Both Aleksandr Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin took part via video conference in the ceremony to launch the new wintering complex at the Vostok station in Antarctica.
“No one can be compared with Russia in terms of the pace, and Russia is the leader in Antarctic exploration today. We had the great country, the Soviet Union. We worked together, there were many scientists from different towns and villages who worked there. But if someone had hope that it would all die... It turned out that it has not died, but has reached a higher level,” Lukashenko said.
Russia maintains ten Antarctic research stations, five of which operate year-round, and the rest — only in the summer. Argentina and Chile each have six year-round stations. Both of these countries also have more seasonal stations than the Russian Federation has.
In terms of the number of workers at these stations, Russia is also inferior to the United States, Chile and Argentina, according to the CIA website.
The most effective countries in the study of the South Pole are the USA, Great Britain and Germany. Russia is in 11th place on this list, as said in the study by Chinese scientists from the School of Geophysics and Information Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, and the National Engineering Research Center of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration, Beijing.
The Helmholtz Association, Germany, has the most scientific publications about Antarctica, it’s about 300. The Russian Academy of Sciences has three times less.
Even Russian sailors do not consider Russia a leader in this area. Here is what the chairman of the All-Russian Fleet Support Movement, Mikhail Nenashev, said in 2021:
“We are behind in Antarctica. Everyone I talked to is unanimous in their opinion: look how China, Chile, and Argentina have stepped forward in terms of investment in infrastructure, the development of the fleet, and their presence. Unfortunately, we are ashamed to talk about this; many of the objects were built there in the 60s, and now all those are abandoned there.”