the head of the Duma wants to reconsider a maritime agreement with Norway

The leader of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, calls for the rupture of a maritime delimitation agreement with Norway, Tuesday July 5. The Duma Foreign Affairs Committee “will examine the question (of the denunciation of the maritime agreement) and then inform the deputies”he declared, Tuesday July 5, according to the site of the assembly (in English). This measure was devised in response to the blocking of the transit of goods to an Arctic archipelago of Svalbard (Norway).

Russia and Norway, two major players in the Arctic region where natural deposits arouse covetousness, concluded an agreement in 2010 on the delimitation of their maritime borders in the Barents Sea which put an end to a long-standing dispute 40 years. This agreement, ratified in 2011, was hailed as the opportunity for a new start for relations between the two countries, but their relations have since become very strained, in particular because of the military offensive that Moscow is leading in Ukraine.

It is in this context that Russia accused Oslo of having prevented the transit through its territory of a cargo intended to supply Russian miners settled on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at the end of June, and threatened to retaliate. Norway defended itself by ensuring that it was not violating any agreement and that Moscow could supply the Russian community living in Svalbard by other means.

Located about a thousand kilometers from the North Pole, Svalbard is governed by an atypical treaty, concluded in 1920 in Paris. This recognizes the sovereignty of Norway but also guarantees the nationals of the signatory States, today 46 including Russia, the freedom to exploit the natural resources there. “on a footing of perfect equality”. It is in this capacity that, for decades, Russia – the USSR before it – has been mining coal on these lands, among the most northerly inhabited places on the planet.