The area has been described as an 'Ali Baba’s cave' of energy deposits

While the world waited for an invasion of mainland Ukraine, Russia quietly gained a chunk of territory the size of Switzerland 4,000 miles away.

In marked contrast to the annexation of Crimea, Russia conquered it without deploying soldiers on foreign soil, and with the full approval of the international community.

It has emerged that on March 15 the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a treaty body run by the United Nations, approved Russia’s longstanding claim to a section of sea-bed in the Far East.

Sergei Donskoy, the Russian minister for natural resources, described the area, which measures 20,000 square miles (52,000 sq km) in the Sea of Okhotsk, as an “Ali Baba’s cave” of energy deposits.

However, despite the obvious