The meeting focused on the construction of rescue and salvage vessels for the North Sea Route. Since 2021, eight multifunctional rescue and salvage vessels (MFRSV) of the FSBI 'Marine Rescue Service' are on permanent duty in the waters of the NSR. Alexander Stotsky, General Director of the Project Office for Arctic Development, writes about this.

By 2025, the arctic rescue team should be brought to 24 ships, and to this, end work is underway to create 16 additional MFRSVs—six of them are to appear in the waters of the NSR in 2023. Fifteen MFRSVs are under construction: the keel has already been laid, technical documentation is being prepared, metal is being cut and sections are being formed. For one more vessel, a construction contract is under way. There are objective obstacles on the way: a number of imported units have fallen under sanctions, which is why the State Commission has considered options for deploying counterparts in Russia—in particular, at the Zvezdochka shipbuilding centre in Severodvinsk.

Another important issue is the application and further improvement of the single subsidy mechanism recently extended to the AZRF. In this format, RUB 2.6 bn were allocated from the federal budget in 2022 for the development of economic growth centres in the Arctic zone. Following the meeting, the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic and the heads of the Polar regions were instructed to refine the single subsidy mechanism in line with their development priorities, taking into account the new level of strategic challenges facing the Russian Arctic.

In addition, the participants reviewed the progress of work being carried out in line with the Unified Action Plan to Implement the Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic and the Strategy for Developing the Russian Arctic Zone and Ensuring National Security until 2035. The meeting resulted in a number of instructions to the Polar regions and relevant ministries.