Don’t think for a moment that London has the monopoly on covert operations. Or that Moscow is the capital of unsolved crime.
A campaign of terror has recently been unleashed against Novgorod’s street art.
I discovered it while walking into town the other day and stopping by this sculpture near the market.

My first impression was of [...]

Bloody Russians!!!
What a bunch of Putin-puking, gulag-loving losers!
Especially after what they did to that nice Mr. Litvinenko.
Why don’t they all crawl back in their black hole behind the Iron Curtain!
Along with such calls from all the British tabloids for the last three days, The Guardian today suggests we might actually feel sorry for [...]

Since every British tabloid has linked the dissident Litvinenko with Politkovskaya, let’s link on.
As it happens, both Litvinenko and Politkovskaya were virtually unknown in Russia. You won’t find a copy of their ’sensational’ books anywhere here - nor in the Russian language, that anyone can read.
Their combined threat to the Kremlin didn’t [...]

People often ask me: ‘Why are Soviet apartments so ugly?’
These of course are ignorant people with no finer sensibilities. Soviet apartments are rich in free forms of artistic expression which defy conventional aesthetics. It is only to the untutored eye that they appear as hideous blots on a mud blown landscape.

A little insight: Soviet architects, [...]

This was always was one of my favourite Ray Charles numbers. Now there’s a new version out in Russia. It’s called, Let’s OD on DDT.
According to the St Petersburg Times:
The country has seen a spike in the number of people who have died or suffered illnesses in the past six weeks from drinking disinfectants.
The Tver [...]

There’s one problem with being a fat cat in Russia. Even the most expensive suits don’t hang right from bloated, square Russian frames. Here’s a recent picture of Georgy Boos - apparently having just popped a button.

Georgy Boos is the new Governor of Kaliningrad. What happened to the old one? Well, he’s serving seven years. [...]

It is always a pleasure to see Russian women legging it across the street. Their distinctive high-heeled gait has even been given names, such as the Slavic Sway and the Tverskaya Trot.
Don’t Try This At Home

A poster to the Moscow Expats Forum claimed he could recognise a Russian woman anywhere without language. Only Russian women [...]

The apartment museums in St Petersburg are like time capsules. History comes out of the walls and you absorb it effortlessly just by walking through the rooms or gazing at an old photograph on top of a piano.

Such a museum is the Elizarov apartment in St Petersburg, preserved exactly as it was in the 1920s. [...]

 I’m not really into chess or politics, but I had occasion to write about Gary in the ’80s when he became the proud owner of an Atari 520ST home computer.

Not so many Russians had computers at the time. There was a Western technology embargo on Russia and most micros snuck in from India. In fact [...]

For Kaliningrad’s 750th anniversary (even though Kaliningrad only really dates from 1945) the town received a spanking new onion domestyle church in the main square. It was built right behind the square’s previous landmark, a statue of Lenin.
Some might think that Lenin’s association with Karl ‘Religion Is The Opium Of The People’ Marx would place [...]