Japan & South Korea in the Arctic

Don't bury the Arctic Council yet

For a dead institution, the Arctic Council has been remarkably busy. Serafima Andreeva draws on four years of research to explain how the Arctic Council survived Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and why it may be one of the more quietly resilient bodies in international diplomacy right now. She goes back to the Council's 1990s origins as a route into post-Soviet Russia, walks through the "temporary pause" of 2022 and the chairship handover from Russia to Norway, and ends with a prediction about what threatens it next. The uncomfortable part: Russia may not be the Council's biggest problem, and the United States belongs in that conversation too.

Japan & South Korea in the Arctic

Japan and South Korea became Arctic Council observers on at the same time in 2013, and they usually get filed alongside China as "Asian observers." But Tokyo and Seoul are not the same actor. Alma Karabeg is writing her PhD on Japan and South Korea in the Arctic at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. We get into what actually drives the engagement (it is partly nation-building), why sustainability is the frame she uses to read both strategies, and how each country handles Russia after 2022. Japan still imports Russian gas. Both had to sanction Moscow even though it does not suit their economies, and both, Alma argues, have a room for maneuver on science diplomacy that the West does not. We finish on the Northern Sea route, Korea's bet on Busan, and a blunt recommendation: European Arctic states are not brave enough about building their own infrastructure or coordinating on what moves through their ports.

Italy in the Arctic

Recorded from Rome, we cover the question of what Italy really wants in the Arctic and how it can achieve it. Marco Dordoni, todays guest, is a PhD candidate at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, where his doctoral work looks at how NATO's European non-Arctic states approach Arctic security, and a senior researcher at SIOI, the Rome institute that has shaped Italian thinking on international organizations and diplomacy since 1944. Italy has no Arctic coastline and no Arctic territory, but it has held a seat on the Arctic Council since 2013, and in January 2026 it published its first new Arctic policy in a decade. Marco lays out Italy's mix of interests, from the strategic value of a place at the table alongside the US, Russia, and China, to the concrete stakes of Arctic shipping. If the Northern Sea Route opens for longer each year, it could pull traffic away from Suez and the Mediterranean, with real consequences for ports like Genoa, Trieste, and Taranto. We get into critical minerals and the recent Italy-Norway agreement, what Italy can realistically offer on Arctic defence, and why Rome keeps positioning itself as cautious but present. We also cover Greenland, the Meloni-Trump relationship and where it has cooled, the Arctic Circle Rome Forum, and whether Italy actually has a long-term Arctic strategy at all.

Will the next war be hybrid?

Hybrid threats are everywhere and nowhere. Cable cutting in the Baltic, drone incursions in Copenhagen and Oslo, the shadow fleet moving sanctioned oil under foreign flags, self-igniting parcels routed through DHL, GPS jamming that no longer triggers Article 5 conversations the way it once might have. What counts as hybrid, what counts as warfare, and where is the line? Dr. Gabriella Gricius returns to The Circumpolar to map how Russia operates differently across the Barents, the Baltic, and the Black Sea, why the shadow fleet is really about testing political cohesion rather than oil revenue, and why compounding threats keep her up at night. The conversation covers attribution problems, the limits of UNCLOS, what to make of Russia's ambassador to Norway saying Moscow has no interest in hybrid confrontation, and whether the West can hold a coherent red line when it cannot agree on a coherent response. Dr. Gabriella Gricius is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian Military Academy, a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute, and a Fellow with the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network. Her work focuses on Arctic and northern European security with a focus on Russia.

Is Russian oil benefiting from the war in Iran?

Arild Moe, research professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, joins Serafima Andreeva to unpack what the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East mean for Russia's Arctic energy sector. They discuss whether Russia is really benefiting from higher oil prices, why the "Arctic dream economy" looks increasingly fragile, the future of Yamal LNG as Europe prepares to phase out Russian gas, and the growing role of the shadow fleet. Drawing on his recent book with Anna Korppoo, "Climate, Hydrocarbons and Sanctions in the Russian Arctic", published with Edward Elgar, Arild explains why long-distance energy supplies are looking more vulnerable, how climate concerns figure into Russian planning (briefly, it turns out), and what rebuilding relations with Russia might eventually require. Book: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/climate-hydrocarbons-sanctions-9781035355501.html [https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/climate-hydrocarbons-sanctions-9781035355501.html]