Russian explorer urges Harper, Putin to meet at North Pole
Russia’s most celebrated polar explorer, Artur Chilingarov, wants Russian President Vladimir Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to meet at the North Pole.
“I have mentioned this to President Putin and I will mention it again,” the limber, heavily bearded Hero of Russia and Hero of the Soviet Union said during an interview conducted this week in an office crammed with memorabilia from his many expeditions to the two poles.
“Let’s do it. It would be a symbol of Russian-Canadian friendship in the north.”
Canadians may remember Chilingarov as the explorer who in 2007 planted a titanium replica of the Russian flag at the bottom of the ocean — at the top of the world. It was a dramatic act that caused shock and anger in Ottawa and other northern capitals.
Canadian officials such as thenforeign minister Peter MacKay had taken deep offence at his dramatic underwater showmanship in one of two small Mir deep sea mini-submarines, “This isn’t the 15th century,” MacKay told CTV at the time. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory.’ ”
Told that some Canadians still vilified him, Chilingarov, who is a member of the Russian Federation Council, responded with a profound belly laugh.
“I don’t know why Canadians took this so painfully,” he said. “The North Pole is a fixed place and it is for everyone.”
Chilingarov, Putin’s special envoy for international co-operation in the Arctic and Antarctic professed to be by turns mystified and amused by the fury overseas to a mission, which received intense, hugely positive media coverage in Russia.
“To be sure, I am a Russian patriot and a celebrated person here, but I was the head of the CanadaU.S.S.R. Friendship Society in Soviet times and I have lots of friends in Canada,” the 72-year-old oceanographer said.
Other Canadians he counted as friends, he said, included Titanic film director James Cameron. They shared an enthusiasm for deepsea exploration in mini-subs such as the two vessels that took Chilingarov and five other Russians to the seabed at the North Pole.
Back in 2007, the BBC quoted Chilingarov as saying, “The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian land mass.”
As to which country owned the great northern ocean, he took a less belligerent position on the issue, as has Putin since 2010.
“There are some forces here would consider that it is all ours,” he said. “But I think that it is up to the (United Nations) to make decisions about who owns the Arctic shelves” based on scientific evidence about how continental shelves were connected to land masses.
Despite some foreigners and Russians having derided what he did five years ago as a publicity caper, Chilingarov said others “thanked me because our expedition to the North Pole had been an impetus for international research in the Arctic.”
With a twinkle in his eye, Chilingarov said that instead of criticizing him, Canada should “give me an award” for the attention he had brought to Arctic research and because of his long-standing efforts to improve ties between Canada and Russia.