cafebabel.com

Ode to 6 billionaires and almost 50 millionaires in Russia's Duma

('Language Cat',) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:30:00 -0000

The fall of communism signified the loss of purchasing power for millions. In the same year, a select number of oligarchs and shrewd businessmen seized the country’s inexhaustible resources and legally entered the ranks of the richest men on the planet. Analysis of a country that, until a few decades ago, considered it a crime to pursue wealth but is now governed by a parliament that boasts the very wealthy

Fictional Russian hopefuls in 2012 elections

('Annie Rutherford',) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:54:48 -0000

Russia’s presidential elections on 4 March are creeping ever closer. Following demonstrations across Russia in the wake of parliamentary elections in December, the run-away favourite Vladimir Putin is now more of a walk-away favourite. Who else is in this one-horse race?

Russian art collective Voina: 'Zhlobs are in power in today's Russia'

('Annie Rutherford',) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:05:48 -0000

The Moscow-based self-styled 'street art gang' formed in 2005. Its four main members consist of president Leonid Nikolaev - who was arrested at an 'election fraud protest rally' on 5 December - ideologist Oleg Vorotnikov, coordinator Natalia Sokol and her son and Voina's youngest activist, two-year-old Kasper Can't-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Him Sokol. Part one of an exclusive interview marks their brief history

Strategy 31: Russians protest for right to demonstrate

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:24:18 -0000

Just a fortnight after the ‘indignant’ protests of Europe, Russians are marching onto their streets and into their squares. However, their motive isn't the greed of those in power but rather the violation of their right to peaceful assembly. Alexandra reports from Saint Petersburg

Russian art group Voina boycotts Moscow contemporary art biennale

('Annie Rutherford',) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:26:45 -0000

It's not the country that you'd expect to celebrate activist art. Held until 20 October, Moscow's fourth contemporary art biennale is not exactly a step towards the freedom of expression, especially since the famous Russian protest collective are paradoxically protesting against the biennale’s 'international festival of activist art'

Kaczynski crash investigation: Russia blames Poland, Poland sees red

('Sarah Hartley',) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:30:00 -0000

Scandal, mockery, insult. These were the words with which millions of Poles greeted the official report by Russian investigators on the crash of the Polish presidential aeroplane, made public on 12 January. The Russians see Poland as solely to blame for the accident. Warsaw is not issuing denials, but claims the investigation is incomplete

Flying coffins and Polish president plane crash: in search of answers

('Sarah Truesdale',) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:30:00 -0000

Russia and Poland have announced they are taking control of the Polish president Lech Kaczyński’s plane crash under their control. The shared investigation is one of many rapprochement strategies between the two countries, But more than six months after the investigation of the Polish national tragedy began, will the Russians be as transparent as they promised?

Conversation with Leo Tolstoy on centenary of his death

('English language version of cafebabel.com',) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:15:00 -0000

20 November 2010; the Russian writer famed for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina is about to die for the hundredth time. We meet him before he takes his last train

Dym and dozhd: useful vocabulary for a smog summer in Moscow

('Natasha Doff',) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:17:11 -0000

Two words have been used more than any others in Moscow this summer. The smoke that has been periodically engulfing Moscow from over 500 wildfires burning across Central Russia for the past few weeks, and the long-awaited rain. Today, the city resembles a scene from a zombie film; it'll be like this until mid-August, forecasters say

Hear the one about the six men on a Mars500 space shuttle in Moscow?

('Hayley Worsley-Carter',) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:36:42 -0000

They'll be closed off from the world for 105 days - but it's all in the name of research. The Mars500 experiment simulates the journey to the Red Planet and focuses on the effects of isolation

G8 summit: whilst Brown meets Medvedev, the British build Russia

('Ed Saunders',) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0000

As the British and Russian prime ministers meet for the first time since the latter's March election in Japan between 7 – 9 July, a look at the foundations of a new renaissance in British-Russian relations

Putin did not pull a Sarkozy love story

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0000

On 21 April, ‘Moskovsky Korrespondent’ apologised after reporting that Putin was to marry athlete Alina Kabaeva, 24. A look back at a story he termed as ‘snotty noses and erotic fantasies’

Roland Lipp on Moscow, the dirtiest city in Europe

('Ed Saunders',) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0000

The German engineer from Brandenburg plans roads which run along house roofs. He is trying to save the metropolis from gridlock. The inventor of these ‘street houses’ is holding talks with German firms, who should be joining him on the project

Zhenya Strigalev: 'London's jazz scene is more open than Moscow's'

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 12:00:00 -0000

At 28, the prodigious composer and late-night jam-session organiser is the only Russian alto-sax player active on the London scene. We catch him at the launch of his new fusion set ‘Findamorale’ at the London jazz festival

UK, Russia: a new Iron curtain?

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Two out of three British Council offices were deemed 'illegal' and closed down in Russia in January. A reflection on ties between the Kremlin and London

Arkady Babchenko: ‘Russia is the Germany of 1934’

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Sent to the Chechen front at 18, the Russian ‘Novaya Gazeta’ columnist and colleague of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 31, lays bare the nightmares he endured in his semi-autobiographical 'One Soldier's War in Chechnya'

Putin: a (filmic) kiss for Valentine’s Day

('Nabeelah Shabbir',) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0000

Two weeks before his handpicked successor takes over, a Russian film released on DVD on 14 February shows a rather different side to a fictional, unnamed outgoing Russian president