Greenpeace’s vessel «Arctic Sunrise» has been released after nearly nine months of detention in Murmansk, following the organization’s demonstration against Arctic drilling in the Pechora Sea last fall.
The Baltiysky Zavod in Sankt Petersburg will build Russia’s next nuclear-powered icebreaker, the first in the country’s new series of icebreaking vessels.
After a slow start of the sailing season this summer, transport along the northern Sea Route has gained speed the last couple of weeks and the previous cargo record will probably soon be broken.
Russia’s new drifting research station North Pole-40 has started working on an ice floe in the Arctic. Finding a suitable ice floe was harder this year than ever before, with ice levels reaching record lows.
The state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Company is joining the development of Belkomur, the long-projected railway line stretching towards Russian Arctic waters.
Ina Bjørnrå from Greenpeace stresses the fact that a melting Arctic is alarming. The recent focus on the Arctic revolves around the opportunities arising as polar ice retracts, rather than the challenges climate changes are causing.
As government officials ready themselves for the Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Sweden this week, directors of Arctic-nation natural history museums are making preparations of their own.
Seven Russian scientists, some of which were evacuated from the drifting ice station North Pole-40, will be spending the summer at an abandoned research station on the island of Bolshevik on Severnaya Zemlya.
After the charges were changed from piracy to hooliganism, the situation for the 30 activists imprisoned in Murmansk is more uncertain than ever, Greenpeace says.
Greenpeace’s vessel «Arctic Sunrise» has been released after nearly nine months of detention in Murmansk, following the organization’s demonstration against Arctic drilling in the Pechora Sea last fall.
