Ukraine renews Antarctic research (12/25/94)

Ukraine renews Antarctic research

by Petro Matiaszek
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYYIV - With the transmittal of a brief, formal letter of acceptance to the United Kingdom, Ukraine officially renewed its long-standing tradition of Antarctic research. For budgetary reasons, the United Kingdom decided to close and abandon its Faraday Research Center, located on the southernmost continent's Antarctic Peninsula, and offered to transfer the base to Ukrainian jurisdiction.

The first Ukrainian team to visit Faraday Research Station will consist of Y. Oskret, deputy director of the Antarctic Research Center of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences (which also coordinates the work of Ukraine's Interagency Antarctic Commission), Volodymyr Herhiyev and A. Lushnivsky, also of the Antarctic Research Center, and Dr. Hennadiy Mylinevsky, director of Kyyiv University's Space Physics Laboratory. They were scheduled to depart for Britain on December 5.

After a short stay in Cambridge, where they will undergo briefings, medical examinations and polar clothing outfitting, they will fly with their British colleagues to the Falkland Islands. There they will board the RRS James Clark Ross for the final leg of the journey to Faraday by the end of the year. They will remain at Faraday through the southern hemisphere's (austral) winter of 1995, and will return to Ukraine in November 1995.

At the special request of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Council of Advisors to the Parliament of Ukraine will cover just over half of the $20,000 needed to send this initial Ukrainian team. The Soros-funded International Renaissance Foundation based in Kyyiv will cover the remaining portion.

Ukrainians are no newcomers to international exploration. However, following the gradual extinction of Ukrainian statehood over the centuries, the achievements of Ukrainian scientists and adventurers were regularly credited to Ukraine's occupiers. To name just two of these Ukrainian explorers: Yuriy Lysiansky, in whose honor a small, uninhabited island at the far northern edge of the Hawaiian Island chain is named, and Makukh-Makhlay, who sailed the southern Pacific. Both were officers in the tsarist Russian navy.

(As an interesting aside, the Ukrainian community in Australia is reportedly competing with the Russian government for the purchase of Makukh-Makhlay's former home; Moscow would like to buy the building to preserve as a "Russian" historical site. Ukraine has diplomatic relations with Australia only at the honorary consular level.)

Another such explorer is Anton Omelchenko, who accompanied British explorer Robert F. Scott to Antarctica earlier this century. On their way through Britain to Faraday, the present-day Ukrainian Antarctic team will visit the Scott Institute where they will view rare film footage of the famed explorer and his Ukrainian colleague.

Ukrainian researchers regularly participated in Soviet Antarctic exploration as well. Before the break-up of the USSR, there were 15 Soviet research bases in Antarctica, of which only five were in operation by late 1991; the remaining 10 were sealed years earlier and have likely deteriorated under the harsh conditions found on the continent.

In late October 1992, Ukraine raised the issue of the former Soviet Antarctic research centers with Moscow. However, consistent with its policy on the seizure of former Soviet assets abroad, Russia presented newly independent Ukraine with yet another fait accompli: On December 21, 1992, the Russian Foreign Ministry informed its Ukrainian counterpart that the five functioning bases were under its jurisdiction and that Ukraine could only have access on a rental basis, provided that the two countries concluded a special bilateral financial agreement. Moscow also offered to discuss the "transfer to Ukrainian jurisdiction" of two of the unused research centers, specifically the "Leningrad" and "Rus" stations, during negotiations on the division of former Soviet assets.

Many countries maintain bases there to study oceanography, meteorology, seismology and other scientific areas. In 1959, 12 nations, including the Soviet Union and the United States, signed a treaty suspending any territorial claims in Antarctica and reserving the continent for research. Ukraine acceded to the Antarctic Treaty in 1993.

Ukrainian scientists also would like to participate in the work of the International Antarctic Scientific Research Committee, which was established by the treaty's countries-signatories. However, that would entail a required annual fee of almost $5,000, which is beyond the current fiscal means of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

In a related development, on October 29, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma issued an executive order formally implementing the standing parliamentary decision regarding Ukraine's accession to the 1980 Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

The writer is legal counsel with the Council of Advisors to the Ukrainian Parliament.

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