Kovalchuk emphasized the importance of Arctic exploration and expansion of the icebreaker fleet

The development of Russia's Arctic zone and the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is one of the priority tasks for the technological sovereignty of the Russian Federation. This was stated on December 11 by Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the National Research Center (NRC) "Kurchatov Institute" at the meeting of the Scientific Expert Council of the Russian Maritime Board Mikhail Kovalchuk at a meeting of the scientific-expert council of the Maritime Board of Russia.

"It is extremely important to form proposals on the strategic development of the Navy. Separately, these are recommendations on the development of marine robotics, which today, you can see for yourself, solves a huge number of very different tasks. And, specifically, it is the Arctic, it is our most important priority - the Arctic zone of Russia and the Northern Sea Route," he said.

He emphasized that Russian Admiral Stepan Makarov has a statement that is still relevant today: "Russia is facing the Arctic Ocean, so no nation is more interested in icebreakers than Russia". In this regard, speaking about the Arctic, it is necessary to stop attention on the development of the icebreaker fleet.

"People say, in general in the world of icebreakers - from 15 to 1 thousand. So, icebreakers, roughly speaking, a little more than 100. And 50% of them are the Russian part, that is, we possess 50% of the world's icebreaker fleet, but only we have a nuclear icebreaker fleet," Kovalchuk said.

He recalled that over the past decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have adopted a number of decrees, resolutions and orders on the development of the icebreaker fleet.

Earlier, on October 10, Kovalchuk, answering the question of what advantage Russia has in having a modern icebreaker fleet, said that many countries of the world are trying to "penetrate" into the Arctic because they lack the resources that Russia has. The scientist reminded that about 25% of the world's hydrocarbon reserves are concentrated in the Arctic, so everyone is striving there "because there are no resources," he explained.