ST. PETERSBURG, April 14. /TASS/. Russia has handed over the presidency of the coordination of scientific work within the Arctic Council to Norway.

The 4th Ministerial meeting in St. Petersburg on Friday summed up the results of scientific activity under Russia’s presidency in the Arctic Council. The meeting was organized by the St. Petersburg committee for Arctic affairs.

"The emblem of the presidency is a pack of sled dogs. It symbolizes working together to achieve common goals. I suggest a sculpture featuring a sled dog be used as a passing of the baton of the presidency. We will hand over this symbol to our Norwegian colleagues and we will find a way to do it physically in the near future," said the meeting’s moderator Anton Vasilyev, who was Russian Ambassador to Iceland from 2014-2020.

Scientific cooperation within the Arctic Council is carried out on the Arctic Science Ministerial platform, which was created in 2016.

The biannual presidency of the Arctic Council came over to Russia from Iceland in 2021, when the Council celebrated its 25th anniversary and Russia will give way to a new president in the Arctic Council in May 2023 at a virtual meeting.

The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental organization of Arctic states, which is comprised of Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Norway, the United States, Finland, and Sweden. After the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Western nations froze contacts with Moscow and decided to continue the work of the Council without Russia.