Russia and China have agreed to increase traffic on Arctic shipping corridors, expand links between their ports and deepen cooperation on building polar vessels. Moscow-controlled Northern Sea Route could cut Asia-Europe transit times by 35 percent, to 18 to 22 days instead of 28 to 35 days through Suez, but it remains marginal, accounting for roughly 0.3 percent of global maritime trade in 2025. The European Union has adopted a strategy to expand its icebreaker capacity, maritime surveillance, infrastructure and protection of undersea cables, but its capabilities remain limited against the Russia-China partnership. Traffic could reach about 1 percent of global trade by 2030, while melting ice could raise the Northern Sea Route’s annual capacity to between 127 million and 463 million tonnes by 2050.
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