Windows to Russia

Kruzenshtern has set sail on its first voyage this year from the port of Svetly near Kaliningrad…

During this expedition, the four-mast Kruzenshtern, one of the oldest sailing-ships worldwide, will mark its 85th anniversary. Despite such an advanced age, the bark continues to slough through the vast expanses of seas and oceans. This is largely due to Russian sailors and shipbuilders who exert tremendous efforts to prepare the ship for its expeditions. Kruzenshtern’s captain Mikhail Novikov says that the Kruzenshtern is a top-quality ship with high-class seafaring characteristics…

Kruzenshtern has made two round-the-world voyages, which means that it’s in fairly good condition, the ship’s captain says. It was the one picked for the Trans-Atlantic expedition, even though Russia has four other barks besides it…

Kruzenshtern became famous worldwide after it circumnavigated the world in 308 days covering a total 39 thousand sea miles in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Russian Fleet in 1995-1996. The second circumnavigation was in 2005-2006, and in 2009-2010 the legendary bark went on the Trans-Atlantic expedition timed for the 65th anniversary of Allied Victory in the Second World War. In addition, Kruzenshtern has scored a series of victories in yacht races and regattas…

This year, the Kruzenshtern will call at a number of ports in Europe. First on its itinerary is the Spanish port of Vigo on the Atlantic Ocean. On its way back the ship will call at Bremerhaven in Germany where it was originally built, and will then arrive at Hamburg, just in time for City Day festivities. At Lubeck, the Russian vessel will take part in celebrations on the occasion of the 100th jubilee of its fellow bark, the four-mast Passat, which has been a museum since 1960…

Most of its 75-day voyage Kruzenshtern will travel under sail. Its crew comprises 112 military students who will be keeping watch, swabbing the decks and climbing up the 60-meter mast. There are women students too, as women are now as welcome as men to choose a seafaring job…

The Kruzenshtern is slated to return to Kaliningrad on May 17th.

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At least 800 people were slaughtered in the western Ivory Coast town of Duekoue on March 29, the International Committee of the Red Cross said, as it became the latest town caught in the spiral of post-electoral violence engulfing the country. Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity, estimated the death toll was 1,000…

Read more: (Link)

Hummm…

So we are at war in Libya but not in the twenty other places that people are dying by the hundreds and the thousands…

If you use the term humanitarian help to one country then you have to apply it to all countries that they are killing people left and right…

Grow up people. It is not equal…

It is sad, very sad…

Windows to Russia!

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said government ministers have until July 1 to give up their seats on boards of some of the country’s biggest state firms, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

The Kremlin insists the move is part of efforts to “improve Russia’s investment climate.”

But experts suggest Medvedev is trying to gain ground ahead of the 2012 presidential election by dismissing some of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s closest allies as oil and gas regulators and company directors. Putin has hinted he may try to elbow Medvedev aside at the polls.

In a speech carried by state news channel Rossiya 24 earlier this week, Medvedev said he wanted all ministers to vacate their seats, including Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin as chairman of state oil firm Rosneft and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as chairman of Russia’s second largest VTB Bank and diamond miner Alrosa.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin will be replaced at Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot and Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, while First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov should resign from the Russian Agricultural Bank.

The entire list of the officials to lose their seats was published on the Kremlin website.

The move has rekindled rumors of a growing rift between Medvedev and Putin, who have recently disagreed on a number of issues, most notably on the second conviction of former oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky and on the UN-mandated air strikes on Libya.

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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… 🙂

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