North Pole skydivers: Troops compete in precision landing on drifting Arctic ice floe (VIDEO)

Defying the freezing cold of the Arctic, Russian and Belarusian troops have tried to outperform each other in a daredevil competition – skydiving from a helicopter on to a tiny, specially-designated patch on a drifting ice floe.

The head-spinning video of the soldiers plunging from a helicopter was captured on a GoPro camera.

“It's a very specific feeling,” said the winner of the competition, Valentin Prokopiev, who shared his emotions with RT’s Roman Kosarev, currently on the Russian military base in the Arctic. “The horizon is a bit dislocated and it seems like the planet is spinning. But it's amazing, I did it for the first time in my life and I won.”

Paratroopers from Russia’s Collective Rapid Reaction Force and the Armed Forces of Belarus had to show off their skydiving skills in poor visibility. They were still tasked with landing in a very small circle.

“It’s a unique event, for the first time in history such competitions are carried out so close to the North Pole. But despite extreme temperatures and other hardships, as you can see the athletes are doing just fine,” competition judge Arifula Ekshikeev told Kosarev.

RT’s Roman Kosarev arrived at the Barneo base to witness a search-and-rescue drill being conducted by a special airborne unit that was airdropped to the base from an altitude of 1,500 meters on April 21.

READ MORE: Russian troops plunge into icy water near North Pole during Arctic drill (VIDEO)

He has since been providing regular reports from the Arctic.

The Barneo base, established on a drifting ice field near the North Pole back in 2002, aims to give elite units the opportunity to practice such drills in the severe conditions of Russia’s extreme north.