INITIATIVES Russia’s shipping and shipbuilding sectors are vibrant in 2015, nowhere more so than in the Arctic. There has been a constant stream of new developments and initiatives. The most significant announcement came in June, when Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed off on plans to raise traffic through the Northern Sea Route (NSR) by 20 times to a staggering 80 million tonnes of freight annually by 2030. The move signals that Russian plans to develop an Arctic passage rivalling the Suez Canal are finally coming closer to realisation.