MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator...

The nuclear-powered ice-breaker Rossiya will escort the Academician Fedorov, the flagship of the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environment Monitoring, which will take about a hundred scientists from Murmansk to the North Pole. Along with unique studies of the far-northern continental shelf, the expedition will carry out the first-ever Arctic dives using the mini-submarine Mir. The first crew will descend to a depth of more than four kilometers, with the deputy speaker of the Duma on board.

But Chilingarov acknowledges the expedition's geopolitical goal: "We want to prove that Russia is a great polar power." A titanium capsule with the Russian flag will be dropped to the bottom as evidence of this. In other words, Russia will publicly stake its claim to the North Pole.

Strictly speaking, Russia claims a triangle-shaped area of the Arctic Ocean; its base includes the Russian coast from the Kola Peninsula in the west to the tip of the Chukotka Peninsula in

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