Two Russian oil barges, MN-4001 and MN-4002, ran aground on the rocky coast of the Kara Sea in Siberia. One of the massive barges contained 7000 tons of diesel fuel and the other 170 tons of kerosene. The near-catastrophic ecological disaster in Putin's Russia happened in November but recently became reported.
The destination of the fuel was not disclosed by the Rosmorrechflot, which is Russia's Federal Agency of Marine and River transport. Though ships depart the Arctic ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk full of fuel in the Fall, this year in late November, the ships ran into an early surprise freeze-up of sea ice. The tankers were being towed to safety in the polar night (for some reason) when a storm containing massive waves with sea ice erupted in the Kara Sea. The tug and the oil barges all ran aground on the rocky coast. Nearby ships attempted rescue when the distress call was made, but close to 20 inches of ice had covered the vessel hampering the ability to free the vessels.
The rescue operation was very difficult and the crew of the salvage vessels were working around the clock to avoid a major oil spill in the fragile Arctic marine environment.
Pulling the barges off the rocks was considered unsafe. This would certainly have led to additional and massive damage to the barge hulls with a guaranteed spill of oil products, the rescue service said.
Work was further complicated by limited depths, windy weather, waves, shifting ice, temperatures down to minus 20 degrees Celsius and constantly icing on the barges. The rescue workers had to manually break the ice to gain access to hatches and other structures and to reduce the weight of the barges.
Diving inspections revealed that the ballast tanks on both barges were pierced. Two tankers came to the site and about 5,000 tons of the diesel fuel were reloaded.
The first barge was removed from the rocks during December, soon followed by the other.
Sigurd Enge, an expert on Arctic shipping and marine environment with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo, is deeply worried about what happened.
“It is only luck that this didn’t ended in a disastrous oil spill,” he said in a phone interview with the Barents Observer.
“It clearly shows that the Northern Sea Route is not ready for year-round sailings. Towing barges with fuel oil are seriously jeopardizing the Arctic environment. We can’t base emergency preparedness on luck,” Sigurd Enge said.
Russia has been building energy and military presence in the Arctic as global warming from the burning of fossil fuels has steadily increased while the Arctic transitions into a death spiral.
The Carnegie Endowment for Peace noted that Russia has always longed to exploit the resources of the Arctic, but what is new is that Putin has returned to its cold war madness ‘centered around long-standing missions of protecting the sanctuaries of its ballistic missile submarine fleet and operations in the North Atlantic in the event of a conflict in Europe."
Russia’s Arctic ambitions have attracted increasing attention in the West over the past decade as climate change opens up new opportunities in the region for navigation and exploration of its riches. For its part, Moscow casts a wary eye on what it sees as a challenge from the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to its position and ambitions there. The Kremlin’s rhetoric about Western encroachment has become more strident, in sync with its enhanced military posture and ambitious economic and infrastructure projects.
snip
Russia’s actions in the Arctic—its aggressive rhetoric and its far-reaching territorial claims—have done little to improve its diplomatic position there vis-à-vis other Arctic states and only antagonized them. Its only partner in its Arctic pursuits has been China, which claims that it is a “near-Arctic” state—a claim rejected by the United States and likely viewed with suspicion by other Arctic nations.
An "onyx" anti-ship cruise missile was launched by the Northern Fleet in Alexandra Land, near an Arctic "trefoil" base. Russia has already used a hypersonic missile on a fuel depot outside Odessa.
(CNN) Russia is amassing unprecedented military might in the Arctic and testing its newest weapons in a region freshly ice-free due to the climate emergency, in a bid to secure its northern coast and open up a key shipping route from Asia to Europe.
Weapons experts and Western officials have expressed particular concern about one Russian 'super-weapon,' the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo. Development of the torpedo is moving fast with Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting an update on a "key stage" of the tests in February from his defense minister Sergei Shoigu, with further tests planned this year, according to multiple reports in state media.This unmanned stealth torpedo is powered by a nuclear reactor and intended by Russian designers to sneak past coastal defenses -- like those of the US -- on the sea floor.
The device is intended to deliver a warhead of multiple megatons, according to Russian officials, causing radioactive waves that would render swathes of the target coastline uninhabitable for decades.In November, Christopher A Ford, then assistant secretary of state for International Security and Non-Proliferation, said the Poseidon is designed to "inundate U.S. coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis."
WASHINGTON — The Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency quietly conducted a successful hypersonic missile test last month.
A defense official told Defense News the Pentagon chose not to announce the test of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, or HAWC, for about two weeks to avoid inflaming already-delicate tensions with Russia.
The free-flight test involved the version of the HAWC created by Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne and was released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the West Coast in mid-March, the defense official said.
A DARPA release Tuesday said the HAWC missile was boosted until its air-breathing, Aerojet-made scramjet engine ignited and quickly accelerated to speeds faster than Mach 5. DARPA said it maintained that speed for an extended period of time, reached altitudes higher than 65,000 feet, and flew for more 300 nautical miles.
The defense official said the HAWC test took place shortly after Russia said it used one of its own hypersonic weapons against Ukraine and was the same week as President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe, which began March 23.