Denis Kretz had the honor of accepting the award.
Denis Kretz: "This is not an ordinary expedition, this is not some one-time, one-year event. This is a multi-year project of the Northern Fleet and the RGS. The project has been going on for 4 years already, and such a big award was given to us for the first two years of our research”.
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In 2018, the plan for the first integrated complex of the Northern Fleet to the Novaya Zemlya archipelago was approved. Three expedition groups were operating for 3 months. Almost all parts of Novaya Zemlya were investigated. The most significant part of the expedition was the reconstruction of the routes of the pioneering explorers. During the thousand-kilometer route march, the routes of those who first crossed Novaya Zemlya were reconstructed. The participants repeated Leonid Grinevetsky's route from the Barents Sea to the Kara Sea. After that, participants repeated Feodosiy Chernyshev's route from the Kara Sea to the Barents Sea and up to the Matochkin Strait. The the journey across Novaya Zemlya got into the Book of Records of the Russian Armed Forces. They also repeated Rusanov's 1909 route in Krestovaya Bay. Beyond that, some of the participants were working on reconstructing the architectural monuments in the southern part of the archipelago.
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From 2018, scientific groups began to take part in the expedition as well. The main purpose of the second stage of the expedition was to explore the Franz Josef Land archipelago, but a number of activities were also carried out on the northern island of Novaya Zemlya. One of the goals was to confirm the formation of the new five islands. The expedition also investigated the trading post on Pakhtusov Island, abandoned more than half a century ago, and specified the coordinates of Ivan Kournikov's grave.
In 2020, a discovery of international significance was made – the expedition participants discovered the food depot of the Austro-Hungarian expedition, founded on Novaya Zemlya in 1872. Crosses marking Vladimir Wiese and Mikhail Popov's points for astronomical observations were also found.