Geography of Russia , the Russian border is the world's longest. Along the 20,139-kilometer land frontier, Russia has boundaries with 14 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (via the Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China and North Korea. Approximately two-thirds of the frontier is bounded by seawater. Virtually all of the lengthy northern coast is well above the Arctic Circle; except for the port of Murmansk—which receives currents that are somewhat warmer than would be expected at that latitude, due to the effects of the Gulf Stream—that coast is locked in ice much of the
Arctic Circle (organization) to be the best placed to effectively protect the sensitive ecosystems and traditional lifestyles of indigenous groups in the Arctic at the time when international commercial interest is growing steadily." As the 1996 Ottawa Declaration, a founding document of the Arctic Council, explicitly stipulates that the Council "should not deal with matters related to military security," a 2014 RAND Corporation publication suggested that security dialogue "leverage existing international conferences, such as that run by the Arctic Circle Assembly, where participation can be ad hoc and security is already an item of discussion." The Arctic Circle's honorary board is chaired by