The 20th of June the President of the Russian Geographical Society, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergey Shoygu and the member of the Board of Trustees of the Russian Geographical Society , the Head of Administration of the President of the Russian Federation Sergey Ivanov visited the Big Tyuters Island. That is the one of the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland.
From the year of 2013 there has been working Complex Expedition «Hogland» on the Big Tyuters Island and on the neighbor islands. The expedition is organized by the Russian Geographical Society. It collects and binds together the record of a relatively small area, which even now fit to be called «white spot» almost in the center of Europe.
The President of the Russian Geographical Society started inspection of the island with a visit to the lighthouse, which was built on the Big Tyuters in 1904. That is acting lighthouse, but it needs to be reconstructed. Sergey Shougy asked the participants of the expedition to pay special attention to the restoration of the tower.
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Then the head of the Society examined in the depths of the forest, where the searchers found this spring the fragments of Soviet aircraft Pe-2, shot down by the Nazis in September 1943, and the remains of its crew. The participants of the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society established for aircraft engine number the names of all three crew members and connected with the families of two of them.
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The bodies of the heroes will be buried with honors near the village of Manuylova of the Kingiseppsky district of the Leningrad region. Meanwhile, Sergei Shoygu and Sergei Ivanov laid flowers at the symbolic memorial, made at the epicenter of the crash of the plane, on the granite rock, split in half by the impact.
At the other end of the island the President of the Russian Geographical Society visited rustic Finnish Cemetery, where the soldiers of the German garrison were being buried in the years of the Second World War. The Russian searchers together with the People's Union of Germany found the remains of 30 German soldiers on the Big Tyuters Island this year. They will be buried in German prefabricated cemetery in Sologubovka village in Leningrad region.
Assuming the results of his visit to the Big Tyuters, Sergey Shoygu suggested making the island available for the lovers of Russian history. «I would like the territory nevertheless to become more available, from one side, and those who will be keen to show the beauty of the island and talk about its history – from the other side», - Shoygu noted during the meeting with the participants of the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society.
According to the words of the President of the Russian Geographical Society, it is needed «to attract those who really wants to see virgin nature, - we have already forgotten this word unfortunately. Many things have been really preserved untouched from ancient times up to this day, because this territory had been the territory of a limited access», - Shoygu emphasized.
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We would like to remind you, that the Big Tyuters Island is now being a part of Russian border area, that is why the access to the island is limited. There is no resident population on the Tyuters Island, besides the light keeper and his family, dwelling there.
In general, the Russian Geographical Society is working much at the organization of field research, the President of the Society noted. «Dozens of interesting expeditions through the country are being organized by us. For instance, the great expedition on the Kuril Island Matua is working now. We have gathered geophysicists, speleologists, divers, combat engineers, chemists there, - a huge number of experts with equipment, there is work not for one year», - Sergey Shoygu told.
One more great archaeological expedition, organized by the Society – «Kyzyl – Kuragino», which had been working for five seasons. More than 500 leading Russian and foreign scientists – archaeologists and more than 2500 volunteers from 50 countries of the world took part in this expedition for all that time. All the artefacts, found during the project, were sent to the St. Petersburg Institute of History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The scientists will be studying this heritage during several years. On the archaeologists` opinion, some discoveries, made during the expedition, can dramatically change the representation of the life of our ancestors. Besides these expeditions the Russian Geographical Society supports more «modest» projects, in which the young researchers and scientists are takin part.