MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. Cargo traffic along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is on the rise despite sanctions imposed against Russia, Deputy Prime Minister, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"Cargo traffic along the Northern Sea Route is on the rise. Its growth rates, let’s say, are not what we expected without sanctions, but despite sanctions it keeps growing," he said.

Special representative of Russia’s state corporation Rosatom for the Arctic Vladimir Panov said earlier that cargo traffic along the NSR would reach record 37.6 mln tons by the end of the year.

The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route and the main sea line in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. It stretches along Russia’s northern coastline across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering seas). The route consolidates Russia’s European and Far Eastern ports and Siberia’s navigable rivers into a single transport system. The route’s length is 5,600 km, stretching from the Kara Strait to Providence Bay.