OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on his way to meet with Nordic leaders ahead of an upcoming NATO summit and as uncertainty looms over the future of the Arctic.
Trudeau is slated to travel to Iceland, which will host leaders from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway over the next two days for an annual gathering of Nordic prime ministers.
Leaders from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Åland Islands are also attending.
Iceland’s government says “societal resilience” will be discussed at the meeting, which is being staged on a group of islands known as Vestmannaeyjar and coincides with the 50th anniversary of a volcanic eruption there.
Trudeau is to appear as a guest, and his office says it is a chance to advance common interests with the Nordic nations, which range from protecting the environment and developing clean energy to tackling security challenges.
The talks come a little more than two weeks before leaders travel to Lithuania to meet with NATO allies and discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
World leaders also kept a watchful eye on internal strife in Russia this weekend after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led troops from his private Wagner Group in an armed rebellion as he called for the ouster of the country’s defence minister.
The move seemed poised to threaten President Vladimir Putin’s decades−long hold on power, but tensions de−escalated quickly on Saturday after the Kremlin announced a deal that halted Prigozhin’s march on the capital city of Moscow. The arrangement will see Putin’s one−time protege move to Belarus and avoid prosecution for his role in the short−lived rebellion, while Wagner Group troops will return to Ukraine where they’ve been fighting alongside soldiers from the Russian army.
Trudeau said Saturday that Canada would be monitoring the situation closely, and foreign affairs ministers from the G7 held a call to discuss the situation before the deal was announced.
“There’s ongoing co−operation among these countries,” Roland Paris, a former senior adviser to Trudeau and director of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said of the leaders gathering in Iceland. “The Arctic has become a strategically more important part of the world as the ice melts.
“Each of these northern countries has a very clear interest in ensuring the security and sovereignty of their territory.”
Nordic countries, including Canada and the United States, hit pause on working with Russia through the Arctic Council after its invasion of Ukraine.
