The sum total of recent events in and around the Arctic Ocean may well be more than the individual parts.
The Russian spy ship Yantar is not only hovering around the waters just to Britain’s North mapping out undersea cables and pipelines; but she even had the audacity to point laser weapons designed to blind the pilots of the RAF P-8 Poseidon plane sent to investigate and monitor her covert activities.
Yantar is operated by a shadowy Murmansk-based operation called Gugi, which pretends to be a deep sea research organisation but is actually one of the most secretive and effective parts of the Russian Navy. Gugi operates submarines specially adapted for deep diving (up to 6,000 metres) in order to gather intelligence, maintain sea bed installations, and carry out sabotage – especially of pipelines and cable networks. It has more than 50 ships, submarines and floating dry docks designed to hide submarines from satellites. Gugi alone, quite leaving aside the huge Russian Northern fleet together with around 50 icebreakers, is chillingly rather larger than the Royal Navy.
China meanwhile is apparently targeting MPs and peers with a sophisticated espionage operation (although what they expect to learn from backbench MPs is anyone’s guess- they may be rather disappointed by the product!) They too are playing complicated games in the Arctic as the ice recedes. Their offer to build two international airports in Greenland, or perhaps a deep sea port on the Greenland East coast was not, perhaps, entirely altruistic. They separately proposed a $2.5bn investment in a Greenlandic mine (more than Greenland’s current entire GDP). It is hardly surprising that both Denmark and the US blocked it. The Chinese boast a number of icebreakers; they have ‘research stations’ in both Iceland and Svalbard, are in advanced planning/building of a nuclear submarine with under-ice capabilities (skills and technology which we have lost); and they take part in regular joint military exercises with the Russians. It is even predicted that they will soon seek to plant a Chinese flag on the actual surface of the North Pole, mimicking a similar Russian stunt some 10 years ago.
Meanwhile the little noticed Clause 13 of President Trump’s 28 point ‘peace deal’ for Ukraine reads “The US will enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in …… rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic…..”
Ring any bells? In February 2025 it was announced that: “Washington and Kyiv have signed a long-awaited deal involving Ukraine's natural resources….. It sets up an investment fund to search for minerals and set outs how revenues would be split.”
President Trump, of course, has form on rare earths and critical minerals. As he said: “Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation.” America and China both have an unashamed lust for Greenland’s rare earths. 30 of the 50 minerals which are essential components of batteries, phones, electric vehicles and all modern computing devices are found in Greenland: silicon, germanium, phosphorus, boron, indium phosphide, gallium, graphite, uranium, copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel, among others. Overall, the Arctic accounts for 40% of the world’s palladium, 20% of its diamonds, 15% of its platinum, 11% of its cobalt, 10% of its nickel, 9% of its tungsten and 8% of its zinc. Ukraine has copper, nickel, lithium, and 7% of the world’s titanium. He who controls their production holds the key to the digital Globe.
Right now, that is Taiwan, sandwiched between the two great powers in a deadly battle for control of the component minerals in microchips and semi-conductors. Taiwan presently manufactures over 60% of the former and more than 90% of the latter. If China were ever to carry out its threat to invade Taiwan (which some observers say may be imminent), it would gain near-total control of the global microchip supply. America would without doubt have to intervene to ensure Taiwan’s continuing independence; and that would risk serious escalation, very possibly world war or nuclear exchange.
So Trump’s remarks about buying Greenland, his mineral deals with President Zelensky and the minerals clause in his Ukraine Peace proposals start to look very strategic. He wants critical minerals and he wants to wrest control of global chip manufacturing from China’s doorstep.
The ‘Gold Rush’ for Arctic critical minerals is but one aspect of the powerful and disturbing changes happening across the Arctic. The sea ice and Greenlandic ice shelf are warming four times faster than anywhere else in the World and melting at an alarming rate. As well as the global environmental consequences, that offers all kinds of commercial opportunities and threats. It’s not only about minerals. It’s about oil and gas. It’s about the Northern Sea Route which may well open up within a few years, allowing billions of dollars to be cut from the cost of international trade. It’s about fisheries, when the current moratorium on fishing in the High Arctic lapses, or is breached, most likely by the world’s largest consumer of fish - China. It’s about tourism which is vastly increasing with great concerns about health and safety.
All of these potentially lucrative commercial opportunities bring serious risks to the environment, wildlife and the way of life of indigenous peoples.
And geopolitical stresses and strains and military rearmament by Russia and China on the one hand and (more slowly) by NATO on the other must be the inevitable consequence of the potential wealth and strategic importance which those changes will bring.
Russian military strength in the Arctic – especially in the Northern Fleet, the Air Force, and covert intelligence-gathering and sabotage operations – should be truly alarming. They are already well into their pre-kinetic playbook of hybrid, undetectable, and unaccountable activities. The mapping and destruction of undersea cables and pipelines, cyber interference, and the testing of NATO’s preparedness and political resolve are all well advanced. There is a real risk of asymmetrical or hybrid warfare – drones, sabotage – if not necessarily a full Article 5 breach against a NATO member. But Svalbard and even Gotland may well be very real targets, and we should be preparing our response. Yet so far NATO and the UK have been slow to realise the growing threat in the High North and invest and plan to counter it.
Russia has been explicit about its intentions. In 2024, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Moscow was ‘fully ready’ for conflict in the Arctic if NATO challenged its position. Signalling a rare public admission that underlines how seriously the Kremlin views the region.
The one thing that Putin and people like him truly respect is strength. We must therefore significantly increase our military presence in the Arctic. We must take a warship through the international waters north of Russia; we must develop our under-ice capabilities, very likely with autonomous (i.e. uncrewed) submarines like those being developed and built by MSubs in Devon. We should increase our Royal Marines Arctic warfare training from its current battalion level to at least brigade level annually. In every way, we must increase our military and defence posture in the Arctic. The Cold War demonstrates that the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction ultimately leads to peace.
The reality is that the whole Arctic region – from Greenland to Murmansk; from the Kola Peninsula to Wrangel Island; from Alaska via the Northwest Passage to Baffin Island – is changing more rapidly and more consequentially than most of the rest of the world. That has huge implications for this remote and frozen part of the world and for the people who live in it, but also for the rest of us. We in Britain have much to gain from the Arctic in commercial terms; much to contribute in scientific and governance terms; and much to be worried about from a political and military standpoint.
For too long we have ignored the Arctic or been complacent about it. We have been fooled into thinking that it should be the Arctic nations alone who decide what happens in this icy crucible, and that it is right that they manage it for their own benefit rather than for the rest of us. We have focused our attention on Antarctica, while ignoring our nearer neighbour, the Arctic. We have allowed commercial opportunities to be lost to others (most worryingly to China). We have failed to coordinate our considerable scientific prowess. We have delegated authority over these matters to Denmark, Finland, and Iceland inter alia, when we should have been leading on them. And we have totally failed to realise that the next great war – if there is to be one – may well originate in the Arctic.
Now is the time to live up to our responsibilities: to do what we can to halt climate change or at least deal with its consequences; to redirect our scientific attention from proving its existence to exploring how to mitigate it; to realise the vital importance of military, commercial, and scientific developments in the Arctic to the UK; and above all, to wake up to this vastly important part of our neighbourhood.
