terminals, are likely an exclusion of the rather difficult situation in this area.
In addition, Patrushev said, “The imperfection of the dual-purpose transport infrastructure prevents from solving problems of units of Russia’s Armed Forces in the Arctic region and has a negative impact on ensuring military security in the region.”
“The existing navigation and hydrometeorological systems allow us to develop the economy of the western part of the Arctic region. But in the eastern part where the majority of our potential resources is located these problems are solved insufficiently,” he added.
“As a whole the exploration of the Arctic region needs strategic planning of our actions to develop Arctic territories within the realisation of the Russian Federation’s state policy in the Arctic region,” the secretary of the Security Council pointed out.