Russia military dimension in the Arctic region

Global warming makes the northern polar region increasingly accessible. Climate change will permit increased exploitation of oil, natural gas and other minerals. The seasonal decline of sea ice cover has raised possibility of large scale maritime trade via Northern routes that would provide great savings in distance and time, and hence cost. These opportunities drew the attention of great countries, like U.S., Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark even China, Japan or South Korea. All these countries declare aspiration to develop and maintain a region cooperation, peace, stability and prosperity with the exception of Russia. Russia's aggressive actions against Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014), illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, broke the trust and have adversely affected cooperation between Russia and other Arctic states. Russia put prioritized and expensive effort to rebuild and modernize its military capabilities, including in the Arctic. This military buildup announces some aggressive intent and responsive actions by other states, intended to heighten their security, lead to security dilemma. The work purpose is to conduct research on Russia’s militarization of the Arctic in the context of international territorial disputes. This goal is achieved by combining several research methods: descriptive, document analysis, comparative and summarization methods. Due to the Arctic has geographical / strategic significance and the objective of this work pertains hard power (Russia's military expansion), Realism and Geopolitics is chosen as most relevant theoretical approach to the issue. The conclusions of the paper confirm the hypothesis, that Russian militarization of the Arctic region is based on realistic international relation paradigm, therefore normative international cooperation, peaceful dialog and common interests will not contain Russian expansion in the Arctic. Keeping in mind that four of the five Arctic littoral states are NATO allies, it means that NATO, according Realism theory, must adopt regional containment strategy for the Russia’s threatening military expansion (imperialistic policy)