The debate around the Arctic is becoming hotter than ever as US President Donald Trump continues to insist on Greenland becoming part of the United States. But while Trump’s demands that the US take over a territory belonging to one of its closest and most reliable allies have puzzled the world, the race for the Arctic has been on for decades.
And for a long time, Russia has been winning it.
There’s no question that Moscow has had a dominating presence in the Arctic region.
It controls roughly half of the land and half of the maritime exclusive economic zone north of the Arctic Circle. Two thirds of the Arctic region’s residents live in Russia.
And while the Arctic accounts for only a small fraction of the global economy – some 0.4% according to the Arctic Council, the forum that represents Arctic states – Russia controls two thirds of the region’s GDP.
Russia has been expanding its military footprint in the Arctic for decades, investing in new and existing facilities in the region.
There are 66 military sites and hundreds more defense installations and outposts within the broader Arctic region, according to the Simons Foundation, a Canadian non-profit that monitors Arctic security and nuclear disarmament.
According to publicly available data and the Simons Foundation research, 30 are in Russia and 36 in NATO countries with Arctic territory: 15 in Norway – including one British base – eight in the United States, nine in Canada, three in Greenland and one in Iceland.
And while not all bases are created equal – experts say that Russia cannot currently match NATO’s military capabilities – the scale of Russia’s military presence, and the pace at which Moscow has expanded it in recent years, is a major concern.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based defense think tank, said that Russia has in recent years invested a significant amount of money and effort in modernizing its nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which forms the backbone of its military power in the Arctic. As it continues to fight its war in Ukraine, Russia has also improved its radar, drone and missile capabilities.
The picture wasn’t always so perilous. For years after the end of the Cold War, the Arctic was one of the areas where it looked like Russia and Western countries could actually do business together.
The Arctic Council, founded in 1996, attempted to bring Russia closer to the other seven Arctic countries and allow for tighter cooperation on issues such as biodiversity, climate and the protection of indigenous people’s rights.
For a time, there was even an attempt to work together on security, with Russia attending two high-level meetings of the Arctic Chiefs of Defense Forum before being kicked out over its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Most forms of cooperation have since been suspended, with relations between the West and Moscow reaching a new post-Cold War low after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO in 2023 and 2024 has effectively split the Arctic region into two roughly even halves: one controlled by Russia and one by NATO.
Trump has repeatedly said that the US “needs” Greenland for national security reasons, pointing to Russian and Chinese ambitions in the Arctic. He has argued that Denmark, which has sovereignty over the world’s largest island, is not strong enough to defend it against threats posed by the two countries.
While not an Arctic country, China has not been hiding its interest in the region. The country declared itself to be a “near-Arctic state” in 2018 and outlined a “polar silk road” initiative for Arctic shipping.
In 2024, China and Russia launched a joint patrol in the Arctic, part of a broader collaboration between the two.
But security is not the only reason why interest in the Arctic is growing. The region is transforming faster than any other area of the world as the climate crisis deepens, warming up around four times faster than the global average.
Sea ice is shrinking at a rapid rate. But while scientists are warning that this could have incredibly damaging consequences for the natural world and the livelihoods of the people who rely on it, there are many who argue melting sea ice could also unlock a huge economic opportunity in terms of mining and shipping.
Two shipping routes that were pretty much unviable just two decades ago are now opening up because of the dramatic ice melt – although researchers and environmental watchdogs have warned that sending fleets of ships through this pristine, remote and dangerous environment is an ecological and human disaster waiting to happen.
The Northern Sea Route, which runs along the northern Russian coast, and the Northwest Passage, hugging the north coast of North America, have both been virtually ice-free during the peak of the summer since the late 2000s.
The Northern Sea Route shortens the sailing time between Asia and Europe to around two weeks, approximately half the time it takes via the traditional Suez Canal route.
While parts of the route were used by Russia during Soviet times to reach and supply remote locations, the challenges it posed meant it was largely disregarded as an option for international shipping.
That changed in the early 2010s when the passage became more accessible, and since then the number of journeys through it has risen from a handful each year to around 100.
Russia has stepped up its use of the route since 2022, using it to transport oil and gas to China after sanctions cut it off from its previous European customers.
Similarly, the Northwest Passage has also become more viable, with the number of through sailings rising from a couple a year in the early 2000s to as many as 41 in 2023.
A third, central route that would take ships directly across the North Pole could also become possible in the future, although the level of ice melt that would be necessary for this would bring alarming consequences, speeding up warming of the planet, increasing weather extremes and decimating precious ecosystems in the area
As for mining, there is a possibility that the melting ice could expose land that was previously impossible to exploit. Greenland in particular could be a hot spot for coal, copper, gold, rare-earth elements and zinc, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
However, researchers say it would be extremely difficult and expensive to extract Greenland’s minerals because many of the island’s mineral deposits are in remote areas above the Arctic Circle, where there is a mile-thick polar ice sheet and darkness reigns much of the year.
The idea that these resources could be easily extracted for the benefit of the US was described to CNN as “completely bonkers” by Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at The Arctic Institute.
While Trump has recently focused on the security aspects of Greenland, his former national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News in 2024 that the administration’s focus on Greenland was “about critical minerals” and “natural resources.”