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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

But what do countries do when they share a continental shelf with other countries? It seems like this only applies to countries that are very large.

And also they're basically claiming land right outside Russia at a time when tensions between the US and Russia are at an all time high in 40 years. Based on something they and their allies in the UN signed back in 1982.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but I see no indication that Russia signed.[1]

Not trying to claim anything politically, just random thoughts on this article from an IT person who is not well versed in any politics.

1. https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetailsIII.aspx?src=TREATY...

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U.S. didn't sign UNCLOS either. The claim here also overlaps with the Canadian claim [0].

[0] https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/cjes-2022-0069#se...

>Maybe I'm reading this wrong but I see no indication that Russia signed.[1]

If you search on the page you linked, the Russian Federation signed it on March 12, 1997. As the other commenter notes, the US hasn't signed it.

The Executive Summary [0] cites the 1990 maritime boundary agreement between the U.S. and USSR [1] to justify its placement of the western ECS border. In that agreement, Article 1 says:

> Each Party shall respect the maritime boundary as limiting the extent of its coastal state jurisdiction otherwise permitted by international law for any purpose.

And Article 5 clarifies:

> For the purposes of this Agreement, "coastal state jurisdiction" refers to the sovereignty, sovereign rights, or any other form of jurisdiction with respect to the waters or seabed and subsoil that may be exercised by a coastal state in accordance with the international law of the sea.

So in the U.S.'s view, the agreement clearly extends to ECS jurisdiction over the seabed and subsoil. The remaining question is whether Russia will continue to repsect the agreement that was made with the USSR.

[0] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ECS_Executi...

[1] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/US_Russia_1...

The Northern Sea Route has been contested for decades:

https://warontherocks.com/2023/10/getting-sporty-in-russias-...

The US is also upset that Russia had been making its own Arctic ECS claims through proper legal channels:

> Russia has cleared the scientific burden of proof required to have its extended continental shelf claim legitimized. Decades of scientific research, Arctic missions, and information exchanges with Denmark and Canada have resulted in the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf dubbing the majority of Moscow’s claim to an extended Arctic continental shelf to be “valid.”

https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/russias-gains-in-the-great...

Wow there's so much I have no idea of.

I just watched the video from the Guardian about Russia claming their own territory based on ECS.

If both Russia and the US intend to exploit these resources, while the public make the switch to more renewable sources of energy, then this is clearly intended for military use primarily.

I remember reading somewhere that the DoD collectively is the largest producer of pollution in the world.

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