MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is spending a couple of days on vacation in Siberia and, as is traditional, has been accompanied by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
After a trip to Blagoveshchensk, Putin arrived in Siberia for a few days, and he will return to Moscow soon, Peskov said.
Peskov did not elaborate on the specific place the president is visiting on his vacation. "He is indeed there with Shoigu, I won't tell you're the name of the place. It's Siberia. This is an ordinary vacation trip: taiga, mountains, walks in the fresh air, etc.," Peskov said, adding that videos recorded during the president's vacation will be published on the Kremlin website as soon as they become available.
Putin and Shoigu will come back by the end of Wednesday, Peskov said. "We'll have a rather stressful working day on Thursday with a very extensive schedule planned," he said.
Putin has repeatedly opted for Siberia as a destination for rest and recuperation for a couple of days. From time to time, Shoigu keeps him company. In particular, the Russian president and the defense minister went to the taiga in the Republic of Tuva late this March.
While on vacation, the president and the defense minister might discuss Shoigu's resonant proposal on creating new cities with populations of more than a million people in Siberia, Peskov said, adding that such proposals are first discussed in concept and then "are studied very thoroughly."
"This is a huge amount of titanic work. But as for discussing [the proposal] at the moment, something we talked about a minute ago, I think Sergei Kozhugetovich [Shoigu] has had the opportunity to conceptually discuss this matter with the president," he said.
When meeting with representatives of the scientific community at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences on August 5, Shoigu came up with the idea of moving the Russian capital to Siberia and creating five new cities with populations of more than one million each there. According to Shoigu, these should be large scientific-industrial and economic centers, each of them oriented toward a specific sphere of work.