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GOGLAND ISLAND, July 15 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin went deep into the Baltic Sea on Monday to explore a tsarist flagship that sank in 1869.
The half-hour journey to the Oleg, a prized steam frigate in Tsar Alexander II’s navy, was a highlight of the president’s trip to this island in the northwestern Leningrad Region to learn about underwater research projects by the Russian Geographical Society.
Putin submerged within the clear-paneled, five-seat C-Explorer-5 submarine, which luxury retail site RichVibe touts as the “world’s first subsea limousine” with a price tag of $2.4 million.
The Oleg sank 60 meters below the surface of the Gulf of Finland after being rammed by an ironclad during a naval exercise. It descended to the seafloor in just 12 minutes, and its interior and weapons remain mostly intact.
Known for a keen interest in exotic adventures, Russia’s leader in August 2011 scuba-dived in the Kerch Strait, which links the Black and Azov seas, and came up with two ceramic jugs dating to the sixth century.
His press secretary later admitted that the urns had been discovered earlier by archaeologists and placed there for Putin to find.
In 2009, Putin took a Russian Mir-1 minisub to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake, to check for reported pollution from a paper factory. He soon allowed the factory to reopen.
