A Russian polar research ship hid in South Africa’s Cape Town harbor over the weekend as climate protesters feared it could be used to help Moscow explore for minerals in protected Antarctica.
The icebreaker Akademik Aleksandr Karpinskiy is on its way to Antarctica as part of a scientific expedition launched late last year, according to Russian media.
Russian polar research vessel
The ship is owned by the Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned mineral exploration company RosGeo.
“We believe that exploitation will happen next,” said Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Jacqui Tooke.
A small group of placard-waving environmentalists gathered at the harbor in Cape Town on Sunday chanting “No more fossil fuels, deal with Antarctica! No more wars!”
“We saw a ship coming into the harbor at 8:41 on Friday morning,” Extinction Rebellion climate campaigner Cassi Goodman said on Friday.
Mineral exploitation is prohibited in Antarctica, and RosGeo denies allegations that the company is involved in the exploration of mineral resources on the icy continent.
RosGeo’s activities “both on the Antarctic continent and in the adjacent seas are of a purely scientific nature,” a spokesman told Russian newspaper Kommersant on Saturday.
Scientific expedition
The 68th Russian Antarctic scientific expedition to study global climate change and oceanology in Antarctic marginal seas among other glaciology research in and around Antarctica.
The ship arrived days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Pretoria for talks and came as Western nations expressed dismay at South Africa’s close ties to Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
South Africa has refused to take sides in the war, which has led to Western sanctions against Moscow and attempts to isolate it diplomatically.
It is the second Russian ship to moor in South Africa in as many months.
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In December, South Africa was criticized for allowing a sanctioned Russian cargo ship to dock and unload cargo at its Cape Town naval base.
The ship’s tracking application is located at the Akademik Aleksandr Karpinskiy in the port of Cape Town on Friday and shows that it left St. Petersburg on Christmas Day last year.
Gateway to Antarctica
The southwestern city of Cape Town has long been the gateway to Antarctica.
“This ship has been using Cape Town as a base for this Antarctic mission for more than 20 years,” Greenpeace campaigner Elaine Nills told AFP on Sunday.
“South Africa has a moral obligation to its own citizens, Africa and the whole world not to enable such activities in a highly ecologically sensitive area,” he said.
Akademik Aleksandr Karpinskiy will join the ship Akademik Fedorov, which leaves Russia in November 2022.
The 1991 Madrid Protocol banned all mineral extraction in Antarctica and included measures to protect flora and fauna, prevent marine pollution, control tourism and waste management.