Into the inferno

A day earlier,Mr Putins own co-pilot,Dmitry Medvedev,Russias president,had remarked that it was tasteless to make political capital out of peoples grief. His comments were addressed to the Kremlins opponents rather than to his mentor,but Mr Putins stunt made them sound ambiguous. Throughout the crisis,which has killed at least 53 people and devastated vast swathes of land,Mr Putin has appeared in his element,charging around the burned-out countryside promising compensation to villagers,banning the export of wheat and issuing instructions over the phone to the office-bound Mr Medvedev from among groves of silver birch trees.

As Muscovites choked in toxic smog and morgues struggled to cope with a doubling of the death rate,Russias president attempted to redirect public anger towards local officials,long stripped of independent power by the Kremlin. Natural disasters,Mr Medvedev said,cannot be blamed on the government. Mr Putin went further,comparing the wildfires to an invasion by mystical foreign dog-knights.

Russia suffers from peat-bog fires every year. But this year they have occurred in the densely populated centre of the country,which has experienced its hottest summer in centuries. Although soaring temperatures clearly played their part in aggravating the fires,so did a number of human factors. A recent forestry law effectively disposed of dedicated forest guards; the dire state of Russian roads often makes it impossible for firefighters to reach burning villages; much firefighting equipment is in an appalling state. And then there is the corruption that converts the governments modest spending on fire safety into luxury cars for some fire-inspection chiefs.

Censored on television,public anger found its way online,in the form of YouTube clips and blog posts. But Mr Putins publicity machine managed to co-opt even this,when the prime minister personally responded to one expletive-loaded post. A blogger described the plight of his village,100 miles from Moscow: We had three ponds,a fire alarm and even a fire engine under the nut-case Communists. Then the democrats came… the ponds got drained and sold for plots,the fire engines disappeared probably got nicked by Martians and the alarm got swapped for a telephone fucking modernisation,only it did not work because they did not plug it in…. Why the fuck do we need some innovation centre… if we dont even have fire engines? …Give me my alarm back and take away your fucking telephone.

In a handwritten reply,Mr Putin praised the writers style and promised him a fire alarm. By siding with this mystery some suspect planted blogger,Mr Putin appealed to the disgruntled,foul-mouthed section of the electorate,rubbished Mr Medvedevs talk of modernisation and turned the serious issue of government competence into a joke. But local officials took him at his word. Instead of fighting fires,they spent the next few days looking for the blogger to give him his alarm.

Mr Putins stunts will help him retain his image,in the eyes of many,as Russias supreme leader. They may even help him retake the presidency in 2012 when Mr Medvedevs term expires. But there is one thing they cannot do: make Russia safer and better governed.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2010