He accompanied Peter to the White Sea (1694-1695); took part in the Azov campaign (1695); and was one of the triumvirate who ruled Russia during Peter's first foreign tour (1697-1698).
It is also connected by rail with Kalach on the Don, where merchandise from the Sea of Azov is disembarked.
The Pliocene appears only in the coast region of the Black and Azov Seas, but it is widely developed in the Aral-Caspian region, where, however, the Ust-Urt and the Obshchiy Syrt rose above the sea.
The annual yield of the Azov Sea fisheries, occupying 15,000 men, is valued at £600,000.
As a precaution against Tatar invasions he founded fortified towns on his southern frontiers - Tambov, Kozlov, Penza and Simbirsk; but when the Don Cossacks offered him Azov, which they had captured from the Turks, and a National Assembly, convoked for the purpose of considering the question, were in favour of accepting it as a means of increasing Russian influence on the Black Sea, he decided that the town should be restored to the sultan, much to the disappointment of its captors.