Russian Arctic clean-up to finish in 3 years
© Sergei Panteleyev

Russian Arctic clean-up to finish in 3 years

Special units of the Russian Defense Ministry are planning to clear the Russian Arctic of all scrap metal and litter by 2018, Deputy Defense Minister Army General Dmitry Bulgakov reported.

"On October 1, we finished the  clean-up operation plan for 2015. The defense minister has extended this program to 2016. We'll resume the operation in May. We hope to complete it within three years, putting the territory in good order," Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency quotes him as saying.

According to Gen. Bulgakov, the military ecologists have collected and pressed 3,560 metric tons of scrap metal and litter on the Arctic islands, with 1,800 tons already transported to the mainland.