MOSCOW, June 5. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic environmental project sees its main task in the year of the 80th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II) cleaning and beautification of territories near military graves and in locations were fighting took place, the project's leader Andrey Nagibin told a news conference at TASS.

"In the year of the 80th anniversary of the Victory and in the Year of Defender of the Fatherland, we will focus on the Arctic locations where the fighting took place. Our task now is to focus on cleaning, on the beautification of territories next to graves and to monuments dedicated to the Great Patriotic War," he said.

Organizers expect more than 2,000 volunteers will participate in the project in the current year. Over the project's 5 years, 7,700 people have taken part in it. The volunteers have collected 19,800 tons of waste and cleaned more than 700 hectares of Arctic land. "For the Arctic, this, of course, is a drop in the bucket, because for 80 years many things have been brought there and nothing has been removed," he added.

The Clean Arctic project began in 2021. Captain of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered Arctic-class icebreaker Dmitry Lobusov, and Gennady Antokhin, Captain on FESCO’s ships from 1982 to 2012, are the project’s authors. Clean Arctic has developed into a platform uniting public and volunteer organizations, scientists, governors and businesses.