NEW YORK, October 17. /TASS/. The European Union plans to launch an Arctic surveillance program in 2027 "to improve regional ties and counter growing US and Russian ambitions," Bloomberg quoted EU’s new Arctic strategy as saying.

The document is set for release next week. It is assumed that the program will use the EU’s Copernicus and Galileo satellite systems to detect Arctic threats across land and sea.

Earlier, Vladislav Maslennikov, Director of the Department of European Issues at the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russia’s senior official in the Arctic Council, said that the European Union is demonstrating its intention to follow the path of escalation in the Arctic and is not ready to abandon the politicization of cooperation issues in high latitudes.