Of all the Arctic seas going into the coast of Siberia, the Kara Sea is noticeably separated by islands from the rest of the Arctic Ocean. These islands have always been under the sovereignty of Russia. These features have predetermined the character of the power of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and modern Russia in relation to the Kara Sea. In 2022, seven Western member states of the Arctic Council brought their disagreements with Russia regarding the non-Arctic issue, thus breaking the traditional “immunity” of the Arctic from political and legal conflicts in other regions.
The author researched legal documents of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation, along with research publications relating to the status of the Kara Sea. General research methods and specific methods of jurisprudence are used as the methodological basis of the study.
During the period of the Russian Empire, the advisor on international law to the Head of the Russian State was adamant that the Kara Sea could only be classified as internal waters of Russia. However, during the Soviet period, Soviet legal scholars unanimously qualified the Kara Sea as part of the state territory of the USSR. However, no relevant legal act was adopted at the official level to confirm this. In 1985, a government decree was adopted dismissing the previous doctrinal position, and most of the Kara Sea was qualified as waters beyond the state’s maritime territory.
In the author’s opinion, the 1985 Decree of the Government of the USSR has conse­ quences in the context of general international law – that is, it is impossible for modern Russia to return to the Soviet legal position as formulated by Soviet legal teachings. However, the 2022 breaking by the seven Western Arctic states of the traditional Arctic “immunity” from non-Arctic conflicts (as noted above) has made the retaliatory meas­ ures of the Russian Federation in the Arctic legitimate. In this context, Russia is entitled to respond by strengthening its regulatory measures in the Kara Sea. The relevant re­ search views regarding such measures are put forward in this article.

A trend that is becoming increasingly noticeable in modern international and domestic maritime law is the regional fragmentation of legal regulation. This, in turn, objectifies and brings to the foreground the creation of complex arrays of legal norms, united by the consistency of the political and legal positions of contracting states that have national interests in the relevant water area – primarily coastal states extending their state sovereignty to certain areas of maritime space. In this context, the Greater Mediterranean region should be considered as one of the most important in world merchant shipping, and in naval support for international peace and security. From a logistical point of view, the basin optimally connects the Atlantic and Indian oceans, which requires the formation of an appropriate scientific and methodological basis for the full implementation of the fundamental principle of international cooperation in the maritime policy of the states of the region. The choice to identify the Greater Medi­ terranean as an independent object of legal regulation was justified by an examina­tion of general and special international legal treaties, the domestic legislation of the Mediterranean states, as well as political and legal documents indicating the existence of certain disputes and situations around certain zones of the Mediterranean water area, primarily in the Eastern Mediterranean region. To obtain reliable and substanti­ ated results, the following methods of scientific knowledge were used: formal-legal, logical, historical-legal, and system-structural analysis. The formal-legal method thus allowed the authors to clarify the content and meaning of international legal treaties concluded at different times and aimed at regulating public relations in the maritime sphere. The logical method made it possible to substantiate the need for comprehen­sive international cooperation among the coastal states of the Greater Mediterranean. The historical-legal method was used to create an overview of the global, Soviet and Russian practice of applying the norms of domestic and international law to issues re­lated to ensuring international law and order in the Greater Mediterranean region. The logical method allowed the authors to build the necessary connections and patterns of development in international legal regulation in the Greater Mediterranean region in the general context of ongoing universal and regional political and legal processes and transformations. The method of system-structural analysis was used to create a holistic picture of law-making and law enforcement in the Mediterranean states aimed at the formation of unified principles and norms for the exercise of the sovereign rights of coastal states. International maritime merchant shipping is an extremely complex area of public relations involving a large number of entities with different legal status which, accordingly, are related to each other in a very different way. This work is devoted to the study of the main trends in the development of the Greater Mediterranean region in terms of formulating key international legal guidelines and rules of conduct for its constituent states. The object of the study is the legal relations carried out in the mari­time spaces of the Greater Mediterranean as one of the key regions, which, along with its economic and political significance, is an integral zone for the implementation of the national interests of the Russian Federation, extending to the entire World Ocean.

Climate change in the Arctic, caused by global warming, and the political processes taking place in the world associated with the increased pressure from the countries of the collective West on the Russian Federation, once again raise the question in Western doctrine of the validity of the Russian Federation establishing a national regime for navigation in the waters of the Northern Sea Route in accordance with Article 234 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Doubts have been raised about Russia’s compliance with the Convention’s requirement to maintain a balance between freedom of navigation and environmental protection. The purpose of this work is to analyse the validity of claims against the Russian Federation regarding its alleged abuse of the right to establish a national regime for navigation in the Arctic under the guise of environmental protection. The problems raised in this work are structurally divided into three main groups. The first involves an analysis of the specific features of shipping in the Arctic in the context of a changing climate and outlines why a special legal regime for navigation in polar waters needs to be established. The second is devoted to the systematic interpretation of Article 234 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, in its relationship with other norms of the Convention, identifying the criteria and restrictions established therein in relation to the rules of navigation adopted by the coastal State in ice-covered areas, as well as the legal content of the requirement of “due regard to navigation and the protection and preservation of the marine environment.” The third part of the work is devoted to assessing the legislation of the Russian Federation on the regulation of navigation along the Northern Sea Route for its compliance with the requirements of Article 234 and maintaining the balance of freedom of navigation and protection of the marine environment in the Arctic. The legislation of the Russian Federation on the regulation of navigation in the waters of the Northern Sea Route fully meets the conditions and criteria established by Article 234 of the Convention, and is aimed at ensuring the functioning of a unified and centralized system for managing the safety of navigation in the particularly dangerous conditions of the Arctic, preventing accidents and environmental pollution environment. The restrictions established by Russian legislation are not discriminatory and are based on current and constantly updated scientific data. Shipping in polar waters involves enormous risks to human life, valuable property, and an extremely fragile and vulnerable environment. The effects of global warming are only exacerbating these risks, leading to increased ice instability and worsening climate problems. In this regard, in icecovered areas, a centralized navigation management system is objectively necessary, and special, uniform legal regulation to ensure the uninterrupted functioning of such a system should be established. A systematic interpretation of Article 234 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea allows us to conclude that the establishment by a coastal state within its exclusive economic zone of non-discriminatory laws and regulations aimed at preventing, reducing, and control pollution of the marine environment by ships is not a privilege, but a duty of the state based on its more general obligation to protect the marine environment, established in articles 192 and 194 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The rule of “due regard to navigation” in this regard should be interpreted to mean that the restrictions and requirements imposed by the laws and regulations of the coastal State must be primarily aimed at ensuring the safety and protection of the marine environment in harsh climatic conditions, without being at the same time discriminatory, unreasonable, and excessive.

The ubiquitous implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is giving rise to cross-border security threats that require joint international responses. Fragmentation and growing conflict in the global information space complicate international cooperation within the UN to form a comprehensive global information security regime. Western countries actively support the formation of a cyber security regime based on Western values and promoted as a general initiative of the international community, without taking the position of developing countries into account. An alternative approach focused on securing digital sovereignty is being promoted by many non-Western negotiating platforms, among which the BRICS occupies an important place. This article aims to assess the potential of the BRICS influence on the international ICT security regime and the main directions of the association’s activities in this area. In this paper, the BRICS ICT security agenda is studied on the basis of official documents of the association’s annual summits and the main commitments made by the member countries. The discourse analysis of the strategic planning documents of the BRICS countries allows to identify their priorities in this area, and to assess the potential for the implementation of these obligations at the BRICS level. All the BRICS countries focus on ensuring ICT sovereignty. However, Russia, India, and China consider digital development and ICT security as the most important area of state policy and international cooperation. They are also more advanced when it comes to digital technologies compared to the other BRICS countries, which means they are more vulnerable. In turn, Brazil and South Africa do not consider this area as a priority, placing greater emphasis on ICT development, access to technology, and bridging the digital divide. However, all five countries are interested in solving the problem of extremism and terrorism in the digital sphere, which is also a promising area for BRICS multilateral cooperation. A study of the voting of the BRICS countries in the UN and an analysis of their participation in alternative initiatives in the formation of a cyber security regime promoted by Western countries showed the high efficiency of BRICS as a negotiating platform. Its main contribution in this respect is the development of a common position on the norms and principles of the international information security regime and their support at the UN level. Thus, BRICS can make a constructive contribution to the formation of the norms and principles of the international ICT security regime based on the principles of respect for state sovereignty, the internationalization of internet governance, and combatting to the criminal use of ICTs. An important advantage of BRICS in this area is the possibility of aggregating the interests and positions of developing countries.

The study of mediation in resolving armed conflicts remains a promising area of research in international relations. However, contemporary IR research provides a limited understanding of the role of the mediator’s military power in the cessation of hostilities and the implementation of peace agreements. We have suggested that asymmetry and parity can characterize the military superiority (or lack thereof) of a mediator state. To assess the relevant characteristics of military power, we propose using a generalized indicator of military asymmetry created through a simple comparative analysis. Within the framework of the methodology presented in this article, various metrics of the military power of the parties to conflicts and their respective mediators were compared in pairs with each other according to the criterion of threshold values (quartiles), indicating an asymmetry (or parity) of military power. Various thresholds of sufficient skewness, ranging from 20% to 50%, were then also used to aggregate the binary scores into a single score. Through the assessment of a series of regression models, we were able to establish that the aggregate military superiority of the mediator state over the warring parties contributes in a statistically significant manner to both the immediate cessation of hostilities and the successful establishment of peace in the long term. Control variables in the form of the features of peace agreements also influence the positive outcome of the peace process. Key among these are increasing the transparency of political decision-making procedures and the involvement of various social groups in power processes at various levels. The results of this study demonstrate the interconnectedness of military force and successful mediation and also indicate the complementarity of military and negotiation components in the context of state-led mediation. Thus, this study proposes to transform the idea of mediation that currently dominates international relations theory.