Two Nations Are Challenging Russia’s Arctic Shipping Dominance

In a development with enormous consequences both for international trade and for Moscow’s control of its far-flung regions across the country’s northern third—places not linked to the center by roads or railways—the Russian Federation is rapidly losing its historical dominance over the Northern Sea Route to China and Turkey.

Indeed, these two countries are now building icebreakers at record rates, as the Kremlin has had to delay, or even cancel, its plans for new Russian icebreakers due to budgetary shortfalls arising from…