Over the past few weeks, the Russian president’s ambitions have converged in the Arctic, challenging Canadian and allied interests and dropping the threat of conflict with the Kremlin directly on our northern shores. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, recently warned Canada and other Western allies that all the resources beneath the melting ice in the Arctic Sea belong to the Russian government.

The Kremlin’s updated claim to what Canadian Arctic expert Ron Huebert defines as the “entire Arctic Ocean” would extend its undersea continental shelf right up to the 200-nautical mile exclusion zone around Canada’s Arctic coast. If approved by the UN, the claim would allow Russia to extract vast Arctic oil and other natural resources, adding to the revenues of Russian kleptocrats who keep Vladimir Putin in power.