Polvokia
Polvokian Federation 포북 연방 | |
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 Flag
 Emblem
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| Location of Polvokia within Septentrion. Light green areas are disputed. Location of Polvokia within Septentrion. Light green areas are disputed. | |
| Capital and | Sirivan |
| Official languages | Letnevian, Polin |
| Recognised regional languages | Menghean, Ketchvan, Dzhung |
| Ethnic groups (2017) |
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| Demonym(s) | Polvokian |
| Government | Federal semi-presidential constitutional republic |
• President | Bak Gi-nam |
• Prime Minister | Morgi Chungšan |
| Federal Assembly | |
| Assembly of Nationalities | |
| Establishment | |
• First unified state | 815 CE |
• Independence from Menghe | 1514 |
• Polvokian Revolution | 1905 |
• Current constitution | 2003 |
| Area | |
• | 5,080,337.83 km2 (1,961,529.40 sq mi) (2) |
| Population | |
• 2017 census | 54,342,981 |
• Density | 10.7/km2 (27.7/sq mi) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2017 estimate |
• Total | $645 billion |
• Per capita | $11,862 |
| GDP (nominal) | 2017 estimate |
• Total | $249 billion |
• Per capita | $4,576 |
| Gini (2015) | 34.3 medium |
| HDI (2017) |  0.675medium |
| Currency | Polvokian won |
• Summer (DST) | (UTC +7 to +9) |
| Date format | yyyy.mm.dd |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +34 |
| Internet TLD | .po |
Polvokia (Menghean: 浦北 / 포북, Pobuk), officially the Polvokian Federation (Menghean: 浦北聯邦 / 포북 연방, Pobuk Yŏnbang), is a sovereign country in Northeast Hemithea. It has a land area of 5,080,338 square kilometers (1,961,529 square miles) and spans two time zones. Counterclockwise from West to South, it is bordered by Nukkumaa, Themiclesia, Dzhungestan, Menghe, and Hanhae. Most of the population is concentrated in the south of the country near the Menghean and Hanhaean borders; the northern reaches of the country are cold and inhospitable for most of the year. Ryŏngdo, located on the southern coast, is Polvokia's capital and largest city.
In ancient times, what is today Polvokia was inhabited by a variety of nomadic peoples, the largest being the Tukchins. During the Yi dynasty, the southern area was conquered by Menghe, which ruled it as the province of Pobuk, or "North of the Riverbank." After the Menghean Black Plague threw Menghe into a period of political chaos, the regional governor established an independent kingdom, which later paid tribute to Menghe as a vassal. In 1905, a revolution led by the Tukchins overthrew the Meng-dominated leadership and established Septentrion's first communist state, setting the stage for later revolutions elsewhere in Hemithea. The Polvokian communist regime lasted until the early 1990s, when ethnic violence boiled over into a prolonged civil war marked by genocide against the Meng minority.
After Menghean and Dayashinese peacekeepers intervened to end the bloodshed, Polvokia was reconstituted as a federal semi-presidential constitutional republic built on the principle of ethnic harmony. Each province, based around its largest ethnic group, has its own legislature and enjoys considerable autonomy in cultural and economic policy. Formally, the government is fully democratic, but the multi-ethnic United Front (Tongil Jŏnsŏn) party has dominated all elections since the end of the civil war. Many human rights groups consider Polvokia to be an unconsolidated or illiberal democracy, with nominally democratic institutions but extensive corruption and inconsistent rule of law.
Etymology
The country's present name originated with the Menghean Pobuk (浦北 / 포북), meaning "north of the riverbank." Menghean cartographers from the Sung dynasty onward applied both Gangbuk ("north of the river") and Pobuk interchangeably to the areas north of the White River, and when the Yi dynasty conquered a broad swath of this land in the 14th century, it was administered as the province of Pobuk-do.
When Sylvan sailors arrived on the south coast of Menghe in 1502, Menghean administrators provided them with a map of Hemithea, with the northeastern region marked as 浦北. This was transliterated into Sylvan as Polvókia, a name which the explorers carried back to Casaterra.
History
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Early history
From ancient times onward, the area which is today Polvokia was populated by a variety of nomadic tribes, who subsisted on horse herding or reindeer herding. These tribes lacked a written language, and did not establish many permanent settlements; much of the surviving knowledge about them comes from Menghean records, which as early as the Meng dynasty made references to a fur trade with peoples around the White River.
Tukchin Khanate
By the 10th century CE, most of the northern tribes had been united by the Tukchin Khanate, which ruled a broad stretch of territory from the White River to the Buksan mountains. The original name of the Tukchins has been lost to history, as they did not have a written language until the 14th century; Menghean records transcribed their name into Gomun characters as 竹珍, which in the 13th century was transliterated to Sinmun as 죽진 or Jukjin. This name appears to have cycled back into Tukchin use during the time of Yi administration, albeit with some distortion.
Menghean rule
In 1296, Menghe's ascendant Yi dynasty led the First Northern Expedition across the White River and into the Tukchin Khanate. The Second Northern Expedition, in 1432-1438, extended Yi control even further. The city of Wŏnsŏng marks the northernmost permanent settlement of the Yi dynasty, though Menghean troops regularly made expeditions further north, moving well into the Buksan mountains. Other permanent settlements were established at Hongdan (紅湍), Yujin (楡津), Ryŏngdo (寧島), Musam (武森), and Balhae (渤海). Under Yi dynasty administrative boundaries, the latter three cities were part of Hanhae Province, which extended well beyond its modern-day boundaries.
During the period of direct Menghean rule, there was a large increase in the region's ethnic Meng population, to the point that Meng made up most of the population southeast of the Myŏngju-Hongdan-Balhae line. To some extent this was a result of migration from the southern provinces, as the Yi government encouraged out-migration to marginal rural areas, but some historians argue that at least half of the new Meng were in fact assimilated locals. Ethnic Tukchins under Yi control also adopted a number of Meng customs, using an adapted form of the Sinmun phonetic alphabet to write their language and shifting from herding to agriculture. These lifestyle changes also set off steady growth in the Tukchin population, though due to the frigid climate, annual harvests remained very vulnerable to early frosts.
Kingdom of Polvokia
The period of direct Menghean rule over Polvokia came to an end in 1514, when the Black Plague was sweeping through Menghe. As it was further removed from Menghe's trading network, and had a less dense population, Polvokia suffered a lower casualty rate than the remaining provinces, losing only 10-20% of its population and remaining relatively stable. After news arrived that the Yi Emperor and chosen heir had passed away, the governor of Pobuk Province declared his territory to be an independent kingdom. Hanhae and Girim provinces followed suit.
Yang Sŏn-ok, the second king of Polvokia, waged a series of military campaigns against his neighbors in the 1550s and 1560s, earning victories against his embattered rivals. Under his rule, Polvokia annexed half of Hanhae, bringing the border close to its present position, and also secured a broad strip of land south of the White River, including the cities of Myŏngju and Baekjin. After annexing the remainder of Gilim, the newly established Myŏn dynasty launched an expedition against Polvokia in 1585, but after taking Baekjin and Yujin they were driven out of the country. This defeat cemented the northern border of the Myŏn dynasty along what is today the southern edge of Baekgang province.
Although it was independent from Menghe, the Kingdom of Polvokia was still dominated by the ethnic Meng scholar class, who retained control of the governing apparatus installed by the Yi. Menghean was the official language of administration, and Meng culture retained its association with higher social status. Meng dominance was reinforces in 1649, when a renewed Myŏn expedition took Baekjin and Ryŏngdo and strongarmed the Polvokian king into making annual tribute payments to Menghe. Ryŏngdo and Baekjin, just a short distance from Kimsŏng (today Donggyŏng), became tightly woven into Menghe's trading network, as Polvokia and Hanhae were among the only countries permitted to send trade ships to Menghean ports under the Myŏn dynasty's closed-door policy.
The thriving trade in furs, timber, and precious metals fed the emergence of a wealthy merchant class along the southern border. Nearly all members of this class were ethnic Meng, as the Meng had better kinship and linguistic connections on the far side of the border, though there were some Tukchin and Dzhung mining magnates further north. Trade wealth and a defensive agreement with Menghe freed up the Polvokian government to fund a series of expeditions beyond the Buksan mountains, which had previously been the northern limit of government activity; large areas of the northern taiga were mapped out, and trading outposts were established along the shore of the Byranattalakh Gulf.
As part of its tribute agreement, Polvokia initially forbade any exchange with foreigners outside the small Myŏn tribute sphere, including Dayashina as well as the major Western powers. This policy was not well-enforced north of Wŏnsŏng, however, and both Tyrannian and Letnian sailors periodically stopped along the western coast to take on supplies and trade for furs. After Polvokia fully opened itself to Western trade in 1859, the country's trade in resources rebounded, and a small industrial class of mining magnates and ore smelters began to emerge.
Polvokian People's Republic
The expansion of mining and early industrialization, and in particular the growth of merchant wealth and the consolidation of land into large commercialized plots, fed simmering unrest in the country. Ulhanga Ayan, a Letnian-educated social critic who had learned of Marxism during his studies abroad, began organizing workers' resistance movements among the Tukchin mining and peasant communities. Unrest reached the boiling point in February 1905, when peasant insurrections in the countryside coalesced into a march on the capital under Ayan's command. In spite of Menghean and Dayashinese interventions, the revolutionaries managed to secure control of the major southern cities by the end of 1907, and had consolidated their control over the northern territories by 1910. With Ulhanga Ayan as their leader, they established the Polvokian People's Republic, Septentrion's first Communist state.
Under General-Secretary Ayan's leadership, the Polvokian government confiscated the wealth of the country's merchants, many of whom had fled to Menghe, and set up government organs to control production. In the area north of Hongdan, all land was nominally organized into town-operated communes, but in the more densely populated south large estates were simply broken up into smaller private plots. An initial effort to seal the borders and ban private trading proved disastrous, and by 1915 Polvokia had transitioned to a "Two Systems" policy under which the state controlled heavy industry but the rural market system remained intact. Despite initial efforts to elevate Tukchin culture, Menghean remained the official language of government, and many defecting Meng advisors were kept on as government staff.
Polvokia remained neutral during the Pan-Septentrion War, though it wavered from side to side as the conflict progressed. In 1937 it signed an agreement with Kim Myŏng-hwan's government, relinquishing its claims to its southern territories in return for a promise that Menghe would guarantee its independence. Polvokia became a strategic supplier of coal, oil, wheat, and ores for the Menghean war machine, but after 1943 it began restricting these shipments, and in the spring of 1945 it fully severed trade ties with Menghe and Dayashina in order to appease the advancing Allies.
Barda Ulušun, who became General-Secretary in 1945 amidst Menghe's looming defeat, pushed through a number of heavy-handed changes. He instituted a purge of officials who had cultivated close connections to Menghe during the war, blaming them for foreign policy missteps, and promoted ethnic Tukchins to the newly-available posts. In an effort to prop up industrial growth after the end of Menghe's wartime demand, he also launched an economic policy aimed at extracting more surplus from the countryside. When southern peasants resisted efforts to break up their markets, Ulušun extended the northern commune system to the rest of the country.
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Civil war and stabilization
Following eight years of shortages and an overall downturn in the economy, as well as policies that discriminated against minority groups, Ketchvans staged a protest in the city of Kremen in 1990 to demand higher wages and more equal representation. Unwilling to negotiate, state security forces violently suppressed the protest, leading to further rioting in rural areas. Major insurgencies emerged in the Ketchvan and Sirivan Oblasts, and by 1993 state security forces were unable to cross the Ergaki mountains on major roads and railways. Reports soon emerged that state forces had engaged in systematic attacks on Ketchvan and Sirivan civilians, on a scale that some observers compared to ethnic cleansing.
As news of atrocities on both sides worsened, Dayashina and the Organized States lobbied for a military intervention by the GA; but the Federation of Socialist Republics threatened nuclear war if an intervention took place, on the grounds that Polvokia was still bound by its former membership in the Turov Pact. The FSR's defense of the Khaimov regime, seen by Choe Sŭng-min as a former lackey of Ryŏ Ho-jun, led to a severe chilling of relations with the new regime in Menghe, especially after ethnic Meng became caught in the crossfire.
In the absence of foreign intervention, the Second Polvokian Civil War dragged on until 1998, when a moderate faction in his government organized a takeover. Led by an alliance of Polin and Letnevians, but with ties to other ethnic groups, the moderate faction negotiated a ceasefire and promised to restore ethnic harmony within a federal system. The new constitution, ratified in 2000, guaranteed equal rights for minority groups, and set up a nominally democratic government with greater autonomy for individual provinces. Rather than seeking revenge on perpetrators of violence, the new government set up a truth and reconciliation commission based on principles of restorative justice. Miroslav Khaimov and his closest allies were offered immunity from war-crimes prosecution as part of the peace deal, but the ex-Chairman still fled to the FSR, where he died of natural causes in 2013.
Geography and climate
Polvokia occupies the northeastern corner of the continent of Hemithea, separated from the continent's central shield by the Yary-Tenitsyn gulf system. Its long coastline stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Vladizapad Sea, then briefly terminates at Dayashima before resuming again in the East Menghe Sea. Polvokia's land neighbors - Dayashina, Menghe, Dzhungestan, Themiclesia, and Nukkumaa - are all members of the North Hemithean Economic Association. By land area, it is the second-largest country in Septentrion, second only to Nukkumaa.
Polvokia's landmass is dominated by the Sakhal Mountains, which stretch from the Dzhungestani border to the Northeastern Plateau. The Sakhal Range includes Mount Pobeda, the highest mountain on the continent of Hemithea, a major attraction for climbers. Polvokia's northern expanse contains many rivers carrying meltwater over the permafrost, but its southern area has only two, the Zeya River through two eponymous Oblasts and the Baek River (locally known as the Belaya river) which forms most of the border with Menghe. Much of the northeastern area is covered by evergreen forests, with steppes to the west.
Outside the mountains, northern expanses are covered by a vast expanse taiga, turning into tundra on the arctic coast. The country's central belt is influenced by Hemithea's broader monsoon system, with relatively dry winters and rainy summers. Due to the frigid conditions, there are few permanent settlements in the north, apart from oil wells, military outposts, and traditional herding villages. Most of the population lives in the Southern Plain beneath the Sakhals, where all the country's major cities are located.
All of Polvokia's large administrative units use the SST +7 time zone, except for the Southern Territory and Northeastern Territory, which use SST +8.
Politics
Polvokia's current political system, as laid out in the 2000 Constitution, was the result of two years of negotiation between representatives of Polvokia's major ethnic communities. It was intended to preserve an adequate degree of political unity while still preventing any one ethnic group from imposing its will over the others.
Federal government
Polvokia has a semi-presidential system or more specifically a president-premier system. The president is subject to a two-stage popular vote; all parties run their candidates in the first round, and the two candidates with the most votes go on to a second round in which an absolute majority is required. Once in office, the president can appoint a prime minister and a cabinet, and retains the power to dismiss them - but both decisions require a majority vote from both houses of the legislature. By convention, post-2000 governments have signaled national unity by splitting the top two offices between a Polin and a Letnevian. Presidential elections are held every four years, and the president is limited to two terms in office, but can later go on to serve as Prime Minister.
Polvokia's legislature follows a bicameral system. The Federal Assembly has the greatest authority, including the power to recall the prime minister, while the Assembly of Nationalities only has authority over issues directly relating to ethnic relations. Delegates to the 84-seat Federal Assembly are elected to two-year terms and serve single-seat districts; like the president, they must pass a two-tier election, winning an absolute majority in the second round. The 315 delegates to the Assembly of Nationalities, by contrast, assigns a certain number of seats for each ethnic group within each federal-level unit, and allows seats to be filled in accordance with local tradition. Sirivan delegates in the northeast, for example, are selected by tribal councils, while Meng and Letnevian delegates are popularly elected on a two-tier basis from single-seat districts.
The United Front coalition, composed of the incumbent "Forward Together" party and a few coalition allies, has controlled the presidency and legislature since it came to power in 2000, raising serious concerns about the degree of real democratic competition in Polvokia. Both national and regional Election Commissions are ethnically representative, but most of their members are affiliated with the United Front, and there is little transparency about campaign laws or nomination procedures. The election in 2016 of Boris Volinski, widely perceived as outgoing President Naranbaatar Mihailov's handpicked successor, set off protests in the capital and provoked criticism from Radio Free Hemithea and a number of pro-democracy NGOs.
Evidence of direct electoral fraud is rare, but other aspects of the system are designed to favor established incumbent parties. The requirement for runoff votes, especially in gerrymandered Federal Assembly districts, makes it difficult for parties with regional or ethnic appeal to win absolute majorities, and in ethnic-majority districts the United Front has run coalition allies appealing to the local ethnic group. Forward Together's sprawling media empire has also given it an upper hand in campaigning, and its consistent record of political stability and economic growth has earned it genuine popularity.
Administrative divisions
The Polvokian Federation is divided into a total of twelve administrative units below the national level: three territories, eight oblasts, and one federal city. Due to their very sparse populations, territories are directly administered by the central government, but guarantee certain rights to nomadic groups under their jurisdiction. Oblasts enjoy the widest range of federal rights, and have their own legislatures, police agencies, and education policies. The capital city, Sarantsk, is not part of any oblast and has its own federal government.
Following the 2000 constitution, Oblasts are further divided into two types. The four Autonomous Oblasts are designed to protect an ethnic group which makes up a majority of the local population and has historically faced discrimination. In these areas, the local language enjoys official status and the legislature has broad authority over culturally sensitive policies. The four Consociational Oblasts, established in 2000, have more mixed populations, with Letnevians and Polins as the largest groups and significant communities of Meng and Ketchvans. In these units, policymaking is designed to be more inclusive, and legislatures, courts, and the police and civil service are required to contain roughly proportional numbers of each ethnic group.
Justice system
Polvokia uses a civil law system, enforced by the sprawling Ministry of Justice. As part of the government's federal structure, Oblasts are given broad powers to set their own criminal law statutes, but cannot overrule laws passed by the federal government.
The individual Oblasts and the Federal City of Sarantsk all operate their own police forces, known as the Militsiya, while the three territories are managed by Territorial Police subordinate to the federal government. The MVD troops, previously responsible for centralized policing, were disbanded in 2000, but a Federal Police Agency similar in role was reconstituted in 2008 to coordinate criminal investigations across Oblast boundaries.
Corruption is a major problem in the Polvokian police force, especially in rural and lower-income areas where police salaries are relatively low. The federal requirement that all courts and police forces make a "good-faith effort" to proportionally represent the distribution of ethnic groups in the raion or municipality over which they exercise jurisdiction has also led to reports of local agencies auctioning off positions in exchange for bribes or other payments.
Economy
With a nominal GDP per capita of $11,832, Polvokia is a middle-income country. Economic growth slowed down during the 1990s due to armed conflict in the southwest and international sanctions, but has since accelerated due to an oil and gas boom, with year-to-year GDP growth averaging 5.5% from 2007 to 2017. Nevertheless, new jobs are mainly concentrated in the rural north, and unemployment in the southern Oblasts remains relatively high at 9%.
The country's economic landscape is dominated by large state-owned enterprises, many of which were established in the 1960s to 1980s and have since been taken over by the Forward Together party. Inefficiency in the state sector is a major problem, compounded by the use of outdated plants and equipment. President Yanovich promised major restructuring during his first term in office, hoping to emulate Menghe's miracle growth, but major oligarchs have resisted changes which would deprive them of their holdings, and Forward Together has been reluctant to cede its strong influence over development.
The Forward Together party embraces a dirigiste economic policy, favoring an active role for the state as opposed to a neoliberal Laissez-faire approach. Polvokia joined the Association of Coordinated Market Economies in 2001, and has sought to emulate Menghe's economic reforms with limited success.
Polvokia's main industries lie in the natural resources sector: coal, gas, timber, and various ores. The country's northern mountain ranges have particularly rich deposits of iron, copper, and magnesium, as well as several strategic uranium mines.
Polvokia also has large reserves of oil, which are mainly concentrated in the vast northern coastal plains. Total oil extraction in 2016 averaged 3.3 million bbl/day, and has increased steadily since 2003. A large pipeline network, recently capped by the Sonetsk Corridor through Dzhungestan, brings oil to coastal processing centers and across the Menghean border. Recent exploratory studies have determined that Polvokia possesses large, untapped reserves of shale oil, which the government has moved to exploit.
Heavy industry, including steel production, is concentrated in the south. Factory infrastructure in the southwest suffered particularly heavily during the civil war and never fully recovered, creating problems with unemployment in the disproportionately Ketchvan region. Since 2001, low-cost competition from Menghe and lingering problems with inefficient management led to a steady decline in Polvokian steel production, though there were signs of a recovery in 2016.
Polvokia's largest trading partner is Menghe, which purchases 72% of its exports and provides 61% of its imports. Menghe's rapid economic growth, especially in the chemicals, construction, and heavy industry sectors, generated strong demand for Polvokian raw materials, including coal, oil, and natural gas for heating and power generation. Since 2002, Menghean contract enterprises have invested enormous sums of money in expanding extraction and transportation capacity in Polvokia, contributing to the resources boom but setting off protests among unemployed steelworkers and indigenous populations.
Military
Polvokia's total armed forces currently have an estimated strength of 350,000 personnel. The size of the military declined under the Yanovich presidency as funds were diverted to reconstruction, but Presidents Mihailov and Volinski have restored the force to its pre-Civil War size. Since 2012, the Polvokian armed forces have also worked to modernize their equipment, relying primarily on imported arms from Menghe to supplement existing stocks of Letnevian equipment.
Polvokia retains a policy of conscription, in which all adult men are eligible to be called up for eighteen months of military service; in practice, only about half of all eligible 18-year-old males are selected each year. The PPR-era conscription system was kept in place due to fears that a volunteer military would be dominated by Letnevians or Polins, and conscripts of all ethnic backgrounds serve in mixed units, a policy which has helped maintain a sense of national unity. Reformers also required the Polvokian Officers' Academy to accept proportional numbers of each major ethnic group, though in practice Meng and Letnevians still make up a disproportionate share of the officer corps and all commands are issued in the Letnevian language.
The Polvokian Army's active forces consist of four Motor-Rifle Divisions, two Tank Divisions, four Air Defense Brigades, and one Special Forces Battalion, in addition to various supporting elements. An additional twelve Divisions (six Motor-Rifle, two Tank, four Infantry) can be called up as reserves. Divisional organization is based on the FSR's model, but incorporates some changes proposed with the help of Menghean advisers.
Polvokia participated in Menghe's coalition during the Innominadan Crisis, and currently has its 1st Motor-Rifle Division and the 4th Tank Division deployed in the Republic of Innominada as part of the Namhae Front force on the border.
Polvokia's Navy consists of:
- 2 Chŏndong-class destroyers
- 4 Jŏngdŏk-class frigates
- 3 Krivak-class frigates
- 12 Bbarŭn-class submarines
- 2 Ri Sun-hŭi class corvettes
- 4 modernized Tarantul-III corvettes
- 12 Type 1062 missile boats
- Various patrol and rescue craft
Foreign relations
After the fall of Miroslav Khaimov's government, Polvokia's relations with the Federation of Socialist Republics experienced a distinct chill. The new government announced that it would not remain in the Commonwealth of North Casaterran States (CNCS), and despite Prime Minister Yanovich's attempt at repairing relations in 2003, resentment over the civil war period still clouds FSR-Polvokian relations. Further conflict surrounds the expansion in 2007 of Narod, a far-right opposition party catering to Letnevian ethnic nationalists. The Polvokian government has accused the FSR of providing covert aid, including funds and intelligence, to Narod, whose nationalist message and open support for Miroslav Khaimov threaten Polvokian unity.
Shortly after coming to power, President Naranbaatar Mihailov launched a "pivot south" policy aimed at improving relations with Menghe. The two countries signed a bilateral defense agreement in 2009, and in 2015 Polvokia was one of the inaugural members of the newly-formed Namhae Front. Polvokia and Menghe have also promoted closer economic ties; as part of the latter's Northern Road project, Menghean companies will complete two new freight railways in Polvokia and help to refurbish existing lines.
Polvokia has a territorial dispute with Nukkumaa, stemming from a 19th-century treaty which set the eastern stretch of border along the narrow Ude river. Following a volcanic eruption and landslide in 1947, the upper Ude diverted to a northerly course along the tundra, and now flows into the Kirenga. The Polvokian People's Republic claimed that the border should follow the river's new course, while Nukkumaa has maintained the border at the river's original course, a claim which most countries recognize. Adding to the gravity of the dispute, in 2003 surveyors discovered a large, untapped oilfield northwest of Lake Tenitsyn. Since 2009, Menghean diplomats have attempted to mediate in the dispute, but both sides still man military outposts along the dry Ude riverbed.