Posts tagged as:

General

Kermit the Frog negotiates with a Russian pig

December 2, 2007

Kermit the Frog, king of the free muppets, visits the Kremlin for some fruity negotiating with a Russian pig.

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Book Review: The New Cold War by Mark MacKinnon

November 15, 2007

Review by Michael Averko
The thought of a re-ignited Cold War can send a chill down some people’s spines. “The New Cold War” (Carroll & Graf, New York, 2007) is about a different kind of Cold War. It’s primarily about Western lobbying efforts to establish influence in the former Communist bloc and Russia’s opposition [...]

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New Russian Visa Regulations

October 31, 2007

Just a quick heads up to let you know that there have been a few changes to Russian Visa regulations recently.
Firstly, and probably most significantly, Russian visa applications can usually only be made in the country in which you hold citizenship. The only exceptions to this are if you can present proof that you [...]

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Quick Links

August 8, 2007

Time for another quick roundup of posts that have caught my eye recently:

Online Russian classics, translated into English
Russians used to write on birch bark
Kvas. Best. Drink. Ever. (Non alcoholic category).
The next Russian President will have a fine head of hair.
The Soviet Union, summed up in 100 photos.  My favourite is the Giant Lenin.  [...]

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Alternatives to AllofMP3

July 7, 2007

Missing AllofMP3.com, and can’t get it’s short-lived replacement mp3Sparks.com to work?  TorrentFreak have compiled this handy list of alternative Russian music sites.

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Denial of Service attack on Russian blogs

June 7, 2007

Neeka has posted translations of a couple of articles about a brute force Denial of Service attack which has temporarily closed down some of the more politically minded sections of Live Journal in Russia:
Just a few hours it was impossible to post messages that contained the following links: “ru_nbp”, “nbp_ru” [NBP is the National Bolshevik [...]

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Just Russia to merge with Communist Party?

May 30, 2007

Just Russia boss Sergei Mironov thinks his party will soon merge with the Communist Party, creating a ‘true’ Socialist party in Russia.

The Just Russia party will walk the same road as “honest Communists” and “there are far more things that we share than those dividing us.”
Moreover, Mironov said he was extending a friendly hand to [...]

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Where is Mosnews?

May 24, 2007

Update, April 2009: After almost two years, Mosnews has returned from the dead!

Anyone know what’s up with Mosnews recently?

As far as I can tell, they’ve only posted one news story since the beginning of May.

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Maria Sharapova’s top 10 partners

May 1, 2007

Maria Sharapova’s top ten mixed doubles partners, that is:
10. Orlando Bloom
9. Bono
8. Yao Ming
7. Lebron James
6. Adam Scott
5. Christiano Ronaldo
4. Prince William
3. President Putin
2. James Bond
1. John McEnroe
Alarming choices, aren’t they?
Anyway, it’s not often I get to scoop La Russophobe when it comes to an oddball Sharapova story, so I’m going to sit back [...]

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The best books about Russia… on the radio

April 10, 2007

All through this week, BBC Radio 4 are reading a series of excerpts from the latest and best books on Russia. You can either listen live, or the shows will be archived on the BBC website.
The books include:

Monday – The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold, Martin Sixmith
Tuesday – A Russian [...]

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State of the Russia blogosphere

April 6, 2007

La Russophobe has updated her report which ranks various English language Russia blogs. The update refines the previous data, in order to try to give a better picture of which is the most “popular” English language Russia blog.
According to the new LR index, the top five English language Russia blogs are:

Russia Blog
La Russophobe
Very Russia [...]

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Tracking the Russia blogosphere

March 5, 2007

Ever wondered what the top English language Russia blogs are, by the numbers? Well, wait no more, for La Russophobe has broken the stats down, ranking blogs by:

The number of blogs linking to each
The total number of incoming links
Overall traffic
Net worth

The stats certainly make interesting reading, and provide a pretty good overview of who [...]

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Russian soldiers forced into prostitution

February 13, 2007

Yet another claim of abuse in the Russian ranks – this time that conscript soldiers are being forced into prostitution on the streets of St Petersburg by older servicemen:
A spokeswoman for the Soldiers’ Mothers, Ella Polyakova, told the BBC that in St Petersburg there was “a network of clients” who would pay for sex with [...]

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A new cold war? Don’t believe the hype

February 12, 2007

If you believe the hype, Vladimir Putin’s speech in Munich this weekend was little more than a declaration of a new Cold War.  If you look more closely, though, it’s little more than a reminder to the world that Russia’s foreign policy is based on realism – something we’ve known for a long, long time.
Seriously, [...]

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Russia’s economy less free than Communist China’s

February 3, 2007

The Heritage Foundation have released their 2007 rankings of Economic Freedom, and it will make difficult reading for the Kremlin, as capitalist Russia apparently has a less free economy than communist China.
Out of 157 countries ranked, Russia places a rather dismal 120th, and 9 of the other 12 former Soviet states ranked higher – most [...]

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