Putin meets young Russian polar ski conquerors

MOSCOW, April 22 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin received participants of the 7th youth Russian polar expedition conquering the North Pole under the motto “To the North Pole on Skis!” at the Kremlin on Tuesday. He admitted to them that he was watching attentively their hard trip. At the beginning of the meeting the president welcomed cordially children and asked them jokingly, “How did you happen to go there, why did you come there, you have just made frightened all of us.” After this without waiting for a reply from confused participants in the polar expedition the head of state recalled such expeditions are held since 2008. “But yours [expedition] turned out to be most difficult, but therefore probably most interesting,” Putin added. The president admitted at the meeting with young travellers that he was following their trip to the North Pole and was watching how hardly they were going to their goal. “An ice floe was drifted away that resulted in a longer itinerary or winds were particularly high and you had to spend nights in tents amid harsh frosts,” the president shared his impressions. For his part, one of leaders of the expedition Matvey Shparo confirmed that during the expedition young skiers could feel themselves what sea water was like.”Amid strong winds all of us were holding our tents from the inside to prevent them from breaking,” he said. The president asked young polar explorers whether they were fleeing afraid to travel across the expanse of the Arctic Ocean. They admitted that they were feeling scared, particularly when they were skiing on a thin ice. Putin told teenagers that the Russian Geographical Society organises interesting youth projects and offered them to participate in them. At the end of the meeting the travellers presented to the Russian president a magazine with photos on which different stages of preparations to the expedition were showed as well as the brightest photos from the North Pole. “Extreme conditions change the character for the better and consolidate people,” the president said at the end of the meeting congratulating teenagers once again on a successful expedition and comeback home. The expedition started towards the North Pole on April 10 from a drifting polar station Barneo of the Russian Geographical Society. The polar adventure last eight days during which the team covered 180 kilometres on ski. From the first day of the voyage polar explorers started to face serious obstacles, including packed winds, snowstorms, ice floes, ice cracks, a large area of open waters when crossing of around 100-metre ice holes took five hours. Despite all these hardships participants in the expedition have successfully reached their goal and raised the Russian national flag on the northernmost point of the Earth on April 18. However, due to heavy meteorological conditions the team failed to fly back from the North Pole for two days. The youth polar expedition was evacuated by a special airplane of Russia’s Federal Security Service only on April 21. The polar ski team was formed through a serious multilevel selection at regional and federal levels. Finally the team included seven teenagers Ksenia German, Nikolay Zaitsev, Alena Karpenko, Karina Kausova, Akhuramazad Mumindzhanov, Nikita Nekrasov, Alexander Petrov, who are inmates of special correctional schools and orphanages, two of them are children with hearing impairments. In the expedition teenagers were accompanied with adult travellers Matvey Shparo and Boris Smolin and Russian presidential ombudsman for children’s rights Pavel Astakhov. Learn more on itar-tass.com