 Details on the retreat of Siberian and Russian Far East glaciers less adequate than in most other glaciated areas of the world . There are several reasons for this , the principal one being that since the collapse of Communism there has been a large reduction in the number of monitoring stations . Another factor is that in the Verkhoyansk and <unk> Ranges it was thought glaciers were absent before they were discovered during the 1940s , whilst in ultra @-@ remote Kamchatka and Chukotka , although the existence of glaciers was known earlier , monitoring of their size dates back no earlier than the end of World War II . Nonetheless , available records do indicate a general retreat of all glaciers in the Altai Mountains with the exception of volcanic glaciers in Kamchatka . Sakha ’ s glaciers , totaling seventy square kilometers , have shrunk by around 28 percent since 1945 reaching several percent annually in some places , whilst in the Altai and <unk> mountains and non @-@ volcanic areas of Kamchatka , the shrinkage is considerably larger . 
