HELSINKI, June 19. /TASS/. A delegation of the Russian parliament’s upper house (Federation Council) invited Finnish legislators, members of the foreign relations commission, to hearings on cooperation in the Arctic, planned for November, Head of the Federation Council’s Committee Konstantin Kosachev told reporters after a three-day visit to Finland.
According to him, the countries will "include actively into the dialogue issues of multilateral cooperation, including on the North, Arctic and the Baltic Regions."
"Before coming here, we have planned for November big parliamentary hearings in Russia on international cooperation in the Arctic," he said. "Initially, that even was supposed to be domestic, but, as we studied the program of Finland’s chairing the Arctic Council, we realized it would be most important to attract to those hearings our Finnish counterparts, and thus we have invited them as the only foreign party."
The event will be organized on board a nuclear icebreaker, he continued.
"Most probably, we shall depart from Murmansk, will cover a part of the Northern Sea Route: we have plans to get to Sabetta - a giant LNG project in Yamal, a breakthrough project, which changes the entire architecture of the Arctic’s development and of the Northern Sea Route’s exploitation," the senator said. "It would be very important for us to demonstrate to the Finnish counterparts how this looks like and how Russia approaches cooperation in the Arctic."
The Federation Council’s delegation, led by senator Kosachev, visited Helsinki in June 13-15.