Vladimir Putin has a way of looking almost like a clown to the wider world while sending out exactly the message he wants to his audience in Russia. Both appearances – the so nearly comical figure abroad and the national hero at home – serve him well as he continues in a project whose ultimate aim we can only guess at. Or try not to, if we want to get any sleep.

Putin the action man – in pictures Read more

The Russian president’s latest stunt casts him as a daring undersea adventurer in the bubble-like capsule of a bathyscaphe about to descend to an ancient shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea. It’s another pose that lends itself both to sensation and ridicule. Melodramatically, hostile westerners might see an absurd resemblance to a Bond villain. Putin’s love of hi-tech has all the boy’s toy bravado of a blockbuster spy movie. Where’s he going – his undersea lair?

In fact, he is colonising history itself. In diving to an underwater archaeological site Putin is exploring the trade routes of early Rus’. The Byzantine ship is evidence of the early economic ties of the first Russian state in the dark ages – and therefore, purportedly, of the inherently Russian identity of the Crimea.

Before anyone laughs at this apparently ridiculous image – imagine if Nicola Sturgeon posed in a bathyscaphe as she descended into the North Sea to prove the antiquity of Scottish fishing rights in a future cod war with England – it is important to recognise how astonishingly effective such propaganda has been. Putin is currently the world’s most successful leader.

Political heavyweight: Vladimir Putin working out in a gym – in pictures Read more

While other governments flail and float on dangerous tides, he achieves his goals and receives immense support for his bold acts. Straight into the depths, without a trace of nerves. His annexation of the Crimea in 2014 has proved immensely popular in Russia and on its anniversary this March he praised the “amazing patriotism” of the Russian people for supporting Crimea’s “historical return”.

Putin’s latest pose as a marine archaeologist, no less, is a spectacular way of insisting on how historic this return is. It follows the recent controversial appointment of an Orthodox priest to run Tauric Chersonesos, a well preserved ancient Greek city in Sevastapol, Crimea, that was founded in the 6th century BC and survived as a centre of Greek civilization until the final destruction of the Byzantine empire in the 15th century. Putin’s intervention highlights just one moment in this long history, the quite possibly legendary conversion of Vladimir the Great here in 988 that marks the mythic foundation of Orthodox (indeed, Christian) Russia.

How can modern politics be shaped by such long-ago events? Putin’s annexation of Crimea is a fait accompli, which Nato and the EU can do nothing about. It’s a fact. But he is still proving Russian’s ancient right to this territory, claiming once more as he descends in his submarine that it is not just Russian but the very heart of Russia – pursuing a national identity rooted in the medieval deeds of Viking traders and Byzantine merchants. And it goes down a bomb with his patriotic public.

Putin on a show: Russian president feeds personality cult with minisub trip – in pictures Read more

Laughable? But we have been here before. Putin in his sub is not just diving into the dark ages. He is diving to a far scarier time: the early 20th century. In the 1920s and 30s nationalist leaders founded their claims, just as he does now, on ancient rights and mythic national identities. Historical Germanic claims to places from Alsace to the territories conquered by the medieval Teutonic knights were revived by the National Socialist party. That propaganda played well at home too, while Hitler was often mocked abroad. If the recent revelation of royal sieg heiling is a reminder of anything it is that people failed to take extreme nationalism seriously enough before 1939. Mr Hitler was seen as a bit funny, prancing around in his Charlie Chaplin moustache. His antics were mocked as ruritanian silliness in central Europe.

So let’s laugh at Vladimir Putin too, and fail to take him seriously, and let the consequences of our cowardice play out. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?