Russia and China Build the Northern Bypass Around Suez
by Jaffa Levy
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Published
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Each time the Suez Canal falters, the world quietly turns its eyes north. The real contest is no longer only in the Red Sea but in the Arctic, where Russian and Chinese icebreakers are building a new corridor that could bypass the most vulnerable chokepoint in global trade.
For most of the industrial age, the global trading system has rested on a single chokepoint in Egypt. When the Suez Canal is open, shipping flows smoothly between Asia and Europe. When it is blocked by war, by accident, or by the ambitions of a militant group, everything slows, costs rise, and the world scrambles for alternatives. The fragility of this artery has shaped more than a century of geopolitics, and each of its failures has pushed strategists to look northward, to waters that were once frozen and inaccessible. Those waters are now changing faster than the old shipping maps can keep up with.
The Suez Canal has been interrupted repeatedly, often with consequences that rewire the global economy. In 1956, when Egypt nationalised the canal and Britain, France and Israel responded with an invasion, the waterway was shut by scuttled ships. The shock forced trade routes around Africa and helped accelerate the shift of post war power toward Washington and Moscow. Then, in 1967 after the Six Day War, Egypt closed the canal entirely for eight years. Fourteen merchant ships, the Yellow Fleet, were stranded in the Great Bitter Lake until 1975. It was the longest modern closure of a global artery and a reminder that even the most vital trade corridor can be rendered unusable overnight.
The Ever Given grounding in 2021 delivered the same lesson in miniature. A single misaligned hull blocked twelve percent of world trade for six days, costing billions and straining supply chains that were already weakened by the pandemic. Today the threat is different. Missile and drone attacks by Houthi forces in Yemen have made the Red Sea so dangerous that shipping lines once again skirt Africa. The canal itself is open but functionally degraded, and the world feels the pressure instantly. Whenever Suez falters, the Arctic reappears in strategic imagination.
Vulnerability of the Suez Canal
• More than one billion tonnes of cargo pass through Suez each year; 2023 traffic was at record levels according to the Suez Canal Authority.
• The Northern Sea Route carried only a few million tonnes of transit cargo in 2024, a tiny fraction of Suez volumes.
• A single blockage can stall around twelve percent of global maritime trade, as seen with the Ever Given incident in 2021.
• Since 2023 attacks in the Red Sea have pushed many carriers to divert around Africa, cutting Suez cargo and toll revenue sharply.
Turning north when the south is blocked
This is why the Northern Sea Route, the corridor along Russia’s Arctic coast, now commands increasing attention. It cuts the distance between China and northern Europe by thousands of miles. What was previously a frozen wilderness is becoming a seasonal alternative to the Suez and Red Sea chokepoint, a corridor whose viability grows with each retreating year of ice. Yet the true power in the Arctic does not lie where Western navies instinctively look. It is not the presence of destroyers or aircraft carriers that determines who controls the top of the world. It is the fleet of icebreakers.
Unlike warm water seas, Arctic trade lanes exist only when heavy vessels break paths through ice, escort convoys, and keep liquefied natural gas tankers moving. Without these ships, nothing else moves, not container ships, not tankers, not even the research vessels that map future infrastructure. Icebreakers are the Arctic’s enablers, the equivalents of dredgers in Suez or tug fleets in crowded harbours. The country that builds and maintains the strongest icebreaker fleet writes the timetable of Arctic commerce.
Russia’s icebreaker advantage
By that metric, Russia holds an overwhelming advantage. It is the only nation on Earth that operates a nuclear powered icebreaker fleet. These vessels, Arktika, Sibir, Ural, Yakutia and others, carve through multi year ice at speeds and depths that no conventional ship can match. They can operate for years without refuelling. They can escort liquefied natural gas tankers from the Yamal Peninsula to the Bering Strait even in shoulder seasons. They can free stranded vessels in conditions where Western ships would be immobilised. This is not naval prestige. It is industrial utility. In the Arctic, a nuclear icebreaker is more valuable than an aircraft carrier.
Russia now fields around eight nuclear icebreakers and dozens more diesel or hybrid vessels, with additional ships under construction. Despite sanctions, the Kremlin has maintained this fleet as a strategic priority, tying its expansion to the long term viability of the Northern Sea Route. While the West lectures about freedom of navigation, Russia is building the only ships that make actual navigation possible.
Russia’s icebreaker fleet by the numbers
• Russia operates the only nuclear powered icebreaker fleet in the world.
• Project 22220 icebreakers, such as Arktika and Sibir, can break ice up to about three metres thick and are powered by twin RITM-200 reactors.
• Official figures and industry tallies put Russia’s wider ice capable fleet, nuclear and conventional, at several dozen vessels.
• New ships like the planned Stalingrad icebreaker show Moscow’s intention to keep expanding capacity along the Northern Sea Route.
China’s quiet polar build out
China has taken a different path, quieter, methodical, and no less consequential. Beijing began with a single ageing research vessel, Xue Long. It now has a modernised fleet that includes the domestically built Xue Long Two, the new multi functional Tan Sun San Hao, and additional hulls designed for deep sea surveying, seabed mapping and Arctic research. These ships are not combatants, but their purpose is unmistakably strategic. Mapping the Arctic seabed is a precursor to cable routes, extraction platforms and liquefied natural gas terminals. China is laying the groundwork for what it calls the Polar Silk Road, an Arctic extension of its Belt and Road initiative.
Where Russia supplies geography and icebreaking power, China supplies capital, cargo and industrial capacity. Yamal liquefied natural gas would not have succeeded without Chinese financing and shipyards. Ice capable liquefied natural gas tankers, the backbone of Russia’s Arctic export system, are built in Korean and Chinese yards because European production has been throttled by sanctions and climate litigation. As China grows more dependent on stable energy flows, an Arctic corridor insulated from Red Sea volatility becomes a strategic asset too important to ignore.
Western weakness in an icebreaker world
Western powers cannot match this alignment. Washington has only a handful of icebreakers, including a single ageing heavy ship and a medium research vessel, and is now trying to recapitalise its fleet after decades of neglect. Plans for new Polar Security Cutters have been repeatedly delayed. Canada has ambitious programmes for Arctic patrol and ice capable ships, but delivery dates stretch well into the 2030s. Europe has capable coast guard fleets but no nuclear icebreakers and no intention of matching Russia’s scale. The West still treats the Arctic as a theatre for naval signalling. Russia and China treat it as a place where cargo must move.
This mismatch is how the Arctic balance of power is actually being set, not by submarine patrols but by the tonnage and power plants of icebreakers, and by the industrial coalitions behind them. In this world, a nuclear icebreaker is not simply a ship. It is an economic weapon. It opens lanes when others are closed. It guarantees Russian liquefied natural gas flows to Asia. It supports China’s interest in secure non Western corridors. It gives both countries leverage over a region that is warming faster than any other on Earth.
Melting ice and a narrowing window
The warming of the Arctic is the final accelerant. Satellite records and climate briefings show that September sea ice is shrinking at more than ten percent per decade, and recent winters have seen record low extents for the time of year. Summer ice free periods are lengthening. The shoulder seasons of spring and autumn, once too risky for regular voyages, are slowly expanding. For shipping companies this means that the Northern Sea Route will be accessible for more months each year. For Russia and China it means the economic case for year round infrastructure grows stronger. For the West it means the cost of entry rises with every year of delay.
Time savings along the Northern Sea Route are already substantial. A voyage from China to northern Europe that may take forty to fifty days via Suez can be cut to around twenty days through the Arctic, depending on ice conditions and icebreaker support. It is not a universal solution. Insurance costs remain high, predictability is still limited, and the route is largely seasonal. Yet as instability in the Middle East continues, even a seasonal alternative carries enormous strategic value.
Time and distance advantages of the Northern Sea Route
• China to northern Europe via Suez commonly takes around forty to fifty days.
• The same voyage via the Northern Sea Route can be as short as around twenty days in favourable conditions.
• Transit time savings can reach roughly thirty to forty percent on selected routes.
• The trade off is higher insurance, ice related risk and reliance on powerful icebreakers for safe passage.
The lesson is straightforward. The Arctic is no longer a remote theatre. It is becoming a strategic bypass for a system that is growing more fragile at its southern chokepoints. The Northern Sea Route will not replace Suez, but it does not need to. It only needs to relieve enough pressure to reshape alliances and supply chains. In a world of sanctions, blockades, drone strikes and drought strained canals, a northern hedge becomes indispensable.
As the ice retreats through the 2030s, the balance of power in the Arctic will not be determined by who deploys the most warships, but by who built the most icebreakers while there was still time. Russia understood this early. China understood it later but moved quickly. The West is still arguing over climate policy while others are laying hulls in shipyards. The Arctic’s future is not waiting for a consensus. It is being built, steel by steel and reactor by reactor, in the shipyards of Saint Petersburg, Murmansk and Shanghai.
When the next crisis hits Suez, the ships that will keep global trade moving will not be aircraft carriers or destroyers. They will be the icebreakers crushing a path through the top of the world. The countries that own them will hold a form of leverage that cannot be sanctioned, blockaded or easily countered.
