After the dissolution of the USSR the role of the High North in domestic policy
greatly diminished, while the Soviet achievements in the Arctic exploration and study
were almost forgotten. The new era for the Arctic began after Vladimir Putin became
President of the Russian Federation. Along with creation of new legal and regulatory
base and revival of polar researches, Russia launched several promising projects in its
Arctic zone. The article is devoted to the overview of some promising projects which
have already been commenced in the Russian Arctic, including the megaproject of the
Northern Sea Route development, ―Project-22220‖ for the construction of newgeneration
nuclear icebreakers, railway system ―Belkomur‖, multimodal transport
system ―Northern latitudinal way‖, infamous liquefied natural gas production
enterprise ―Yamal-LNG‖ and projects of offshore hydrocarbon fields development –
―Shtokman‖, ―Prirazlomnaya‖ and ―Universitetskaya-1‖. This paper gives comparison
of the expectations expressed before implementation of each of the projects started to
what has been accomplished till now. All the projects examined are headliners directly
or indirectly connected to infrastructure development of the Arctic zone of Russian
Federation. The conclusion offers possible solutions to overcome the most prominent
problems of Russian Arctic projects implementation – high costs and incoordination of
the contracting parties.
