Kovalchuk: Russia is distracted by Ukraine and Armenia, and the main test site is the Arctic

The Arctic is a global advantage of Russia, said Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the Kurchatov Institute, during a meeting on the participation of higher education institutions in ensuring the technological sovereignty of the Russian Federation in the field of shipbuilding.

"The Arctic is our global advantage. Our president has formulated it absolutely clearly, understood it and made a lot of steps for this," Kovalchuk said.

It is important to remember that they understand this not only in our country, but all over the world, Channel Five quotes Kovalchuk.

"The Arctic is the testing ground of the future. Today we are being distracted there in some Ukraine or somewhere in Armenia, but in fact the main test site is the Arctic," he said.

Kovalchuk stressed that Russia is the rightful owner of this territory, since it has more than 50% of the world fleet of icebreakers. In addition, our country is the only one in the whole world that has nuclear icebreakers "out of competition," he said.

Now there is a big struggle for the Arctic, this is clearly demonstrated by the events in Greenland. If the United States takes this island together with Canada, they will become equal to Russia in strength, the scientist noted.

"We have to be super-strong, and today we are in In the Arctic, we can take positions in which it will be very difficult to catch up with us," Kovalchuk said.

In this regard, the Maritime Collegium, headed by Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev, is a very important body — with its help, Russia can develop a fundamentally new concept for promotion, Kovalchuk added.