Putin's warpath goes through Arctic

Putin’s pretense for readiness to bring the war to an end is negated by his own war-mongering rhetoric. The Kremlin seeks to downplay this intransigence and to create incentives for bilateral Russia-U.S. rapprochement along other political and economic tracks, including the Arctic. The problem with this intrigue is that the failure to stop the deadly hostilities is plain and obvious, while the profits to be harvested from the vaguely outlined Arctic cooperation are hypothetical and mostly fictitious. The enormous and sustained concentration of Russian economic and human resources on waging the war of attrition against Ukraine has been detrimental to its Arctic development plans. Launching new nuclear submarines is not a solution to the problems of deteriorating infrastructure, even in military bases. The neglect of accumulating ecological problems, including those resulting from nuclearization of the Arctic, generates risks that will inevitably undercut all geopolitical fantasies.