Image caption Mr Putin (left) is seen here with with the Commander of the Russian Military Air and Space Defence Forces, Alexander Golovko 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has told his military leadership they should build up their forces in the Arctic as a priority. 
 
 Commending the recent restoration of an airfield in the region, he said Russia needed to use every means to protect its national interests in the region. 
 
 He was speaking after Canada announced plans to claim the continental shelf under the North Pole. 
 
 Russia and Denmark also lay claim to parts of the resource-rich shelf. 
 
 Mr Putin has spoken about the need to increase Russia's military capacity in the Arctic before but this was one of his most direct orders yet, the BBC's Daniel Sandford reports from Moscow. 
 
 It is a sign of the growing manoeuvring by the Arctic nations for the potentially valuable resources beneath the northern seas, our correspondent says. 
 
 The Arctic is estimated to have 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 15% of the undiscovered oil. Climate change and advances in drilling technology mean these reserves are becoming easier and cheaper to exploit. 
 
 New air bases 
 
 At a big meeting of the country's top military officers on Tuesday, President Putin asked them to pay "particular attention to the deployment of infrastructure and military units in the Arctic". 
 
 He thanked the defence staff for re-opening this summer an old Soviet airbase abandoned 20 years ago on the Novosibirsk Islands in the high Arctic. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The North Polar region is home to not only polar bears but vast untapped resources under the ice 
 
 More air bases would follow, he said, in Tiksi and Severomorsk. 
 
 "Next year, we have to complete the formation of new large units and military divisions [in the Arctic]," Mr Putin added. 
 
 In August 2007, Russian explorers travelling in mini-submarines planted their country's flag on the seabed 4,200m (14,000ft) below the North Pole to further Moscow's claims to the Arctic. 
 
 The detention of a Greenpeace ship and its crew after they protested at a Russian Arctic oil platform in September highlighted Moscow's sensitivity to criticism of its prospecting in the region. 
 
 On Monday, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said his country intended to extend its seabed claims in the Arctic to include the North Pole. 
 
 He said the Conservative government had asked scientists to work on a future submission to the UN claiming that the outer limits of its continental shelf include the Pole. 
 
 'Political' claim 
 
 Under international law, no country has sovereignty over the North Pole, one of the remotest and harshest parts of the planet. 
 
 Canada applied to extend its seabed claims in the Atlantic last week, including some preliminary Arctic claims. 
 
 Michael Byers, an expert on the Arctic and international law at the University of British Columbia, suggested Canada's new claim had as much to do with domestic politics as national interest. 
 
 "We're talking about the centre of a large, inhospitable ocean that is in total darkness for three months each year, thousands of miles from any port," he told the Associated Press. 
 
 "The water in the North Pole is 12,000 ft [3,650m] deep and will always be covered by sea ice in the winter. It's not a place where anyone is going to be drilling for oil and gas. So it's not about economic stakes, it's about domestic politics." ||||| Russian officials on Tuesday submitted a formal claim to the United Nations for control of a resource-rich swathe of the Arctic seabed stretching as far as the North Pole. 
 
 Sergei Donskoi, Russia's minister for the environment and natural resources, confirmed last October that the country was seeking recognition of its exclusive economic rights to about 460,000 square miles of the region. 
 
 The area has been estimated to hold five billion tons of hitherto unexploited oil and gas reserves. 
 
 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty that delimits continental shelf claims, allows countries to claim an exclusive economic zone up to 200 miles from their coastline or as far as their land territory naturally extends from shore beneath the sea. 
 
 Russia is seeking to demonstrate that two underwater features, the Lomonosov Ridge and the Mendeleev ridge, are natural geological extensions of the Russian continental shelf. 
 
 Russia first submitted its claim in 2001, but was told it had not supplied sufficient evidence. 
 
 In December 2014, Denmark submitted a similar claim for 895,000 square kilometres, arguing that the Lomonosov ridge, which runs 1,240 miles almost directly across the centre of the Arctic Ocean, is an extension of Greenland. 
 
 Norway and Canada are also expected to place claims for Arctic territory under the terms of the treaty. The United States, which is not a signatory but is an Arctic littoral power because of its possession of Alaska, may also make a claim. 
 
 Vladimir Putin has described the Arctic as a region of Russian "special interest," and has expanded Russia’s military presence in the high north to secure its claims in the region. The Russian government plans to spend £2.8 billion on Arctic development between 2015 and 2020. 
 
 But the scramble to secure resources in the high north as the Arctic ice melts has already produced international tensions. 
 
 In 2007, the then Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay accused Russia of acting like a 15th century colonial power after an expedition planted a titanium Russian flag on the sea bed at the North Pole, which Canada has said it intends to claim in its own submission to the UN. 
 
 In April this year, Norway summoned the Russian ambassador after Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister in charge of defence and head of a new Arctic commission, defied a travel ban by visiting the Svalbard archipelago. 
 
 Mr Rogozin, who is subject to EU, US and Norwegian sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, flew unannounced to the Russian mining town of Barentsburg, which operates on the Norwegian islands under a 1920 treaty between the two countries.
– Canada is planning to claim the North Pole as part of its territory, and Russia has something to say about that: Oh, heck no. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to boost its presence in the Arctic, and though he's discussed the idea before, the BBC calls this "one of his most direct orders yet." The Arctic has vast resources of gas and oil, and Putin says Russia must safeguard its interests there. He gave the directive at a meeting of top military officers yesterday, and also thanked them for re-opening an abandoned Arctic airbase this summer. He promised more airbases to come, saying, "Next year, we have to complete the formation of new large units and military divisions [in the Arctic]." In addition to other airfields Russia is restoring, one Russian senator and polar explorer wants to revive a polar research institution that shut down in 1936, RT.com reports.