MOSCOW: Vladimir V Putin's press secretary, Dmitri S Peskov , said now famous television footage of the Russian PM diving to the bottom of a bay and discovering ceramic jugs from the sixth century was, in fact, a setup.

In an interview released late on Tuesday, Peskov said that the jugs had actually been found by archeologists during an expedition "several weeks or days before." They were then placed in six feet of water where Putin, dressed in a wetsuit and trailed by cameramen , could find them. "Naturally, they either left them there, or they put them there," Peskov said.

"This is completely normal . It is totally not a pretext for malicious joy and so forth," he added. The episode provoked considerable amusement among the Internet users who are most skeptical of Putin's herculean image