| January 23, 10:00 AM "Altaigate" Scandal Takes A Page From Sarah Palin |
Looks like Siberia and Alaska are even closer than we’d thought! The seven senior government officials who died in a helicopter crash earlier this month in the Altai region of Siberia were apparently enjoying Sarah Palin’s favorite pastime: aerial wolf gunning. Or, sheep gunning, to be exact. Endangered wild argali sheep gunning, to be even more exact. |
January 26, 4:00 PM Moscow’s Journalists Issue Public Diss to Oligarch |
A few months before his instantly notorious purchase of the London Evening Standard, oligarch Alexander Lebedev had shuttered his Russian tabloid: The Moscow Correspondent. The laid-off staff of that paper still know how to wield that poison pen, though, as they have shown in a pseudo-deferential open letter to “the honorable Alexander Evgenievich.” |
January 26, 9:00 AM London’s New Million-Dollar Mullet, or Where’s Yevgeny Chichvarkin? |
This Wednesday, January 28, a Russian court will consider issuing an international warrant for the arrest of Yevgeny Chichvarkin, former chairman of Euroset, the largest mobile phone retailer in Russia. Officially, Chichvarkin is wanted for the alleged 2003 kidnapping and extortion of a former employee. Unofficially, Chichvarkin is being told to “get out and stay out” for getting too big for his faded, designer britches. |
January 25, 4:00 PM What Do the KGB and Margaret Thatcher Have in Common? |
Didn’t want to let this one go without a raised eyebrow. A feature appeared in Sunday's New York Times about oligarch Alexander Lebedev and his plans to purchase British tabloid The Evening Standard. Nothing particularly strange or funny about that, but the editors did their best to make the piece utterly baffling. To start with, there’s the picture. |
January 26, 9:00 AM The Merry Maids of Moscow |
Could this have been some perverse joke of the Soviet educational system on its unassuming young women? One cannot help but notice the unmistakable resemblance of the Soviet schoolgirl uniform, developed in the 1920s, to the iconic French maid costume. Observe: a brown wool dress, accessorized with a lacy white pinafore over the chest, white tights and a cartoonishly large chiffon bow. And we thought Catholic schoolgirls had it rough. |
January 23, 8:00 PM Fedor Emelianenko: The Modest Bringer Of Beatings |
Today, January 24, the world's premier mixed martial arts fighter Fedor Emelianenko squares off against Belarus’ rock-hard colossus Andrei Arlovski in a heavily publicized bout in Anaheim, CA. Emelianenko comes into the event, aptly titled “Day Of Reckoning,” with a 29-1 record. |
January 23, 12:00 PM 1/23/09: Booze & Brawn |
The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, Russia! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics. |
January 22, 4:30 PM New U.S. Ambassador And Russia Have History |
John Beyrle, America's new ambassador to Russia, is a vessel for warm feelings despite the cold relations between Moscow and Washington today. That Beyrle speaks fluent Russian and has seen the country through the Soviet war in Afghanistan to the death of Andropov is noteworthy, but not the reason he was the subject of the New York Times Saturday profile. In fact, the profile was really about John’s late father, Joe, a P.O.W. during World War II who escaped from a German camp only to voluntarily join the Red Army in fighting the Nazis. He wrapped his boots with burlap and drank his remedial shots of vodka with the best of them—opportunities to go home notwithstanding. As the legend goes, a starving Joe Beyrle crossed the eastern front by foot and approached a Soviet tank battalion with the only three words he knew in Russian: “I am an American comrade.” Whoa. Who's got the movie rights to this one? |
January 21, 5:39 PM Oligarchesses Break Very Expensive Glass Ceiling |
Russia's first lady-oligarchs—today's business owners, designers, editors of big-name mags and tabloids, and Dima Bilan producers—sprang up in the beginning of 2000. While the idea that "a man stands behind every big thing in Russia" continues to sit snug in the Russian psyche, the estrogen level among oligarchs is changing. Yes, Russia's rich female still parties, and she still uses her connections, but she now leads a more "European" style of life, dresses according to "Hollywood" fashions as opposed to head-to-toe Versace, and has capitalist ambitions of her own! How did she come so far so fast? Well, it helps being the granddaughter of Mikhail Gorbachev. |
January 22, 9:51 AM Outer Space To Be Closed To The Public |
It’s a dark day for the world’s budding space playboys: Roskosmos has announced it will discontinue its space tourism program after 2009. You can still blow $20 million dollars, you just can’t do it at Star City. In theory, it’s about the math: the space agency discovered that by eliminating one eccentric rich person from each Soyuz mission (much the way American Airlines once did with olives in salads), they can fit more cosmonauts on the international space station and thus get more work done. That’s the official story. But we know what this is really about: foreigners. |
January 21, 10:44 AM Kira Plastinina Fairytale Enters Chapter 7 |
Just before the New Year, when her compatriots were busy mixing up the olivye, 16-year-old fashion designer Kira Plastinina was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the U.S. Plastinina, whose fashion empire was financed entirely by her dairy-magnate father, Sergei, has spent the last two years setting the world aflame with magenta tutus, nylon jumpsuits, and frilly lingerie—that you wear on top of your clothes—to the accolades of… uh, we'll get back to you on that one. Today, we salute the fallen princess, now prudently shifting her focus from L.A. to Kazakhstan, with a retrospective of her short time on U.S. soil. |
January 15, 8:00 AM Introducing 2008's Rolling R Nominees |
Comrades and lady-comrades, let's do this thing. Here, with minimal fanfare (we don't even have our own video hosting capability yet!), are four best "Russian-acting actors," as New York Magazine' s Vulture blog snappily puts it, of 2008. The winner by online acclamation will be announced on February 15. A ceremony (seriously) will follow. In the meantime, vote for your favorite in the comments below. |
January 21, 8:28 AM Abramovich Suing Newspaper For Reading His Mind |
Don’t ever try to deduce what a Russian billionaire is thinking. You will get sued for defamation. Just ask the Times of London. They ran a story on Sunday alleging that Roman Abramovich was considering selling his football club, Chelsea; now it’s Wednesday and the judge is already hearing the case. Abramovich and the team are suing the paper’s parent company, Times Newspapers Limited, for an unspecified amount. |
January 20, 7:58 PM Mumiy Troll U.S. Tour Kicks Off Today In DC |
We’ll come right out and say it: alongside Zemfira and Splean, Mumiy Troll are one of the very, very few Russian rock acts we’re not embarrassed to crank up with Brits or Yanks within earshot. And Mumiy (pronounced like roomy) Troll might be the worldliest of the three, what with lead singer Ilya Lagutenko’s multilingual punning (he’s fluent in Mandarin, among other things) and no-translation-needed feline yowl. 2009 brings the band’s first attempt to conquer the U.S. in earnest – and seemingly on their own terms. |
January 20, 9:17 AM Russia Braces For Smiles, Vests: The Wal-Mart Cometh |
The economy's done no favors for Russia's retail sector, which is where Wal-Mart sees an opportunity. Swooping into metaphorical "rebound boyfriend" position while Russia's in a vulnerable state, Wal-Mart just registered a legal entity and joined an organization of local retailers in Russia. |
