Perhaps Prime Minister Putin is more attuned to Western criticism than he lets on.

For example, two years ago the British motoring show Top Gear rather harshly called the Lada Kalina - the newest model from Russia’s much maligned firm - a poor copy of  a mid 90s Fiat, made out of turnips.

Yet when Putin decided to embark on a trans-Siberian road trip in a yellow Kalina to revive the national carmaker image and confound the haters, he must have secretly taken Jeremy Clarkson’s words to heart.

Amateur video taken by a group of off road enthusiasts shows two ’spare’ yellow Kalinas in his entourage, including one that had already broken down being carried on a flat bed truck.

On the tape featured today at Radio Liberty, the citizen journalists are heard laughing with incredulity at the fact that the Kalina couldn’t be trusted to cover even a 200 mile stretch without incident, as well as in disgust at the over 100 official security and support vehicles (all foreign made) accompanying Putin on his ’solo’ drive.

“This is all paid for with our money”, one of the men is heard muttering.

“The organisers forgot that he was not making the trip in the age of Potemkin and his villages, but in the age of digital cameras and the internet” gloated a Belarussian news report on the fiasco.

This is not the first time that Putin used false advertising to promote the domestic automaker. In January, he debuted his personal camo-coloured Lada Niva jeep only to admit that its original engine had been specially replaced with a German one.

Of course, the Lada stunt proves that the Potemkin village conceit - the age-old tsarist and later Soviet fixation with posturing (derived from an intense insecurity vis a vis the rest of the world) remains well entrenched in the current regime.

But that’s not even the worst of it!

For Semyon Shifrin, one of the men who filmed Putin’s roadtrip, an even greater disappointment was that for all his machismo, the Prime Minister was not man enough to handle a Lada like an ordinary Russian:

We didn’t expect to see as many as three of these much-advertised Lada Kalinas. It made us laugh,” he says. “If they want to promote this car, why take three of them on the trip? Putin is a grown man. He can make repairs himself if something breaks. He could even turn this into a PR stunt.

The big news from Russia has been yet another series of arrests at an opposition rally. Nemtsov and Limonov were predictably hauled off while astute bloggers dissected Putin’s latest macho threat that unauthorised protesters would be hit upside the head with a truncheon.

Yet behind these political theatrics, another much less boisterous yet much more important conflict is being meticulously played out. One whose outcome may do more to shape Russia’s -and Putin’s- future.

This is the conflict between court oligarchs and rival shareholders Potanin and Deripaska over the control of Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer. Yesterday, Putin personally tried to mediate in the increasingly acrimonious tug of war for one of the country’s most strategic assets.

Indeed, unlike the gruff public persona he deployed when dealing with demonstrators, Putin was silky smooth and subtle in his meetings with Potanin and Deripaska. He chose his words very carefully and avoided any harsh words, delivering a subtle rebuke to the latter and ruling out any ‘third party’ state intervention.

There is more than just Russia’s mineral wealth (and the regime that it nurtures) at stake here. Norilsk is a giant factory town whose terrible environmental and social conditions make it a prime candidate for the kind of unrest that crippled Deripaska-controlled Pikalevo last year and that could seriously undermine the government’s stability.

Hundreds have died in the original battle for control of Russia’s natural resources, when Deripaska crowned himself king of the country’s aluminium reserves. Potanin, who acquired much of his wealth during loans for shares by using his extensive Kremlin connections in shady circumstances, is no less a pushover. Yet both oligarchs are Putin approved survivors who outlived the purges of their one-time contemporaries Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky.

Right now, many of Russia’s strategic resources are in the hands of such loyal oligarchs. Until recently, they maintained a sort of cartel over their respective goodies, but now, it seems that there is a push to expand, consolidate and renegotiate ownership. Sometimes, this is welcomed. But at other times, it can cause problems. Perhaps in a related development, the government is now holding back from transferring any more vital assets into private hands.

The Norilsk wars present a major challenge for the leadership; something that, unlike a mere protest, a few truncheon blows can’t fix.

Most people would find it hard to upstage a meeting between the head of a giant nuclear power and one of the world’s most high profile rock stars.

But most people are not Putin (thank God!?). By single-handedly  harpooning a whale while shouting “Living in general is dangerous!”, the Prime Minister not only made Medvedev’s tea with Bono look positively Austenesque, but even settled an old score with Captain Ahab.

The point of the stunt was clear: for all his Deep Purple fandom, Medvedev does not live dangerously. Bono at least salvaged some machismo by even accepting a cup of tea from a Russian official.

Putin’s political embrace of manliness, courage and danger (except when facing calls for open and transparent elections!) has a long pedigree most clearly espoused by the Italian futurists. Unfortunately, that pedigree links him to some of the less savoury characters in history, from generations of Latin American junta leaders to Margaret Thatcher.

That’s because a Nietzschian taste for danger, which puts hair on your chest and separates the men from the boys, is a central tenet of this particular strain of right wing politics: an obsession with the extraordinary, a worship of the strong and virile, a distaste for the morass of listless, dirty, wussy masses, a distrust of intellectualism and nuance. Danger, motion, dislocation are the forces that throw up strong leaders and destroy the vacillating and the weak; there is no room or allowances for the old, the vulnerable, or even the ordinary. There is room only for a few.

Because the cult of danger is so inherently disruptive, elitist and authoritarian, it is the perfect theoretical crutch for such conservative agendas as neo-liberalism, free market capitalism and political gauchoism.

For Putin and his ilk, living dangerously by flying helicopters, doing karate or going after whales (surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and doctors on call, natch) on the rough seas is a life-affirming thrill.

Meanwhile, for most of his citizens, living dangerously by negotiating work and life in a ruthless capitalist society stripped of a social welfare net, a functional health system and any long term stability is the life-crushing norm.

The old Labour leader Neil Kinnock put it best on the eve of Thatcher’s election in 1979:

If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old

Conveniently, none of that applies to Russia’s extraordinary Prime Minister, so what’s the problem?

To freshen up after saving the Amazon from the construction of the world’s largest dam and then helping beat the Gulf oil spill, Avatar director James Cameron decided to relax in an unusual setting today: by celebrating his birthday in a submarine at the bottom of Lake Baikal.

While Cameron’s connection to Baikal so far stems mainly from his interest in deep sea underwater cinematography, the lake could be an equally good fit for his passionate environmental activism.  Like the amazon basin, it is a unique depository of biodiversity; and like the amazon, it is at huge risk of destruction from government-connected industrial concessions - namely, a giant oligarch-owned paper mill.

Besides, saving Baikal would be a good way to atone for plagiarising the plot of Avatar from a Russian science fiction story.

It’s can be easy to hate on Cameron, a Hollywood titan who has taken flack both from the US right for Avatar’s unpatriotic pacifism and from the international left. Just recently, the irascible Serbian radical Slavoj Zizek accused him of making a film that “enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle”; in other words, favouring the simulacrum of liberation over its real and ugly truth.

True, Cameron’s bleeding heart enthusiasm means we are likely to hear from him about protecting the Baikal in the coming days or week.  But the director’s latest high profile eco-campaigns do seem to have gone beyond PR or fickle vanity projects: his reputation, cash and can-do attitude have done much to empower grassroots activism.

So is Cameron’s Baikal adventure just a liberal billionaire’s caprice, or could the world’s biggest lake have just found its saviour in the world’s biggest (if not necessarily deepest) film director?

Sorry, Slavoj; I’m on team Cameron here.

Luzhkov, an avid beekeeper, had ordered his prize-winning hives to be evacuated away from the smog. All the while, he has refused to declare a state of emergency for Moscow’s human inhabitants.

This is just one stark example of government callousness and incompetence  in the face of the fires that led Simon Schuster to ask, in today’s Time article: ‘Will the Wildfires Stoke Political Change in Russia?’.

Sure, the people are seething with anger at ruling United Russia, and some regional deputies, such as Volgograd’s Vladimir Dvuzhilov, have ripped up their party cards.

Yet Schuster sides with the pessimistic prognosis of political analyst E Volk, who says that “aside from showing the ruling elites that they should do more to manipulate public opinion, give some more handouts, further marginalize the opposition, I don’t think that any real change can come of this”.

Surprise! Russia’s leaders are surviving the wildfires much more comfortably than their beleaguered constituents, up to 700 of whom are dying per day in Moscow alone.

Indeed, as the flames threaten to kill up to 15000, cost $15 billion worth of GDP and even turn radioactive (!!!), some things they don’t seem to threaten are the careers of those responsible for the poor preparation and response.

This despite the fact that Medvedev’s approval ratings plummeted to 38% in the last month and Putin’s have fallen as precipitately as the water he’s been dropping from the firefighting plane he has piloted as part of his latest action-man routine.

Even Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a man long in the Kremlin’s cross-hairs,  has escaped with only slight burns from the single limp and passive-aggressive rebuke he received from an unidentified government official.

So far the disaster has claimed the political lives of just one small and isolated group of mid-ranking bureaucrats: Medvedev sacked a few Defence Ministry officials for letting the fire destroy a top military installation. The Minister himself received only a mild rebuke.

That was more than the Minister for Emergencies, Sergei Shoigu, got from his old-time crony Putin despite conceding his helplessness to deal with the blaze. Apparently, he’s doing a heck of a job.

Anyway, says Konstantin Kosachev, one of Putin’s pocket parliamentarians, people are just not interested in apportioning blame.

He should tell that to his prime minister, who narrowly avoided being lynched by angry townsfolk.

Mr. Putin, visiting a village in the Nizhny Novgorod region where 11 people had died in a fire, got a firsthand view of the rising anger over the fire response. When he waded into a crowd to discuss a plan for monetary compensation, a woman yelled in anger.

“You didn’t do anything, everything is burning, don’t make promises,” the woman said, according to a video of the encounter posted on the Internet. Mr. Putin said he could do nothing now, as the village had already burned. “We asked for help. We trusted you. Why didn’t anybody do anything?” the woman said.

That’s right! What’s the point of looking for blame when the damage has already been done? Like get over it and move on already, Russia!

Seems like one Chechen rebel leader should’ve thought twice before clicking “Upload” on his you-tube resignation video!

Two days after his original clip appeared to announce his resignation in favour of Aslambek Vadalov, indecisive Doku Umarov says he changed his mind.

“In connection with the situation shaping up in the Caucasus, I consider it impossible to step down as Emir of the Caucasus,” said the bearded Islamist leader, dressed in a black skullcap, camouflage and a bullet-proof vest.

“Inshallah (God willing), this statement cancels out my previous statement,” Umarov said as he pressed his palm on the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle.

Perhaps he got cold feet after hearing about how his arch enemy Zakayev was trying to ingratiate himself with his ex-successor Vadalov?

Or maybe he wanted to be around to see how the Chechenisation of Russia will contine.

Totally moderate! That’s what Akhmed Zakayev, another former rebel leader now living in London, says.

And naturally, that’s what’s been obediently parroted by the English language press (the  Russian press has been (UN)surprisingly silent on the matter, believe it or not!).

Reuters printed unchallenged Zakayev’s comments that the new leader, Aslambek Vadalov, represents a moderate break with the violent Islamist leadership of Doku Umarov, who had supported terrorist acts against civilians.

Zakayev said the new leadership wanted to focus on the possibility of talks with Moscow but did not elaborate. He added: “The only thing that we don’t accept … is violence against civilians. (We have always) condemned acts of terror.”

Radio Liberty also reported that “Zakaev described Vadalov as a moderate with no links to Islamic groups” without any attempts to fact check such an assertion.

They would have done well to read NYU Prof Mark Galeotti’s extensive backgrounder on the new chief.

Writing on his blog In Moscow’s Shadows, the security expert describes Vadalov’s “very early exposure to a radical Islamic perspective of the war in Chechnya”. Contrary to Zakayev’s assertions,

Vadalov’s rhetoric…followed the Islamist trend, and by 2007 he spoke not of Chechen independence so much of a wider struggle against Russia and the non-Islamic world

Overall, the only really moderate thing about Vadalov appears to be the level of his success as a field commander; he quickly became out of his depth in charge of larger assignments. Yet Galeotti believes that Umarov, having grown increasingly unpopular among his rank and file Jihadist fighters, needed a

successor who satisfied the younger-, middle-ranking and non-Chechen commanders but who also respected him and would be unlikely to turn on his predecessor. After all, Vadalov was one of the first field commanders to pledge allegiance to Umarov when he assumed command.

The account suggests that contrary to Zakayev’s version, Vadalov represents a strategic and ideological continuity with Umarov’s policies but with a fresh face, similar to the way Putin had succeeded Yeltsin in 1999.

So why would someone like Zakayev, a cultured man of some principle who truly opposed Umarov’s brutal Wahhabism (so much that he resigned from the government in exile) now be so intent on boostering his protege?

Zakayev could simply be using the foreign media to loudly suck up to Vadalov in the hope of re-entering politics and becoming relevant again after so many years of being a frozen out ‘telephone commander’ as he was branded by Umarov.

That’s totally understandable. What isn’t understandable is just how easily Reuters and RFE/RL allowed themselves to be spun by -let’s not forget- a politician.

On holiday, Comrades!

Still there.

Will return next week!

Those Bolshevik posters depicting the Russian Orthodox Church as an integral pillar of dictatorship had to wait almost a century for vindication.

Ironically, it may come from as surprising an ally as the European Court of Human Rights, to which the museum curators sentenced for hosting anti-religious art have applied to contest their convictions.

For much of the post-war period, the Russian Orthodox Church was seen as a subversive repository of anti-Soviet, and by extension, liberal values. It was the declared source of spiritual inspiration for iconic Russian artists such as Akhmatova, Gumelev, Tsvetaeva and Solzhenitsin.

In fact, in the 1970s, even many Jewish intellectuals, who had only recently been the victims of Orthodox Church sponsored pogroms, stated to associate themselves with the Church as both the only available source of civil society and a locus of principled opposition to the Communist regime.

During Perestroika, the church struck a political deal of mutual assistance with Yeltsin ad the Democrats. When Yeltsin came to power, the Church was generously rewarded for its support: not only with a defacto religious monopoly (the new regime made life as difficult as possible for foreign missionaries and Muslims) but also, incongruously, with lucrative business assets including the exclusive rights to tobacco sales.

By the end of the last century, the Russian Orthodox Church returned firmly to the status quo as a political and financial powerhouse, even acting as a kind of foreign policy arm of the government.

It reached such a point that during every local election, each candidate would fund the construction of a small church so that cities became dotted with the functioning churches paid for by the winner as well as the semi-constructed, derelict shells of churches left unfinished by the loser.

Today even if the current government would like the church to cede some of its power, that is unlikely to happen voluntarily: a decade worth of sponsorship, kickbacks and other largesse has created a monster that can no longer be undone similarly to what happened with the Taliban following US Cold War era support.

What is interesting is the role of the liberal opposition, headed by Boris Nemtsov, in all this.

Nemstov, it turns out, is financially supporting the defendants in the blasphemy case against the Church. Yet, in the 1990s when he was Yeltsin’s protege, he fully supported and profited from the cosy Church-state relationship that he now so heroically condemns.

So what happened? Actually, nothing. Neither the church nor the Nemtsov led liberals have  changed. The Church has remained an authoritarian, illiberal and intolerant institution from pre-revolutionary times till the present. It was only supported by dissidents and democrats during Soviet times because of its anti-Communism, which was erroneously conflated with liberalism.

Similarly, Nemtsov and the entire crop of 90s liberals have always been right-wing elitists concerned only with getting and maintaining power. Cozying up to the church in the 90s was as consistent with those goals then as attacking it is now.