Repression Against Researchers Undermines russia’s Position in the Arctic

In 2026, the next international scientific report on the state of the Arctic, which has been prepared every five years since 1991 under the auspices of the Arctic Council, will be published without russian input – and the reason for this is political, not scientific.

On January 14, russian researcher aleksei dudarev was detained on his way to work in st. petersburg on suspicion of treason. He was the one who collected and systematized the materials for the future report. The main topic of his work was the impact of toxic pollutants on Arctic ecosystems and human health, in particular that of small indigenous peoples of the rf. Information that was published in open sources until 2022 is now considered by russian special services as a potential resource for the “enemy”. According to them, Norwegian intelligence services could have used the scientific findings.

The pressure was not limited to one case. On February 16, russian authorities declared the non-profit organization “Arktida”, which specializes in Arctic research, “undesirable”. At the same time, there have been reports of siloviki’s pressure on teachers and scientists at the northern (Arctic) federal university. A separate area of confrontation has been with the Norwegian media outlet “The Barents Observer”, which actively writes about the Arctic and has a russian-language version: the publication’s journalists have been added to the lists of “terrorists and extremists” and “foreign agents”.

The kremlin’s growing hostility toward any sources of information about the russian Arctic indicates moscow’s unwillingness to disclose the real state of affairs in the region. russian authorities are trying at all costs to maintain their influence in the Arctic and leave room for possible agreements with the West in the future. In this logic, repression against scientists, institutions, and the media becomes a tool for concealing the consequences of previous economic management, even if it means effective isolation from international scientific cooperation.