PUTIN IN NEW DIVING BELL ADVENTURE

In the on-going series of exciting adventures, earlier this week our superhero, Vladimir Putin, descended to the very bottom of the dark, cruel sea (50m in the Gulf of Finland) to explore an ancient shipwreck. Once again, at great personal risk to his person, and wearing smart white trainers (as worn by other superheroes like Justin Bieber), Vlad went down to the ocean bed, looked through the 6-inch glass of his little porthole, and then went back up to the surface a few minutes later to declare another heroic triumph for ...err…himself.

This latest triumph comes hot on the heels of his other aquatic exploits in which he found an old wine bottle on the bottom of the Black Sea and shot a whale with a bow and arrow.  In other adventures, we have seen the fearless Vlad darting a tame....apologies....a wild and dangerous tiger, riding a pony whilst not wearing a shirt (which everyone knows is very daring) and courageously locking up 3 pop stars from punk outfit Pussy Riot, for singing very rude ditties in church.

Vlad will therefore have been very dismayed to learn, upon surfacing from his deep sea adventure and climbing out of his diving bell, that Pussy Riot have once again been up to all sorts of mischief whilst he was on the ocean floor, releasing a video parodying Vlad as a Russian Ayatollah, and accusing him of spreading the country's wealth amongst his political and business mates.

The latest stunt is another attempt to bolster his waning popularity as increasing numbers of  urban Russians tire of his rule and its patronages and corruption. Like so many politicians, he is unable to move with the shifting times and attitudes of those he once represented, but from whom now he only elicits scorn and derision. And with each new stunt, that level of scorn will only increase.

What a tragedy for Russia he is though. With its declining birth rates, low mortality and unreformed, economy, there is a sense that it is in long term decline. It cries out for clear farsighted leadership. It faces formidable challenges. Its educated youth are leaving. On its far south eastern borders the huge, heaving dynamo of north eastern China rises like a great, all engulfing tidal wave of progress and people that one day, given the mathematical inevitabilities of a fixed land area and a swelling population, may spill over into sparsely populated Russia on the other side of the fence (already over 1 million Chinese live over the border).

Russia is also institutionalised with corruption, rotted with bribery, as the preparation for the winter Olympics in Sochi bears witness, being the most expensive Games of all time. Its become primarily a get rich scheme for cronies of the state, the pretence of sport merely serving as the enabler for this.  Putin’s posturing and blustering on the world stage cannot hide this and avoid the sense of national decline.

Against all this, Pussy Riot may not of course pose a threat to Putin. However, they do more than create a discordant objection to his rule. Despite State persecution of them, they are back in their brightly coloured outfits, angrily unbowed by the bullying of the law. Through public performance they are openly and brazenly mocking and challenging the Russian president and all he stands for with their brash outbursts about him and his corrupt cronies, all the while figuratively and literally thumbing their noses at his fading aura of authority. Such outrages would have been unthinkable in Soviet times; times after which Putin yearns.

Yet the Riot is, in a way, symbolic of a wider movement in Russia that is losing its fear of it's once mighty president. As the protests against him continue, and as his attempts to portray himself as a nationalistic, macho super hero in farcical adventure videos fail, so Putin risks becoming ever more bitter and dangerous. Personal ambition, arrogance and corruption will be mixed in with increasing public ridicule and protest. All risk coming to the boil eventually in the same political pot.

For us in the West, in our easy, human rights protected democracies and, by comparison, well cushioned welfare state societies (despite austerity), we have long since forgotten the courage it takes to face down genuine tyrants on our own streets and to live in truly oppressive states. But in Russia they know well the features of that bleak landscape and the courage needed to endure and challenge it. Its epitomised by a band of punks, and by hundreds of thousands of Russians who take that courage with them onto the streets in protest.

 Also see RUSSIA: EVERYTHING CHANGES AND EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME… and PUTIN: NOT A PUNK ROCK FAN?