Breaking the ice As the U.S. and Russia tease Arctic cooperation, climate science could offer common ground — but neither side seems interested

Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has overseen a rapid thaw in relations with Moscow. Among the more curious points of alignment: a renewed focus on the Arctic. Despite Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine — the very conflict that fractured U.S.–Russia ties — both countries have begun speaking, at least in broad strokes, about possible cooperation in the world’s northernmost region. Proposals range from sharing sea lanes to joint energy development projects. But with sanctions still in place and trust in short supply, scientific research now appears to be the easiest, least politically fraught arena for renewed engagement. Even there, though, the two sides may be further apart than they seem. To understand how climate science, geopolitics, and Arctic ambitions collide, Meduza spoke with two leading experts: Arild Moe of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute and Ilia Shumanov, director of the Arctida project.

Donald Trump’s talk of annexing Greenland has drawn widespread condemnation from much of the international community. From Vladimir Putin? Not so much. At the end of March, the Russian president called the idea historically justified and said he believed U.S. ambitions on the island were serious. According to Ilia Shumanov, director of the Arctida project, the fact that Putin “didn’t respond to this idea with mockery, but rather took it quite seriously” stood out. “The unexpected consensus around Greenland,” he believes, “became the starting point for some kind of dialogue” between Russia and the United States.

Indeed, while Trump has yet to deliver the swift peace in Ukraine he once promised, talk of U.S.- Russia cooperation in the Arctic has expanded into ambitious (if vague) proposals — potentially spanning everything from trade routes to energy development projects, according to Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. But even amid the attempted rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, serious obstacles to Arctic cooperation remain.

As Arild Moe, research professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, told Meduza, while Trump may have grand ideas about U.S. companies getting involved, he doesn’t have the power to dictate strategic decisions to private American firms the way Putin does to Russian state-owned companies. “There’s no deal that can commit American business to investments in Russia happening overnight,” Moe said. For any of this to be plausible, the risks would have to be manageable — and right now, Moe said, “long-term investments in Russia look quite risky because the economic [and] political situation is unpredictable.”

Even if sanctions were lifted, “American companies don’t seem particularly eager to return to the Russian market right now,” Shumanov concurred. There’s also the matter of nationalization, which the Kremlin has been actively using to seize foreign-owned assets since the full-scale war began. As Shumanov put it, when Trump leaves office, “Vladimir Putin, if the mood strikes him, could easily sign another decree nationalizing the next enterprise.”

With joint business ventures still difficult to justify — and military cooperation all but unimaginable — Shumanov believes the most realistic area for actual engagement is environmental science. “Joint climate research, coordination, disaster prevention — that kind of collaboration could start tomorrow, even with major political differences,” he told Meduza. “Russian and American scientists and climate experts could meet through Arctic Council working groups and begin working together.” 

The Arctic Council — an intergovernmental forum focused on scientific and environmental cooperation — has managed to survive not only Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but also Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, which left Russia the lone non-NATO country in the Arctic Circle. “It was almost on its deathbed,” Moe said, “but it seems that all parties wanted it to remain.”

Still, he said, “the level of contact and cooperation within that framework is at a very low level today” — though he acknowledged that international interest coupled with concern for the region’s vulnerability could lead to renewed cooperation.

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On thin ice

Climate change is having an outsized impact on the Arctic. By some projections, the region could lose all of its summer sea ice before the middle of the century if warming isn’t slowed. But what’s bad for the planet could be good for business. Retreating glaciers are exposing long-inaccessible mineral deposits, and longer periods of reduced ice cover are making Arctic trade routes more viable.

Those same shifts, however, can be a double-edged sword for those looking to capitalize on them. “Climate change also has negative impacts on shipping in terms of more extreme weather, more coastal erosion, […] which makes port infrastructure more vulnerable,” Moe told Meduza. And even as sea ice retreats, conditions remain unpredictable. “You can’t plan for no ice, even in the best months,” he said.

At the same time, carbon emissions remain a global issue — and as Moe pointed out, Arctic routes are shorter than southern ones. “They use less fuel and emit less greenhouse gases,” he explained. “There are those who argue that the Arctic is a climate advantage.” 

But the region’s volatility still deters many. Even as conditions improve, Moe said, the volume of Arctic shipping could “double or triple” without becoming significant “in relative terms.” “It will be a big thing for the Arctic,” he added, “but it will still be just a small proportion of international shipping.”

And then there’s the risk of environmental catastrophe. “The big fear is a major oil spill,” Moe said. If that happened during the dark season, in a remote area, “it would be very, very difficult to contain.”

Shumanov recalls the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off the southern coast of Alaska as a turning point in the U.S.’s approach to northern development. “After that, environmental concerns became central,” he said. So far, no disaster of that scale has occurred within the Arctic Circle itself. But as Moe warned, if it did, it would “change a lot of the perspectives on Arctic shipping.”

Still, while the environment may be one of the areas with fewer obstacles to cooperation, Shumanov notes that the U.S. and Russia approach the issue in fundamentally different ways. “If you compare the strategic documents of the U.S. and Russia — which really shape each country’s policies and approaches — you’ll see vastly different emphases on climate,” he said. “U.S. doctrine places far greater importance on environmental sustainability and combating climate change.”

Russia, by contrast, acknowledges climate change mostly in terms of the benefits it brings: easier access to resources and the Northern Sea Route. “Environmental constraints,” Shumanov noted, “are far less the focus.”

That also seems to be the case in practice. “Russia has permitted the use of tankers with no ice class to go through the Arctic to transport oil from Europe, from the Baltic, to Asia,” Moe said. The shipments began in 2023, after sanctions left Russia cut off from the Atlantic market. Since then, several vessels from Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” have made the trip — ships that are not only old but, more critically, not ice-strengthened.

“Russia maintains that they’re within safety limits” and that the tankers are “escorted by icebreakers,” Moe said. But under normal circumstances, “those ships would not have been used.” Even though they’ve been sailing during the most favorable part of the year, he said, there’s concern they’re “pushing the limits” and that “the risk of an oil spill is higher than it should have been.”

When asked how prepared Russia and the U.S. are for a real disaster in the Arctic, Moe pointed to a binding intergovernmental agreement under the Arctic Council framework that “draws up a picture of zones of responsibility and also calls for international cooperation” in the event of an oil spill. But in practice, its utility is limited under extreme, remote conditions. “There are some preparations, there’s some infrastructure, some equipment around,” Moe said, “but hardly enough to control a big oil spill.”

‘A wish list — not a plan’

In the same International Arctic Forum speech in Murmansk where he effectively endorsed Trump’s Greenland ambitions, Vladimir Putin laid out sweeping goals for Arctic development: more nuclear icebreakers, new ports, and expanded infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route. Moe called it “a wish list — not a plan.” “Many of [the projects] make sense,” he told Meduza. “They’re things that would be good for Russia. But the problem is, exactly how is this going to be implemented?”

Russia is spending heavily to support its war against Ukraine. The federal budget for 2025–2027 set a record for defense expenditures — but even that may be hard to sustain. The broader economy is anything but stable. “We’ve seen similar lists of proposals before,” Moe added. “Russia has issued several Arctic documents with a long, long list of important projects without explaining how they're going to be financed.”

Though Russia’s real approach to the environment may tell a different story, Putin did devote time to climate concerns in the same speech — albeit only after blaming the West for the breakdown in cooperation. He spoke of preserving the Arctic’s “unique natural environment,” called for “environmentally friendly technologies,” and proposed a new research center to monitor the effects of climate change — not to curb them, but to guide infrastructure planning.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, for all its talk about the Arctic’s strategic importance, has slashed funding for NOAA and other agencies with Arctic research programs — and made broader cuts to climate science. That research isn’t just about protecting the environment; it also provides critical information for operating in it, like sea ice forecasts. “In the shorter term [the cuts] may not have such very clear effects,” Moe told Meduza. “But it’s a long-term problem — the administration is cutting off the possibility for long-term involvement and investments.”

Indeed, while politically the environment might be the easiest arena for the U.S. and Russia to revive Arctic cooperation, it’s not clear that either administration actually plans to start prioritizing it.