Putin Dives to the Depths of Lake Baikal, Enough to Save it?

It takes just a few minutes for Vladimir Putin to dive nearly fourteen hundred meters (4,600 feet) and become the first Russian politician to reach the bottom of the world’s deepest freshwater lake.

He has been looking at how the research program into the ecosystem of the lake is progressing.

....Vladimir Putin’s personal participation in such landmark events certainly helps boost his own popularity among ordinary Russians. But, the Prime Minister says that the main goal is to attract people’s attention to what is really important.

In 1957, when the public first heard about plans for a cellulose plant at Baikalsk, people who had mutely obeyed the Soviet government for 40 years finally howled in protest. Local scientists, writers, fishermen, and ordinary citizens banded together to fight the plant, igniting an environmental movement that was a direct forebear of all Soviet activism to come. Their protests were mostly ignored.

....After years of protest, the lake's defender were rewarded in April, 1987, when the Soviet government issued a comprehensive decree protecting Lake Baikal. Among other things, it abolished logging anywhere close to the lake shore and decreed that the cellulose plant be "reprofiled" for activities harmless to the environment by 1993. Exactly what those activities might be has not been decided.

Meanwhile the dumping of industrial waste into Baikal continues, and bilious smoke still rises from the plant 24 hours a day.

...Dozens of international expeditions that worked on Baikal during recent years have come to the unanimous opinion: Baikal remains the cleanest reserve of fresh water, but the local alterations in its ecosystem near the Baikal pulp-and-paper plant and the region where the Selenga River flows into Baikal, impose their negative effects on its inhabitants.

Putin spent the Sunday evening and Monday in a tent camp near the Khemchik River. Putin enjoyed the whitewater rafting on the river and made a short stop in a desolate location amid mountains. He saw a flock of sheep and a shepherd nearby. The prime minister invited him for a cup of tea, and the shepherd asked Putin to visit his home.

...Putin spent the Sunday evening and Monday in a tent camp near the Khemchik River. Putin enjoyed the whitewater rafting on the river and made a short stop in a desolate location amid mountains. He saw a flock of sheep and a shepherd nearby. The prime minister invited him for a cup of tea, and the shepherd asked Putin to visit his home.

...Putin removed his watch and gave it to the man’s son as a gift. The shepherd received from Putin his own hunting knife.

...It is not the first time when Putin visits Tuva. He visited the republic in August 2007 in the company with Albert II, Prince of Monaco, and Russian scientists.

During the current visit to the republic Putin had a meeting with Andrey Subbotin, a senior scientist of the Institute for Ecology and Evolution Problems. The scientist is in charge of Putin’s program, which the prime minister initiated in 2007 to save the snow leopard.