Windows to Russia

Medvedev has signed up on Twitter…

http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E -(English Version)

http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia -(Russian Version)

Go ahead and follow – we have…

Windows to Russia!

Hello,

I was drinking my morning cup of coffee & thinking about Visa issues again. It seems that getting a visa to the UK from Russia is getting hard to do. It also seems that getting a visa to Russia from the UK is just as hard if not harder!

I know visa issues play a big part of where you travel. My wife and I wanted to travel to Armenia, but the Russian/Georgian issues stopped that plan. We had to have an unbelievable mess of visas to drive to Armenia. (So we said, “No Way!”)

I always try to keep updated information posted about any Visa issues.

So all UK & Russia are doing is hurt their own cash flow by keeping tourists out…..

Russian Tourists to U.K. Face Lengthy Visa Delays

By Irina Titova

Staff Writer

Changes to visa procedures for visitors to the U.K. have led to delays of up to two months and have begun to reduce the number of Russian tourists making the trip there, Moscow tour operators say, although The St. Petersburg Times has learned that visa applications made through the British Consulate in St. Petersburg tend to be dealt with more quickly than they are through the British Embassy in the capital.

The new rules mean that a tourist wishing to visit the U.K. needs to fill out an online visa application after which an appointment to attend a visa center is arranged where the applicant will give biometric data, operators say. The application is then considered by visa authorities.

“On March 21 we were only able to arrange tourists’ appointments for April 21 — that is, they’ll have to wait for a month just for the appointment,” the Russian Tourism Union or RTU quoted Valeria Krasilnikova, head of British direction at PAK group company in Moscow, as saying.

“Besides, the [visa authorities] will then need at least two weeks to consider the documents. As a result, in order to get a visa to Great Britain a tourist needs up to two months,” Krasilnikova said.

Tour operators say that it is not completely clear if the delay with British visas is due to technical problems with the new system or with strained diplomatic relations between the countries. However, they say that the U.K. is losing Russian tourists.

“Tourists become interested in other European countries. For instance, getting a visa for Germany or Austria takes only four days. For a French visa, it officially takes two weeks but in reality one can do it in three or four days,” Tamara Guskova, manager at Moscow’s Alp Discovery travel company said.

“We don’t send that many tourists to Great Britain, but we still have a constant flow. However, because of current problems we refuse to process tours with flights dated before May,” Guzkova said.

Yelena Zryanina, general director of Moscow’s Planeta Business Tour said that because of the impossibility of receiving the visas on time the company has had to make changes in presold tours. She said Thursday that the company can’t prepare documents for people who were planning to fly as late as May 1.

Anna Maslennikova, general director of Insight Lingua, said she is worried about the cost of the new procedures, and how long they take.

“About 70 percent of our clients are people living in the regions. It’s often children who go to England to study the language. So, now a child needs to personally come to the Embassy, bring documents, give biometric data, leave, then wait to receive the visa. At the same time all those trips a child has to do with an adult. This way the trip becomes $500-$1000 more expensive,” Maslennikova said.

Maslennikova said the regional demand for U.K. trips has decreased. Instead, Russians are preferring to study in Ireland, Malta or even the United States, she said.

The press service of British Embassy in Moscow confirmed that delays with British visas currently exist.

“The delays at present are unfortunate but are due to a number of short term reasons and we are working to ensure that these problems are eliminated as soon as possible,” the press service said.

The Embassy refused to specify the “short term reasons” for the delays.

Meanwhile, the British Consulate in St. Petersburg said it is not experiencing any delays with visas.

Yelena Mishkenyuk, spokes-woman for the British Consulate in St. Petersburg, said that in St. Petersburg, those who fill out the on-line application form get an appointment for the visa center a day or two later.

Mishkenyuk said within three or four days of the appointment, if the documents are fine, a tourist can get a British visa.

“We haven’t come across this problem in St. Petersburg,” Mishkenyuk said on Wednesday.

Tatyana Demenyeva, spokes-woman for northwest office of the RTU, said St. Petersburg tour operators have not complained about problems with British visas.

Demenyeva suggested that more people in Moscow were interested in the visiting the U.K. than in St. Petersburg because it is expensive and Muscovites are wealthier than people in St. Petersburg.

Mishkenyuk said filling an on-line application form was a part of British visa strategy all over the world that was directed at the improvement of the procedure.

“In the new application form, a person needs to fill out only the parts needed for getting a particular visa type,” she said, adding that the system is directed at “lowering the percentage of refusals.”

Mishkenyuk said that although giving biometrical data causes some inconvenience to tourists it is a procedure that is becoming standard worldwide.

At the same time, Sergei Korneyev, head of the northwest branch of the RTU, said the process of getting a British visa “has indeed become longer and more complicated.”

“The new visa procedure is especially inconvenient for tourists living in Pskov, Novgorod or Murmansk if we are talking about the north west region. Residents of those cities now have to travel to St. Petersburg at least twice to get a British visa,” he said.

Korneyev said that the modernization of the visa system had clearly been the major reason for the complications in the process, but he said that he couldn’t exclude the idea that “the political situation between the countries could also play its role in that.”

“Great Britain is an interesting country for Russian tourists. However, this interest is easy to break and hard to build up again,” Korneyev said.

Beginning March 1, British visa centers accepted only electronic visa applications. At the same time, a personal visit to the visa center remains a necessity: an applicant needs to bring a passport, a printed and signed application form and other support documents, as well as to pay for the visa and give their biometrical data.

Russian citizens were obliged to give their biometrical data beginning November last year.

U.K. visa centers operate in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.

So Svet & I travel to countries that seem to want tourists and make it easier to get visas!

How About you?

Kyle & Svet

This morning while drinking that wonderful cup of coffee and doing some thinking. I started to wonder what I weighed. This has come about because Svet has been on a very successful weight loss program.

Svet has a blog that deals with what she is doing to lose weight and to tell you the truth I do not know what she writes on that blog. I stay away and let her alone… (Read Svet’s Blog: In Russian!) Her blog has become very successful and she is starting to have a lot of followers.

So I weighed myself and have found that I have lost a huge amount of weight myself. I had wrote an article a month ago about that I had lost 20 pounds. I was struggling hard with my weight ever since my heart attacks and I quit smoking coming to Russia. So how much have I lost?

When I started to alter the way I eat and alter my habits, I had reached a unbelievable 150 kilos. That equates into 330 pounds for you none metric people. As of today I touched the 130 Kilo mark on the scale. That is 286 pounds. I have lost 44 pounds and to this American that is a wonderful thing…

I have had real problems struggling against the medicines that I take because of heart issues. One pill I take, bloats me up and my feet swell, then I have to take another to stop my feet from swelling. Then I take a pill that slows my heart down and that makes it so that I have to pace myself and not push things to hard. (So On and So On) I officially take a total of 27 pills a day now and that is way down from what the American doctors had me taking…

When I had my first heart attack I weighed 250 pounds and went like no tomorrow. It has taken me years to change what was, to what has to be. It is not easy and when you realize that you can not eat those hot roast beef open faced sandwiches smothered in gravy any more, is when you will realize that you will be around the earth much longer.

I will not talk about how much weight Svet has lost because guys are just better off not talking about their wives weight. 🙂 But her blog tells what she has lost and I will venture to say that Svet has lost as much weight in proportion that I have.

So what is this miraculous weight lose program that Svet and I use. It is not a certified program. (those never work) It is not a diet fad or such. (Those never work) In fact it was extremely simple…

1. Gave up any and all desserts…
2. Stopped cooking with any oil…
3. Stopped all starches (such as potatoes, rice and noodles)…
4. Stopped all breaded foods (such as rolling meat in flour)…
5. Use real butter in place of margarine…
6. Low fat cottage cheese…
7. I also drink a liter a day of Russian Sour Milk (Kefir)
8. No pork or beef – just chicken and turkey

We do not control how much chicken or turkey we eat nor the fruit or vegetables that we eat. The only veggies that we stay away from are corn and peas due to high starch and such. That is it…

Oh and the most important part of loosing weight. Svet and I do it together…

Windows to Russia!

Lets have a look at what Russia is doing this week:

How about we start with Medvedev? It seems that Medvedev is having a really good time this week. It seems that he is in the USA on a visit. Now, in my opinion he just did the most important part of his visit and the rest of the trip doesn’t matter…

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev kicked off his five-day visit to the United States with dinner with Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in San Francisco.

What a deal! To meet the Terminator in person. That has to be the highlight of his trip even if Medvedev does not want to admit it. Just look at Medvedev’s face. He is probally thinking of the famous line from Terminator 1 – “I’ll be back”…

So while Medvedev is gallivanting around America, lets see what else is happening in Russia?

It so happens that Belarus has declared a “full fledged gas war with Russia!” Now I am not sure that Russia really understands that this is “war”, but according to the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko it is war… (Russia says, Pay your bill and send receipts for the gas transit and all will be happy…) What is it with these Ex-Soviet States Presidents that act like rejects all the time? Is it something in the air or water?

Well while Belarus has declared war on Russia, lets see what else is happening?

It seems that in Moscow that people have reached a new level of sophistication. Moscow parks are trying to get people to clean up after their dogs do, what dogs have to do, when they go out for a walk. They are now supplying doggy bags and pooper scoopers to help clean up with. It seems that all the excess doggy doo doo is blamed on people and their dogs that they keep in their residence. What I have a question about is, Why are the unbelievable numbers of a million excess dogs that run all over Moscow not blamed? I know that those dogs do, what dogs have to do, also… (Boza and I had to use sticks and bad language and barking, to dissuade a pack of about 15 dogs, not to bother us, just today…)

So while Moscow is coming down on doggy’s that have a family to care for them. Lets see what else is happening?

We do not want to leave Putin out of the story. (Do We?) Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov have agreed to discuss energy cooperation in Moscow and this just happens to be happening while Belarus plays games. It seems that Ukraine has smartened up and have made it very clear that while they do not take sides on this Russian / Belarus “War of Gas”, that Ukraine will be happy to increase the flow of gas to Europe and bypass Belarus completely if need be. Obviously Ukraine has no issues with kicking Belarus in the teeth to get more money in transit fees…

Windows to Russia!

What more would a Russian want? Before you know it they will all be saying Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet is the Russian way…

“I really hope not!”

Everyday I wake up in Russia it looks a little bit more like America. We have McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Budweiser and now Coors Beer…

American-Canadian beer company, Molson Coors Brewing Company, has signed Moscow brewing company to bottle the Coors Light brand in Russia, reports Russia Today.

I remember when Coors Beer became popular. But the only place you could get it was basically in Colorado? It was suppose to be illegal in the rest of the country. So, since it was presumed illegal we had to have it and many people all over the country made illegal runs across the Colorado state line and bought Coors beer. I think the Movie, Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds, dealt with the bootlegging issue of Coors?

You could make a fortune selling the cases of beer for three to four times what you paid for them…

You could say Coors was “coveted”…

Those where the “good ole days”…

Windows to Russia!

Hello,

In Russia the old system of stock predictions has proven to be fatal (literally)! The old system that relied upon humans has become out of date and inaccurate. So a new system with higher accuracy was needed to predict the stock market more accurately.

Do you recall the earlier months of this year when in Russia, respected analysts and brokerage houses were eyeing an end of year level for the RTS (Russian Trading System) of 3000?

Finans Magazine does, and with the RTS currently nudging 700 it thought it needed to look at another way of getting stock market guidance and has turned to a female monkey from the Durov animal circus.

It coaxed the young monkey into choosing 8 publicly listed company from a group of 30 with independent observers present to ensure that there was no pressure on the monkey from any organizer to choose one stock or another. The monkey chose these companies in Russia: Polyus Gold, Rosneft, Lukoil, Avtovaz, Gazprom-Neft, Surgutneftegaz, Sberbank, Uralsvyazinform.

Finans Magazine intends to set up a portfolio matching the monkey’s selection, and monitor it throughout 2009 to see how it compares with the other professionals in Russia and their advice. (Link)

The Monkey’s Portfolio:

1. Avtovaz
2. GazpromNeft
3. Lukoil
4. Polyus Gold
5. Rosneft
6. Sberbank
7. Surgutneftegaz
8. Uralsvyazinform

For those of you who are looking for good picks on the stock market in Russia, this could prove to be a Godsend!

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.

PS: Maybe the world needs to get themselves monkeys to predict Wall-Street?

Good video because it is hard for me to see Medvedev as being tough. He has such a baby face. Putin just looks so much tougher than Medvedev, when the law is being laid down…

In this video Medvedev lays the law down to Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller!

I guess Medvedev does not want to barter?

Windows to Russia!

I was drinking my morning cup of coffee and thinking about the Gas issue between Belarus and Russia. The Western press is all over it with comparisons to the Ukraine situation in the past. The Western press has gone all out and is accusing Russia of using gas as a political weapon and this is even as Belarus admits they owe it:

“Belarus acknowledges the gas debt, but has offered to pay with machinery, equipment and various other goods,” Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said, adding that talks had yielded no result.

The amount is $200,000,000 and that may not seem like a lot in this day and age, but it is a lot to a country like Belarus!

I understand Gazprom’s stand on it and if you do not pay your bill a utility company will settle it for you and that involves shutting off the gas at the meter. I once had my water shut off in America for a past due amount of $2.95. I was new to living in a city and never thought twice about a tiny bill I received that said that I still owed a minuscule amount. This was an 11 day notice that if not paid my water would be shut off. I was 15 days away from the next water bill due in the mail and I knew that all would be paid in full at that time. $2.95 is not enough to worry about! Wrong…(No pay – no play!)

But when I discovered that Belarus is trying to pay by a barter method, I started to do some thinking. What is better to receive a bunch of worthless paper we call money or to get a tangible product, such as farm equipment that can be used on the farms in Russia…

Now to a giant like Gazprom they only care about the money. But on a realistic level, countries and companies that open up the possibility of bartering again as a means to pay bills is not a bad idea.

But then the banking system would hate the idea of countries and companies exchanging goods for other goods because that would leave them out of the equation…

Now a final thought on this. You can feel sorry for the Belarus people but somewhere you have to remember that someone is taking money from the system just like what was happening in Ukraine. Transit fees are paid. Money is made off of gas sold to other countries by Belarus. All kinds of little tricks and games go on. Just like in Ukraine where Ukraine was charging up to double the price to her own people for gas. The same situation is most likely happening in Belarus.

Feel sorry for the people of Belarus but do not blame Russia for the problems in Belarus…

Windows to Russia!

If not already happening, in 25 years Chinese and Russian parents will all be telling their children, whom whine about the veggies at dinner, “eat their vegetables” because “there are starving children in USA and EU” who don’t have enough to eat.

Circle of life starving.

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.

Hello,

Russian diplomacy achieved an important triumph in foreign relations yesterday. At the Moscow meeting of the foreign ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization a joint statement was adopted that laid all the blame for the conflict in South Ossetia on Georgia. At the same time, the members of the organization gave support to a package of Russian proposals touching on global security, including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s idea of developing a European treaty. Moscow will try to build upon that success at the CSTO summit today.

What is the CSTO:
On October 7, 2002, the Presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, signed a charter in Chişinău, founding the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) (Russian: Организация Договора о Коллективной Безопасности (ОДКБ~ODKB)) or simply Ташкентский договор. Nikolai Bordyuzha was appointed secretary general of the new organization. On 23 June 2006, Vladimir Putin announced that Uzbekistan had also joined the CSTO.

The charter reaffirmed the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force. Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states, while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all.

The CSTO is an observer organisation at the United Nations General Assembly. (Link)

The document adopted by this group of seven – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – expresses support for “the Russian Federation’s active role in contributing to peace and cooperation in the Caucasus.” They advocate “a guarantee of firm security for South Ossetia and Abkhazia based on the United Nations Charter and the 1975 Helsinki Accords” and insist on “the rigorous fulfillment of the settlement principles developed by the president of the Russian Federation and president of France.”

The most pleasant part of the document for Russia is where the CSTO countries express “grave concern over the military actions undertaken by the Georgian side in South Ossetia that have led to numerous civilian victims and the deaths of Russian peacekeepers and a severe humanitarian crisis.”

In the midst of the numerous statements by the CSTO member states, it has gone unnoticed that none of its members has approved Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.Russia now has to still make efforts to find sympathizers ready to follow its example in recognizing the two Caucasian republics. Now that Nicaragua has done so, it will be at least a tiny bit easier for Moscow.

Kyle & Svet

comments always welcome.