MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. The foreign policy independence of those Arctic Council countries which are also members of NATO raises a number of questions, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy, Chairman of the Committee of Senior Arctic Officials, Nikolay Korchunov, told a news conference timed for the Summit of the Indigenous Minorities of the Arctic.
"After the latest NATO summit, the alliance’s attention to the Arctic has increased. Almost every month, NATO’s Secretary General makes some statement that concerns the Arctic region. Often, he goes beyond military topics: he gives an assessment of the Arctic countries’ economic activity and cooperation with other Arctic countries," he said. "In this regard, the question arises to what extent the member countries of the Arctic Council, which are also members of NATO, are independent in pursuing their policy in the Arctic, to what extent they are bound by the decisions and obligations that stem from the North Atlantic Treaty and the decisions that are made at the headquarters of the alliance."
Korchunov said that for Russia, Sweden and Finland had always been independent in the military sense.
"These countries made a significant contribution to strengthening regional security in the northwestern region and in the Arctic. Now the paradigm is changing. We are getting ever more and more alarming signals regarding long-term interaction and the modality of cooperation in high latitudes," Korchunov stated.