The Rus­si­an pre­sence in Sval­bard was alre­a­dy sub­ject of the last artic­le on this page, but the­re is more to it.

Accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten the­re are Rus­si­an plans to refur­bish and use seve­ral old buil­dings in Gru­mant and Coles­buk­ta. In con­trast to other con­s­truc­tion pro­jects, the Sys­sel­mes­ter recei­ved an appli­ca­ti­on for the pro­ject befo­re work star­ted on site. Befo­re appr­oval might be given, aut­ho­ri­ties need, howe­ver, more infor­ma­ti­on – a usu­al pro­ce­du­re in such cases.

The idea seems to be that the Rus­si­an want to be able to offer pro­per accom­mo­da­ti­on to their peo­p­le when they stay in Coles­buk­ta and Gru­mant for work.

Gru­mant (often cal­led Gru­mant­by­en) and Coles­buk­ta tog­e­ther used to be a Rus­si­an coal mining sett­le­ment which was, howe­ver, aban­do­ned in 1961. All buil­dings are accor­din­gly in an advan­ced sta­te of decay. Put­ting any buil­dings the­re back into use wit­hout com­ple­te­ly remo­ving them and buil­ding new ones seems to be quite ambi­tious.

Buil­ding in Gru­mant­by­en. It may need more than a bucket of paint.

It has been known for a while that the Rus­si­ans have plans to increase their sci­en­ti­fic acti­vi­ties. So far, they have been run­ning a sci­ence cent­re in Barents­burg (south of the hotel). Now the Barents­ob­ser­ver wro­te that the Rus­si­ans plan a major sci­ence cent­re in Pyra­mi­den, which is to invol­ve part­ners from „fri­end­ly count­ries“ such as Chi­na, Bra­zil, India, Tur­key and Thai­land.

Both Chi­na and India alre­a­dy run a pre­sence each in Ny-Åle­sund. Accor­ding to Nor­we­gi­an experts, it is not cer­tain that the­se count­ries are real­ly inte­res­ted in even fur­ther cos­t­ly sci­en­ti­fic pre­sence at ano­ther place in Spits­ber­gen. It also remains to be seen of Bra­zil, Tur­key, Thai­land or other count­ries are inte­res­ted in such a pre­sence on a long-term basis at all. But it is inte­res­t­ing to noti­ce that Pyra­mi­den is back in the focus for such plans. Also the Rus­si­ans are con­side­ring new acti­vi­ties bey­ond coal which is obvious­ly not a future-ori­en­ta­ted pro­ject and tou­rism which for obvious reasons is not doing well in the Rus­si­an sett­le­ments.

Pyra­mi­den: may beco­me an inter­na­tio­nal sci­ence cent­re, accor­ding to Rus­si­an plans.