Buenos Aires. They are dedicated to measurements, observation, analysis. They strive to do their job “to the best of their ability” as a “contribution” to their country. They are the Ukrainian scientists at the Vernadsky base in Antarctica, from where they helplessly suffer the Russian military incursion.
“At first we spent several nights without sleep. All the time we tried to find out what the situation was in our respective cities. Now we check the news when we wake up and before going to sleep, in every free moment,” Anastasiia Chyhareva, a 26-year-old meteorologist, told AFP in a written and videotaped message.
The Vernadsky base is on Galíndez Island, 1,200 kilometers away from the Argentine city of Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego) and more than 15,000 from Ukraine. It has a team of between 11 and 13 people.
In the place, populated by penguins and whales, six low buildings stand under the Ukrainian flag in the middle of a majestic landscape of snow, ocean and rocks, with a changing and treacherous climate, in which the temperature ranges from one to -3 degrees Celsius in autumn and up to -20 in winter.
The work consists of meteorological, geophysical, geological and biological observation. Sometimes snow storms force young scientists to seclude themselves for several days at their base. The war, geographically distant, is always present in his thoughts.
like on another planet
For the geophysicist and data analyst Oleskandr Koslokov, the first impression was “as if all this happened on another planet, and not in our world.
That feeling was generated by my absence from Ukraine. (…) But the voice of my wife when she told me about the first explosions in Kharkov on WhatsApp, placed me in the center of the place in just a minute, ”she recalled.
“So, I started to guide my family on how to act. I had no time to reflect. I had to help them survive and escape from my city, just 40 kilometers from the Russian border, before it turned into an unpredictable hell,” added Koslokov, whose relatives found refuge in Germany.
Biologist Artem Dzhulai, 34, a native of kyiv but with family in other parts of Ukraine and in Crimea, said: “I find out about the situation in Ukraine every day on the Internet, but it is hard to be so far away and not to be able to help”.
Chyhareva explained that she gets up at 2 in the morning (7 hours in Ukraine) “to find out how they spent the night. I can’t start the day if they don’t send me a message saying that everything is fine, ”she pointed out. Her parents and grandparents have had to sleep many nights in a shelter.
Marine biologist Oksana Savenko summed up the group’s sentiments. “At the base we are between sadness, due to the anguish for the fate of our family and friends, and strong spirits due to the pride we feel for our army and our people who bravely fight for the right to live in a free country” .
The team will leave Antarctica in a few days, after a year. His relief is in the process of transition.
In these weeks, they have made an effort to help with donations, collection of signatures and online courses to distract Ukrainian children, but they consider that their main contribution is to fulfill their scientific mission.
“We do our job to the best of our ability. It is our contribution, because those who are fighting do not have time for this,” Chyhareva said.
Savenko, originally from kyiv, said her family is happy to know that she is “away and safe even though they haven’t seen me for a whole year.”
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