External international shocks’ impact on regional governance: Ukrainian crisis spillover in the Arctic

In a globalized world, major international conflicts such as wars, impact not only the involved actors, their interests and behavior within certain networks, but the whole structure of the international system. The Arctic region is not detached from the world politics, neither it is immune to conflict, and, as Russia has waged a full-scale war against Ukraine, it became crystal clear, that the regional cooperation is undergoing dramatic changes. Today’s situation is strikingly different from the previous escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, many of the high-level dialogues and programs between Russia and the Western countries were suspended. However, their cooperation in the Arctic continued via the regional councils and other institutionalized arrangements and has become an emblematic case of how the regional cooperation could transcend the “political” boundaries in pursuit of a common good.
The paper explores historical and theoretical perspectives on the resilience mechanisms of the Arctic regional cooperation and seeks to understand how social interactions and specific policy-making instruments helped construct connections for efficient cooperation. Ultimately, I suggest that, even if the future of the Arctic cooperation remains unclear, we may hope that the multi-level and multi-dimensional links between the Arctic actors and networks built in the past thirty years can become a ground for continuation of the dialogue in the High north in the near future.