Cleaning up Baikal

Andy Potts and Anna Arutunyan

A journey into the abyss showed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the latest way to bail out beleaguered oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Taking his now-traditional summertime action-man trip - this time to the bottom of Lake Baikal - Putin emerged from the depths with news that Deripaska could reopen his pulp mill on the shores of the lake, less than a year after it was shut due to environmental concerns.

Baikalsk Cellulose and Paper Plant union chief Valentina Nesvetova confirmed on Monday that the plant was set to reopen in September.

"On Sunday a notice appeared at the plant saying it would resume production on 15th September," she told The Moscow News. "The notice says they are hiring. It contains a schedule, so it must be official."

Echoing Putin's recent intervention in Pikalyovo, cash-strapped staff at the factory got an immediate boost.

"There was talk that Putin was coming a week ago," added Nesvetova. "Immediately, within a day, they paid wage arrears for two months."

The Baikalsk paper mill employed 2,000 people - in a town of 17,000 - until it closed in October 2008. Since then there have been threats of hunger strikes, and fears that the town's heating system will also stop.

"We will not act thoughtlessly and carelessly, without thinking of nature and Baikal, but we need to act carefully, thinking of people who live here as well," Putin told reporters after his expedition.

Experts assured Putin that the plant was not a serious threat to the lake. "It exerted some local impact but there's no real damage," said Robert Nigmatulin, director of the Oceanology Research Institute.

But Nesvetova had reservations about reopening the factory, which has been a focus of environmental campaigns since it opened 43 years ago.

"I think that they shouldn't restart the plant. We should have clean air," she said. "But people need someplace to work, some place that won't pollute the air."

The submarine trip also gave Putin a new insight into preserving Baikal's unique ecology - and convinced him that Deripaska's plant could reopen, with scientists telling him the lake's eco-system was self-cleaning.

"I see the bed of Lake Baikal and it is clean," Putin told reporters through a hydrophone from the submersible, which dived 1,400 meters into the lake. "Baikal is in good shape, there is practically no environmental damage," he said afterwards, Reuters reported.

"I got a clearer picture of what could be done, how it might happen, and what shouldn't be done," Putin said.

"We need to develop and introduce such mechanisms soon. Besides, measures of responsibility for environmental pollution should be worked out," he said, RIA Novosti reported.

The summer holidays traditionally bring out Putin's adventurous spirit. In past years he has flown on strategic bombers and fighter jets, cruised the Barents Sea in a submarine, gone for a high-speed spin in a KamAZ sports truck and famously posed for photos shirtless while fishing in Siberia.

Putin dismissed suggestions that his next summer trip might be out of this world.

Asked if he was considering taking up a 2006 offer to fly to the International Space Station, he said: "There's plenty of work to do on Earth."

Last week Putin also tamed a wild whale at a research centre on Chkalov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Having been warned that Dasha, a white whale, could splash guests if agitated, Putin fitted a tracking device to her and told her "not to be angry", RIA Novosti reported.