Russia plants flag 14,000 feet under North Pole as Putin stakes claim to Arctic

Last updated at 14:03pm on 2nd August 2007 Comments
Russia has sent a submarine to plant a flag beneath the ice of the North Pole in an audaciouas bid to lay claim to the resource-rich Arctic.


The submarine managed to plant a Russian rust-proof titanium flag on the seabed. 14,000 feet beneath the surface of the Arctic Ocean, according to Vladimir Strugatsky, vice president of Russia's polar exploration association.
Russia wants to extend the territory in the Arctic it controls right up to the North Pole.


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The Russian ship carrying the submarine moves through the Arctic 's sea ice of the



The region is believed to hold vast untapped oil and gas reserves.
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 200 mile economic zone around the north of their coastline.


But Russia is claiming a larger slice extending as far as the pole because, Moscow says, the Arctic seabed and Siberia are linked by one continental shelf.


One of the aims of the expedition is to allow oceanographers to study the seabed and establish that Russia and the North Pole are part of the same shelf.


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The submarine reaches the seadbed on its mission to plant the Russian flag



"It was a soft landing ... There is yellowish gravel down there. No creatures of the deep are visible," expedition leader Artur Chilingarov was quoted as saying.


Soviet and U.S. nuclear submarines have often travelled under the polar icecap, but no one has so far reached the seabed under the Pole, where depths exceed 4,000 metres.


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.