The Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs will “examine the question [da denúncia do acordo marítimo] Then report to the representatives”, declared Vyacheslav Volodin, on the website of the Assembly.
Russia and Norway, two key heavyweights in the Arctic region where natural resources lead to many contests, in 2010 concluded an agreement on delimiting their maritime boundaries in the Barents Sea, ending a 40-year dispute.
The agreement, ratified in 2011, was hailed as the occasion for a new beginning in relations between the two countries, but their relations have since deteriorated, particularly after Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
In this context, at the end of June, Russia accused Oslo of blocking the passage of a cargo ship destined to deliver cargo to Russian miners based in Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, and threatened to fight.
Norway considered that no agreement had been violated and pointed out that Moscow could provide for the Russian community living in Svalbard in other ways.
About a thousand kilometers from the North Pole, Svalbard is twice the size of Belgium and is sometimes considered NATO’s ‘Achilles’ heel’ in the Arctic.
A treaty concluded in Paris in 1920 recognizes Norway’s sovereignty over Svalbard, but guarantees citizens of signatory countries, today 46 and including Russia, the freedom to exploit its natural resources “under conditions of perfect equality”.
In this sense, Russia and the former Soviet Union have been extracting coal for decades in these lands, home to less than 3,000 people from about 50 nationalities.
