As anyone who has visited Russia knows, their drivers are pretty crazy. It’s common here to undercut/overcut other traffic and drive at ridiculous speeds in poor conditions. Only yesterday we got news that 45 cars had a crash on the Moscow road but accidents are very common. The main reason you know this is […]

It’s always a meeting of minds when George Bush and Vladimir Putin get together, as seen at this latest G8 Summit…

“I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in […]

When it comes to environmentalism, you don’t normally think of Russia of somewhere particularly ‘green’. Partly that’s true, you’re more likely to see a plane here than a car running on a Hybrid engine. One area they excel at though is recycling bottles and cans. At most street corners you can catch a babooshka (old […]

GREAT news. We heard on the TV last night that Ivanovo has been given 500m roubles ($180k) to repair and reopen the city airport, closed since 1991. There have been rumours about it reopening for a while now, will all this extra oil/gas money being available for development, but this is the official confirmation everyone […]

The United States has asked Russia to waive the diplomatic immunity of a Russian diplomat who is accused of drunk driving and hitting a New York City policeman.

A spokesman for the U.S. mission at the United Nations said the request concerns Ilya Morozov, a diplomat at Russia’s U.N. mission.

Russia has not yet responded to the […]

This is an great post and absolutely spot on - “How to drink vodka and stay sober”

One hour before the party.

1. Eat a couple of boiled potatoes.
2. Drinks one or two raw eggs.
3. Drink one or two table-spoons of olive oil. Sunflower oil will also do.
Thus it's guaranteed that at the Russian party you will […]

Anyone living in Russia knows the rule - the more expensive the car, the more outrageous the parking…

It also seems to be a status thing - a general ridiculing of the small fines for traffic violations. With the massive inequality of incomes here it is very hard to use fines as a deterrent for rapidly […]

Well this was a story that caused much amusement here in the office. The Ukraine government, in a moves to increase ‘Ukrainization’ of the population have decided to change the surnames of their citizens on the polling lists. Notably the Russian surnames have been changed to a more ‘Ukrainian’ sounding version.

Chernovil, a current lawmaker […]

Anna came running in to tell me that a Policeman had just rung her from her mum’s mobile. The one that was stolen off her in a mugging last month. Turns out they had caught the guy and found a whole pile of mobile SIM cards, they were going through them one by one and […]

Heh. Just found this post by Kirsten Mortensen on Russian’s giving the zoo animals vodka to help them keep warm.

Animals at zoos across Russia were being given shots, or in some cases buckets, of vodka, to keep them warm yesterday as temperatures in the European part of the country plunged towards an exceptional minus 40 […]