The Russian Geographical Society condoles with family, relatives, friends and colleagues of the deceased. And they are many thousands of people: Oleg Leonidovich had been launching new and new projects, making new friends, discovering new lands and businesses. The general director of the «Onejskoye Pomorie» National Park, president of independent non-profit sports organization «The Polar World», pioneer of ecotourism on the Lenniy Shores of the White Sea – that is just the beginning of the long list of activities of Oleg Prodan, the most part of which he invented and organized by himself.
He was a romantic – possibly since the Army, where he was a paratrooper, or possibly, since the year of 1994, when he got to the Arctic for the first time – and linked his life with the North. The main idea, the main passion of Oleg Leonidovich, had been the search for traces of the schooner «Saint Anna» of the polar expedition of Georgiy Brusilov, which disappeared in 1914. That very expedition, the history of which was described by Veniamin Kaverin in his «Two captains» novel. A new season of this expedition has just begun - in the morning on April 18 all its participants were in Moscow yet…
«We are about to install three meteorological buoys on ice, in places where were the last points of the schooner being on the drift marked, - Oleg Leonidovich told before the start of the expedition. - According to the testimony of coordinates of points, being rhythmically made by the buoys, we will manage to identify the intended route of ice drift in these latitudes. That will let us continue searching for traces of the lost expedition. New points of ice drift, which will be received from the new settings, will let us clarify the probable area of searches, and will provide a new data on hydrography of the Arctic region».
Three helicopters Robinson R66, which participated in the expedition, had been flying from Komi to the Belyi Island. As it was reported by the emergency department in the Arkhangelsk region, two of those three helicopters landed at the port of Sabetta due to adverse weather conditions. The third «Robinson» - with Oleg Prodan and the General Director of the «Mirital» company Alexey Frolov – went for weather reconnaissance. An experienced helicopter pilot-polar explorer Mikhail Farikh, who first in the world got the North Pole on the board of helicopter in 2013. The connection with the engine was lost soon, and some hours later the polar explorers – meteorologists of the Belyi Island found the crashed helicopter. All who were on board died.