A few months ago, news broke (yet again) that Russia planned to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska. Well, it looks like a tunnel isn’t the only option on the drawing board. 

Engineers are also considering how they could build a bridge across the Bering Strait.  Or, to be more precise, a series of three bridges spanning the Bering Strait, via the Diomede Islands.

As with a tunnel, the challenge of buildng a bridge from Russia to Alaska would not be insignificant.  According to the Discovery Channel (via Fogonazos blog):

Ice breakup after each winter is violent and would destroy normal bridge piers, so the 55-mile-long bridge would need 220 piers, cone-shaped to resemble and function like the bow of an icebreaker ship, and weighing 50,000 tons each.

And that’s even before you consider the thousands of miles of roads and railway lines that would be needed to connect the bridge to any of the major Siberian or North American transport routes.

If you want to know more, the Discovery Channel has an excellent interactive guide, with plenty of diagrams and pictures.

The meteor which (allegedly) struck Tunguska in 1908 has been stolen:

Russian police were combing the northern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Friday for a three-tonne meteorite that has disappeared from under the nose of its keepers.

The giant rock was stolen from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908, news agency Interfax reported.

Whether the meteorite actually was the cause of the Tunguska explosion is very debatable, but 3 tonnes of giant space rock is still going to be packed full of metals that many an enterprising thief would love to exploit. 

Can you melt meteors down for scrap?  No idea.  But even if not, you’ve got to give the thieves kudos for their style.

Anyway, for more stories of enterprising Russian metal thefts check out my posts from 2004 about the steel bridge that was removed from a river in Ukraine, the 14.5 tonne steam train that went missing from a museum in Donetsk and, until now easily the most enterprising theft of them all, the 30 meter radar tower which was stolen from a military base in Vladimir).

A BBC poll reported that 90% of Russians regularly drink anti-freeze. 

But not all was as it seemed.  Russian bloggers, taking exception to a Russian language BBC article about alcohol abuse in Izhevsk, decided to spam the BBC’s online poll:

Within hours, sometimes at a rate of two votes per second, more than 25,000 testified to being “regular” consumers of antifreeze and the like. Even after BBC computers zeroed out the results the next morning, the votes kept piling in, with over 90% blithely confirming suspicions that Russians are pretty much liquored up all the time.

People power, or cyber-terrorism?  You decide.

Update: Mmd Russia Blog has more, including details of a few other stories where Russian bloggers have flexed their muscles. 

Scandal hit the Miss Virtual Yakutia contest this year, when it was revealed that one of the finalists… was a man. Newslab.ru reports:

Anzhela Adamova was a young man called Oleg Goncharov, who decided to take part in the beauty contest by joke. He went to a stylist and after that made a portfolio at a professional photographer.

Apparently, Adamova received more than 360 votes before (s)he was outed and disqualified.

Take a look at the photo - can you tell that Anzhela is really Oleg? I tell you what - that’s one hell of a stylist!

Anyway, the results of Miss Virtual Yakutia are available on the official site. Unsurprisingly, Miss Adamova doesn’t seem to be mentioned.

The tunnel under the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska story has resurfaced again. Bloomsburg report that Russia plans a tunnel that will include both transport links, and a pipeline to allow the export of oil to the United States:

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber- optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so- called public-private partnership include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System and pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according to a press release which was handed out at the media briefing and bore the companies’ logos.

The cost? Oh, just a cool $10-12 billion.

I’m sceptical that the tunnel will be built in the near future - if ever - but I’d still love to see it happen. I’d be the first to hop on the train from London to New York.

The picture on this post, found on Flickr, was taken by Lukeii.

The image below is from Google Maps.

Notice the blur in the middle? I didn’t put it there - Google did. Click on this link to check for yourself.

Then scroll out a bit, using the controls of the left of the screen. Notice anything else?

Yep - the blurred out area is in the Russian Far East.

Anyone got any ideas about what’s been airbrushed out?

No really. That was the headline from a news report I just read.  Krasnoyarsk has just won an award for having the third best custom house in Siberia.

Krasnoyarsk custom house was listed third best in Siberia in the category “Best custom house team of the first category” for 2006. The first and the second in this category are Altai and Omsk custom houses. Irkutsk custom house was declared “Best internal customs station”. The contest for the best custom house teams was conducted by Siberian Custom House, Krasnoyarsk custom-house reported.

“Krasnoyarsk Airport” became winner in “Best custom house team in non-traffic” category.

The winners were chosen, according to such criteria as collection of customs duties, competence level, interaction of officials with foreign trade participants, discipline, sport and cultural work. A total of 19 custom houses participate in the contest.

I couldn’t find a copy of the Krasnoyarsk customs house to illustrate this article, so you’ll have to make do with one of Gorno Altai instead.

Russian company towns are similar to the US company towns of fifty years ago. But today, they’re dying too:

Gazprom has quietly begun cutting back on the Soviet-style paternalism for which it is renowned, hiving off “social assets” such as nurseries, subsidised housing and sanatoriums. Already almost half of its 9,320 “social properties” have been handed to local authorities. The mothership is sailing, and some of her dependants are to be left to fend for themselves.

Gazprom is under pressure from its shareholders (yes, there are some that aren’t based in the Kremlin) to cut such generous subsidies. They don’t look good on the end of year balance sheet.

The problem is, towns in the frigid Russian Arctic, like Novy Urengoy, traditionally attracted workers to their harsh climate by offering high wages, and the prospect cradle to grave support for workers and their families.

If that support goes, who actually will work the world’s coldest oil and gas fields?

Clearly, one should not mess with a siberian squirrel:

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

[…] Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory.

Click here for more squirrel blogging at siberianlight.net.

Laurence Jarvik links to a couple of reports that Russia should buy Alaska to solve America’s finacial difficulties.

I read the original Washington Post column by Steven Pealstein that proposed selling Alaska as a solution to America’s financial problems. (It also said that Alaska had a Soviet-style economy because of federal spending obtained by Senator Ted Stevens [R-AK])It seems like a funny joke at the time–but apparently in Russia,according to RIA-Novosti, people are now discussing the idea seriously.

I remember the days when people were suggesting that America buy Siberia, as a way to kickstart the ailing American economy. Back then, it was buy buy buy. Now it’s just sell ,sell, sell. Times must really be tough.

Charlie Ganske at Russia Blog has a thoughtful post about whether Russia should focus its energies on maintaining a nuclear arsenal, or on preventing the breakup of the Motherland.

Today’s Washington Times features a story on Russia’s successful test of a maneuverable re-entry warhead. While this may bolster the national pride of Russian scientists and provide opponents of U.S. missile defenses with another talking point, the billions of rubles spent do nothing to address the real threats to Russia’s territorial integrity and security.

I think Charlie is right that the biggest threat to Russia right now is that of instability and militant Islam on it’s Southern borders - although I’m not sure that I’d go so far to suggest that Siberia may become China’s most northerly province. But I do think that he perhaps underestimates the benefits that nuclear weapons bring to Russia, and the relative cheapness of updating the nuclear arsenal compared with addressing deeper, more structural problems such as corruption in the military.

Spending money on addressing the structural problems that beset Russia’s convential military forces (”conventional”, “nuclear” - I feel like I’m back in the Cold War) is, without doubt, going to be of immense benefit to Russia. But restructuring the army is an expensive, and long term project. The problems of addressing corruption in society as a whole are going to be even more challenging. Spending money on nuclear weapons, on the other hand, is, comparatively cheap, and carries large short term benefits (or, to put that more precisely, avoids a great deal of short term damage).

I know it’s a cliche, but nuclear weapons really do carry cachet on the world stage. There is a belief among many states that nuclear power buys influence in global affairs. In the UK, where I live, updating our nuclear arsenal, small though it may be, has become a hot political topic. There are plenty for updating the arsenal, and plenty for turning our nuclear submarines into scrap, but the government seems convinced of the necessity to upgrade. I have no idea of the situation in France, but China is looking to boost it’s nuclear stockpile, and the US isn’t exactly neglecting nuclear research either. (And that’s before we even consider states like Israel, Iran and North Korea). These countries don’t spend all this money on nuclear bombs for fun - they spend it because they respect the nuclear arsenals of their competitors, and want to make sure that their arsenals are respsected also.

I personally don’t buy into their logic, but it is the logic that they use. And they are the people playing the game. It’s what they think that really matters in interstate relations.

One of the main reasons that Russia faces trouble on its borders is the general perception that it is a weak state - a belief shared not just by other states, but by disaffected groups within Russia itself. If Russia’s nuclear arsenal loses the respect of other states around the world, Russia loses respect (in the sense of fear, rather than love, of course) One that respect goes, so does a big chunk of what remains of Russia’s influence and bargaining power in the world. States hostile to Russia will take note of this, and feel emboldened to further provoke instability on and within Russia’s borders.

Although Russia does need to invest in long term projects to ensure its security, it also needs to spend a considerable amount of time, effort and, yes, money, on firefighting. It is hard to push the Cold War to the back of our minds, but perhaps in the early 21st Century, we would do better to look at Russia’s nuclear investments more as a defensive, rather than an agressive stance.

Looks like the the toxic waste that was spilled into the drinking water in the Chinese city of Harbin is spreading northwards along the Songhuar and Amur rivers. One Russian city has already announced plans to shut down its drinking water supply:

Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian environmental monitoring agency Rosprirodnadzor, told the BBC that in Khabarovsk “the water supply will be shut off, because the purifying equipment cannot deal with benzene”.

He said heating would not be affected but tap water would be cut for a few days and fish from the Amur would also be contaminated.

“We expect the spill to arrive in Russia on 26 November and in Khabarovsk on 30 November-1 December,” he said.

However, Chinese officials said they expected it to take two weeks to reach the Amur river.

I wonder whether the Russian government will press a claim for damages? (Update 25/11: Yes, if this senator is to be believed).

Following his sentencing, ex-Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to a jail in Siberia - YaG-14/10 to be precise, which is near Chita. His co-defendant, Platon Lebedev has been sent to a prison in the Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets, 2,000 km north of Moscow.

There is some concern about the legality of these moves, with his lawyers, and human rights activists saying that Russian law stipulates a prisoner should be imprisoned close enough to his home city that relatives can visit relatively easily (which, of course, would mean that he would have to be somewhere close to Moscow):

His confinement in IK-10 camp will put him a six-hour flight plus a seven-hour car ride from Moscow, and human rights bodies accused authorities of violating Russian law by sending him so far from his home and family.

“The law says that a general regime prisoner should serve his term somewhere close to his home. The Russian authorities are spitting on their own law,” said Yevgeny Ikhlov of the All-Russian Movement for Human Rights.

“This is being done on purpose to complicate as much as possible Khodorkovsky’s contacts with his family, his defence and with society. Khodorkovsky is a prominent public figure and prominent opposition ideologist and everything is being done to isolate him,” Ikhlov told Reuters.

Clearly the choice of his prison - far, far away from Moscow and the prying eyes of the international press - was intentional. Whether it breaks Russian law, I have no idea. If it does, expect to see Khodorkovsky’s lawyers back in action pretty soon.

The BBC, by the way, has a profile of Khodorkovsky’s prison - which used to service Uranium mines in the 1960s:

Today, YaG-14/10 is chiefly a garment factory where inmates sew protective clothing for the prison system and the police, as well as making bed linen and doing private orders.

Khodorkovsky will find himself about 4,700km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow.

On the evening the name of his prison was revealed, it was -9C in Krasnokamensk; by January, the average daily temperature should range between -18C and -33C.

According to Zabinfo, most of YaG-14/10’s inmates are serving between three and five years and the average age is 24 - significantly younger than Khodorkovsky, 42.

The most common conviction is theft with 40% of inmates sentenced for it.

Russia Blog has more information on the prison, which seems to indicate that, as Russian prisons go, YaG-14/10 isn’t so bad:

As of 2002, the colony had 1389 prisoners. There were rumors that the prisoners were forced to work in the mines, but the rumors were false. Today, the colony is one of the top prison facilities in the country; the prisoners live in two-story brick buildings, and sleep in bunks. There is a TV in the recreation room, and on the weekends prisoners are allowed to attend a “club”. Prisoners can be employed to sew textiles or work in a metal shop.

By the looks of this report from Mosnews, Khodorkovsky has already found a useful way to occupy his time while he serves at Putin’s pleasure - he’s going to write a PhD dissertation:

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a graduate of the National Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow. His Ph.D thesis will likely be dedicated to his work. According to Russian law he can defend it even in prison.

Good for him.

According to Mosnews, though, Khodorkovsky has brought two suitcases filled with books with him. Question: Just how much luggage is the average Russian prisoner allowed to bring with them?

One of the joys of writing siberianlight.net is the random stuff I find while searching the net. Take this piece of Star Trek fan-fiction I found today on Technorati, for example, in which Capain Kirk takes a trip down memory lane and (almost) visits Siberia’s finest city:

“That is correct, Colonel. Our captain has been taken into custody by what appears to be a Soviet military unit.” Spock barely moved as he spoke. “If my suspicion is correct, they may believe Captain Kirk to be an American espionage agent. If this is so, then his life is in grave danger.”

Steve’s face grew somber. “That would be a pretty fair assumption. Where do you think he was captured?”

“About 67.3km Northeast of Irkutsk,” the Vulcan replied.

Steve’s brow furrowed. “There’s a secret military installation in that area. If your Captain was down there, you have a problem on your hands. What was he doing down there, anyway?”

“We were working on an experiment, there was an error, and Captain Kirk was part of the recovery party sent down to retrieve the experiment.” Spock was determined to give Steve as much information as he could without telling him anything.

Now, if I were a Star Trek fan-fiction writer (which I am not), or even Mr Spock (which I am also not) I’d be taking this opportunity to make the most of Ensign Pavel Chekov. He is, after all, a Russian and, presumably, speaks a little of the local lingo. But, does he appear in this story? Ummm, no.

Update: Goodness, I almost forgot to mention - the Steve mentioned above is Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. So, we have a Star Trek / Six Million Dollar Man / Soviet Union crossover. At least, I assume it’s the Six Million Dollar Steve Austin, and not the guy from WWF - because that would be just too wierd.

Sunday saw a raft of elections for local legislatures across Russia. Probably the most significant result of the weekend was for the Pensioners’ Party, who crept past United Russia to finish first in Tomsk. The St Petersburg Times, as a part of their roundup of election results, reports:

The Pensioner’s Party garnered slightly more than 19 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, while United Russia received slightly more than 17 percent, according to preliminary results released Monday, Interfax reported.

The result was unusual because United Russia, which dominates the State Duma, has managed to muster a majority in more than half of the country’s regional legislatures over the past two years.

The Pensioners’ Party aren’t going to make any great waves on the national scene - after all, they won withjust 19% of the votes on a 31% turnout - but it is very interesting to see just how fragmented and unpredictable the political party scene in Russia remains. While the electorate seems happy to rally behind one Presidential candidate every four years, we haven’t seen any political parties at all really emerge from the crowd in the almost decade and a half since the end of the Soviet Union.