Russia's planned go-it-alone orbital space station, the ROS, will be controlled from the complex once constructed.

The complex will house sub-enterprises of Roscomos alongside private space companies and Moscow Mission Control. The hope is to build synergies between the various organisations.

85% of respondents are anxious about national control, and agree that Canada "must use its Arctic sovereignty or it will lose its part of the Arctic." 72% of northern Canadians want the government to spend more on defence in the Arctic.

Probably an attempt to signal to the US that Europeans are happy to step up defence commitments wherever requested by D.C., but also to show European support for Greenland's right to political self-determination

It's probably too sensitive - there are many overlapping U.S./Russian interests in the Arctic, far away from the European theatre. Trump has been trying to leverage these in negotiations w/ Putin (think Alaska summit). If talks break down, or China makes further inroads on NSR, maybe. Otherwise, no.

The "Polar Star" base turns 11 next month, so it isn't all that new.

I'd expect tensions over divergent U.S./Russia positions on whether the Northern Sea Route should be treated as internal waters (where transit can be restricted under the law of the sea) or international waters (where it cannot)

Worth highlighting - again and again - the fundamentally different military responses by Russia to Finnish NATO accession vs. Ukraine's unsuccessful NATO aspirations.

The full-scale invasion has never been about NATO, and monocausal arguments focused on alliance expansion fail to convince.

This is part of an ongoing military buildup along the border with Finland. Finnish officials fear a possible tripling of Russian troops in the region, within five years of a potential ceasefire in Ukraine www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/19/s...

Still, Wrangel could become another case study for how parts of the U.S. right are resuscitating historical imperialism in the service of modern Arctic geopolitics. This time, however, with the aim to gain footholds to thwart China's naval encroachments in the northern Pacific and Arctic ocean.

It has essentially remained undecided by the 1990 agreement, with international lawyers disagreeing on the solidity of Russia's 'de facto' sovereignty. But for the moment, the State Department still asserts there is no U.S. claim. jamestown.org/program/wran...

[...], then the British Empire, and eventually, with his mission bound for failure, the U.S. But Washington ignored his request. The "status" of the island also didn't change in 2014, with the building of a Russian base.

The National Interest article contains a few misrepresentations, as is often the case with pieces peddling territorial claims. For one thing, Arctic explorer Stefansson never "raised the U.S. flag" on the island. He first tried to claim it for Canada [...] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjal...