site.btaKamen Nedkov: Overall, 34th Antarctic Expedition Was Scientific and Logistical Success

Kamen Nedkov, commander of the St Kliment Ohridski Bulgarian Antarctic Base on Livingston Island, told BTA that overall, the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition was successful both scientifically and logistically. He returned to Bulgaria on Thursday with the final group of the expedition.

The members of the group were welcomed at Sofia's Vasil Levski Airport by their families and friends, as well as by the head of the expedition and Bulgarian Antarctic Institute President, Prof. Christo Pimpirev.

Among those returning from Antarctica were the doctor of the Antarctic base, Atanas Peltekov; electrical engineer Alexander Bogdev; and logisticians Lyuben Lyubenov, Boiko Koliovski, Antoniya Tilyasheva, and Dragomir Mateev, who serves as the head of logistics for the Bulgarian Antarctic Programme.

The base has been successfully closed and secured, and the team hopes that the next expedition will be able to reopen it easily. "We had enough time and the necessary number of people to do it properly, so we do not expect any major surprises," said Nedkov. The 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition will end officially when the research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (RSV 421) docks at the port of Varna, which is expected on April 9.

The ship sailed off from Antarctica on February 17.

On that day, Christo Pimpirev, biotechnologist Kiril Kandilarov, writer Vasil Popov and journalist Jivko Konstantinov returned on a flight from Rome. Pimpirev said the 34th Bulgarian expedition was the best organized, had a very rich scientific programme and involved many foreign scientists.

The Bulgarian naval research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii departed for Antarctica from Varna (on the Black Sea) on November 7, 2025. 

BTA has had a national press club on board the ship since 2022 and another on Livingston Island since February 2024. BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said ahead of the fourth voyage to Antarctica that the news agency will have its special correspondent in January and February 2026.

The two press clubs exist thanks to the generous support of RSV 421 and Bulgaria's St Kliment Ohridski Base, which provide the necessary facilities. These two press clubs are added to BTA's other 41 national press clubs (33 in Bulgaria, seven abroad in neighbouring countries and in nations with large Bulgarian communities, and one mobile National Book Press Club), Valchev said at the time.

The news items of BTA's special correspondents on RSV 421 and Antarctica are freely available in Bulgarian and English on the news agency's website. They can be used free of charge by all media, with attribution to BTA. Valchev recalled that thanks to its correspondents, the news agency appears among the top results on Google when searching for the phrase “Antarctica correspondent”.