Pyramiden science centre short of foreign partners

No foreign research institute has yet expressed interest in joining the international science centre planned in Pyramiden, Trust Arktikugol's Yuriy Sychev told a conference in Murmansk on Tuesday 10 November, Vedomosti reported.

Sychev, the state-owned company's deputy director general for work with scientific organisations, said Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment had sent 10 letters of invitation to countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. He said no research organisation had so far expressed interest, and that the company had traditionally worked only with universities.

Several foreign universities have said they are interested in research on Svalbard. Among them are the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, Korea Maritime University, Turkey's Polar Research Centre and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Sychev said there is an agreement with the Ocean University of China to create a joint telemedicine centre on the archipelago, and that equipment for it is being delivered.

He said it is important for the centre's work that research organisations take part, not only universities. Arktikugol used the conference to ask other organisations to consider taking part again, Vedomosti wrote; scientists from India are among those attending.

The Russian government commission for the country's presence on the archipelago approved the concept for the centre in November 2025. The centre is to be housed in Pyramiden, where local infrastructure is to be renewed so that foreign participants can live and work there. Up to 150 scientists will be able to work at the same time. Full operation had been planned for October this year. Arktikugol now says full operation will start after the commission's next meeting, expected before the end of the year.

The project was first presented as a centre of BRICS, the group of countries named after Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; the name changed as the list of member countries grew, Vedomosti wrote. Its research is to focus on the environment, the atmosphere and glaciers, taking account of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty and later acts.

Vedomosti wrote that the centre was prepared in close cooperation with the Russian and Norwegian foreign ministries. "Despite the increased tension in Russian–Norwegian relations, almost all questions about the international scientific and educational centre have been agreed," Sychev said.

Experts asked by Vedomosti said the search for foreign partners would depend partly on the international situation. Academician Gennady Matishov, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed to the arrest of the research vessel Professor Molchanov by Norwegian authorities in Barentsburg on 2 September.