How Russia is cosying up to SA to create an Antarctic BRICS+ bloc — one tiny toy icebreaker at a time

Imagine you’re the head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (Aari), the Kremlin’s scientific agency for the poles. You’re a bloke. Obviously. And you want to promote scientific cooperation in some of the world’s most geopolitically prestigious zones. The Russian way. 

You weren’t always onboard with the idea of human-caused climate change, but does that mean you’re “anti-science”? 

Hell. It is not like you’re Australia, which has claimed 42% of Antarctica (but almost no one recognises that special brand of antipodean zealotry). 

Then, shiver me timbers, in February 2022 President Vladimir Putin goes off-piste again with more violent sabre-rattling in Ukraine, a fellow veto holder of the Antarctic Treaty — possibly the world’s most enduring pact for freezing territorial conflict. Moscow’s missile wrecks Kyiv’s Antarctic HQ. 

As recently as October 2024, Putin’s envoys use the treaty’s annual fisheries meeting to say there’s “no evidence” of the “assumption” that Russian “actions” had negatively impacted Ukraine’s Antarctic programme. 

Read the story of "military penguin" Yuriy Lyshenko.

He worked in Artic, spent 4 years in Vernadsky base, joined the Ukrainian army, lost his leg there.... and returned back to Antarctica on prosthesis.

We are very proud of such our colleague!

See the whole story. pic.twitter.com/ICUTNgO2iB

— National Antarctic Scientific Center ?? (@nasc_ua) February 23, 2025

Yuriy Lyshenko, a long-serving electrician with Ukraine’s Antarctic programme, lost his right leg on the battle front in October 2023. He returned to Antarctica in February on a prosthetic leg.

At the same meeting in Hobart, Tasmania, your colleagues also link arms with Beijing’s diplomatic bulldozers to veto renewed krill protections and marine protected areas (MPAs). These shenanigans further frustrate cooperation with the West — because vast amounts of the organism at the base of the Southern Ocean food web can now be hoovered up in a single area. 

Eish, you know? Awkies. 

But you, you’re staying po-faced, in case you ever get stuck in a lift with Putin (seriously, imagine). And maybe all’s not lost. There is, surely, always BRICS+. 

Russia has friends in Antarctica

This may, or may not, be how Dr Alexander Makarov, Aari’s director, views his prospects in the simmering powder keg that is the bottom of the world. Dr Makarov has not responded to the seven comment requests we have sent him since October 2021, but we can look at the facts. 

For starters, we can tell you that Makarov’s job manages a critical tool in Russia’s global power strategy. Whether the Kremlin needs Arctic environmental data to research territorial claims or understand how climate change is opening up the Northern Sea Route, Makarov gets out of bed to help coordinate that stuff. 

And, at the opposite end of the Earth, in Antarctica, Aari’s strong scientific footprint ensures heft in future geopolitical negotiations. 

Yes, it’s primarily a science agency. But it’s not your everyday one. Makarov’s Aari is as fundamental to the Russian polar machine as Nasa is to American space dominance. 

Yes, we can tell you that Makarov’s job is very important. But we can also tell you that Aari wants to be seen as a powerful convenor of friends, because science diplomacy is the oil that greases Russia’s polar machine.

In fact, as Aari’s own press archive shows, the idea of BRICS+ cooperation in the Antarctic only emerged as a public relations theme during the institute’s war-induced isolation. 

BRICS+ expedition sailing through Cape Town

“Despite the difficult geopolitical situation,” the institute said in a February 2025 annual report, “Aari scientists do not stop developing contacts with foreign scientists…” 

In that report, Aari makes special mention of “[expanding] cooperation with scientific organisations in China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and South Africa in the field of polar research”. 

In February, the institute’s Akademik Tryoshnikov research vessel completed an Antarctic “round-the-world” natural science cruise. About 19 BRICS+ science institutions were on board, as well as scientists from four of the treaty’s Global South veto holders: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru. The vessel, now resupplying Russia’s Antarctic research stations, is set to refuel in Cape Town in April. 

Framed by Table Mountain, the Akademik Tryoshnikov at anchor in Table Bay in May 2022. (Photo: Xabiso Mkhabela)

Speaking off-record, some international scientists have told Daily Maverick they have been ordered not to speak with Makarov. Even so, Aari remains a member of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (Scar) — the world’s largest body of its kind. 

And, to counter perceptions of isolation, Aari has issued statements marking its ongoing attendance of Scar discussions, such as Makarov meeting with “friendly countries, in particular the BRICS countries”, to discuss cooperation. 

Regardless, it was at the treaty’s 2024 talks that Beijing and Moscow placed Scar’s “best-available science” in their crosshairs, firing their wrecking balls through every tabled conservation plan. 

Almost unanimous calls to protect krill, emperor penguins and MPAs — nothing was spared the usual, relentless blows of Chinese and Russian vetoes.

Beijing and Moscow’s polar officials could not be reached for comment.

A geopolitically exposed wilderness

There is no evidence that South Africa has yet crossed the floor to support Beijing and Moscow’s hazardous game of coalition politics, but the Antarctic remains particularly exposed to the decision-making powers of the treaty’s states. Compared with the 193-state UN, a separate system with no say in Antarctic governance, there are only 29 decision-making states in the exclusive treaty universe. 

Each holds an equal veto to inflict on whatever conservation proposal may or may not offend them at any given point.  

Africa’s weight — whose coastlines stand to be redrawn by Antarctica’s rising sea levels — rests upon the shoulders of one country, South Africa, the continent’s only veto holder. 

And the Antarctic is not just any ecosystem exposed to geopolitical whims and resource ambition. It’s ground zero for “runaway” climate change, and it swirls right around 10% of planet Earth, feeding all world oceans, which feed the global community of life. 

So, how the world and South Africa respond to any potentially emerging coalition politricks by any countries — BRICS+ or not — is non-trivial. 

Aari’s meeting with South African scientists

Scientific literature holds limited evidence of academic collaborations between Russia and South Africa. Except for Russia’s use of Cape Town’s sought-after polar port facilities, the two founding signatories of the 1959 treaty have largely passed each other like ships in the night. 

But in October 2024, the South African National Antarctic Programme issued an unusual statement. The statement celebrated an exclusive science presentation in Cape Town to the head of another state’s polar agency.

That head was Dr Alexander Makarov. 

Held on 17 October, when Beijing and Moscow were unleashing their veto spectacular at the treaty’s fisheries talks in Tasmania, the hybrid presentation was attended by some of the country’s top polar scientists. Afterwards, they held talks with Makarov on sharing “resources, infrastructures and expertise to protect and study this unique region”. 

The statement stressed that South African and Russian state agencies “have a long history of involvement in Antarctic studies, and these discussions [are] a step forward in research and innovation collaboration”.

“As the world watches the impacts of climate change unfold,” the statement crooned, “this international collaboration offers hope for a deeper understanding of our planet and the preservation of its most fragile regions.”

For his part, Makarov had also held cooperation talks with India’s polar research agency in April 2024, during which he handed agency director Dr Thamban Meloth a toy replica of Severny Polyus — Russia’s Arctic research flagship.

This was the same vessel that unfurled the Russian tricolour across 1,423 square metres of Arctic ice in August 2023 while drifting north of Russia. The flag’s white, blue and red bands were displayed as a symbol of power and patriotism in the planet’s “most extreme conditions and iconic places” — including Crimea and Antarctica.

In Cape Town, Makarov handed Professor Juliet Hermes of the South African Polar Research Infrastructure (Sapri) her own toy replica of the Severny Polyus.

A screenshot from Sanap’s October statement. Here, Aari’s Alexander Makarov presents Sapri’s Juliet Hermes with a toy replica of Russia’s Arctic research flagship. (Source: Sanap public statement)

When asked about the possible geopolitical implications of a potential deal with Russia, Hermes underlined South Africa’s evidence-based decision-making and cooperation across “multiple platforms”, of which BRICS+ was just one. 

“Scientific cooperation is built on the premise that international collaboration is necessary to address global environmental challenges, especially in such remote areas,” Hermes contended. “While geopolitical complexities exist, the pursuit of scientific knowledge — particularly in understanding and protecting polar regions — remains a core focus.

“South Africa’s engagement in the Antarctic region is based on its commitment to conservation, climate research and upholding the principles of the Antarctic Treaty System. Statements regarding collaboration should be understood in this broader context rather than interpreted as political endorsements.”  

Hermes said “no formal agreements or projects have been established between Sapri and Aari”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9yHbHgGqEU

WATCH: Aari’s “polar explorers” unfurl a gigantic Russian tricolour in the Arctic in August 2023. 

Cash-strapped polar sciences: Ready for ‘formal’ deal with Russia, China 

UCT oceanography head Professor Marcello Vichi was also at the Cape Town meeting. 

He did not respond to Daily Maverick’s requests to see the “BRICS Relay” slideshow he presented to Makarov, but he warned against viewing scientific collaboration with countries such as Russia and China through a lens of suspicion or conspiracy. Such cooperation should be seen as a pragmatic response to global challenges, he proposed.

“Given the current tension in the US related to climate science, I would see [it as] extremely detrimental to further create a sense of conspiration theory about the polar sciences, especially in developing and resource-limited countries,” said Vichi, speaking in his capacity as director of UCT’s marine and Antarctic research centre. He said his views did not represent those of any institution.

Vichi acknowledged the controversial Sino-Russian positions “that you mention”, but he was frank about his desire to work with Chinese and Russian institutions.

“To be completely honest, I would very much welcome a formal collaboration with Aari and other Chinese institutions with polar resources. In this way, the views of South African scientists could permeate other contexts and build stronger consensus on how relevant it is to keep monitoring and studying our polar southern hemisphere,” said Vichi. 

He argued that South African polar scientists — occupying a unique place as African representatives with BRICS+ as well as Global North links — faced severe funding challenges in a sea of immense domestic “issues and needs”. 

Conversely, he claimed that China and Russia were “among the very few countries still investing in the Antarctic space. My position is that they would never use their icebreakers for hidden operations if Sapri scientists were part of their scientific programmes.”

He also cautioned: “I would like to remind you that many countries have expressed territorial claims over Antarctica, and Russia and China are not among them.”

Fact check: Claims that warrant scrutiny 

Vichi claims “many Global North countries” have long obstructed MPAs, but Japan is now the only Global North fisheries commission member not actively backing a proposal. Past Global North opposition pales in comparison to China and Russia’s vocal annual resistance since 2017.

Seven — rather than “many” — of Antarctica’s 29 consultative states have staked territorial claims which are neither recognised nor denied by the treaty. 

Notably, Russia is actually a semi-claimant state, meaning it has never renounced its longstanding interest in grabbing a slice of the world’s southernmost pie. (It has agreed to a hands-off policy as long as the indefinite treaty lasts.) 

Both Beijing and Moscow, in fact, are known for south polar territorial posturing. Rosgeo, the Kremlin’s mineral explorer, has explicitly declared the geopolitical intent behind its intensive, “scientific” search for oil and gas across vast East and West Antarctic waters via Cape Town. (The Democratic Alliance and environmental groups have publicly objected to such map-making multiple times.) 

Beijing has positioned its Kunlun station on the Antarctic plateau’s highest ice dome and Earth’s coldest point — taking a cue from the US, a semi-claimant whose south pole station intersects all territorial claims.

Russian oil and gas seismic surveys in Earth’s last unmined frontier since Antarctica’s mining ban entered into force in 1998. (Graphic: Daily Maverick / Tiara Walters / Righard Kapp)

Since 2024, two souped-up Chinese and Russian stations have opened their doors in East Antarctica. The Russian station, a Vostok overwintering complex, was part-funded by gas oligarch Leonid Mikhelson. 

To some, this may be evidence of Antarctic investment, but senior Aari glaciologist Dr Alexey Ekaykin previously told Putin that infrastructure and science were not the same thing. 

“You may get the feeling that we are doing well with Antarctica,” Ekaykin, a Vostok ice core specialist and IPCC author, told the Russian president at a Moscow think-tank just ahead of his budget-sapping, illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

“Alas, this is not so, because the strategy is really about infrastructure, only there is not a word about science,” ventured Ekaykin, bemoaning Russia’s Antarctic action plan for 2030. In a video reviewed by Daily Maverick, he cleared his throat and eyeballed a visibly exasperated Putin: “This is a rather paradoxical situation.”

He reminded Putin he had raised this topic with him “several times in previous years”.

“Nevertheless,” he argued, despite producing leading science, “there is no state support for scientific research in Antarctica in Russia.” 

Putin offered the scientist a glacial smile. He reached for his pen and vowed to “punish those who made a mistake”.

Ekaykin could not be reached for comment.

Russia, South Africa and the MOU to ‘coordinate positions’

More than three years after Beijing and Moscow had begun their yearly MPA blockade in 2017, South Africa’s polar authorities would sign two seminal — if apparently contradictory — documents on the same day: 19 March 2021. 

One was the state’s internationally focused, conservation-first strategy for the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. The other was an Antarctic memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Russia.  

Signed by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), the MOU intended to “consult regularly” through the governments’ “respective foreign ministries”. 

But that clause was not a diplomatic eyebrow-raiser. 

More unorthodox was the concession to “coordinate their positions” at the midyear consultative talks and even the acrid fisheries deliberations. 



The March 2021 MOU signed between Russia and South Africa.

What the ‘diplomatic note’ said: South Africa’s response

Asked to reconcile the strategy’s conservation approach with an MOU aiming to “coordinate positions”, DFFE spokesperson Peter Mbelengwa said: the “non-binding” MOU “does not equate to alignment with Russia’s stance on conservation matters… 

“Rather, it reflects South Africa’s broader approach to diplomatic engagement, where dialogue and cooperation with all Antarctic Treaty parties — including Russia — are essential to advancing conservation-based measures.”

Mbelengwa repeatedly stressed ideas such as South Africa’s commitment to “scientific integrity, conservation and multilateral cooperation”. (He conceded South Africa did not have a “similar MOU with Ukraine”, but did cite an agreement on fisheries observers. “Several” countries, including Ukraine, used Cape Town as an Antarctic gateway.)

The state-position supported MPAs and there had been no potential shift in the country’s “consensus-driven” stance towards closer cooperation with Russia and/or BRICS+.

“No specific positions have been coordinated with Russia” and no further meetings or activities with Aari were “anticipated at this stage”.

Mbelengwa confirmed that it was Aari that requested the meeting. “The purpose of the visit was indicated in the diplomatic note as: to enhance cooperation in the field of polar science.”

The meeting request, added Mbelengwa, “was transmitted via the diplomatic channels”. 

Sources who did not want to be named said South Africa’s foreign ministry, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, was that channel. The department did not respond to requests for comment.

Yet, the meeting was hosted by the National Research Foundation, a major funder of Antarctic projects; and the South African National Antarctic Programme, which facilitates scientific access to the far south.

So, if some scientists — as those sources suggest — had misgivings about doing an exclusive presentation to a warring state with a record of weaponising scientific data, the invitation’s winding diplomatic journey would have left them in an unenviable position. 

The meeting also reflects the hyper logic of so-called Antarctic exceptionalism. 

Awful things, like war, happen in the “outside world”. But the business of science — hell or rising water — must go on. 

Banning black people from the white continent: the Soviet Union’s silence

Far from being the warm, fuzzy symbol of Cold War cooperation some claim it to be, the treaty was forged from fierce territorial rivalry. Led by the US, the founding negotiations included two states that would detest each other for decades while sharing a grotesque human rights record: the anti-communist apartheid regime and the Soviet Union. 

And yet, even if the ANC now cites Soviet support to justify its controversial friendship with the Putin regime, Soviet diplomats stayed silent about South Africa’s ban of black people from the white continent.

It is precisely this chequered history that exemplifies the paradox of Antarctic exceptionalism. 

The International Science Council’s manifesto enshrines the “right to participate in science”. And more recently, a planet in peril is seen as the reason diplomats and scientists cannot stop talking to each other.

“Considering the importance of international collaboration for tackling climate change and ensuring environment protection, cooperation with national science programmes of any country that conducts research in the region is essential,” says Dr Yelena Yermakova, a Scar committee member and the 2023/24 Fung Global Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. 

“Institutions consist of individuals who might support their government or might not,” Yermakova observes. “In some countries there aren’t many other pathways for scientists than joining state-funded projects.” 

Talking and exchanging data, in other words, was like a diplomatic trust fall.  

But there is a footnote here for scientists. 

The “challenge for the South African scientific community is the price to be paid for all of this”, warns Professor Klaus Dodds, a geographer and executive dean at the School of Life Sciences and Environment at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

“I don’t think Russia’s scientific networks and associated opportunities are going to rival the prestige, funding and networking opportunities outside the Russo-sphere.”

Russia’s new Vostok station in East Antarctica, part-funded by Novatek chair Leonid Mikhelson. (Photo: Aari public statement)

‘Normalising’ the ‘bleeding’ liberal order

“BRICS+ will work if countries interested in preserving the Antarctic Treaty System and protecting the environment get together for the betterment of the region and humankind,” Mathieu Boulègue, a global Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, told Daily Maverick.

But writing for the Polar Institute, Boulègue and Dodds say they fear such a potential coalition “might very well start introducing bargains and trade-offs concerning the creation of future marine protected areas or wildlife protection measures in exchange for resource governance or elsewhere”. 

“A potential BRICS+ coalition in the Antarctic is an unsettling prospect” for the West, including the US and the UK, the authors add. “Such a situation would essentially take good regional governance hostage and dim the spirit of consensus.”  

“The logic for Russia — and China, trailing behind — is to ‘normalise’ things with regards to Antarctic governance in a BRICS+ context,” Boulègue notes, and says the South Africa-Russia memorandum is seen as part of this: “The rhetoric is simply that ‘we are putting on paper what has been a factual development’ in regional relations.” 

Boulègue also notes: “Even more deviously”, Moscow might use “normal” developments in world affairs to entrench the argument that the Western-led liberal order is “bleeding allies by the year”. Russia’s south pole approach is pitched as a “more equitable, prosperous solution” in a system where it is the West — not Russia — that is framed as the primo science weaponiser. 

Dodds says Moscow “is very clear that it will pursue alliance building with ‘friendly nations’, including South Africa. As with the relationship with China, albeit at a different scale, it will be very transactional.”

US Antarctic officials under likely orders not to mention climate change would make such a transactional approach “ever more explicit”.

“If there is an opportunity for South Africa,” Dodds offers, “perhaps it is one where the southern hemisphere states create an informal alliance demanding that Antarctica remain a zone of peace and cooperation.”

Boulègue urges: “We need watchdogs. A country like South Africa could actually play that role to ensure that the Antarctic Treaty System remains secure and that the BRICS+ logic does not turn into a geopolitics fest.

“Or we’ll turn the region into the free-for-all China wants.”

Russian FOMO vs South Africa’s Antarctic muscle

Among others, in 2024, taxpayers funded a DFFE party to fly to the India-hosted Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting without presenting one independent paper. 

Russia and Australia submitted 10 and 15, respectively. Mbelengwa explained the African representative’s underwhelming performance by arguing that “papers are submitted to advance certain objectives and, in this instance, South Africa did not find it prudent to submit any papers”. 

Indeed, being a regional watchdog is one thing. Playing convenor and kingmaker is another, and here Dodds believes South Africa’s Antarctic capabilities are “very limited”.

Russia, on the other hand, “has a highly economic-security-driven agenda which is in part driven by a fear of missing out when it comes to Antarctic resources and a well-honed interest in mischief-making for others”. 

And thanks to the polar access it offers, Moscow is able to convene BRICS+ partners who share its vision of reforming global governance.

For instance, after stepping off the Russian Antarctic Expedition in mid-2024, an Indonesian university announced it would start lobbying the country’s accession to the 58-state treaty.

That means southeast Asia’s biggest economy now joins the new, rapidly growing momentum of BRICS+ members who are either current or aspiring treaty signatories, wielding no fewer than four equal veto holders among them. (BRICS+ invitee Saudi Arabia became the newest Antarctic observer state in 2024, second only to the UAE, which acceded as treaty observer in December.)  

Dr Alexander Makarov with Leonid Mikhelson while inspecting Vostok. (Photo: Aari public statement)

The race for the pole

While Trump’s Greenland showmanship and contrasting lack of icebreakers consume global attention, the Kremlin has not taken its eyes off either pole. 

For Russia, in fact, its Antarctic expedition staff aren’t just “scientists” — the terminology used by other national Antarctic programmes. 

If the Russian Antarctic Expedition pays your salary, you’re going to be a “polar explorer”. 

So it was that polar explorer Kirill Klevasov, a geomagnetist, trounced his competition at a BRICS+ themed “international sports race” at a Russian East Antarctic station in August.

Like a self-respecting Russian automaton, the victor conquered the 9km “snowy track” in 36 minutes (four minutes per kilometre) in “an air temperature of -22°C and a wind speed of 10 m/s”.

Pointing out that India was second and China third, Aari did not mention the other explorers’ race times. 

It’s a friendly reminder that, whether against friendly country or foe country, Russia remains in it to win it. 

“As the Soviets used to say,” Dodds points out, “not one step back.” DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk