Even Russian Ports Along Northern Sea Route Must Be Dredged More Often, And Those Which Aren’t Won’t Function – OpEd
By Paul Goble
The need to dredge waterways in the southern portions of the Russian Federation has attracted increasing attention over the last few years, especially as Moscow has had to use dredging equipment and personnel from other countries because of its own shortages in both (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/falling-water-levels-forcing-moscow-to.html).
These challenges in the south have continued to mount, but now they have been joined by the increased need to dredge ports along the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic; and this combination has led Moscow to announce plans for the construction of new domestic Russian dredgers (https://en.portnews.ru/news/385647/).
According to the Rosatom State Corporation’s Hydrographic Enterprise, “the total volume of dredging on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along will reach 60 million cubic meters of materials over the next five years. Because Russian yards are unlikely to be able to produce enough vessels of this kind, China and other countries are likely to play an expanded role.
But given that China and other countries have a greater interest in traversing the entire route of the NSR rather than stopping at intermediate points, it is entirely likely that some of the latter will cease to be able to handle large ships in the coming years because no one will be dredging these ports.
That will hurt Moscow’s ability to develop these areas or even to control them, especially as China will be in a position to decide which ports get dredged and thus remain functional and which ones remain un-dredged and thus cannot be effectively used for trade (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/10/as-russia-falters-in-north-china.html).
