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Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 was the end of the Arctic cooperation between states and others as we knew it, despite the fact that Russia’s illegal actions are not occurring in the Arctic region. Russia’s attack on Ukraine caused pronounced security fears and responses, particularly from the European and North American countries, including the other Arctic states. This naturally affected Arctic cooperation because it is precisely in the Arctic region that Russia is such a vastly central actor. For example, the region’s pre-eminent inter-governmental forum, the Arctic Council, is struggling to continue its activities in full, as the seven western Arctic states paused participating in meetings held in and activities involving Russia. On the other hand, the first in-person meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) fisheries agreement in late November 2022 successfully adopted its COP Rules of Procedure by consensus, including Russia. The purpose of this article is to investigate how adversely Arctic international cooperation in inter-governmental forums and treaties has suffered due to the Ukraine war, utilising a qualitative research methodology to collect internal and sensitive information from key informants. In particular, the article aims to find an answer to the following question: In which types of Arctic inter-governmental structures have the states been able to continue the cooperation and for what reasons? The hypothesis that will be tested in this article is whether treaty-based cooperation has fared better than cooperation founded on soft law. This article will flesh out the current state of Arctic cooperative frameworks and actual cooperative activities under them, analysing three soft law-based cooperative frameworks, including the Arctic Council and several treaty-based cooperative frameworks, such as the CAO fisheries agreement and Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement. This article is based on the facts as of 22 February 2023.

This article addresses the normative potential of the principle of sustainability to integrate the rules, principles, and procedures of international law applicable in the Arctic, so that Arctic international law can be posited more holistically and systematically. The holistic and integrative approach towards international law is particularly called for in the context of the Arctic, as the inextricable interconnectedness between its changing natural environments, its societal particularities, and its economic and industrial potential is the fundamental characteristic of the Arctic. In line with the purpose of the special issue, this article takes up a harder case of sustainability, in addressing Arctic mineral resource development. This article posits the principle of sustainability as a principle with an integrative function operating behind the primary norms relating to resource development at the international law level. In response to the claim of fragmented nature of the law at issue, this article calls for an academic examination into the normative function of the sustainability principle to forge the relevant and evolving norms applicable in the specific context of the Arctic mineral resource development towards an integral, coherent whole. This aim will be pursued using the analytical methodology employed by the International Law Commission’s (ILC) work on the “fragmentation of international law” (2006) and the “principle of integration” as identified by the International Law Association’s (ILA) work on the international law relating to sustainable development (2002–12). Finally, as an initial attempt to articulate the legal reasoning for such integration, this article examines the legal institution of environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a tool to present a holistic view of the international law on Arctic mineral resource development.