“The Largest Victory Banner” peacekeeping mission to the North Pole
© RIA Novosti. Maksim Blinov

Pole of Peace and Friendship expedition scheduled for April 16-17

The third Pole of Peace and Friendship international high-latitude expedition will take place in the Siberian Federal District on April 16-17, biology professor Nikolai Drozdov, who is board chair of the Terra Viva international environmental movement and a member of the organizing committee of the Year of the Environment in Russia, told a news conference at the TASS agency's press center.

The expedition has been sponsored by the Emergencies Ministry, the Russian Geographic Society, the Association of Heroes of Russia and the business community.

"The main aim of the mission is to stage on the Barneo drifting station, together with Arctic explorers and environmentalists, the ceremony of simultaneously unfolding the largest banner of the Association of Heroes and two main symbols of Russia — the largest national flag and the largest Victory Banner," Drozdov said.

This will be the third expedition organized by the Terra Viva movement. The first one, called Open Arctic 2015, took place in April 2015, when a team of Russian political activists, scientists and businessmen visited the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) Archipelago. During the second expedition, held in April 2016, one team set off to Iceland and Greenland for a series of business meetings, while another team traveled to the North Pole, where it unfolded a replica of the Victory Banner more than 1,000 square meters in size.