Russia Lacks Icebreakers Its Arctic Fleet Needs to Function in Eastern Arctic

Executive Summary:

• Russia has more icebreakers than any other country but far fewer than it needs to ensure passage in the Eastern portions of the Northern Sea Route critical to its trade with China as well as to ensure that the Russian navy can continue to dominate the North.
• Moscow has announced an ambitious icebreaker construction program, but both longstanding problems in Russian shipyards and Western sanctions make it unlikely to achieve its much-ballyhooed goals.
• As a result, some Russian navy ships in the north are now forced to drift at night to avoid running into ice or aground in inadequately mapped portions of the Northern Sea Route, opening the way for China to take the upper hand.

Russia has more icebreakers than any other country, something it celebrates and that most other countries see as guaranteeing Russian dominance in the region. Most of these ships, however, are small and diesel, rather than nuclear, powered and lack the most advanced electronics and are incapable of helping ships far from the Russian coast (see EDM, November 25 [1],  [2]). This means that Moscow’s ability to keep the Northern Sea Route (NSR) operational year-round is still far from guaranteed, and Russia faces particularly serious difficulties in the route’s Eastern portion and to its North (see EDM, June 12, 2023). These areas are now cooling rather than warming, given the irregular pattern of climate change, undercutting Moscow’s ability to trade with China and, more generally, advance its expansive claims to the Arctic seabed  (The Barents Observer, August 6; AANII, August 8).

Moscow’s challenges with its shortage of deep-sea icebreakers have become increasingly evident. This is underscored by its much-ballyhooed icebreaker construction program, which Russian experts acknowledge is unlikely to materialize in the near future. Additionally, Deputy Commander of Russia’s Northern Fleet Vice Admiral Oleg Golubyov recently admitted that ships in the eastern Arctic often drift at night to avoid sea ice or the risk of running aground in poorly surveyed areas. This occurs because they lack the necessary icebreaker escorts to operate safely 24 hours a day (IAREX.ru March 31; Profile.ru, November 9; Arctic Today, November 22). Such a danger is very real and was highlighted several years ago when a large number of ships, civilian and naval, were trapped in the ice for weeks (The Barents Observer, November 9, 2021; Window on Eurasia, December 30, 2021).

Golubyov’s admission is indicative of Russia’s often ignored problems with the NSR, the Arctic Ocean more generally, and its fleet of icebreakers. In an interview with that fleet’s newspaper, Na Strazhe Zapolyarya, Golubyov says that this year, ships under his command encountered heavy sea ice in the Eastern Arctic waters between Wrangel Island and the Russian Federation as well as beyond toward the Bering Strait. Lacking icebreaker support, these Russian naval vessels had no choice but to drift at night and move only when the two helicopters accompanying them could survey a safe route forward during daylight hours. Neither he nor others want to rely on such an arrangement and it is one that Moscow hopes to overcome by building more icebreakers, despite all suggestions that global warming will make that costly exercise unnecessary. Such problems are compounded, Golubyov continues, by the fact that in the region, much of the seabed remains unmapped and shallow waters can trap ice, posing particular dangers to ships.

The Russian admiral’s words call attention to environmental issues in the NSR that are all too often ignored. While global warming has left the Western half of the NSR ice-free for most of the year, the situation in the Eastern half is very different. In fact, temperatures have cooled in recent years, and ice has become a larger problem (Profile.ru, May 31, 2022; The Barents Observer, November 16, 2022;  Window on Eurasia August 8). To counter the cooling temperatures, keep the NSR open and trade with China flowing, and allow Russia to project power far into the Arctic, Moscow has announced an ambitious program of icebreaker and ice-capable ship construction (see EDM, September 11, 2018, September 4; Profile.ru, May 31, 2022; East Russia.ru, August 1, 2022). Longstanding and intractable problems in its shipbuilding branch, including corruption and the impact of sanctions, and cutbacks in government financing as a result of the war in Ukraine, however, means that Russia is unlikely to be able to build anything close to the number of needed vessels, Moscow experts say (Kommersant, October 12, 2023;  EDM, December 12, 2023; Window on Eurasia, April 4). All the more so due to the development of its shore-based support facilities along the NSR, which has nearly stopped (see EDM, September 11, 2018,  June 4, 2022).

This has created a new geo-economic and, therefore, geo-political situation, as far as icebreakers and the Eastern Arctic are concerned. While Russia maintains a dominant position internationally, as far as icebreakers are concerned, its dominance is increasingly a facade more than real. On the one hand, most of its icebreakers are smaller and capable of handling ports but not open sea routes, as Golubyov acknowledges. On the other, Moscow is increasingly concerned with keeping the Eastern Arctic, where ice remains and even is currently on the increase, and thus needs more icebreakers to maintain trade with China and lend credence to Moscow’s expansive claims to the Arctic Ocean and its mineral-rich seabed (see EDM, October 29, 2019). Both these claims and the kind of difficulties Golubyov’s remarks suggest Moscow is facing in the eastern Arctic, however, are leading other countries to consider building more icebreakers of their own and be in a position to challenge Russia in the future. Among those doing so are Canada, Finland, the United States, and China (The Barents Observer, July 10, July 12;   TRT Russian, July 15; see EDM, November 25). All of them can see that Russia is overextended as far as icebreakers are concerned, not only keeping vessels in service long after they should be scrapped but also failing to meet deadlines for building new ones (Window on Eurasia, July 18). The Russian dominance that intimidated them earlier is now dissipating (see EDM, June 12, June 26, 2019).

Among these countries, the one that has made the most rapid progress is China, which has not only built more icebreakers in recent years than any of the others but, even more importantly, has significantly reduced the time it needs to construct each of them (see EDM, July 23, 2020). For now, Moscow hopes that China, its ally against the West, will help it maintain its presence in the Arctic, given Chinese interest in Russia’s use of the NSR. Russian officials fear that at some point, China will assume a dominant position in the Arctic and be able to elbow Russia aside (see EDM, July 12, 2018, June 12, 2019, March 6, 2021, February 1, 2022). That is all the more likely in the coming years, given that Moscow experts say that Russian yards will not be able to build anything compared to the number of ships, icebreakers in particular, that Moscow needs to maintain its current status (Window on Eurasia, July 18).

Russia’s inability to reliably send ships through the ice in the Eastern Arctic is a clear sign of the beginning of a major geopolitical shift. Western governments will have little choice but to deal with it if they do not take timely action and expand their own icebreaker fleets as well.