At the council’s meeting in Nuuk, Greenland, in 2011, the members adopted their first legally binding agreement to coordinate search-and-rescue operations over 13 million square miles of ocean. In 2013, in Kiruna, Sweden, the council signed a similar agreement to coordinate cleanup efforts in the event of an oil spill, something that is no longer a hypothetical possibility given Russia’s first shipment of oil from its offshore platform in the Kara Sea last April.

At this year’s meeting, the nations agreed to discuss how to reduce the amount of methane and black carbon emitted by burning wood or fuels in the Arctic, considered a pernicious contributor to climate change. They offered no concrete proposals but pledged to do so by the time the council meets again in 2017.

Russia’s military activity in the Arctic and its vast territorial claim to waters there highlight the strategic priority that Mr. Putin has given to the region. The intensifying competition over natural resources has increased the possibility of confrontation, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 deeply strained relations with the rest of the council’s permanent members.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who attended the last council meeting in Sweden two years ago, declined to attend this time. He cited a scheduling conflict, but many suspected that his decision was in retaliation for Canada’s sharp criticism of the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine and a boycott of a meeting on Arctic issues in Russia.

Instead, Russia sent its minister of natural resources and the environment, Sergei Y. Donskoi, who was also on Mr. Rogozin’s trip to the North Pole last weekend.

Leona Aglukkaq, Canada’s environmental minister and the chairwoman of the Arctic Council for the past two years, reiterated her country’s condemnation of the intervention in Ukraine during a private meeting with Mr. Donskoi. She and Canada’s foreign minister, Robert Nicholson, did so again when asked about it at a closing news conference, which was dominated by questions about Russia’s moves in the Arctic and beyond.

At Friday’s meeting, Mr. Donskoi declared that Russia opposed any politicization of the Arctic. “There is no room here for confrontation or for fear mongering, particularly from forces outside,” he said.