The official website of the Russian Government announced that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan to implement the Strategy for Developing the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation and Ensuring National Security, which includes 80 activities in six areas.

The strategy itself, which will guide Russia's activity in the Arctic until 2020, was approved by President Putin on February 20, 2013.

The plan includes 80 activities in the following six areas: comprehensive socioeconomic development of the region; promoting science, technology and innovation; developing information and telecommunication infrastructure; environmental protection and safety; fostering international cooperation; military security, defence and protecting the state border.

The plan provides for improving conditions for Russian companies' activities on the Arctic shelf, preserving and developing fisheries and the Russian icebreaker fleet, creating a new port and industrial infrastructure and modernising Arctic ports, developing transport communications (including small aircraft and related service system, a railway network, and support road networks), and promoting tourism. Plans are in place to create an integrated national information and research atlas of the Arctic.

To improve information and telecommunications infrastructure, advanced traffic control systems for water and air traffic will be introduced in the Arctic, including with the use of GLONASS.

Measures to ensure environmental safety include creating and maintaining an effective waste management system, expanding the network of specially protected natural areas, and remedying environmental damage.

In the sphere of international cooperation, the plan includes provisions on sharing information about the environment in the Arctic, organizing sophisticated research expeditions, working with Arctic states to create a single regional search and rescue system, preventing man-made disasters and providing emergency relief.