2016-07-06 By Richard Weitz
Recent weeks have seen clear evidence of Russian perseverance in sustaining its Arctic presence despite the country’s national economic slowdown and other challenges.
This is particularly visible in Russia’s new icebreakers, which in the Arctic are the military equivalent of aircraft carriers in other oceans—the main symbol of national power projection and presence.
The Russian Federation, like the Soviet Union, has long had a fleet of icebreakers of various capabilities and sizes.
In addition to the conventional diesel engines found on all U.S. and other foreign icebreakers, Russia also has nuclear-powered icebreakers that normally can break thicker ice due to their more powerful motors.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of these icebreakers fell out of repair or came under private corporations or were loaned to foreign countries.
But the Russian government has since recovered control of many of these vessels as well as built many new ones for military and civilian use.
On June 10, 2016, the JSC Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg floated Russia’s first icebreaker in four decades.
The Project 21180 Ilya Muromets, commissioned by the Russian Navy, is a diesel-electric powered, 280-foot, 6,000-ton icebreaker that is designed, to have the capacity for a two-month voyage of some 12,000 nautical miles, with a cruising speed of 15 knots, and able to smash ice of almost one-meter thickness.[1]
In addition to breaking ice for other vessels, the Ilya Muromets, which will join the Northern Fleet in 2017, can tug ships and convey cargo to isolated Russian military facilities.
The Russian Navy will acquire at least three more Project 21180 icebreakers in the future.[2]
The Northern Fleet has high-level responsibility for Arctic security and comprises some two-thirds of Russia’s naval vessels.[3]
The Northern Fleet needs icebreakers to sail on patrols in the Arctic outside the summer months.[4]
In addition to the three more military icebreakers, the Northern Fleet will acquire two cruise-missile corvettes with icebreaking capabilities, to open paths for themselves and other Russian ships, by 2020.[5]
Rosatom has proposed rebuilding a decommissioned nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Sovetskiy Soyuz, as a floating Arctic command headquarters with an operational life of over two decades.[6]
Russian civilian companies are also building more icebreakers that could have an inherent dual-use capacity to assist Russian military operations in the Arctic.
The Russian-state company Rosmorport is building the world’s most powerful diesel-engine icebreaker.
The first of these LK-25 Type Project 22600 ships, the Viktor Chernomyrdin, will be able to conduct two-month long voyages through approximately 6.5-feet thick ice.[7]
Russian energy corporations such as Novatek and Gazprom Neft are also acquiring icebreakers to support their Arctic operations to include transporting oil and gas as well as towing or rescuing distressed ships.[8]
Until now, there has been a division of labor among the shipyards around St. Petersburg that build Russia’s icebreakers.
The Admiralty Yard and Vyborg Yard make Russia’s diesel-powered icebreakers, while the Baltiisky Yard build the nuclear-powered vessels.
The Arctech Yard in Finland, which is Russian-owned, also makes some icebreakers for Russian clients as well as other customers.[9]
Russia’s is the only country with nuclear-powered icebreakers.[10]
It is now building its largest nuclear icebreaker in history, the Type LK-60 Project 22220 Arktika, at a cost of some $1.2 billion.
With 80,000 hp (60 megawatts), the ship can break ice up to 10-feet thick powered by two 175MW RITM-200 compact nuclear reactors that weigh half as much as the power reactors presently used by Russia’s nuclear-powered icebreakers.[11] The Arktika floated in June 2016, a year ahead of schedule.[12]
According to the official timetable, the ship will be commissioned in December 2019.[13]
The new Arktika will replace a previous nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika that retired in 2008, which was half the size of the new ship.[14]
There are two more Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreakers planned, the Ural and the Sibir.[15]
These new vessels may not have much of a near-term impact on Arctic dynamics since Russia already has more than 40 icebreakers, considerably more than the rest of the world combined.
At least another dozen icebreakers are on order.[16]
Some two thirds of these vessels are capable of operating in the high seas of the ocean, while the rest are designed for primarily coastal missions.[17]
Russia sees its icebreaker fleet as an important enabling capacity for infrastructure development in the region, for enhancing use of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from East Asia to Europe, and for securing Russian access to the Arctic’s sizable energy and mineral resources.
The increasing activity level was symbolically represented by the December 2015 voyage of the Russian icebreaker Vaygach, which not only traversed the Northern Sea Route in the record time of 7.5 days, but did so in the second half of December, weeks after the traditional shipping season ends in mid-November—affirming Russian hopes to keep the NSR operational year-round.[18]
[1] “Russian Navy’s brand new icebreaker Ilya Muromets floats off,” RT, June 10, 2016, http://on.rt.com/7f3k; and Agence France-Presse, “Russia Unveils New Navy Icebreaker in Arctic Military Focus”, June 11, 2016, Defense News, http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/naval/2016/06/11/russia-unveils-new-navy-icebreaker-arctic-military-focus/85747556/.
[2] “Russian Navy gets new icebreaker,” Russia Beyond the Headlines, June 10, 2016, http://rbth.com/defence/2016/06/10/russian-navy-gets-new-icebreaker_602031.
[3] Frans-Stefan Gady, “Russia Launches First New Military Icebreaker in 45 Years,” The Diplomat, June 14, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/russia-launches-first-new-military-icebreaker-in-45-years/.
[4] Matthew Bodner, “Russia’s Polar Pivot,” Defense News, March 11, 2015, http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/warfare/2015/03/11/russia-arctic-bases-soviet-northern-command-navy-fleet-siberian-island/24335619/
[5] Agence France-Presse, “Russia Unveils New Navy Icebreaker in Arctic Military Focus,” Defense News, June 11, 2016, http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/naval/2016/06/11/russia-unveils-new-navy-icebreaker-arctic-military-focus/85747556/.
[6] Sputnik, June 28, 2016, http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160128/1033824140/russia-arctic-rosatom-hq.html
[7] Atle Staalesen, “These are Russia’s new icebreakers,” The Independent Barents Observer, December 1, 2015, http://thebarentsobserver.com/2015/12/these-are-russias-new-icebreakers
[8] Atle Staalesen, “These are Russia’s new icebreakers,” The Independent Barents Observer, December 1, 2015, http://thebarentsobserver.com/2015/12/these-are-russias-new-icebreakers
[9] Atle Staalesen, “These are Russia’s new icebreakers,” The Independent Barents Observer, December 1, 2015, http://thebarentsobserver.com/2015/12/these-are-russias-new-icebreakers
[10] Camila Domonoske, “Russia Launches World’s Biggest, Most Powerful Icebreaker,” June 16, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/16/482288188/russia-launches-worlds-biggest-most-powerful-icebreaker
[11] http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160627/1042026545/russia-nuclear-icebreaker-reactor.html
[12] Aiswarya Lakshmi, marinelink.com/news/arktika-largest-russia411416.aspx Russia Aims it Big With Arktika, World’s Largest Icebreaker Ship By June 19, 2016
[13] Rosatom has completed a power unit for the world’s largest nuclear icebreaker Arktika,” http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160627/1042026545/russia-nuclear-icebreaker-reactor.html
Sputnik, June 27, 2016
[14] David Hambling, Russia Built a Big, Bad Nuclear-Powered Icebreaker to Win the Arctic,” Russian Maritime Register of Shipping,” June 23, 2016, http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a21484/russia-nuclear-powered-icebreaker/.
[15] “Russia Invests in World’s Largest Nuclear-Powered Icebreaker © Sputnik, June 28, 2016,
http://sputniknews.com/military/20160628/1042095705/nuclear-icebreaker-launch-ural.html.
[16] Norton A. Schwartz & James G. Stavridis, “A Quick Fix for the U.S. ‘Icebreaker Gap’”, February 3, 2016, The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-quick-fix-for-the-u-s-icebreaker-gap-1454542242
[17] Franz-Stefan Gady, “Russia and China in the Arctic: Is the US Facing an Icebreaker Gap?” The Diplomat, September 7, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/russia-and-china-in-the-arctic-is-the-us-facing-an-icebreaker-gap/
[18] Emily Russell, “Russian icebreaker breaks speed record on Arctic route,” Alaska Dispatch News, December 31, 2015, http://www.adn.com/arctic/article/russian-icebreaker-breaks-speed-record-arctic-route/2015/12/31/.