Vladimir Putin: At Sea in More Ways Than One

Putin went for a dive in a submersible of the Crimean coast today. He was apparently in search of the Russian economy, and the ruble, but the sub couldn’t quite make it that far down.

As people get older, they tend to repeat the same behavior even after it has become self-parodying: they run out of new ideas and cling to old ones that used to work. This is especially true for people who are at a loss for what to do, because they are presented with insoluble problems.

Vladimir Putin is a perfect illustration of this. Even though his acts of derring do have become the target of world-wide satire, did the submarine thing again. (I thought he would actually go to Kherson, and claim to stumble a cross a relic of Vladimir the Great, but he went with the glass bottom boat again.) Perhaps smarting from previous criticism of his scuba dive in which he claimed to have found a (planted) amphora, today he asserted that the sea bottom was strewn with them.

Putin is at sea in more ways than one. He faces a dire economic situation. His old standby-various energy powerplays-has been undermined by declining demand growth and the development of new supplies. He is in a quagmire in Donbas. He has no idea how to address any of these problems, and indeed, everything he tries seems to turn out badly.

So he goes to the well one more time, and looks even more delusional than usual. It’s the kind of thing that people who are out of ideas do.

It’s also hilarious that the man who bans Dutch cheese and Dutch flowers*, and stymies the investigation of the shutdown of airliner with dozens of Dutch citizens aboard, went on his dive in a Dutch-built vessel.

I guess he didn’t trust a Russian one. Given that it’s August, that’s probably wise.

To round out the comedy, Putin communicated with Medvedev by radio. Poor Dmitry, always the sidekick who never gets to do the fun stuff.

* The Dutch flowers are allegedly infested with California thrips. Dutch flowers and American bugs! Obviously a Nato plot!