Maria Goes
The discovery of oil and gas deposits in the Arctic placed the Arctic region high on the national agenda in Russia. As a result, in official documents and political statements, the Russian Arctic is mainly framed in terms of national, economic and military security as the Arctic is positioned as a strategic source for national development. A connection between security and development remains unproblematised in the main discourse. The Russian economy in general depends on incomes from petroleum revenues. Some of Russian regions prosper due to oil and gas extraction sites located on their territory. At the sametime, the Russian Arctic for decades has been a place with difficult socio-economic situations due to an incoherent state policytowards the region. This brings a lot of insecurities and instabilities in daily life for people living in the Russian Arctic. Nonetheless, these insecurities are not visible in the official narrative of security and development. Therefore, this article will be demonstrate how security and development are interconnected. Another question it will address is whether human security has a place in the Russian security landscape at all? These questions will be answered in several steps. First, I discuss connections articulated in the literature on development and security. With the help of a framing approach, I explore how the Russian state approaches development and security in the Arctic. Third, using the case of the Murmansk region, I expose a regional understanding of development and security. In the end, I will compare and discuss regional and national perspectives.
