Clean-up operations will be held on Arctic territories, where military formations are stationed

Servicemen of the Russian Defense Ministry have begun “‘ecological clean-up” on Arctic territories, where military formations are stationed, Deputy defense minister General Dmitry Bulgakov said on Monday. More than 170 servicemen have been involved in clean-up of the contaminated territories, he said.

Clean-up operations are going on on a number of islands of Novaya Zemlya archipelago, the islands of Kotelny and Wrangle. Around ten clean-up brigades have been dismantling shabby houses and constructions to be followed by land reclamation there, Bulgakov said. The ministry’s servicemen have been also removing scrap metal, including metallic containers for liquid substances, pending their shipment away from the Arctic territory by auxiliary ships of the Russian Navy, he said.

Russia to build military Arctic environmental center

“To control the ecology of the Russian Arctic zone, a regional environmental center of the Northern Fleet is to be created in the near future, which will carry out ecological monitoring and control compliance with Russian and international environmental legislation,” Bulgakov said according to Portnews.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has worked out a road-map on ecology security in the Arctic, Bulgakov said. According to the road map, military specialists are analyzing the ecology situation in places the Armed Forces have been located in the Arctic, including territories that were used in the Soviet times. “We plan to remove within the next few years old and destroyed buildings and to re-cultivate the territory – this means we shall remove the debris, fundaments, metal parts and so forth.”

According to Bulgakov, Russian forces have removed ten tons of garbage from Wrangel Island.