In the Kara Sea, for the second week now, a drama has been developing around the research vessel “Akademik Nikolay Strakhov”, which is stuck there. T-invariant describes the broad context of the problem and tells what role Mikhail Kovalchuk can play in the emergency, who tried in the summer to bring the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences into the structure of his Kurchatov Center.