Video - Russia's Arctic Obsession.....realistic or just a foolish dream?

Video - Russia's Arctic Obsession.....realistic or just a foolish dream? (FT).

President Vladimir Putin has revived Russia's dreams of exploiting its Arctic territory – boosted by a warming climate that has opened up the Northern Sea Route. The FT travels to remote reaches of Siberia to see if Russia can make it work.

Visiting Nikita Kudryashov at home is a bit like entering a bomb shelter.

Once the metal door into the building slams shut behind us, it is pitch dark. The young man leads me up a dim staircase. But then we enter a flat that could be anywhere in Russia: a kitchen table laden with pancakes, smoked fish, buns with cottage cheese, jam and tea. Past the lace curtains and geraniums on the windowsill, barely anything is visible of the snowdrifts and crumbling houses outside.

This is Tiksi, a decaying town in the Russian Arctic. Here, more than 4,000 kilometres from Moscow on the coast of the Laptev Sea, 4,550 people inhabit a wasteland whipped by blizzards and wrapped in polar night for half of the year. Surrounded by thousands of kilometres of permafrost, the town has no outside land connection.

Its main lifeline is an airport manned by a military unit, a relic of Soviet times, when the country’s Arctic territory was dotted with military bases. Read the full story here.

Two more Anthrax outbreaks hit northern Siberia due to thawing permafrost.

Two more Anthrax outbreaks hit northern Siberia due to thawing permafrost. (SiberianTimes). HT: Crof.

The Yamalo-Nenets region has suffered not one but three separate outbreaks of lethal anthrax since 7 July, with bloodsucking insects - especially gadflies and mosquitoes  - playing a key role in the spread, we can confirm.  

A strong new warning from scientists suggests that there is a 'dangerous' risk of infection across this entire permafrost area. 

There was worldwide coverage last month when Russian bio- and chemical-warfare troops were deployed to deal with the first case of the infection since 1941.  

Now it is clear that there were a total of two outbreaks on the Yamal peninsula, and a third east of the Gulf of Ob.  

Previously, only one focal point was acknowledged, around Lake Yarato.

Now scientists say that the epicentre of this initial outbreak was in a privately-owned herd of reindeer at nearby Lake Pisyoto on 7 July, while a second outbreak occurred some 100 kilometres or 62 miles southeast at Novy Port, on the Gulf of Ob.  

The last, where the infection was detected on 3 August, was at Pyakyakhinskaya in Tazovsky district, a distance of some 250 km or 155 miles east of the original infection.  

Our map shows the three locations. (See Top Of Post)

Officials say that the summer anthrax infections led to one fatality, a 12 year old boy, along with the death of 2,349 reindeer and at least four dogs. 

Crucially, the study also established that the infection started in thawed, contaminated soil, rather than emanating directly from decades-old poisoned reindeer carcasses or even human remains in graveyards, as was earlier believed.  

This, in turn, means that controlling new outbreaks in a warming climate  is virtually impossible, other than by mass vaccinations of people and animals.   

'Due to the wide spread of anthrax in the past, almost the entire territory of Yamal district is dangerous in terms of anthrax,' said a report from  the All-Russian Research Institute of Veterinary Virology and Microbiology, part of the Russian Agricultural Academy. 

The soil originally became infected because of numerous anthrax outbreaks, specifically in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Researchers established that especially around the initial outbreak bloodsucking insects were active in transmitting the disease from animal to animal over a distance of up to 20 km (12 miles).

'The insects - and we are mostly speaking about gadflies - bite infected animals and transmit anthrax spores to another animal.

'In some cases it can even be corpse flies which transmit the spores from the carcasses of dead animals. A human can also contract anthrax this way, but this time we had no such cases. The insects spread the disease mostly around the first foci.'

Vaccinations of reindeer, begun in Soviet times, were halted in 2007, but now all animals are to be injected. Six districts of Yamalo-Nenets

 Autonomous Region have 59 known burial sites of animals which died of anthrax in 1941 or during earlier decades.


Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets has demanded that compulsory vaccinations must be introduced for all groups deemed at risk. 'If people work with animals they must be vaccinated against anthrax,' she said. 'We are dealing now with an outbreak of anthrax [in Yamal] and we have found out that no one was vaccinated in this region.'

She said: 'Professional groups can become a source and transmitters of all infectious diseases that occur in this country.'


Some teachers and tutors working at childcare centres 'are not even vaccinated against chickenpox and measles. This is outrageous. They become infected together with the children and they transmit the disease. The consequences are dramatic. This must not be tolerated.'

Scientist: Yamal anthrax outbreak could just be the start of dormant diseases awaking.

Scientist: Yamal anthrax outbreak could just be the start of dormant diseases awaking. (BarentObserver).

Burial sites across Siberia with infected animals dug in the past may release spores of anthrax, specialists with Russia’s Academy of Sciences warn.

“The rock and soil that forms the Yamal Peninsula contain much ice. Melting may loosen the soil rather quickly, so the probability is high old cattle graves may come to the surface,” says Mikhail Grigoriev, Deputy Director of the Permafrost Studies Institute under the Academy of Sciences to TASS.

He points to Yakutia in Eastern Siberia where the usual thaw depth during summer is 0,3 to 0,6 meters, while this year is has exceeded one metre.

Warmest Arctic on record.

July has been the warmest on records over much of Siberia including the Yamal Peninsula.
Sergey Semyonov, Rosgidromet’s Director of the Global Climate Change and Ecology Institute tells TASS that July 2016 turned out the warmest ever in Siberia since systematic weather observations began. Temperatures on Yamal have climbed above 30 degrees Celsius.
The current anthrax outbreak is believed to come from an old burial site with reindeer that died of the disease more than 70 years ago.

One dead, 115 in hospital.

So far, 2,349 infected reindeer are burned in the on-going military operation to halt the spread of the outbreak, the Siberian Times reports.


A 12-year old boy is killed and another 115 are in hospital in Salekhard. Of these, 24, including 10 children are confirmed as anthrax victims.

Scientists fear this summer’s outbreak is just the beginning.

“There are thousands of such cattle graves across Russia and many of them are inside the Arctic Circle, says Sergey Netesov, Chief of the bionanotechnology, microbiology and virology laboratory with Novosibirsk State university to TASS.


He says the burial places were sealed off, but warns that wooden fences don’t last long. “Then, people forget that these are no-go areas for livestock.”

It is not just anthrax that is hidden under the fast melting tundra.

Netesov says specialists this summer are studying corpses buried in a village where 40 percent of the people died of smallpox in the 1890s. The graves in the village, located on the banks of the Kolyma river, where under the upper layer of the permafrost. In recent years, Kolyma’s floodwaters are eroding the banks near the graveyard because the permafrost is melting.

“Only some fragments of the virus’ DNA was found,” Sergey Netesov tells.

In 1979, WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox after global vacination campaigns. Read the full story here.

Siberia: 40 now hospitalized after anthrax outbreak in Yamal; more than 50% are children.

Siberia: 40 now hospitalized after anthrax outbreak in Yamal; more than 50% are children. (Siberiantimes).

A total of 40 people, the majority of them children, from nomadic herder families in northern Siberia are under observation in hospital amid fears they may have contracted the anthrax. Doctors stress that so far there are NO confirmed cases.  

Up to 1,200 reindeer were killed either by anthrax or a heatwave in the Arctic district where the infection spread.  

Specialists from the Chemical, Radioactive and Biological Protection Corps were rushed to regional capital Salekhard on a military Il-76 aircraft. 

They were deployed by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to carry laboratory tests on the ground, detect and eliminate the focal point of the infection, and to dispose safely of dead animals.

The move confirmed the seriousness with which the authorities view the anthrax outbreak, the first in this region since 1941.   

The army unit is equipped with military helicopters as well as off road vehicles for what Yamalo-Nenets governor Dmitry Kobylkin calls 'an extremely challenging task of liquidating the consequences - and disinfecting the focus - of the infection. I think this perhaps will be the first in the world operation cleaning up a territory of mass deer mortality over such distances in the tundra.' 

Eight new people were admitted to hospital in Salekhard early on Friday, bringing the total to 40, said officials.   

Earlier it was reported that 13 were in hospital.

'As of now, there is no single diagnosis of the dangerous infection,' said a spokesman for the governor of Yamalo-Nenets, Dmitry Kobylkin. 'Medics are taking preliminary measures even if there is the slightest doubt over the nomads' state of health.'  

The 40 are all from a total of 63 nomads belonging to a dozen families who were at the site of the outbreak at Tarko-Sale Faktoria camp. The remaining nomads have been evacuated some 60 kilometres from the focus of infection in Yamalsky district.  

A prolonged period of exceptionally hot weather in an Arctic Siberian district - with temperatures of up to 35C - has led to melting of permafrost in Yamalo-Nenets and other regions.   

The outbreak of anthrax earlier this week is the first in this part of Russia since 1941. Read the full story here.

Related: Yamal anthrax outbreak may come from melting Tundra.

Russian Officials Order Deportation of Chief Rabbi of Omsk.

Russian Officials Order Deportation of Chief Rabbi of Omsk. (Forward).

The chief rabbi of Omsk in southern Siberia, Asher Krichevsky, was ordered deported by Russian officials, according to Russian media reports.

Krichevsky, 36, was told Tuesday that he and his family — a wife and six children — have 15 days to leave Russia.

The rabbi, who has Israeli citizenship, has worked in Russia as a Chabad emissary for 13 years.

The Federal Migration Service has accused Krichevsky of “illegal trading of alcohol,” Kommersant-Siberia reported Tuesday, but Krichevsky told the newspaper that he has not been told why he is losing his residency permit.

Local news organizations also reported that Krichevsky is under suspicion of spying for Israel, while others believe the decision is politically motivated.

Last month, Krichevsky was fined 2,000 rubles, or about $50, for selling kosher wine from the Chabad House without a liquor license, Kommersant reported.

Omsk Jewish leaders plan to appeal the deportation to Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling Krichevsky “an absolutely apolitical individual,” according to Kommersant.

The newspaper reported, however, that the rabbi may have made anti-government comments in private conversations and that the deportation may be intended to send a message to other religious leaders.

The rabbi has 10 days to appeal the decision. Hmmm.....In he 'good old days' they would send you to Siberia, now they send you to Israel?

Video - Friendship among the horror: Female prisoners of the Russian Gulags.

Video - Friendship among the horror: Female prisoners of the Russian Gulags.HT: RBTH.

GULAG was originally an acronym meaning Main Camp Administration, but it has come to signify the whole system of imprisonment and forced labor that Stalin expanded in 1929 and which grew until his death in 1953. 

Anne Applebaum, in her comprehensive book “GULAG: A History”, estimates that between these dates “some 18 million people passed through this massive system,” with millions more compelled to migrate. 

Conditions were terrible; the death rate was high. But “in the end,” writes Applebaum, “statistics can never fully describe what happened.” 

We can only begin to comprehend the suffering behind the numbers by reading the eyewitness accounts of survivors. 

Russian woman Tamara Petkevich spent seven years in labor camps. In her autobiographical “Memoir of a Gulag Actress” she mentions a former NKVD (security services) official who ended up in prison. 

“The bloodiest page of our history had firmly projected itself onto the aggravated consciousness of this functionary,” writes Petkevich. He wanders about muttering deranged decrees for shootings, exile or the arrest of “all the women of Moscow” and finally runs amok with an ax, hacking off limbs as “streams of blood gushed everywhere.” 

A female doctor eventually stops him by asking in a commanding voice: “Where’s the verdict? When did the court confer?” This crazy episode functions as a microcosmic metaphor for a senseless era. 

 Eugenia Ginzburg, a professor in Kazan, was to spend 18 years in the Soviet prison camp system. Her memoir, “Into the Whirlwind,” describes the mundane details that underline the horror, like washing her bra over the slop bucket, or darning it with fishbone needles “extracted from the evening stew.” 

In parentheses, as though it were nothing remarkable, she writes about the moment when a peaceful, easy­going woman called Nadya collapses on the frozen ground, one “purple evening in Kolyma” in arctic Siberia. The guard prods her body with his rifle and shouts at her to get up until one of the other prisoners points out that she is dead. 

Crushed by the dreary life in labor camps, some women found ways to exchange sexual favors with the camp officials for better food and living conditions. 

Not everyone, though, succumbed to this temptation, which led to disdain and hostility from fellow prisoners.  

“His blue, frost­bitten hands with their crooked fingers stretched out towards me,” writes Ginzburg. When she is offered money for sex, she comments wryly that she has previously encountered the question of prostitution only as a social problem or a theatrical device.

The memoirists have mostly been arrested for political reasons under the infamous Article 58 of the penal code. Labeled as a “daughter of an enemy of the people,” Petkevich was arrested in her early 20s in 1943. A beautiful young woman, she was the target of frequent sexual assaults. When she fights off the head of the cultural­educational department, he growls: “You’ll rot. You’ll be groveling at my feet for help.” 

Petkevich later describes how mothers were separated from their children and recalls one prisoner stripping herself naked and “cursing and swearing that she was pregnant again and that they had to let her stay.” The guards take her to the punishment block, “from where her screams reached us for a long time afterward.”
Read the full story here.

'Devil's Ear' gold nugget of over 13.227 lb - 6,664 Kg found on Friday 13th in Irkutsk mine.

'Devil's Ear' gold nugget of over 13.227lb - 6,664 Kg found on Friday 13th in Irkutsk mine.(SiberianTimes).


As soon as Siberian workers set eyes on the find - the largest ever at the Ukhagan mine in the Irkutsk region's Bodaybinsky district - they called it the Devil's Ear.

'The nugget was found on Friday 13 June', said a statement by local officials. 'The weight of 6,664 gram also favours secrecy and the shape is very similar to a pointy ear. So miners immediately called the find 'The Devil's Ear'.'

Surprisingly the find was initially thrown away, thanks to an overzealous sifting machine. A worker levelling the mining debris found the treasure.

Now there is added excitement at the Siberian mine. Such finds rarely come singly.

'If there is one, there will be a second and it is possible that very soon the Devil's Ear will have a brother,' said the local administration statement

Sergey Kozlov, Ugakhan director, said: 'The nugget was found in a new mine that according to preliminary estimate doesn't have that much gold.

'But the miners are very hopeful that an old saying 'one nugget never walks alone' will work for them again.

'First we will have to check the dropouts more carefully - to see what else the clever equipment threw away!'

"Silence of the Reindeer" - Second Russian republic on hunt for wolves.

"Silence of the Reindeer" - Second Russian republic on hunt for wolves.(RT). A second Russian republic in Siberia has begun hunting down wolves that continue to threaten livestock, following a similar move by Yakutia, the largest Russian republic in Siberia. But the experts are warning that the plan is not feasible.

In January Siberia’s Republic of Khakassia, located in south-central Siberia, organized a group of 30 people, made up of expert hunters and specialists from the State Committee that began hunting wolves in the Lake Balankul region.

“When wolves start attacking deer and livestock they have to be killed and the population controlled. This is the right policy,” Russian WWF’s Head of the Biodiversity Program Vladimir Krever told RT. Republic of Khakassia has been implementing measures to cut down on the number of wolves in the area since 2011, as the predators continue to threaten domestic livestock.

Last year, the republic managed to hunt down 129 wolves, and the year before that 103.

Yakutia, located in north-eastern Russia, is also fighting with the influx of wolves in the area and has ordered more than 3,000 wolves to be killed in three months due to increased attacks on livestock. Authorities declared a state of emergency and summoned hunting parties, promising six-figure rewards for the top hunters More than 16,000 domestic reindeer and some 300 horses have been killed by the overpopulation of wolves in 2012, officials said, adding that damage to the region’s households topped 157 million rubles (US$5 million) last year.

Vladimir Krever argues that the number of wolves can even be higher in the region, but the main point is that the number of wolves in the area of such a size “isn’t even that many.”

Even though Krever does not disagree with the policy of increasing the hunt for the wolves, he still believes that the idea of killing 3,000 wolves is not a feasible one.

“Normally they kill around 600 wolves a year in Yakutia. If you really tried you might be able to double that figure if you used expensive helicopters and planes to spot them,” Krever said. “Even if they were able to kill 3,000 wolves the population would recover quickly. But they simply won’t get near to killing 3,000 wolves. This is a totally unrealistic target.”

We have 'BIG Things' in Russia - Siberian shale play 80 times larger than Bakken.

We have 'BIG Things' in Russia - Siberian shale play 80 times larger than Bakken.(Forbes).Everyone has heard about the Bakken shale, the huge expanse of oil-bearing rock underneath North Dakota and Montana that billionaire Harold Hamm thinks could yield 24 billion barrels of oil in the decades to come. The Bakken is a huge boon, both to the economic health of the northern Plains states, but also to the petroleum balance of the United States. From just 60,000 barrels per day five years ago, the Bakken is now giving up 500,000 bpd, with 210,000 bpd of that coming on in just the past year. Given the availability of enough rigs to drill it and crews to frack it, there’s no reason why the Bakken couldn’t be producing more than 1 million bpd by the end of the decade, a level that could be maintained for halfway through the century.

But as great as the Bakken is, I learned last week about another oil shale play that dwarfs it. It’s called The Bazhenov. It’s in Western Siberia, in Russia. And while the Bakken is big, the Bazhenov — according to a report last week by Sanford Bernstein’s lead international oil analyst Oswald Clint — “covers 2.3 million square kilometers or 570 million acres, which is the size of Texas and the Gulf of Mexico combined.” This is 80 times bigger than the Bakken.

Getting access to the Bazhenov appears to be a key element in both ExxonMobil and Statoil‘s big new joint ventures with Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. Exxon’s recent statement says the two companies have agreed “to jointly develop tight oil production technologies in Western Siberia.”

No wonder. The geology of the Bazhenov looks just as good if not better. Its pay zone averages about 100 feet thick, and as Clint points out, the Bazhenov has lots of cracks and fractures that could make its oil flow more readily. The couple test wells that he sites flowed at an average of 400 barrels per day. That’s in line with the Bakken average.

This Siberian bonanza might be news to most of us, but it’s old news to Big Oil. The conventional oil fields of Siberia have been producing millions of barrels a day for decades — oil that originated in the Bazhenov “source rock” then slowly oozed up over the millenia. From the looks of it, geologists have been looking at the Bazhenov for more than 20 years....

Unlike the Kremlin’s much ballyhooed plan to drill for oil in ice-packed Arctic waters, the beauty of the Bazhenov is that it is onshore and it underlies an area that is already criss-crossed with pipelines serving mature, conventional fields. No need for expensive icebreakers, cold-weather drillships and subsea pipelines.Enough oil to satisfy all of current global demand for 64 years, or to do 5 million bpd for more than 1,000 yearsHmmm........... Dem :"Supply does not matter in determining the price of oil"Think again.Read the full story here.

Russian Siberian Airliner Crash Kills 31, survivor was 'Too Tired' to Board Ill-Fated Plane

Russian Siberian Airliner Crash Kills 31, survivor was 'Too Tired' to Board Ill-Fated Plane.(RN).A 36-year-old businessman from Tyumen missed the ill-fated flight to Surgut that crashed shortly after takeoff killing 31 people, the city’s deputy prosecutor general said. “According to the pre-flight list, there should have been 40 passengers on board, but one person missed the flight and this possibly saved his life,” Valentin Tarasov said. The lucky survivor, Dmitry Grigoryev, told the Life News portal that he had to go to Surgut on a business trip, but was just too tired to go to the airport after a kite surfing competition and decided to take another flight. “I had the ticket in my pocket,” Grigoryev said. “But I was returning from the competition in my car and had to spend several hours behind the wheel. The weather was bad, the road was awful, so I got home only by three a.m. local time. I decided to take another flight on Tuesday. I was so tired I did not even call to the airport to change the ticket.” He said that he learned about the disaster from his colleague’s wife, who called him upon hearing about the crash. “She asked me if I was alive. Then everything got blurry… The first thing I did was to call my mother,” Grigoryev said. The survivor said he cancelled all nearest business trips. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fly to Surgut. Psychologically, this is too hard,” he said.Read the full story here, more here.

Six foot - 200-kilo metal ‘UFO dustbin lid’ metal fell from the sky near remote village in Siberia.

Six foot - 200-kilo metal ‘UFO dustbin lid’ metal fell from the sky near remote village in Siberia.(PAP).Six foot metal fragment fell near remote village in Siberia.Does not appear to be from earthly missiles or rockets Russian space experts say, ‘The object is not related to space technology’.
Under police guard as experts examine it.Space experts are trying to solve the mystery of ‘a UFO fragment’ which crashed close to a village in Siberia.
Locals insist the metallic object – which resembles a large rubbish bin – fell from the skies but initial checks by experts have concluded it is neither from a rocket nor a missile.It is now under police guard as interest in the ‘visitor’ intensifies.
The ‘fragment’ does not appear to come from any known missile or space technology. Russian space experts will make an announcement shortly.
The six-foot metal object is now under police guard as the Russian space agency prepares to examine it.
Weighing 200 kilograms and around two metres in height, locals fixed it onto a trailer and took across the snow to the village where local inspectors checked it.
‘The object found is not related to space technology. A final conclusion can be made after a detailed study of the object by experts,’ said the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Locals insist the metallic object – resembling a large shiny rubbish bin – fell from the skies. The object is six feet long and is at least partially made of titanium steel.
It was found near a village called Otradnensky some two thousand miles and three time zones east of Moscow.The Russian media immediately claimed ‘fragments of a UFO’ were discovered in the remote forest.Locals had heard strange sounds in the thick woodland in December, it was claimed.
But it was only on Sunday that the find was reported to local police who then alerted Moscow.
Yuri Bornyakov, head of rescue service department of Kuibyshevski district of Novosibirsk region, said: ‘We measured the radiation level near and inside the object. We found no radiation here.’
The 200-kilo metal fragment was examined for radiation. A theory that it’s a remnant from a rocket launch in Kazakhstan also appears to be mistakenInitial theories that it was part of a space rocket or a satellite form a failed launch in Kazakhstan have been denied.
Head of Department for Civil Defence and Emergency Situations of the Kuibyshevski, Valery Vasiliev, said part of the fragment was made of ultra strong titanium.
Finder Sergey Bobrov undertook in an official statement that he would keep the UFO safe, but locals reported that ‘police came during the night and secretly removed it’.A local police spokesman confirmed the object was now under guard by the force on orders from unspecified authorities.
‘You can see inside it, all is open, it’s empty, no danger here. We were asked to take and store it. We brought it here. And now we are going to wait until they come to take it if they need it’ said Sergei Sulein.Read and see the full story here.

Live 'Woolly mammoth' spotted in Siberia?

The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed.
The animal previously thought extinct apparently filmed crossing icy river
He filmed the elephant-sized creature as it struggled against the racing water. Its hair matches samples recovered from mammoth remains regularly dug up from the permafrost in frozen Russia.Hmmmm......Could be a bear eating a huge fish.Read the full story here.HT:AstuteBlogger.