How Ukrainian aircraft ripped off the Russian Arctic expedition

The annual Arctic camp "Barneo" has been held since 2001. But this year it will not take place. The organizers chartered a Ukrainian An-74 aircraft, and Antonov Airlines banned its use. They suspect that the organizers wanted to use the plane for other purposes.

Фото: Depositphotos

Camp Barneo has been operating in the Arctic since 2001. About half of the inhabitants of Barneo are skiers who are preparing to make a trip to the Pole. Plus tourists who then fly to the pole by helicopter. A tour to Barneo costs at least 19 thousand euros, and a ski tour through Barneo costs 46 thousand euros.

Altogether, along with several scientists and service personnel, there are about 260 people there, told Bi-bi-si Viktor Boyarsky, head of the Vikaar company, which organized ski trips to Barneo.

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The camp operates one and a half months. During this time, the sun has not yet managed to flood the ice so that the plane could not land on it.

Barneo is served exclusively by An-74 aircraft. They were developed in the 1980s in the USSR on the basis of the military transport An-72 and are better suited than others for flights in northern latitudes. An-74 can perform short takeoff and landing, which is also very important when flying from a runway on an ice floe.

There are very few machines in the world capable of delivering cargo to a similar Arctic station.

Фото: Depositphotos

Planes fly to the ice base from an airfield in the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen on the Spitsbergen archipelago - the northernmost airport in the world.

Until 2018, the Barneo drifting camp was organized by the Expedition Center of the Russian Geographical Society, headed by polar explorer Alexander Orlov. It was on his initiative that the Barneo camp appeared. Orlov died in April 2017.

Now the drifting camp is organized by the Swiss company Barneo AG.

Alexander Krasnoperov, head of Barneo LLC, associated with the Swiss company, confirmed the closure of the camp. He refused to answer questions about financial losses for the organizers.

How did everything happen?

In 2019, the expedition prepared as usual. At the end of March, specialists for the construction of the camp arrived in Longyear, they also brought fuel, tents and equipment. Mi-8 helicopters conducted ice reconnaissance and determined a place for the camp, and then parachute landing and fuel were dropped from the Il-76 transport aircraft.

But 12 April it became known that the expedition in the 2019 year will not take place.

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The reason for the termination of the expedition was the inability to use the An-74 aircraft of Antonov Airlines for flights from Longyearbyen to the Barneo airfield. The State Aviation Service of Ukraine refused to issue this aircraft permission to fly in areas north of 80th latitude, he said Bi-bi-si Boyarsky.

Фото: Depositphotos

According to him, Antonov Airlines previously received permission to fly from the Norwegian aviation authorities.

Boyarsky claims that the organizers received a notification about the impossibility of flying to the Arctic station only on April 8, it was written four days before.

Minsk or Barneo?

Bi-bi-si sent a request to the State Aviation Service of Ukraine and is awaiting a response.

At the Antonov Group of Companies Bi-bi-si They said that they gave the go-ahead for the An-74T to take off. But the customer wanted to use the plane to perform two commercial flights on the Longyearbyen-Minsk route, and not to fly to the Barneo camp, he said Bi-bi-si representative of the company.

“The issue of flying the An-74T aircraft to the Barneo camp was considered at the initial stages of negotiations, before the arrival of the An-74T aircraft at Longyearbyen airport, but the customer was informed in advance about the impossibility of carrying out such flights,” said a representative of Antonov Airlines.

Boyarsky denies that the organizers ordered this plane to fly to Minsk.

According to him, after the refusal, the organizers tried to find a replacement for the Ukrainian An-74T, but they did not find any “free” aircraft. In addition, the process of coordinating flights for companies that have not previously flown to Svalbard takes two to three weeks, which the organizers did not have due to the beginning of the ice melting.

Фото: Depositphotos

The cancellation of the expedition in 2019 will be temporary, says Boyarsky. He expects that next year the organizers, having a few months left, will be able to prepare for the expedition in advance so that at the last moment not to be left without an airplane.

What is known about the camp?

Barneo is an international and exclusively peaceful project, far from politics, say the organizers and participants.

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But in the past, the Barneo camp became the center of Russian military activity. In 2016, a parachute landing of special forces of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs landed on it.

As a TASS correspondent talked about this, the task of the paratroopers was to discover the camp of a mock enemy and take it by storm. Chechen paratroopers were based at Barneo. A little later that year, according to the Vesti TV channel, a joint training operation of Russian airborne troops and special forces from Belarus took place in the camp.

In 2016, after the landing of Russian special forces at the Barneo camp, Norway tightened the flight rules at Barneo, introducing a mandatory 48-hour break between flights. This rule was soon canceled, but on the official Facebook page of the camp on April 23, 2016, an announcement appeared that logistics would be transferred from Longyearbyen to Russian territory - to Franz Josef Land. But this never happened.

Фото: Depositphotos

The Russian Geographical Society itself, under the patronage of which the camp was held, collaborates with the Russian Navy. And his board of trustees includes President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and other representatives of the Russian leadership.

On April 12, when it was announced that the Barneo expedition would not take place, a meeting of the center of the Russian Geographical Society in the Northern Fleet was held, at which the expedition to Franz Josef Land was discussed.

“The events of the complex expedition to the Franz Josef Land archipelago will be held in the unified context of the historical and patriotic action “Three Flags over the Archipelago,” which is dedicated to the modern Russian flag and two significant historical dates - the 105th anniversary of the raising of the Russian flag on Cape Flora of Northbrook Island and the 90th anniversary of the raising of the Russian flag on Cape Flora of Northbrook Island. anniversary of the raising of the Soviet flag on the southern coast of Hooker Island,” says a statement on the Ministry of Defense website.

In October, the Russian Geographical Society outfitted an expedition to the islands of Gogland and Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, whose members traveled by landing craft of the Leningrad naval base.

In recent years, Russia has begun to actively develop its presence in the Arctic. This region is considered as one of the most strategic.

The Russian military regularly conducts exercises in the Arctic latitudes. NATO countries are also actively strengthening their military presence in the north. The last major NATO exercise, Trident Juncture 2018, the largest since the Cold War, took place at the end of October in Norway. According to legend, NATO forces, together with partners from Sweden and Finland, saved a certain small country from an attack by an aggressor.

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