This sends out a really clear message to all those Black Sea scuba divers, find some sunken remains and hoik the stuff out for yourself.
Premier Putin sees the archaeological heritage obviously as the excuse for another 'action man' photo-op. This was a dive off the Taman Peninsula in the Krasnodar region of Russia - home to the Phanagoria Greek colony (map below from Wikipedia).
Ukrainian politicians are known to be collectors of antiquities, as is apparently Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirnovskij. Is Vladimir Putin (looking a bit flabby in this photo) now trying to get in on the act? Its a shame he was not shown doing his bit for the patrimony of the Motherland by clobbering an underwater looter rather than doing a bit himself. In any case, the journalist seems to be of the opinion that these two nice clean jars were 'planted' in shallow water just off the coast for the Premier to 'find'. As if.
(Still at least he's not shown dragging a piece of impaled wildlife wriggling its death throes on a spear out of the water).
Hat-tip to Cultural Property Observer
1 comment:
Well, for your information, Poland ceased to be "on Russian territory" in 1918 and we got rid of the Russian army in the early 1990s. More recently though we've had CIA cells torturing people here, so if Obama stages a similar stunt, I'll have a bit of a dilemma whether to mention it or not.
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