The role of the Arctic Council in the management of the Arctic and Russia's activities in it

Abstract

The XXI century is the era of the emergence of geopolitical disputes and disagreements between states. Such contradictions are caused by scientific and technological progress and an increasing number of international actors in the struggle for natural resources. Today, one of such spaces of geopolitical contradictions is the Arctic. It is here that the political, legal, economic, military-strategic, environmental and social interests of many powers are concentrated. The authors turn the attention to the international legal regime of the Arctic, the positions of the main participants in Arctic policy and the leading institution in the region - the Arctic Council (AU). The authors analyze the level of influence of the Russian Federation on political processes in the region. The article examines the strategies and concepts of the leading actors in the region: Russia, the USA, Canada, the Scandinavia countries, as well as declarations and conventions of international organizations. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the AU documents adopted both at the ministerial level and at the level of working groups and the Committee of Senior Officials in the period from 1996 to 2019. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that, to date, the AU is the main legal mechanism in the Arctic, which over the history of its existence has shown itself to be a necessary attribute in regulating the activities of states in the region. Despite the fact that the AU has the legal foundations of an intergovernmental international organization, it still retains the status of a high-level forum with limited institutional capacity, remaining a relatively poorly structured organization of the founding States. In addition, the authors come to the conclusion about the high level of Russia's involvement in the political processes of the region. In conclusion, a number of assumptions are made regarding the future political development of the Arctic and the role of the Russian Federation in this process.