Windows to Russia

The coffee was sad this morning as we here in Russia realized the extent of deaths in a sinking of a pleasure cruise boat on the Volga river in Tatarstan…

Rescuers say there are more than 100 bodies, including 30 children, inside the “Bulgaria” cruiser boat which sank in the Volga River near the Russian city of Kazan, but the search for survivors continues. Twelve people have been confirmed dead…. Read More >>>

Russian Video From Russia has posted a 10 min. video about the tragic accident that took at least 100 lives in what was to have been a pleasure cruise on the Volga river…

Windows to Russia!

Paris is carrying out talks with Muammar Gaddafi. The son of the Libyan leader Saif al-Islam said in his interview for the Algerian newspaper El Khabar that the authorities of his country are negotiating with the French government and not with the regime’s opponents. Paris indirectly confirms its contacts with Gaddafi. The French Defence Minister says that it is time for the participants in the Libyan conflict to start talks.

In his interview Saif al-Islam quotes the words of the French President to the Libyan envoy. To put it in a nutshell, the Interim National Council (the rebels’ government) was established by the West. The rebels could not survive without the support, money and weapons they get from outside. They will be forced to cease fire after France comes to an agreement with Tripoli.

Similar declarations from Paris sounded several hours before the interview for El Khabar came out. French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet declared that NATO would stop its bombings as soon as the Libyans started a dialogue between each other and their soldiers returned to the barracks.

Information about talks between the Libyan government and the rebels came in the past as well: representatives of both parties mentioned talks either in Italy, or in Egypt, or in Norway. It is not as if the Libyan authorities took an implacable position – even Muammar Gaddafi declared that he was ready for reforms. This means that the stumbling block is the future of the leader of Jamahiriya, pointed out Yuri Rubinsky, the head of the Centre of French Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences in his interview for The Voice of Russia:

“French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe made a hint that demands for Gaddafi’s dismissal remain. At the same time, the French also said that Gaddafi should stay “next door”: near power but not in power. Thus, Gaddafi has a chance of staying in case of a slow political settlement.”

France and the USA have never agreed on Libya from the very beginning. France was the main initiator of the sanctions and later the military campaign in Libya. At that time the USA mostly kept silent, not wishing to be involved in a new Iraq or Afghanistan. The USA unwillingly headed the allied operation and shifted the command to NATO at the first opportunity. Now that France is ready for peace the White House policy has suddenly become tough. And France, as is known, is ready to promise the colonel certain guarantees: unfreezing some of his and his family’s bank accounts and helping him to avoid the Hague tribunal if he steps down peacefully. The Libyan leader may even be allowed to remain in his native country.

Recall that at the G8 summit in Deauville in May the leaders came to an agreement that there is no room for Gaddafi in the new Libya. At the same time Moscow has repeatedly confirmed its opinion that the Libyan people should determine the future of their country, the authorities and the opposition should start talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said recently that it is naive to hope that if Gaddafi leaves everyone will surrender to the opposition. There is no alternative to talks.

Original Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/07/11/53084731.html

Windows to Russia!

The Olympic Flame is going to leave Earth as part of the traditional relay before the 2014 Winter Games in the Russian city of Sochi.

­“Russia was the first country 50 years ago to send a man into outer space,” Alexander Zhukov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, told the RIA-Novosti news agency. “Now we have the chance to be the first nation to send the Olympic Flame to outer space, and we are proud of that.”

No less than 14,000 torchbearers will take part in the 120-day-long relay, which will see the Olympic Flame covering 28,000 kilometers and nine time zones.

The sacred fire will also be brought to the highest mountain in Europe, Mount Elbrus, as well as to the bottom of the deepest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Baikal.

I had a post about several months ago and it looks like they are going to try to take the flame to outer space…

Hummm – not sure what I think about that…

Windows to Russia!

One of my biggest grips is about how the Western media never reports the news correctly. The news is always slanted to play their agendas and never written to tell the truth…

Example: Russia’s Ministry of Justice has refused to register a new opposition movement – the People’s Freedom Party – for serious procedural violations including listing minors and the dead amongst its members…

Now this was reported a long time ago and it was clear that this new opposition group was trying to cheat the system. This is normal because, well – remember we are in Russia…

The opposition group was told to clean up its act and reapply and they would be considered. This was said last month and at the time we all laughed because of how stupid can you be? Putting dead babushkas on the membership roll of a political party…

Personally they were lucky to get a chance to reapply. I think that if they are caught trying to cheat by using dead people and underage children to pad the membership role. They do not deserve to be registered as a new party. The knew what they were doing, just as they knew that taking an appeal to European Parliament, would give the West some fuel to create a fire to hassle Russia…

So instead of taking their lumps as good little people, they ran to another country and cried whaaaa whaaaaa whaaaaa…

The West has taken the word of these poor crying people about this situation that is an internal affair of Russia and plastered it all over the news as: Bad, evil and despicable Russia denied an opposition party the right to register… (Minus the real reasons! I guess the crying got in the way!)

Lets see what the head of the State Duma Committee for International Relations Konstantin Kosachev said in an interview with RT about the Western interference…

“The more the European Parliament discusses current political developments in Russia, the more concerned I become for one simple reason – the European Parliament is no longer discussing the whole picture of the ongoing processes in Russia, rather certain political forces, while at the same time supporting these political forces that are neither registered nor a part of the picture,” the Russian official told RT. “Anyone who wants to contribute to the free and democratic processes in Russia should ask this political party, Parnas, to meet the requirements listed in the Justice Ministry’s official reply and try to get registered again,” he said. “But nothing like this happens. This is a political project by the European parliament and [more specifically], certain political forces within the European Parliament, and I am not ready to accept it, nor do I believe this is a favor to Russia,” Kosachev said.

What he said…

Windows to Russia!

PS: It is the same old story as with illegal unsanctioned rallies in Russia. The West never reports that truth. they just report that Russia is bad and arresting innocent people for having a peaceful rally… (Minus that fact that they did not get or were denied “or forgot to get?” permission to have a rally!)

On July 8th, Russia is celebrating Family, Love and Fidelity Day. This has always been the day to commemorate St. Peter and Fevronia of Murom, the patron saints of family happiness. The idea of turning it into a national holiday came from residents of Murom, an ancient city on the Oka River 280 kilometers from Moscow. Here, Prince Peter fell in love with an ordinary peasant woman Fevronia and married her; they lived a long happy life and died on the same day…

Neat holiday…

Windows to Russia!

I needed a good laugh today and this statement supplied that laugh. It was not a laugh at the Belarusian president but I was laughing at the thought of all the political prisoners going to the Western world on a one way ticket. That is what the West needs a bunch of political Belarusian’s… 🙂

The Belarusian president will “buy a ticket tomorrow” for all political prisoners in the country if Western states are willing to accommodate them. ­This is not an issue for Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko said during a working trip to the city of Shklov in Mogilev Region on Thursday. The West may take political prisoners if it is so concerned about them, he said. The president promised to take a decision and send them all in one wagon, “Including those who are free today and making a humming noise in the [public] squares.” Read More >>>

So that is the answer. The West can have all of the humming Belarusian prisoners and make everyone happy…

Get a Ticket to Paradise… 🙂 LOL

Windows to Russia!

Things are changing in the visa department for Americans. I know that my visa run coming up real soon will entail me getting a year visa instead of a 3 month visa as I have done for years now…

I also know that it will be interesting because time frames are always askew when it comes to Russia and America…

I will update the visa situation when I get back, but that will not be for a few weeks. I also am not sure if I have to spend two weeks in Ukraine again. If I do then that will be another whole story in itself… 🙂

My visa expires the 28th of July. So it is time to get invitation, train tickets and a place to live lined out in Ukraine. This time I have to get an HIV certificate from a Russian clinic. Anything over a 3 month visa to Russia has to have a HIV certificate. I am not sure why but to me it seems that 3 months visa is enough time to cause issues with HIV…

So when I get done with this visa run, I will have a one year multi-entry visa…

Stay tuned for updates in the future about visa rules and regulations. As I experience them… 🙂

Windows to Russia!

It is strange but since we moved windowstorussia.com to a new host our readership has doubled. It is almost as if a huge wall was removed that held back people…

So as we are running record page views on Windows to Russia. We almost let “Russian News from Russia” escape our attention and when we realized that Russian News from Russia was running 2 times the page views that Windows to Russia was. I almost freaked out… 🙂

These articles below that have been posted on “Russian News from Russia” in the last few days literally got buried by page views…

Chinese dissident Hu Jia released from prison

Russia publishes its money laundering and terrorism financing list

Russia plans to rent naval pilot training facilities in Ukraine

Russia, NATO must settle ‘missile shield’ issue soon

These articles below on Windows to Russia have been slammed also…

NATO and Missile Defense: No Way Russia…

The Communist in Russia want NATO Disbanded…

NATO/Russia Actions Speak Louder Than Words…

They account for way over a 200,000 page views on Russian News from Russia and Windows to Russia in the last 24 hours alone. Mostly out of America and China. In fact a tidbit of information: In the last few days we have almost equaled all of last months readers from America and we have just started the month. If you remember we were telling in past posts that Germany and China were catching America in readership…

We had been and were convinced that our last host located in America, had been playing games and now we are positive. This is what you call the icing on the cake, so too speak…

We trusted our host to do right by things and we found out that trust was not in the equation…

Windows to Russia!

PS: I will let you know who the host is if you ask by e-mail in contacts. I have already been asked and will responded if I feel that the e-mail is sincere…