The nuclear icebreaker Siberia was sent to the freezing Gulf of Finland

The nuclear icebreaker Sibir went to the Gulf of Finland to provide the necessary icebreaking facilities. This was announced on February 18 by Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev.

"At the moment, the nuclear—powered ship [Siberia] is approaching the Northern Capital and is scheduled to arrive at the port of Primorsk in the Leningrad Region by 14:00 in order to immediately begin completing the task of providing icebreaking services," TASS quoted Likhachev as saying.

He noted that due to the extreme frosts that have been in Europe and the European part of Russia for several weeks, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation asked to send an icebreaker because of the threat to navigation.

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Alexander Kolesov, chief weather forecaster of St. Petersburg, said on February 13 that the Gulf of Finland could be completely covered with ice for the first time in the last 15 years. He noted that such a volume of ice has not been observed in recent relatively warm winters. The eastern part of the bay was completely frozen, but the ice did not leave to the west due to the higher temperatures.

The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported on February 13 that the Gulf of Finland is at risk of experiencing the largest icing in the last 10 years. The last time such an accumulation of ice blocks was observed was in the winter of 2011, when the entire northern part of the Baltic Sea was completely covered with ice.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.