Day: April 1, 2011

Windows to Russia!

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin test-drove Russia’s new Yo-mobile hybrid car on the ten kilometer route from his residence to President Medvedev’s country house outside Moscow on Friday.

Yo-mobile, a project by Russia’s Yo-Auto, a joint venture between truck maker Yarovit and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim group, will start production of Yo-Mobile hybrid cars in St. Petersburg in the second half of 2012.

“I am not ready to make any conclusions,” Putin told a high-tech commission meeting. “I want to drive this Yo-mobile of yours to Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] and show it to him.”

In December, Prokhorov presented three prototypes of the hybrid car, including a hatchback, van and cross-coupe vehicle models. New production cars will cost 350,000-450,000 rubles ($12,000-$15,000).

Putin drove the sports cross-coupe version, accompanied by Yo-auto Director General Andrei Biryukov. Prokhorov drove a microvan.

Biryukov said the complete version of the car would be four-wheel drive and equipped with cruise control, GPS/Glonass navigation and climate control. He said the car was attractively priced because it was based on cheaper new materials.

Yo-mobile is not the first car that Putin has test-driven. In August, he tested a Russian-made Lada Kalina. He drove it for four days from Khabarovsk in the Far East to Chita in Siberia, covering a distance of over 2,000 km (about 1,000 miles).

In November, he drove a Formula one car at a speed of 240 km an hour (150 miles an hour).

Putin’s passion for cars also became prominent when he drove French President Nicholas Sarkozy in a black Mercedes in 2007.

According to his tax declaration, the premier and former president owns two Russian Volga cars, a Russian four-wheel-drive Niva and a trailer car.

Windows to Russia!

It was -10 below zero this morning and seemed to be a far cry from the Spring that is suppose to be in effect. So that cup of coffee was extra good this cold morning…

My thoughts today are centered around our News Blog and other subsidiaries.  Russian News From Russia – It has in the last two weeks caught Windows to Russia in traffic and that is no small feat…

So as I watched the increase in traffic happening. I was perplexed as to how to handle the development of the windowstorussia.com domain. Windows to Russia has been the top dog for so long that it feels strange to have created another blog that has challenged it…

I decided to coordinate the sites better from data exchange to template appearance. It seems to be working. I am going to shift things this month and bring another blog into the limelight. Thoughts of Moscow will start developing as a Moscow based blog. At that point the windowstorussia.com domain will comprise of Windows to Russia, Russian News From Russia, Coffee Talk and Thoughts of Moscow. All blogs will be on the same template and the feel. The news site is still a work in progress that will take me most of this month to fine tune the software that makes the magic happen and create 200 plus posts a day. I also have in mind for the news site to have a better post layout on the front page. But I can not get Internet Explorer to play right…

So be looking forward a better data structure on windowstorussia.com. It has taken awhile but people are starting to realize that Windows to Russia is my personal blog, Russian News From Russia is based off of multiples of Russian news sources that are congregated into one spot, Coffee Talk is American (based issues with an occasional attitude about a piss poor American government, type of) news and Thoughts of Moscow is ( Well – we gotta wait to see. :))…

And last but not least we have our Russian Photo Blog, Russian Video Blog and Soviet Stories. They are all top of their categories in Google. They are all based from kylekeeton.com which is called Windows to Russia Portal now…

So if you think it should be posted on Windows to Russia. Most likely it has been. You just have to venture to one of the other sources that is part of Windows to Russia…

Windows to Russia!

It really was not as bad as what I expected from all the doomsayers of life. Final results will be out and done by December 31st, 2012…

Windows to Russia!

The UN International Court of Justice has refused to entertain Georgia’s action against Russia over the events in South Ossetia in August 2008, says the RIA-Novosti news agency in a report from The Hague. The court has ruled that the case is beyond its competence. Read More >>>
Source: Voice of Russia.

Windows to Russia!

Just what Sveta and I have waited for. Now Sveta can travel to Turkey visa free. It was just officially announced that Russians will be able to travel to Turkey visa-free as of the 16th of April, 2011…

This is according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. It seems that a new Russian-Turkish agreement is due to come into force this month…

So we add another country to the list of visa free for Russians… 🙂

Windows to Russia!

Russia has raised social pensions in Russia by 10% as of today (April/01/2011).  They will now be reconfigured  once a year in Russia, rather than every two years, as it was in the past. The amendment to the pension law was approved by Russia’s parliament and signed into law by the Russian President on the 29^th of March, 2011. Some more than 4 million Russians are entitled to social pensions…

Rough figures that vary where you live in Russia: The average social pension in Russia by the end of 2009 was 4,176 robules. The labor pension in Russia was increase by around 1,113 roubles to 5,749 roubles during 2010, and the average old-age pension in Russia will be expected to reach 6,091 roubles by 2011…

That equates into around $200 per month to survive on, in Russia…

That may not seem like much but when I came to Russia 5 years ago they were getting about $100 per month so it is better…

Windows to Russia!