May 19, 2021
Katarina Kertysova
This week, the rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council, the leading intergovernmental forum for Arctic affairs, will pass from Iceland to Russia for a two-year term. Russia will take the baton at a time when the organization grapples with multiple challenges and Russia-West relations have hit another historic low. COVID-19 has caused a major disruption to the Icelandic chairmanship agenda, while the preceding Finnish chairmanship (2017-2019) was negatively affected by the Trump administration’s policy departure on clean energy and climate change, which put the U.S. out of step with other Arctic governments and jeopardized efforts to adopt a ministerial declaration in 2019. Military buildup in the Arctic, coupled with the emerging narrative of great power competition, further undermine the cooperative spirit that the Arctic Council represents.