Category: Russia

Hello,

I saw an interesting article while drinking my coffee that Russia will only communicate about Iran if the USA gets their attitude straight about Georgia. I guess we will see how important Georgia is to the USA…..

The UN Security Council held its latest meeting on Saturday. Due to Russia’s efforts, no new sanctions will be imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Formally, Moscow wants to maintain the possibility for a diplomatic solution to the crisis around Iran’s enrichment of uranium. The Russian leadership had made it clear in advance, however, that it would be willing to come to an agreement on Iran only after the United States changes it position on Georgia.

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin introduced the current document on Iran, saying that a resolution was needed that “would give wind to the political process” on Iran. The document urges Iran to follow all IAEA Guidelines and all previous Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran stop work on uranium enrichment. No mention is made of new sanctions in the resolution.

The Group of Six that is working on the Iranian crisis (Russia, the U.S., Great Britain, China, France and Germany) had planned to pass a much more pointed resolution on Iran that included sanctions during the UN General Assembly session in New York last week, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it known to a narrow circle that the U.S. would not be able to “punish” Russia for its actions in the Caucasus and work with it on Iran at the same time. It was then announced that Lavrov’s schedule did not permit him to meet with the group’s other foreign ministers.

Also on Saturday, Lavrov stated from the podium of the UN General Assembly that the majority of the world’s problems today stem from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Under the false pretense of fighting terror and the spread of nuclear arms, international law was broken and a global crisis was artificially created that still has not yet been completely overcome,” Lavrov told the General Assembly. (Link)

I find this interesting because the USA has cried wolf in everyone’s backyards and now for once they are being sent home spanked.

Russia does not see the urgency about Iran that the USA does and I do not see the urgency either. But then I never saw the urgency in Iraq, Just like I never saw the urgency in Afghanistan, Just like the urgency to develop a terrorist black list, Just like the urgency of missiles in Poland, Just like we must build a wall against Mexico, Just like we must oppress the people speaking out at the Democratic and Republican conventions, Just like the urgency of Home Land Security and so on and so on and so on. The urgency of the situation is part of the crying wolf syndrome.

The last statement of Lavrov is very true and accurate. The USA has been playing crying wolf for a long time now. How does the world know what is truth or lies anymore?

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.

PS: Crying Wolf – Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.

The Moscow International Film Festival is among the oldest film festivals in the world. The first time it was held was in 1935 and the Judges were headed by Sergei Eisenshtein himself, but the chronology of the festival begins in 1959, when it became a regular event. It is significant that the rebirth of the Moscow International Film Festival occurred in the 1960s of the past century, at the time of the Thaw, when cinema experienced the influx of a new generation of directors, whose spiritual experience was shaped under the influence of the great victory over fascism.

Over the past decades the renown and influence of the Moscow Festival on the world film making process have grown significantly. Prizes were awarded to outstanding masters of world cinema – Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kramer, Federico Fellini and Ettore Scola, Andrzej Wajda and Francesco Rosi, Krzysztof Zanussi and Damiano Damiani, Gleb Panfilov and Sergei Gerasimov, Bernard Blier and Alexandr Rogozhkin. The Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) has a lot to pride itself on. It paved the way for filmmakers who later became known throughout the world like Istvan Szabo and Kaneto Shindo, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Aki Kaurismaki, Kohei Oguri and Humberto Solas. In 2010 the honorary prize for contribution to world cinema went to the French director, author of the legendary “A Man and a Woman”Claude Lelouche. The Moscow Festival honoured remarkable representatives of the acting profession. Over the years the prize “I Believe. Konstantin Stanislavsky” for acting achievements was awarded to Jack Nicholson and Jeanne Moreau, Meryl Streep and Harvey Keitel, Fanny Ardant and Daniel Olbrychski, Gerard Depardieu, Oleg Yankovsky and Isabelle Huppert. In 2010 this prize was awarded to the outstanding French actress Emmanuelle Beart.

The festival has always mirrored the socio-political changes taking place in Russia, our tempestuous modern history has always aroused the interest of numerous guests from all over the world. Our Festival is intended not merely for professionals and journalists, but also for the wider audience. Suffice it to say that in 2010 the number of viewers reached almost 200,000. For four years in a row the Moscow Festival is hosted by the “Mediafest” company. The largest foreign movie empires strive to schedule premiers in this country, assessing the large viewing potential of Russia as the most promising in the world. It is no accident that despite the financial difficulties caused by the economic crisis, the last Moscow Festival hosted a special “Moscow Forum of Film Co-production”, where the festival management offered producers from different countries an opportunity to discuss major problems of film production.

More than 200 guests from all over the world attended the 32nd MIFF, including noted filmmakers, journalists, film critics. The number of journalists who are accredited at the festival, is steadily rising and exceeded two thousand. The guests could enjoy a varied program of more than 200 movies from 50 countries. Moscow viewers could re-discover the Italian Sergio Leone, whose retrospective was held within the festival framework. Personal retrospectives were dedicated to French director Claude Chabrol and the last Alexander Sokurov’s documentary series “Intonation”.

The Jury of the anniversary festival was headed by the remarkable filmmaker Luc Besson. His movie “Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec” was screened at the closing ceremony.

For many years now the Moscow Film Festival has been presided by the Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov.

Source:

Sveta and I will go…

Windows to Russia!

The Russian press has lots of news about Libya. 90% of it is contradictory to the main Western news. The Eastern news from China and Russia both are telling a whole different story about what is happening in Libya. In fact the Western propaganda is being shot full of holes daily and it has become a joke in the East about the trust and reliability of NATO and all who are part of it. The Italian rebuke of the happenings in Libya are stemming back to the story that you will read below. The Italians now know that Libya is unjustly being bombed to death and the world watches from the sideline while the Western Empire acts like God and crushes a bug that refuses to die…

The Libyans entirely support Muammar Gaddafi – well-known Italian documentary film maker Fluvio Grimaldi has debunked the main myth about the situation in Jamahiriya.

“The Ambassador to Rome turned out to be one of the few high-ranking Libyans who happily sided with the strong partner. “If you want a visa to Benghazi you will get it in no time. If you want to go to Tripoli there will be no visa for you’, the Embassy declared. I joined a group of British peace-makers who also wanted to know the truth about what’s going on in that country,” Grimaldi writes.

The expedition flew to Tunisia from where it proceeded to Libya by land. The itinerary was prompted by the western press – the group visited places where the situation was especially difficult, according to the media.

In Tripoli the foreign visitors were controlled by young functionaries of the current regime appointed to stay with the group. However, Grimaldi and his fellow-travelers were allowed to stop in any place and talk to anyone on any subject. This was a freedom unavailable to journalists accredited in Benghazi.

National unity and firm resolution to defend their country was what impressed the group most of all. School lessons have not stopped for a second, and now schools also provide additional training how to use weapons. This training is both for boys and girls. The so-called human shields, which are in essence cannon fodder, turned out to be voluntary units. Cities on the Mediterranean coast, ravaged and cut off by Gaddafi’s troops, according to the western media, in reality are very picturesque places with a good water supply system and strong agriculture. In any allegedly oppressed city, people told the Italian journalist that they heard about Muammar Gaddafi’s tyranny from their relatives and friends abroad, and a real disaster came only when NATO bombings began with the aim of protecting the people. Each interview, Fluvio Grimaldi says, gradually destroyed the western story of the horrible aggression of the Libyan leader.

The local Catholic church has become a place of pilgrimage. Muslim women visit the Roman priest every day and ask him to tell the world the truth about the situation in the country. The Libyans asked Grimaldi’s group to do the same.

The Libyan citizens have already been voluntarily defending their country for six months. The local people say that the army is doing its best to talk the civilian population out of taking part in the hostilities. The local people do not look like intimidated illiterate scamps, on the contrary, Grimaldi pointed out the dignity and honor of their bearing.

It has been mentioned before as well that the situation in Libya is not as black as Obama and his NATO allies are trying to paint it. However, now that the US Senate has given Obama permission to extend the operation in Libya for another year and the coalition is persistently looking for the proof of Gaddafi’s bloody crimes, an eye-witness’ report is very appropriate.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/22/52254887.html

Now you know how Italians have learned the truth. Someone of respect went there and saw the truth with his own eyes. Including some British people…

It is sad that we are doing this to Libya. Literally all Western press is propaganda puppets to stimulate the war in Libya…

But I forgot you all really do not care…

But I do care…

Windows to Russia!

Substitute Pilot at Controls in Crash Tu-134 on Friday:

A plane and flight crew that crashed while trying to land in thick fog at Karelia’s capital, killing 44 of the 52 people on board, were provided by a U.S.-affiliated charter airline as a replacement for a smaller jet after too many passengers bought tickets.

The pilot rejected instructions from the air traffic controller to abort the landing just before midnight Monday on the flight from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, moments before the Tu-134 jet rammed into a highway and soon after exploded into what an eyewitness described as “a pillar of fire.”

Local residents managed to pull eight people out of the wreckage before the blaze, including a mother and her two children, aged 9 and 14.

At least nine foreigners, including a Florida-based family of four, were among those who died in the crash.

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov indicated that pilot error was to blame, drawing a comparison to the crash of a Polish presidential plane in thick fog in the Smolensk region last year.

The Moscow-Petrozavodsk flight was initially supposed to be operated by the RusLine airline on a Bombardier CRJ200, which has 50 seats. But too many people bought tickets, so RusLine called in RusAir to handle the flight with a 66-seat Tu-134 on Friday, RusLine spokeswoman Svetlana Yakovleva said by telephone.

Source a 4 page article: The Moscow Times

Windows to Russia!

I have to agree with Russia on the issue of banning EU veggies. I keep reading almost daily about another person dying from the E.coli strain that has been unleashed. Russia has enough issues without inviting death across the border and since Sveta and I live in Russia we really do not want EU veggies on our store shelves…

But that does not mean that the EU is not having a tantrum over the ban…

Russia’s ban on veggie imports from the EU complicates its negotiations on WTO accession.

This was stated by the European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht, speaking in the Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

Russia imposed an embargo on vegetable imports from Europe in early June, in the wake of the E.coli outbreak scare.

In Germany, the infection has caused the death of 38 people.

So things make sense and since Russia has an abundance of veggies why take a chance? Besides who really gives a crap about the WTO? If you think it is a great idea then you need to do some research on the subject…

I do not care if Russia ever lifts the ban on EU veggies. We have more vegetables come from Israel anyway…

Windows to Russia!

By Galina Stolyarova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: June 22, 2011 (Issue # 1662)

When Yevgenia Gurova, a 21-year-old student of the Northwest Institute of Publishing, reached the nearest metro station on June 16 to travel back home after taking an exam — Gurova is in the middle of her end-of-year exams — she discovered she was banned from using the metro. For Gurova is disabled, and moves around the city in a wheelchair — something that suddenly became a concern for the local metro management, which issued an order banning all wheelchair-bound people from the metro because “its elevators are not equipped for wheelchairs and are therefore potentially dangerous.”

For Gurova, the officials’ concerns are nonsensical.

“I find the metro the only accessible means of transportation: You get in, you get on the elevator and put on the brakes on your wheelchair, and then get off safely,” Gurova wrote in her blog at jenianm.livejournal.com/14077.html. “Just try and imagine what it feels like squeezing yourself into a full trolleybus or bus, which in most cases are not even equipped with an access ramp!”

Gurova’s post provoked an avalanche of commentary on the Internet, and within days city officials up to City Governor Valentina Matviyenko were facing tough questions from local media.

Deputy Governor Yury Molchanov told reporters that City Hall has requested that a new type of safety device for elevators, designed with wheelchair users in mind, be developed and installed at local stations. The official stopped short of estimating how much the new technology would cost and how long the initiative might take to implement.

“A tender for the development of the safety device will be organized by City Hall in the near future,” Molchanov promised.

The management of the St. Petersburg Metropolitan defended its actions by issuing a statement in which its representatives claimed that “it is international practice not to allow people in wheelchairs on the metro for safety reasons.”

As Molchanov pointed out, all new metro stations currently being built or developed are equipped with access ramps, slopes and other facilities for disabled people.

According to City Hall’s press office, the St. Petersburg metro is currently implementing a new safety system for blind people that includes the installation of special floor lines with a rutted surface that can easily be detected by blind people using sticks and used to help them find their way.

In the meantime, Russia’s ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has called for the creation of an expert council that would develop a series of measures to protect the rights of disabled people and ensure that they have equal access to public transport.

“Disabled people are banned from using the metro not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Moscow and other Russian cities,” Lukin told reporters in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. “It is high time that we found a solution to this very unfair situation.”

According to official statistics, there are about 800,000 disabled people in St. Petersburg, including 15,000 children.

Windows to Russia!

MOSCOW, June 22 (Itar-Tass) — People in Moscow, St Petersburg, the capitals of ex-Soviet republics and other cities are to hold a vigil of memory on Wednesday.

Yekaterina Abramova, director of the Interstate TV and Radio Network MIR (peace), has told Itar-Tass, “The vigil, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the (1941-1945) Great Patriotic War, is to begin at 04:00, Moscow time — at the hour when Nazi Germany perfidiously attacked the Soviet Union (in the June of 1941). On this sorrowful date, people who support our idea will go out to squares of their cities, visit Eternal Flame monuments, light candles, and honor by a minute of silence the memory of all those who perished in that war.”

The Vigil of Memory is to be held in nineteen cities as follows: Moscow, St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), the capitals of ex-Soviet republics — Tbilisi, Baku, Almaty (formerly Alma Ata), Dushanbe, Bishkek, Yerevan, Minsk, Vilnius, Chisinau, as well as s in Penza, Vitebsk, Lugansk, Kostroma, Tula, Odessa, Mogilyov, and Simferopol.

“City-folk can take part in the vigil in person or via the Internet,” Abramova said. For this purpose, a www.vahta-pamyati.ru website is open for people to be able to tell about their relatives who fought at the front-line or worked on the home front during the war, and post their photos.

“People of the senior generation, whose fathers fought at the front, know well and remember our history. To young people, the vigil of memory is a fine opportunity to request their parents and grandparents to tell them about that war and look through the old photo albums,” Abramova pointed out.

The Memory Vigil has been organized by by the MIR network, the Itar-Tass news agency, and the Social Networks agency.

Windows to Russia!

Hello,

When Georgia started her attack the USA had already landed at Tbilisi and was getting ready for a 3 week training session……
———————————————————————————————————–
U.S. Trainers Say Georgian Troops Weren’t Ready:

20 August 2008 / The Moscow Times, Georgia — U.S. military trainers say the Georgian soldiers they knew who were sent to battle the Russians had fighting spirit but were not ready for war.

The Georgians were “beginning to walk, but by no means were they running,” said U.S. Army Captain Jeff Barta, who helped train a Georgian brigade for peacekeeping service in Iraq. “If that was a U.S. brigade, it would not have gone into combat.”

Now on standby at the Sheraton Hotel in the Georgian capital, unarmed and in civilian clothes, six of the U.S. trainers offered a glimpse at the five-year U.S. mission and at the performance of the outnumbered and out gunned Georgian military in its defeat by Russia.

The Americans arrived for work Aug. 7 to unexpectedly find training was over for the unit they had been assigned to for three weeks, the 4th Brigade: The Georgian soldiers were sitting on their rucksacks and singing folk songs as an Orthodox priest walked among them chanting and waving incense.

Then buses and trucks took the troops off toward Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, where there had been sporadic clashes and shelling during the previous week. That night the Georgian army began an offensive trying to retake the Russian-supported region, and by the following morning hundreds of Russian tanks were rolling across the border.

“From what I’ve heard, a lot of the 4th Brigade was hit pretty hard,” said Rachel Dejong, 24, a Navy medic.

The Georgian company commander who was training alongside Barta was killed.

“Some of the soldiers seemed really grateful for the things we taught them,” said Barta, 31, but he acknowledged that it was not nearly enough.

Trainers start with the basics of infantry warfare — shooting, taking cover, advancing — then on to squad and platoon maneuvers, Barta said.

The Georgians do not lack “warrior spirit,” he said, but added that they were not ready for combat.

They inherited bad habits from the Red Army, whose soldiers would not move without a direct order from a superior, and need to be taught to think on their own, Barta said. To make things more difficult, many soldiers “come from the hills of Georgia, and some of them sign for their paycheck with an X,” he said.

The Georgian army has five regular infantry brigades, each with some 2,000 troops. Only one of them — the 1st, which was rushed home from Iraq by U.S. planes after fighting broke out — has been trained to a NATO level.

There are also units of poorly trained reservists, Georgian men who do 18 days of one-time military training and then eight days a year into their 40s. Officially, the government says it has 37,000 regular soldiers and 100,000 reservists.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, some of the U.S. trainers spoke bluntly about problems with the Georgian troops, who one veteran sergeant said “got torn up real bad.”

The Americans were training them to use the U.S. military M-4 rifles, he said. But when fighting broke out, the Georgians went back to the Soviet AK-47, the only weapon they trusted. They appeared incapable of firing single shots, instead letting off bursts of automatic fire, which is wildly inaccurate and wastes ammunition, he said.

Another problem was communications: As soon as combat began, the army’s communications network largely collapsed, he said, so troops conducted operations using regular cell phones. That left their communications easily accessible to Russian intelligence.

“Were they ready to go? The answer is no,” the sergeant said.

The U.S. trainers come from different branches of the military: Marines, Army, Navy and special forces. Most have combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan. At the moment, according to the trainers, there are fewer than 100 of them in the country.

Officially their job is to get the Georgians ready to serve in Iraq, where the country has maintained a 2,000-man contingent. Unofficially, some of the trainers acknowledge, the program hopes to give the U.S. a more robust ally on Russia’s border in a country that houses a vital oil pipeline.

The Americans are not the only ones here. Georgian corporals and sergeants train with Germans, the navy and alpine units work with French instructors, and special operations and urban warfare troops are taught by Israelis, said Georgia’s deputy defense minister, Batu Kutelia.

While the U.S. mission is specifically aimed at getting troops ready for Iraq, the “overall goal is to bring Georgia up to NATO standards,” Kutelia said in an interview Sunday.

Georgia has allied itself with the West and has hopes of joining NATO, ambitions that Russia has seen as a challenge to its influence and security.

Kutelia said Georgian troops who had trained with the Americans and other foreign forces — about half of the military — performed better in the war than those who did not.

It is not clear how many Georgian units actually had a chance to put what they learned into practice.

One Georgian officer who returned from the front said the army succumbed not to one-on-one combat but to overwhelming Russian air power. The officer, who appeared shaken by what he saw, showed photographs of Georgian military jeeps destroyed from the air, the bodies of their occupants lying bloated on the road. He would not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Barta, the U.S. Army captain, said of the company he was training: “I know specifically that Bravo Company, I’m sure, and I hope from what I did for them, that they’re better off than they would have been if this happened four weeks ago.”

An independent Georgian military expert, Koba Liklikadze, said the U.S. training was not a deciding factor, attributing the army’s loss to bad decisions by the government.

The U.S. program has been interrupted, and critically damaged, by the war. Many Georgian military bases, including the main U.S. training facility at Vaziani, were damaged or destroyed.

The U.S. trainers now lounging at the Tbilisi Sheraton have been relegated to following the situation from the hotel’s carpeted halls and glass elevators. They seem eager to either get back to work or leave.

With the future of their mission uncertain, the trainers have been drafted to help the U.S. aid operation that began last week. But it is hard to avoid the impression they would rather be elsewhere.

“I’m not saying that we’re suffering here with the 1 million thread-count sheets or checking out the local females at the pool,” said Captain Pongpat Piluek, a veteran of the Afghanistan war. “But if our job now is to sit here and put down roots in the couch, I’d rather do it at home.” (Link)

———————————————————————————————————–
I guess the truth will slowly come out. Seems that the NATO was doing some serious playing in Russia’s backyard…..

Kyle & Svet

This morning while sipping that cup of coffee. I was thinking about how life seems to imitate whether animate or inanimate. This thinking came from the last few days here in Russia…

Sveta and I just purchased a Asus Eee pc. It is a tiny little thing and we are going to use it on our travels. This was a decision that we made after several years of contemplating…

It came with Windows Starter (Which I just love!) and is a fast little computer. It actually is faster than our other two computers. But actually this post is not about the Asus Eee pc. The post is about how you can become attached to an inanimate object as almost a friend and buddy…

Many people get attached to certain items in their life. Some have a pair of shoes that they just can not get rid of. Some have a lucky T-shirt. It can be anything animate or inanimate…

Well I did not realize how important my desktop computer was to me, until it just died this weekend. I was working on the Asus and getting it set up to perform all the functions that we need it to be able to do. I got a blue screen of death on the big computer. The first time it happened I wrote it off as something that I was up to and it caused a conflict in the system. But after the 5 blue screen of death, I realized that something is amiss.   So I dropped everything I was doing and spent all day Saturday and part of Sunday morning getting all our data from the hard drives of our big computer. Believe you me, we have a lot of data and Sveta will accept no loss of any of it… 🙂

So once I was certain that all data was safe, I could then play around and see what is wrong. Well to make a long story less long. The big computer has a mother board going out. This caused issues with trying to recover all data. The drive controllers and built in video are shooting the craps…

It looks like the hard drive is OK but without the big computer we are blind without a way to access the data. Hence the need to transfer everything to our external drive…

So today I am sitting here working on the Big Dell laptop hooked to the big monitor and using the laptop as a desktop for now. It works great but it is not the same…

I realized as I am typing this article that I am sad that our friend the big computer bit the dust. It seems dumb that it would make me sad, but that is the way it is never less. It is like a friend just passed away and will not be back. I knew every square inch of the computer and even though I knew that she was old and we needed to upgrade beyond what she could handle. We had already maxed out the memory and installed other new parts to get her to limp along with the big boys. But we had reached a serious road of thoughts about whether we needed to get a new computer to keep up with our demands…

But Sveta and I are very much alike in this respect and if she still worked then “what the hey…”

So now the decision is whether we buy a new computer or do I tear the old one down and rebuild it with new mother board or not? I will have to check out the cost of parts in Russia because if the price is the same either way then it is decision time. Computers are dirt cheap here in Russia…

Strange how things work out. Now the big Dell laptop becomes the main computer and the new little Asus has a real use already in life. I just finished a few minutes ago getting the sp1 update installed in the Asus and it is ready to earn its keep around the the household. It reminds me of how our family had a thought associated with, that a new birth preceeded a death of the aged person. We got a new computer and the old one left…

But it is still sad that our old computer that we have typed thousands and thousands of articles on has decided to bite the dust. I guess she was tired…

Windows to Russia!

This morning over that wonderful cup of coffee that always makes a great start to any day. I was doing some thinking’s about this weekend that just passed…

We got into a heated argument with another gentleman and several ladies over an issue with the flats we live in. It was over installing a door in the hallway and we are against it. The law says that if one person is against it then the door can not be installed. Or else we can have the door tore down. The rules are on our side…

Well the gentleman was a cop who lived upstairs and his girlfriend finally convinced him to try to strong arm me into letting the door be put up. After he tried to intimidate with being tough and flashing his credentials around. It dawned on him that I was not the type who cared who he was and that was that…

When we realized that he was in trouble with his girlfriend and her mother and several other women. We made a deal with the group. I only care if the door goes up and everyone makes the hallway into a personal trash storage place. You know a place that old washers and dryers go when they die because they are too heavy to move any farther. Plus hundreds of other things that could be done in the hall…

So Sveta and I came to a compromise and the door will go up and the door bell has to be moved, also no trash, no family room or smoking area. no carpet, not furniture, no pictures, no lumber storage and anything else that I can get grouchy about… (Yes I get grouchy!)

Now to the part of men…

When we parted our ways the gentleman came to me and thanked me. I being an American put out my hand to shake his hand and at that moment realized that this 300lb + policeman wanted to hug me!

Now being from America the land of real men, real men do not cry, real men do not hug, real men do not kiss and real men… (You get the picture.)

I got to experience a 300lb cop lay his head on my shoulder and said thank you…

So as he walked away, I was stunned because my upbringing was such that strange men do not hug or lay their heads on each other. Especially two men who just about got into a fist fight…

Later I mentioned it to Sveta and she said it was normal for Russian men. Then I thought about the times in my past when I see Russian leaders kiss each other on the cheeks and many times I see Russian men hug each other out in public. I then realized that this was the first time that I had a serious confrontation with someone and what was normal for him was not normal for me…

His perception of how things are, is different than what I perceive. Culture is the big key in this situation…

In Russia men do kiss each other on the cheeks and they do hug and immediate family is not the criteria. In America we have our personal space around us and for a stranger, much less one that you have just been in an argument with, to invade that space, is fighting time…

That is why I love Russia…

Windows to Russia!