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The Arctic could be a new battleground in the souring relations between Russia and the West.
One of the key figures of the expedition, which left on July 24 and reached the North Pole today, is Russian polar explorer and State Duma Deputy Artur Chilingarov.
Russian scientists hope to bolster Russia’s claim on 1.2 million square kilometers of Arctic territory, which Russia estimates to contain at least 10 billion tons of oil and natural-gas reserves.
They estimate this is 25% of the World’s resources.
News channel Russia Today is covering the expedition with a 24 hours live coverage.

n 1926, the Soviet government claimed the whole Arctic sector adjoined to the Russian polar coast. This is a gigantic triangle that begins at the former western border of the USSR, stretches to the middle of Bering Strait, and has its apex at the North Pole. However, no country has recognized this delineation. Under international law, the Arctic region is no man’s land.
Artur Chilingarov outside the nuclear-powered icebreaker (TASS) Russia ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1997. Under the convention, coastal states have the right to 12 nautical miles of territorial water from their coasts and exclusive economic rights to a 200-mile economic zone. But the delineations are complicated by undersea shelves. If the shelf is longer than 200 miles, the coastal state still has the rights for the mineral resources.
By ratifying the UN convention, Russia did not uphold the Soviet Union’s Arctic claims. But now the Kremlin is trying a new tack.
The Kremlin is attempting to show that the Eurasian continental shelf extends beyond the 200-mile zone. That can be done by showing that the shelf is a continuation of the Eurasian continent. And that is precisely the goal of the present Russian North Pole expedition, who are trying to prove that the underwater Lomonosov Ridge is a geological extension of Siberia.

In 2002, a UN committee that administers UNCLOS did not uphold the Russian claim filed in December 2001 on the extension of the continental shelf, saying it proved insufficient and more research was needed. UN scientists said that, according to Russia’s argument, the Lomonosov Ridge could also be seen as an extension of Greenland or Canada. (In fact, Danish and Canadian scientists are both working on proving their own claims that the ridge is an extension of their continental shelves.)