At his wedding last week Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov was photographed wearing a Richard Mille wristwatch, one of 30 ever made.
This has drawn a torrent of comments, some irate, some sympathetic, some of the ‘so what?’ variety. However, no one displayed intimate familiarity with the genre of the detective story, with its reliance on a tiny piece of evidence as the clue to solving a heinous crime.
For this £385,000 timepiece tells you everything you need to know about Russia’s kleptofascist regime. Start with this one detail, and nothing will remain unravelled.
You’ll probably agree that no Western politician would be seen in public wearing such an item even if he could afford it. Such ostentation would send wrong signals to a population whose average annual income is, say, £26,000, as it is in Britain.
Yet in Putin’s Russia, where the average annual income is under £4,000, Vlad’s mouthpiece doesn’t mind showing off bling worth almost 100 times as much. What does this tell you?
First, that neither Peskov nor his boss cares about the signals this sends for the simple reason that the population doesn’t matter. It’s so thoroughly brainwashed that few will see something wrong in a government official indulging in a vulgar display costing four times his annual salary.
Second, since Putin’s gang are all upstart Mafiosi, it’s predictable that they should display the kind of taste that’s traditionally associated with that group. The salient principle is that cornerstone of bad taste: if you’ve got it, flaunt it.
What the ‘it’ stands for is immaterial. It could be diamond and ruby rings on every finger. Or £10,000 suits worn badly. Or inordinately long fingernails, designed to show that their possessor doesn’t stoop to physical labour. Or indeed a grossly vulgar watch.
Whatever it is, the item falls into the same category as prison tattoos and underworld slang. Its role is to communicate belonging to an elect group, an elite perceived as such by its members. The overall message is “I’m the alpha male who’s above any law that doesn’t originate within the group.”
That bling worth £385,000 can’t be legally afforded by any public official is part of the message. According to Russian law, an official can’t even accept it as a present, for any gift worth more than £30 pounds must be declared, which Peskov hasn’t done.
Hence he, acting as dummy to Putin’s ventriloquist, is effectively saying “I’ve broken the law and I don’t care. What are you going to do about it, you worm?”
Then again, wristwatches occupy a particular place in the Russian psyche. Because before the war most Russians had never seen, never mind owned, such a luxury, it held endless fascination for them.
When war fortunes took millions of Russians into Germany and hence to an orgy of rape and pillage, watches, most of them Swiss, were looted first. This was actively encouraged by the high command and, because there was no shame attached to it, even otherwise decent people helped themselves.
Fascination with watches must have been coded into the Russian DNA, for even today’s Russians spend much of their wealth, ill-gotten or otherwise, on their wrist decorations.
Hence the criminal powers that be, and all power in today’s Russia is criminal, proudly flaunt their wealth by letting their shirt cuffs ride up.
Putin himself owns a £500,000 collection of watches, and that’s just those we know about. And even the ecclesiastical branch of the mob isn’t far behind. Of course the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church have to be monks, which is why their wrist wealth is modest. That is, it’s modest comparatively but not absolutely.
Thus Patriarch Kiril, previously known as Vladimir Gundiayev in the lay world and as ‘Agent Mikhailov’ in KGB files, once caused a bit of a stir when photographed sporting a £19,000 Breguet under his cassock sleeve.
Since many felt that such ostentation contravened the time-honoured principles of monasticism, the same picture was hastily re-released with the offensive item airbrushed out. However, what was left intact was the reflection of the watch on the polished table in front of His KGB Holiness.
Such laxity betokened chronic Russian negligence in paying attention to detail and, more important, the height from which Russian rulers, ecclesiastical or secular, spit on the ruled.
I have an intentional pun for them: watch out. When the Russians master the investigative techniques popularised by Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, they’ll eventually piece the case together.
Then they’ll throw this vile gang out – without, if history is anything to go by, displaying boundless mercy in the process. That will be a sight to behold, though I for one tremble to think what they’ll come up with next.