Windows to Russia

That cup of coffee is extra special today. I got my sweetie with me in Ukraine. We are at the Kiev Train Station at this moment…

I really like the Kiev train station. It is like home away from home and I have spent many hours waiting for trains at this station…

Sveta is here with me now and we are waiting for our train to Odessa Ukraine. We decided to take a week and explore the Odessa area…

Sveta and I were stunned. We were able to get train tickets from Kiev to Odessa for less that USD amount of 10 dollars each. That is great…

So we are off to explore and enjoy life. I hope to have access to internet in Odessa but that may not be possible…

You all have a great weekend because I know we will…

Windows to Russia!

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will pay an official visit to Russia on May 11-14, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The visit will take place on an invitation from President Dmitry Medvedev, the presidential press service said, adding that talks between Medvedev and Zardari will take place on May 12.

The visit was announced just days after world’s most wanted terrorism Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid on his compound 50 kilometers from the Pakistani capital.

Islamabad has both praised and criticized Monday’s operation by U.S. troops on its territory, which the Pakistani government was not told about until it was over. In a statement on Wednesday, Pakistan expressed “its deep concerns and reservations on the manner in which the government of the United States carried out this operation without prior information or authorization from the government of Pakistan.”

A cradle of the Taliban movement, Pakistan allied with the United States when U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in a hunt for bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Russia has expressed its readiness to support Pakistan in its fight against terrorism. Last March, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for an international assistance to the Pakistani government in combating terrorist activity.

However, the Russian government has reiterated that it will not develop military cooperation with Pakistan, taking into account the concerns of India, a major purchaser of Russia’s military equipment.

MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti)

Media should cover issues concerning health care and especially children’s vaccinations extremely precisely and responsibly, avoiding the dissemination of medieval myths, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

“Our media are free, but they should be responsible. They, of course, should not spread grand old Middle Ages [ideas], when saying that vaccinations are a devil-like matter and children get sick from them and sometimes even die from them,” Medvedev said during a visit to a children’s hospital in Moscow.

The issue was raised by one of the doctors of the hospital who took part in the meeting with Medvedev. “I am afraid to switch on the TV in the morning. They say awful and absolutely incorrect things about vaccinations. Elementary control should exist,” the doctor said.

Everybody knows that “incidents and mishaps sometimes occur after inoculations,” the president said. “But of course no one should fan fears and create a psychopathic atmosphere because this would have a negative impact on the interests of the people,” he added.

MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday instructed the Agriculture and Energy ministries to solve the problem with gasoline shortages in the country to ensure the start of spring cultivation.

The government boosted gasoline export tariffs to nearly 44 percent from May 1 to fight local shortages which started in mid-March in some regions. Russian oil companies prefer to sell gasoline abroad where prices are higher than in Russia, where the state has capped prices.

“I instruct you [Agriculture Ministry] with the Energy Ministry to see what is really happening [with fuel in the regions] and not just on pieces of paper.”

Putin cited a statement from the Volgograd and Saratov regions, suffering from gasoline shortages, which says the lack of gasoline is hampering spring cultivation.

The Russian prime minister promised his support.

The Russian government may take more steps to ensure uninterrupted deliveries of gasoline to the local market, including examining the operation of crude oil trading and gasoline exchanges if it does not see a stable market, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said on Thursday.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service, the government’s competition watchdog, has accused large oil companies of operating a cartel.

The government believes that the introduction of exchange trade in oil products will help regulate the market and has ordered companies to sell 15 percent of their products via exchanges.

Sechin criticized state-run gas giant Gazprom, which owns an oil refinery, for not participating in the exchange market.

“A lack of work through the exchange creates conditions for setting inappropriate prices, which is why officials from oil refineries, which are not part of vertically integrated companies, are participating in the work of the government commission on their failure to participate in exchange markets today,” he said.

MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti) 

A Moscow court sentenced ultranationalist Nikita Tikhonov to life in jail on Friday for the murder of human-rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009.

The court also sentenced Tikhonov’s accomplice and civil partner Yevgeniya Khasis to 18 years in prison.

Markelov and Baburova, who worked for the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper, were gunned down in broad daylight in downtown Moscow in January 2009. Investigators said Baburova was killed as a witness to the murder of Markelov, who was an active member of an anti-fascist movement.

A jury found Tikhonov and Khasis guilty of the murders on April 28. Both are linked to the outlawed ultranationalist group, Russky Obraz.

During the hearings, Khasis pleaded not guilty while Tikhonov admitted to a separate arms trading charge but denied involvement in the murder.

Tikhonov and Khasis embraced while the verdict was being announced, apparently oblivious to the judge’s words. When the judge asked whether the sentence was clear, Tikhonov answered, “It’s been clear since March.”

The defendants’ lawyers said they would appeal the ruling.

The court also ordered Tikhonov to pay Baburova’s parents 2 million rubles ($73,000) in moral damages and 40,000 rubles ($1,500) in material damages. They had originally made a claim for 5 million rubles ($182,000.)

A handful of supporters and friends of the defendants, present at the hearing, smiled when the verdict was announced.

“In five years they will get out, and someone will be dead,” one said.

MOSCOW, May 6 (RIA Novosti) 

I am sitting at a place called McFoxy! The name should give you a hint. It is owned by McDonalds here in Ukraine…

The coffee is exactly the same as McDs and the menu is centered around chicken and more chicken. I have become a McFoxy fan because McDonalds is always so busy that you can not even get in. They seem to be building a McFoxy where ever you find a McDonalds…

So I am sitting here typing a post out on the phone. I am waiting for Sveta to show up from Moscow Russia. I will be glad when she gets here. She made it through the borders ok and that is always a relief…

The Kiev train station is busy 24 hours a day and I just love the hustle and bustle of the station…

Time to go and hopefully when I have time to write more I will be able to find internet to allow me to write. But for now I will finsh my coffee before it gets too cold…

Windows to Russia!

Posted from mobile…

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev moved to beef up his image as an anti-corruption crusader on Wednesday as he signed off a bill to raise fines for bribery.

The bill, approved by Russia’s parliament earlier this month, raises fines for giving or taking bribes up to 100 times the amount of the bribe. The maximum fine is 500 million rubles ($18.3 million).

“I hope this law helps fight corruption, the scale of which is horrifying,” Medvedev said in a meeting with Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika.

“It is an absolutely new punishment,” the president said. “The spike of state responsibility will be directed at a person’s assets. For some, this will be more important.”

He added however that a jail term remains the “main type of punishment” for palm-greasing.

“There should be no doubt: imprisonment… will continue to be used by courts.”

The number of corruption-related crimes involving top government officials and large bribes increased 100% in 2010 year-on-year, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in January.

Russia is ranked 154th out of 178 countries by Transparency International, while the United States is 19th in the anti-corruption group’s latest Corruption Perception Index.

GORKI, May 4 (RIA Novosti)

Russian military will carry out on Thursday the third night rehearsal of the May 9 parade on Moscow’s Red Square, the Defense Ministry said.

“The first rehearsal was carried out on Red Square on April 26, the second took place on May 3, and we still have the third on May 5 and the final rehearsal on May 7,” spokesman Lt. Col. Sergei Vlasov said on Wednesday.

Vlasov said the rehearsal was scheduled to start at 10.00 pm Moscow time (18:00 GMT).

This year’s parade will involve 20,000 servicemen and over 100 pieces of military hardware, including Topol-M ballistic missile launchers, S-400 Triumph air defense systems, Pantsyr-S1

Air defense systems, Iskander-M missile launchers, Smerch multiple rocket launchers, BTR-80 armored personnel carriers, and T-90 main battle tanks.

The event will culminate with a flyover by a group of Mi-8 multirole helicopters carrying Russian state and military flags.

The Moscow authorities have allocated about 102 million rubles ($3.7 mln) on preparations for the Victory Day parade on Red Square.

MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti)

I found this article interesting because I can tell you that being from America that this is a worthless report that should be abolished. It is American based and American backed…

Russian media experts disputed on Tuesday the accuracy of the 2011 Freedom of the Press report which ranks Russia 173rd out of 196 countries.

Russia jumped two positions in the report by the Washington-based Freedom House think tank, from 175th in 2010, but is still ranked on par with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe.

“I strongly disagree with those estimates, because, even if we do have negative factors, we are not at the level of Venezuela or certain African states,” said Pavel Gusev, the chairman of the Russian Public Chamber’s committee for media issues.

“Positive trends, media development and the fact that almost every Russian region has its own free media – free both in terms of their financial sources and in terms of expression – were ignored by Freedom House,” said Gusev, who is also the editor-in-chief of the popular Moskovsky Komsomolets daily.

Russia has only a handful of independent newspapers and just one independent TV channel. There have been several murders and beatings of journalists critical of the authorities in recent years.

The Internet has remained mostly free of censorship, turning it into a forum for public discussion and dissent. President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed rumors last week that the government planned to impose Chinese-style restrictions on the Internet.

I can tell you from experience that this is a political tool and is used to wage political war on countries that America deems not agree with their point of view. So Russia just needs to ignore this report and tell America to stick it where the sun does not shine…

I still say that Russia is just as free if not freer than America and these reports are the same every time. But when you control the end results of the reports. The reports become what ever you want them to be and say…

Windows to Russia!

A former Russian intelligence officer who helped the U.S. authorities uncover a Russian spy ring last summer has been charged with high treason and desertion, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday.

Ten Russians, including media star Anna Chapman, were arrested in the United States in June 2010 on suspicion of espionage. They plead guilty to conspiring to act as unregistered foreign agents and were returned to Russia in exchange for four men accused by the Kremlin of spying for Britain’s MI6 and the CIA.

“The FSB investigation department has completed an investigation into the case to charge Russian national Alexander Poteyev with committing high treason by divulging state secrets,” the FSB said in a statement.

It said the indictment against Poteyev was sent to Moscow’s main military court on April 21.

Poteyev fled to the United States with his family shortly before the arrest of the sleeper agents was made public. His case will be heard in absentia.

Windows to Russia!