A container ship leaving Shanghai for Hamburg spends about 35 days at sea if it goes by way of the Suez Canal. Under favorable conditions, the same voyage along Russia’s Arctic coast could take roughly 19. That gap, and the retreat of the ice behind it, explains why the Northern Sea Route keeps returning to the agenda of European capitals.
The route runs along Russia’s northern shoreline from the Kara Sea to the Bering Strait. Anadolu reported in February 2026 that it could cut transit times between Asia and Europe by up to 40% against Suez. Satellite data from climate research institutions, the agency said, show Arctic summer sea ice down by more than 40% since 1979, which has stretched the navigable season on parts of the route to several months.
Russia’s hand on the route
Moscow has made the passage a strategic priority. Its Arctic coastline covers roughly half of the Arctic Ocean, and it has put money into icebreakers, ports and navigation infrastructure. China has taken notice too. Its 2018 Arctic policy white paper called the country a “near-Arctic state” and sketched a “Polar Silk Road.” The European Union is reviewing its own Arctic strategy; Ursula von der Leyen said in 2025 that “Europe must be more proactive and more invested in the Arctic.”
Traffic is rising. Atomflot, Russia’s state-owned nuclear shipping company, said cargo on the route in the first half of 2026 was 15% above the same period a year earlier, and it expects total volume to pass 40 million metric tons for the first time. High North News, which reported the figures in August 2026, added that bilateral Russia-China cargo exceeded 5 million tons in those six months. The two governments have set a target of 20 million tons by 2030.
Container shipping is the newer story. Chinese operator Sea Legend plans a weekly liner-type service with eight scheduled departures, linking Ningbo with Felixstowe and onward to Rotterdam, Hamburg and Gdansk. The service would skip Russian ports entirely. A Korean line, Panstar, was due to send its own container ship along the route within days of that report.
The case for caution
Experts who spoke to Anadolu were far less excited. Ksenia Vakhrusheva, an Arctic policy advisor at the Norway-based Bellona Foundation, argued that thinner ice is not the same as safe water. “Shrinking ice cover does not eliminate floating ice formations which can block narrow straits,” she said. Ice-class ships, trained crews and thin search-and-rescue capacity all push costs up and make voyages harder to predict.
Andrea Dugo, an economist at the European Centre for International Political Economy, put numbers on the doubt. Transit volumes stayed around 3 million tonnes in both 2024 and 2025, he said, against about 1.57 billion tonnes through Suez in 2024. “The Northern Sea Route remains a rounding error for Europe,” he said. A 40% saving in distance, he added, does not mean a 40% saving in cost, because reliability, insurability and scale matter as much.
Both experts warned against leaning on a corridor that Russia largely administers, often through its icebreaker escorts. Dugo’s advice to Brussels was blunt: “hedge, not hype.” He called the route “a niche, seasonal corridor and a Russian industrial artery, not ‘the new Suez.’”
Sources
- Arctic shortcut or strategic challenge? Experts question Northern Sea Route’s promise
- Russia’s Northern Sea Route cargo set to surpass 40 million tonnes as China expands container shipping
