According to the company spokeswoman Veronika Kazakova, once out of the packed ice, the container vessel will continue on its own.
Ten thousand tons of food supplies, medicine and scientific gear have been unloaded at the pier of McMurdo for the station's crew, with full trash containers from the past year being loaded on board.
Under international agreements, all Antarctic programs must remove trash, which is essentially a must for unimpeded research in the pollution-free area of the Antarctic.
Before the return trip to the Ross Sea, the Krasin cleared the 15-mile channel in the packed ice once again.
"Leading the dry-cargo vessel to McMurdo was much harder than leading the first ship, the fuel-laden Paul Buck tanker, because the temperature fell and the wind increased in the Ross Sea, on whose coast McMurdo is situated," the Krasin Captain Viktor Kovalchuk said.
Adverse weather hampered efforts. The channel the Krasin had broken through the packed ice became filled with thick ice and icebergs once again. The Krasin had to continuously break ice around the container carrier to prevent it from becoming trapped.
"It is not by chance that the U.S. government turned for help to Russia. Russia operates the largest icebreaker fleet in the world, whose crews are the most experienced ones in navigating through ice," Yevgeny Ambrosov, General Director of the Far Eastern Maritime Company said earlier.
"Our experience in icebreaking, including doing so in the Antarctic, is second to none in the world," he noted.
The Krasin left Vladivostok for the Antarctic on December 21, 2004 and is due back in March 2005.
