New sanctions imposed on the Russian shadow tanker fleet, I believe China and India have refused to allow some oil tankers to to dock. Also the deployment of JEF to the Baltic sea to help monitor sabotage etc.
India and China have been pretty good at sticking to the letter of sanctions. Interpretation is occasionally open to discussion, which is the same in any legal framework, with access to western banking systems and the international appeal of the $US a strong motivator.
There is a Cold War reboot of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap with a Baltic bonus thrown in because of the invasion of Ukraine. GIUK went out of fashion following the fall of the USSR and NATO nation bases on the outlying islands that had surveyed access to the Atlantic from the Norwegian Sea were moth-balled. This is why naval nuclear facilities on the west coast of Scotland are still of strategic importance to supply western submarines.
Global warming is opening up the Arctic shipping routes and Russia imposes tariffs on the Northern Sea Route (one of several routes) to keep channels clear of ice. The Arctic routes can save thousands of miles on some journeys when compared to Suez Canal routes and more when Suez is inaccessible.
Russia has been updating its Arctic military presence for years and is ahead of the west in the region and can control shipping routes in a region that comprises 20% of the Russian land mass. Keeping the west focussed on the Baltic damages NATO resilience and detracts from operations elsewhere.
The JEF nations are all NATO members and the GIUK grouping has been expanded to cover Baltic routes, hence the inclusion of the Netherlands amongst the Baltic countries. Whether we like it or not, there is more to be done and it’s going to cost!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-expeditionary-force-activates-uk-led-reaction-system-to-track-threats-to-undersea-infrastructure-and-monitor-russian-shadow-fleet
