GOGLAND ISLAND, Leningrad region. July 29 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists that he goes underwater and flies planes to better appreciate the hard work of the Russians for whom it is their job.
"I am doing this because our people work everywhere: in the air, under water, and under ground. And I think that I must get in where our Russian citizens, specialists are working, to see how they do it, to better understand the price of what many of those people have dedicated their lives to," Putin said on Saturday after making a trip to the bottom of the Gulf of Finland aboard a bathyscaphe to inspect the wreckage of the Soviet Shch-308 submarine which sank in 1942.
"On the ground problems abound. To have fewer of them, one either has to rise high into the air or go down under water," he added.