For decades, Moscow ignored environmental degradation above the Arctic Circle. But this week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a massive cleanup effort -- and plans to increase the exploitation of resources in the region.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin loves to travel. And he seems to have a particular soft spot for the Arctic. In April, Putin helped researchers attach a radio transmitter to a sedated polar bear while in August, Putin paid a visit to Russian and German scientists at the research station on Samoilovsky Island in Russia's remote northeast.
The latter trip seems to have made a lasting impression -- so much so that he even felt compelled to mention it during a speech he delivered Thursday at the international Arctic conference held in Moscow. Permafrost and climate change experts at the research station in northern Siberia, Putin said, must battle "very trying conditions" but "their love of science" ensure that "they don't even seem to notice." Given their sacrifice, he went on, he wants to do everything he can to help spruce up their dilapidated station in the enormous Lena River delta. But there is more to do in Russia's north than just renovate researchers' quarters. Putin said that, after years of delay, it is finally time to begin large-scale efforts to clean up the dirty legacy of the Soviet Union. "We will put huge amounts of money into environmental protection," Putin pledged grandly before conference attendees. "We are planning to do a serious spring-cleaning of our Arctic territories," he went on, and spoke of "garbage that (has) been accumulating for decades" there.
Nowhere, is the Arctic as populated as it is in Russia. And nowhere is there as much industrial activity -- and resulting pollution. The worst sites are well known. Like, for example, the double island of Novaya Zemlya which was used for a total of 130 atomic weapons tests between 1955 and 1990. In addition, reactors from Soviet-era nuclear submarines were simply scuttled in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea. And then there are the more than 100,000 fuel barrels that the military has left to rot away on the islands of the Franz Josef Land archipelago
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,719443,00.html
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