Putin plunges deep in Black Sea to visit ancient shipwreck
Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a ride in a submersible to visit the remains of an ancient shipwreck off the coast of the Crimea peninsula.
Putin embarked on his 45-minute underwater expedition on Tuesday to have a glimpse of the newly-found sunken Byzantine galley on the Black Sea’s bed in the vicinity of the southwestern port city of Sevastopol.
“The galley was quite hard to see, as it was covered with 40 cm of ooze, but the ship is supposedly 27-30 meters long, and 13-15 meters wide… There are many objects, like amphorae, just scattered around there,” Putin later told journalists.
“It is still to be investigated by experts. I have to say that there are not that many similar remains like this in the north of the Black Sea,” the Russian president added.
He plunged down to a depth of 83 meters in the three-seat Dutch-made mini submarine as part of a Russian Geographic Society expedition researching Crimea’s ancient trade route.
The trip was made “to make sure once again how deep our historical roots lie, how deep our history of relations with the whole world is,” Putin further said, adding that such expeditions were essential “to understand how Russia’s national identity was established.”
It is not the first time the Russian leader takes a trip to the underwater. Back in 2009, he went 1,400 meters down in a sub to the bottom of Lake Baikal, located in Russia’s southern Siberia, and in 2013, he made a half-hour underwater expedition in a mini submersible craft to see the remains of the naval frigate Oleg, which sank in the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea in 1869.
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