I’m happy to say that Siberian Light was one of the blogs they reviewed recently, although SL only received 3 stars, out of a possible 5.

I shall clearly have to work harder…!

The first, Elections in Russia hasn’t got any posts yet, but says in it’s About page:

This blog will attempt to provide an insight into the Russian blogosphere and other news outlets throughout the Russian parliamentary elections.

The second, called… Выборы в России…. has just the one post, which went up today in English, linking to pretty much every major English language blog about Russia. The glowing reference to Siberian Light as “another popular blog on Russia” certainly got my attention!

Keep an eye out - if these blogs (this blog?) are anything like as good as the other TOL blogs, it’ll be well worth reading.

… to the Accidental Russophile, who has been busy blogging up a storm

The latest attempt to quantify which Russia Blog is the biggest, bestest and most popular is underway at Krusenstern (the original post is in German - a machine translated English version of the page is here), and predictably provoking controversy beyond belief.

Here are the top five - see if you can guess why I like this ranking method better than previous attempts…

The list covers the “Top 50 blogs”, in both English and German, and there are some interesting blogs out there - including a few I hadn’t discovered before. Krusenstern’s post is well worth a visit, if only to browse the list and discover a few new blogs.

Some interesting debate in the comments, too, mostly involving La Russophobe.

One particular point, which I hadn’t considered before, covers whether blogs should publicly release their Sitemeter data. The potential problem with this is that it also displays quite a lot of information about the site’s visitors, including (partial) details of each visitor’s IP address. I think, over the next few days, I’ll need to consider whether it is appropriate to keep this data publicly available. In the meantime, any thoughts welcome.

Steady State is a new blog from Transitions Online set up to cover “unresolved conflicts in the former Soviet space”. 

Covering pretty much everywhere from Transnistria to Georgia, it’s been going for a few months now.  I’m not sure how I missed it, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a must-read from now on.

Thanks to Lyndon for the link.

The title says it all really.  Publius Pundit has a new design.  And very attractive it looks to.  Go see.

And no, it’s not just about girls.  Posts so far include:

• The Typhoon - the world’s largest submarine
• Mayakovskaya metro station
• And the obligatory Russian lady is Uber Babe Oksana Fedorova

Just a quick announcement - Russian News Analysis is now called Whims of Fate.

New blogs seem to be lurching to life faster than I can keep up. One of the most recent is Российская Федерация, by Heribert Schindler, seems to be majoring on relations between Russia and Germany.

But the post that really caught my eye was this one, which obliquely discusses anti-Russian sentiments, both within blogs and the wider media, by reference to James Bond films.

So why am I speaking of a “war of the words” ? The more I follow the coverage of Russia in the media, the more I am convinced that there is a system behind it. I am convinced that, just like the fictional “Carver Media Group” in the movie I can’t get out of my mind, there is simply business behind the covering of Russia.

A business which isn’t really interested in providing a balanced coverage of the actual situation and the events in Russia. As to the commercial media I am inclined to accept that the negative tendency towards Russia is inspired by our money, money the media tycoons want to have.

And that’s just his criticism of the media.  Wait til he gets started on the bloggers…

Fascinating stuff.

The latest blog on the Russia block is Apricot Flan.  Written by:

“…a fur trapper and wildman from New Zealand, now living in St Petersburg.”

You don’t get many of them to the pound.  Anyway, it looks like he’s having fun:

Just now was the first time I’ve been in a high street internet cafe at 5pm which has also been hosting a professionally performed mostly-nude lapdance. It seems one of the male staff is celebrating a birthday today. Most people are carrying on work as normal–music’s a bit loud though.

Nuff said.  Apricot Flan is already on the must read list.

Good news - Lyndon has re-started his blog, Scraps of Moscow.  Great commentary, great translations, and great photos, all in one blog-shaped package.

Three new bloggers have announced their presence in the past few days:

• Sochi Travel is about, well, Sochi.  It’s author Erik is on a mission to bring you the best coverage of his hometown, and it’s bid to become an Olympic city in 2014.  Refreshing, in a world of Russia blogs that focus on high (or, perhaps, low) politics. 
• Russia News Analysis will be bringing you up to date with the latest Russian tv news shows.
• Red October will not be bringing you news of the latest Sean Connery films.  Instead, Red October will be bringing you the latest news on how to find, and presumably keep, a Russian wife.  Just in case… well, you know.  

The latest blog on the Russia block is “Russia in the Media“, which aims to review coverage of Russia in the English language media.

The Economist is Author Fedia Kriukov’s first target.  They are a little too pessimestic about the state of the Russian economy, it seems:

[The Economist have] predicted 20 or so out of the last 0 collapses of the Russian economy.

Tsk.  You’d think a magazine called The Economist would be embarrased by such a record…

Introducing the Krasnodar Country Club blog:

Welcome to the Krasnodar Country Club’s website. Over the next 2 years we will be chronicling the development and construction of Krasnodar’s 1st country club community.

Confirming once and for all that Russia is now a member of the decadent bourgeios set.

The latest Russian blog on the block is ZheZhe[dot]us.

The site appears to be a collective of bloggers from Russia, posting in English, although it’s a little hard to tell this for sure at the moment, as none of the posts are linked to specific authors.

Nonetheless, ZheZhe have already posted some great articles, including a very nice introduction to the Russian Blogosphere.

Today’s in-depth posts include Who is Dmitry Kovtun? and Poland, Russia, the EU and trade.