Russia has issued permits for seven Chinese transit ships to travel along the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic to Europe, the Russian state corporation "Rosatom", which manages the route, said on Friday. It was quoted by "Reuters".
Chinese container company Sea Legend Shipping plans to launch the first regular container line between China and Europe via the Northern Sea Route, the director general of "Rosatom" said. Alexey Likhachev.
Unlike previous container shipments along the route, which were mostly experimental or one-off, the 2026 program envisages a regular line with a ship sailing every week during the navigation season, Likhachev said.
Moscow has been striving for years to turn the Northern Sea Route into a real alternative to the Suez Canal route. The main obstacles so far have been seasonal sea ice, the need for specially equipped ships and icebreakers, higher insurance and operating costs, and the relatively weak port infrastructure along the Arctic coast.
Global warming is gradually opening the Arctic to shipping
The possibility of using the Northern Sea Route more intensively is also directly related to climate change. The Arctic is warming significantly faster than the average for the planet, and the area and thickness of sea ice are decreasing. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in 2023 the average Arctic sea ice extent in September was 43% smaller than the value calculated from the trend since 1979. The period during which Arctic waters can be used for shipping is expanding in both spring and autumn.
However, this does not mean that the Northern Sea Route is now ice-free. Conditions vary significantly from year to year, and even in summer, individual sections can remain blocked. In 2024, for example, ice in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas persisted until the end of August, delaying the opening of the route. That is why icebreakers, ships with the appropriate ice class and accurate ice forecasts continue to be key to safe navigation.
Why the route passes by Russia
The reason the Northern Sea Route is practically a Russian Arctic corridor is geographical. It follows the northern coast of Eurasia - from the Kara Sea along Siberia through the Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi Seas to the Bering Strait.
The route passes through a combination of Russian internal waters, territorial sea and exclusive economic zone, rather than entirely through Russian territorial waters. This distinction is important. The territorial sea under international maritime law extends up to 12 nautical miles from the baselines of the coast. Further inland, Russia has an exclusive economic zone in which it has certain sovereign rights over resources, but this is not Russian state territory in the same legal sense.
A feature of the Northern Sea Route is the huge number of Russian Arctic islands and archipelagos - Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, the Novosibirsk Islands, and others. They form natural straits between the continent and the islands through which convenient shipping routes pass. This is what places a large part of the practically used route directly on Russian territory.
How far does Russia actually reach in the Arctic?
Common maps, on which the Russian part of the Arctic appears as a huge sector reaching almost to the North Pole, can create the mistaken impression that the entire sea in this sector belongs to Russia.
Maritime borders are not determined simply by drawing lines from the extreme points of the Russian coast to the North Pole. According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, baselines along the coast are first determined. From these, 12 nautical miles of territorial sea are measured, and beyond that there may be an exclusive economic zone of up to 200 nautical miles.
A separate issue is the continental shelf. Russia claims rights to the seabed beyond the 200-mile zone, including in parts of the Central Arctic. Such claims are justified by the geological connection of underwater structures with the continental shelf. But rights to the extended continental shelf are primarily rights to the seabed and its natural resources - they do not automatically turn the water above it into Russian territorial waters.
Therefore, the North Pole is not part of Russian territorial waters, and Russia's maritime border is not simply a triangle ending at the pole.
New meaning after the Gulf crisis
According to Likhachev, the Northern Sea Route is also gaining global importance due to the worsening situation in the Persian Gulf and the increased logistical and political uncertainty.
In trade between Northeast Asia and Northern Europe, the Arctic route can be significantly shorter than the route through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. But it still cannot completely replace Suez - mainly due to seasonality, ice, restrictions for some ships and the need for specialized infrastructure.
That is why the decision for a weekly Chinese container line is more significant than the individual voyages carried out so far. If the program is implemented according to plan, 2026 may be the moment when the Northern Sea Route begins to transition from an experimental transit corridor to a regular trade route between China and Europe.