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The announcement came as the Kremlin increases its military presence in the far north. Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that it was going to build 13 new military airfields and 10 radar stations in the Arctic in case of “unwelcome guests”.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, told his security council in April that the Arctic was “a sphere of our special interest”.

Under the UN convention on the law of the sea, the five states with territory inside the Arctic Circle – Canada, Norway, Russia, the US and Denmark, via its control of Greenland – have economic rights over a 200-mile zone around the north of their coastline.

However, the convention is open to appeal and several countries are disputing the limits of the zone.

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Russia believes its shelf is directly linked to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater mountain crest that runs 1,240 miles across the polar region. A similar claim is being made about the Mendeleyev ridge, which also strikes out from Siberia toward the North Pole.

Moscow submitted research findings to the UN in 2001 to the effect that the ridges were a “natural prolongation” of Russia, but they were rejected, and it has been gathering data for a new application since.

In 2007, Russian scientists tried to beef up their claims by diving to the seabed under the North Pole and planting a titanium Russian flag. That prompted ridicule from some quarters, with Peter MacKay, Canada’s then foreign minister, comparing it to a 15th century colonial land-grab.

Canada also calls the Lomonosov ridge its own and is expected to lay claim to the North Pole itself in a forthcoming application to the UN. Denmark thinks the ridge is part of Greenland.