Northern delivery

The Northern delivery (Russian: северный завоз, romanized: severny zavoz) is a set of annual measures to provide the population of the Russian Far North with basic goods (primarily food and fuel) for long and harsh polar winter.^[1]

Northern delivery as a phenomenon is due to three reasons:

• Absence of its own production base for most industrial and agricultural products in the Far North
• Remoteness of the main industrial areas by thousands of kilometers, which makes it difficult and expensive for private entities to deliver goods even in the summer
• Complete absence of roads and railways in most regions of the Far North.^[1]

In these conditions, the only possible is the centralized purchase and transportation of goods from the southern and central Russia to the Far North, which is a responsibility of the federal government. Delivery is carried out mainly by air, as well as river and sea, including the Northern Sea Route.^[1]

Today, 70% of cargo delivered by the program is fuel.^[2] Northern delivery is carried out in 25 regions of Russia. The main volume of supplies falls on four regions: Yakutia, Chukotka, Magadan Oblast and north of Krasnoyarsk Krai with a total population of about three million inhabitants.^[3]