After expedition of "Edinaya Russia" to North Pole which was accompanied by far not peace declarations, like Arthur Tchilingarov's promise to cover almost all Arctic Region with a network of the Russian military bases and frontier posts, prime-minister of Canada Stephen Harper personally went to the north.
"The Russians used deep-water devices to establish their flag at the bottom of the ocean. We send our prime-minister to confirm leadership of Canada", - the official representative of the head of the government Dimitrios Sudas declared.
It is expected that during his northern tour prime-minister will define a place where the first Canadian deep-water port will be constructed. He also will meet the militarians participating in trainings "Arctic Sovereignty". The trainings pass in the south of Baffin Island and also in Hudson Strait. About 600 military men of the Canadian army, aircraft and fleet from the structure of Incorporated special group "North" are involved in operation. Together with them employees of the Canadian coast-guard and Royal Mounted Police take part in the maneuvers. The trainings will continue 10 days.
Experts consider that attempts of Russia to distribute the continental shelve on a thousand and more miles in Arctic Region can lead to revision of a part of VI Convention in which the legal status of continental shelve is defined.
One should also think about possibility of "super-cold" shelve "war" between eight countries for the right of possession of underwater part of the Arctic pool. Disputes on the question of differentiation of continental shelve are international and very sensitive.
International court of the United Nations has already arbitrated dispute about differentiation of shelves. It's possible to suppose that the number of such disputes around Arctic shelve will grow.
- Canada, basically, does not possess nuclear weapon but on volume of gross national product - 1 trillion 251 billion 463 million dollars - in the past year occupied the 8th place in the world on the sizes of the economy, - editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk Anatoly Baranov noted, - while Russia was on the 11th place with gross national product a little less 1 trillion dollars. So, among the countries applying for the Arctic possession, even if not to take into consideration the USA, Russia is all the same not the most powerful player. Constantly reducing defensive potential of the country does not give special hopes for serious successes in "super-cold war" which can deploy in Arctic Region. Pre-election "show offs" of the party in power can appear to be very expensive to our country if our Arctic neighbours will seriously start to increase military potential on the Far North. Our communications in this region are strongly stretched, the Arctic coast is practically uninhabited and there is no potential for its intensive development. In the military aspect we are too weak today and we shouldn't "be bought into" hurrah-patriotic declarations of Sergey Ivanov and of his.
In the North our fleet today is not only weaker than the American or British one but concedes on a number of parameters even to Norwegians, Danes and the same Canadians. The Finnish and Canadian units are much better prepared for winter war. Well and intervention of the United States simply outweighs every scale in the region. Where do we go to?..
