Russian Arctic military exercise draws awe and concern

I'm not an expert at all in this subject, but I think a lot of these actions are a way of pushing forward Russia's sphere of influence over the Arctic.

> I read about this last week, and seemed a bit pointless.

It's about positioning, that's far from pointless.

Access to oil (hopefully something of long term diminishing value) and future shipping lanes.

It’s also Russia’s border with the USA and Canada so would be the place to enter from if you want to try to take out the DEW stations (yeah, sure. But the route to take). Though if that were something I wanted to do I’d either use a sub to drop the, off or launch cruise missiles from subs.