Crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star recently joined a Russian Border Guard AN-26 aircraft crew in patrolling the 1,700-mile area along the Bering Sea that borders the U.S. and Russia.
The Russian Border Guard Directorate for the Eastern Arctic District and the Coast Guard Seventeenth District in Juneau, Alaska, were in communications before the crews headed out in support of agreements that allow them to work together on various operations such as search and rescue and illegal fishing enforcement.
"The United States Coast Guard works diligently to maintain a unique cooperative relationship with the Russian Border Guard in an effort to enhance the protection of shared interests in and around the Arctic region,” Capt. Jason Brennell, chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard’s Seventeenth District said in a statement. “The coordinated communications exercises on the high seas these past weeks with Polar Star demonstrate a recognition of the importance of that relationship.”