For a week in June, about 20 Russian emergency-management experts and scientists and their U.S. counterparts were planning to tour Alaska natural disaster landmarks, sharing information about lessons learned and risks avoided.
Now the summit is off. The U.S. State Department pulled the funding, making the Alaska hazards-reduction workshop a casualty of the conflict over Ukraine.
The June event was one of several multinational Arctic projects that have been damaged — or are at risk of being damaged — by political tensions in Ukraine. Canadian officials last month boycotted an Arctic Council working-group meeting in Moscow, a decision intended to show what that nation’s environmental minister said is a “principled stand” against Russian actions.