A Russian submersible reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean on Thursday in a mission to symbolically claim the resource-rich region by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, Russian media reported.
Two Russian submersibles started their dive from an ice hole near the North Pole and dived about 4 261m, Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing its correspondent on board a support ship.
The second submersible is expected to reach the seabed soon, Vesti-24 television station reported.
Under international law, the five states with territory inside the Arctic Circle — Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States and Denmark via its control of Greenland — have a 320km economic zone around the north of their coastline.
But Russia is claiming a larger slice, extending as far as the North Pole because, Moscow says, the Arctic seabed and Siberia are linked by the same continental shelf.
Soviet and US nuclear submarines have often travelled under the polar icecap, but no one has so far reached the seabed under the Pole, where depths exceed 4 000m.
Expedition leaders have said their main worry is to resurface at the ice hole where they dived as the mini-submersibles are not strong enough to break through the North Pole’s desolate ice cap. — Reuters