Page 30 - Журнал Sozvezdye Review - «СОЗВЕЗДИЕ» #40

forced ships, supply vessels, and river-sea ships for
the Northern Supply Haul.
The icebreaker fleet is expected to be added with
five Project 22220 general-purpose nuclear icebreak-
ers, which are to be commissioned sequentially be-
tween 2022 and 2030, and with flagship icebreaker
Leader (Project 10510), which is scheduled to be com-
missioned in 2027 and will be followed by the launch
of a nuclear servicing ship. The roadmap further en-
visages the modernization of the infrastructure for
servicing Atomflot’s newly built icebreakers, and fur-
ther fleet development proposals.
Emergency rescue fleet will, too, receive new
ships. The period until 2030 will see the construction
of 47 vessels to ensure the navigational safety along
Alexander Pilyasov, the Northern Sea Route and to service the facilities
Professor, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State in Pevek, Dikson and Tiksi. Modernization program
University Department of Socio-Economic covers also the existing maintenance bases and the
Geography of Foreign Countries: rescue centers operated by the Emergencies Minis-
try. Arkhangelsk is expected to receive, by 2025, an
The roadmap has strengths and inherent short- upgraded berthing line for rescue vessels.
comings. Its strengths are its consistency and the in-
tent to ensure the steady-paced development of the
NSR through a set of interconnected measures. The
parts concerning each particular development proj-
ect and cargo growth forecasts sound well substanti-
ated and convincing. It is a good idea to appoint op-
erators to be responsible for the action plans towards
increased cargo traffic. This is an indication that the
NSR and its development are viewed as a matter of na-
tional planning and will not be left to market forces.
The disadvantage of the roadmap lies in its lack
of disruptive approach and innovation. The projects
that it covers have been in the pipeline for at least a
decade. Its lack of disruptive approach manifests it-
self in poor funding of the innovation-driven servic-
es, primarily satellite and telecommunications sup-
port for the operations within the Arctic and the NSR.
No proposals have been made for establishing service
monopolies that would be responsible for this line of
operations.
Another disadvantage is rooted in reliance on the
European market. It still is a part of the plan. The
roadmap seems to be thinking in older terms, as if
our ‘new normal’ were a myth. A third drawback is
lobbyism. It reads on every page, making it evident
that while some of the development projects are going
to be delivered fully by the state, others will be recog-
nized as federal property upon completion, and there
are those that are completely on their own. Straight
out of Orwell: all animals are equal but some ani-
mals are more equal than others. A fourth drawback
consists in poor attention to the river network of the
NSR and unreasonable underfunding of dredging and
river fleet development at large. The reason is perhaps
the river people being less skillful lobbyists than the
railway people, as the interests of the latter clearly
enjoy a priority. These are not the only drawbacks of
the roadmap.
As to the projects that are oriented towards the
Asian market, these sound more than feasible. But in
all else that relates to consumers in Europe, the road-
map inertially sticks to the plans that existed before
the February of 2022. The same is true about its fore-
cast of the cargo traffic.
The roadmap is useful to commercial actors in the
sense that it clearly shows where the state’s interests
are in the Arctic, what exactly the state is going to do
in the Arctic, and where it wants the private business-
es to contribute. This gives businesses a clearer vision
on the decision-making side. Ideally, each greenfield
project on the roadmap should have been set a dis-
tinct task of forming, with explicit support from the
state, a pool of small and medium-sized service pro-
viders and manufacturers, including intelligent sys-
tems developers, for each specific project with its spe-
cific plans for import substitution and involvement of
the SMEs and subcontractors. This practice is known
to have been successfully used by, for example, Statoil.