Russia is planning the construction of a new scientific research station on Svalbard, similar to the Snezhinka international Arctic station launched in 2020 by the Yamal authorities together with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). The station will use advanced technologies in the field of clean energy production, life support systems in the Arctic, and will be among the world’s scientific and educational complexes that operate on hydrogen energy. By using hydrogen, the new research complex will have zero emission of climate gases from its power production, Russia’s ‘Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic’ Chenkunkov told state-operated news agency TASS. It is expected to be an international project relying on other BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) and other ‘friendly countries’: the term ‘friendly countries’ was introduced by Moscow after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year and concerns nations that have not introduced sanctions against Russia. Managed by the Arktikugol trust, an enterprise that has ensured Russia’s presence in Svalbard since 1931, coal mining in the archipelago should be reduced by 3 times (down to 40 thousand tons per year), by 2032. Arktikugol owns an area of 251 square meters in Svalbard. Chekunkov also added that “the archipelago has a rather deep historical heritage. In terms of the cultural part, we also plan to make Svalbard a magnet for tourists. Not only for those who want to watch whales, but also for those who want to look into the Soviet past. The corresponding plan has already been approved, we are now conducting dialogue with potential business participants in the process.” Today, Russia has a few science and research institutions working in Barentsburg, the 300ish-people community looking for new ways to maintain activities at Svalbard after coal mining is supposed to be drastically reduced in the years to come: the ‘Kola Science Centre’, a branch of the Russian Academy of Science, is among those present in Barentsburg. Norway’s main Arctic science community on Svalbard, ‘Ny-Ålesund’, is home to many nations’ Arctic science fieldwork, among them both China and India: the settlement offers a wide range of shared infrastructure and laboratory services for international nature, climate and marine environment research. Under the 1920 ‘Svalbard Treaty’, Norway has full and absolute sovereignty over the archipelago. Citizens from signatory countries, like Russia, have equal rights of abode as Norwegians. For Moscow, that is key to maintaining its presence in Barentsburg on the strategically important archipelago between the shallow Barents Sea and the deeper Norwegian Sea and Greenland Sea. Among new ideas to replace coal mining, Arctic tourism was initiated a few years back, but not to the level as Moscow hoped for as, following the war in Ukraine, a majority of tour operators in Longyearbyen last fall decided to cancel cooperation with the Russian state owned company in Barentsburg. Last year, the ‘Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos’ listed Svalbard as one of several global locations to host a station for the warning system for tracking dangerous objects in space.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has repeatedly lashed out at Norway’s Svalbard policy, including the Svalsat satellite station on the mountain plateau above Longyearbyen. All science fieldwork at Svalbard must be approved by the Governor before started.
Read more on Thebarentsobserver.com and on Tass.ru
