Russia invites Finland to hearings on Arctic cooperation

A delegation of the Russian parliament’s upper house (Federation Council) invited Finnish legislators, members of the foreign relations commission, to hearings on cooperation in the Arctic, planned for November.

According to the Russian news agency TASS Konstantin Kosachev, Head of the Federation Council’s Committee, told this to reporters after a three-day visit to Finland last week.

Kosachev says the two countries will "include actively into the dialogue issues of multilateral cooperation, including on the North, Arctic and the Baltic Regions."

“Before coming here, we have planned for November big parliamentary hearings in Russia on international cooperation in the Arctic," he said.

“Initially, that even was supposed to be domestic, but, as we studied the program of Finland’s chairing the Arctic Council, we realized it would be most important to attract to those hearings our Finnish counterparts, and thus we have invited them as the only foreign party."

If everything goes as planned the event will be organized on board a nuclear icebreaker, departing from Murmansk. Most probably the icebreaker will cover a part of the Northern Sea Route – as the plan is to get to Sabetta – to ghe giant LNG project in Yamal.

“It would be very important for us to demonstrate to the Finnish counterparts how this looks like and how Russia approaches cooperation in the Arctic”, the senator says to the news agency.