Windows to Russia

Message from the President of Russia to the leaders of several European countries

10 April 2014, 23:00

The message reads:

Ukraine’s economy in the past several months has been plummeting. Its industrial and construction sectors have also been declining sharply. Its budget deficit is mounting. The condition of its currency system is becoming more and more deplorable. The negative trade balance is accompanied by the flight of capital from the country. Ukraine’s economy is steadfastly heading towards a default, a halt in production and skyrocketing unemployment.

Russia and the EU member states are Ukraine’s major trading partners. Proceeding from this, at the Russia-EU Summit at the end of January, we came to an agreement with our European partners to hold consultations on the subject of developing Ukraine’s economy, bearing in mind the interests of Ukraine and our countries while forming integration alliances with Ukraine’s participation. However, all attempts on Russia’s part to begin real consultations failed to produce any results.

Instead of consultations, we hear appeals to lower contractual prices on Russian natural gas – prices which are allegedly of a “political” nature. One gets the impression that the European partners want to unilaterally blame Russia for the consequences of Ukraine’s economic crisis.

Right from day one of Ukraine’s existence as an independent state, Russia has supported the stability of the Ukrainian economy by supplying it with natural gas at cut-rate prices. In January 2009, with the participation of the then-premier Yulia Tymoshenko, a purchase-and-sale contract on supplying natural gas for the period of 2009-2019 was signed. That contract regulated questions concerning the delivery of and payment for the product, and it also provided guarantees for its uninterrupted transit through the territory of Ukraine. What is more, Russia has been fulfilling the contract according to the letter and spirit of the document. Incidentally, Ukrainian Minister of Fuel and Energy at that time was Yury Prodan, who today holds a similar post in Kiev’s government.

The total volume of natural gas delivered to Ukraine as was stipulated in that contract during the period of 2009-2014  (first quarter) stands at 147.2 billion cubic meters. Here, I would like to emphasize that the price formula that had been set down in the contract had NOT been altered since that moment. And Ukraine, right up till August 2013, made regular payments for the natural gas in accordance with that formula.

However, the fact that after signing that contract, Russia granted Ukraine a whole string of unprecedented privileges and discounts on the price of natural gas is quite another matter. This applies to the discount stemming from the 2010 Kharkov Agreement, which was provided as advance payment for the future lease payments for the presence of the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet after 2017. This also refers to discounts on the prices for natural gas purchased by Ukraine’s chemical companies. This also concerns the discount granted in December 2013 for the duration of three months due to the critical state of Ukraine’s economy. Beginning with 2009, the sum total of these discounts stands at 17 billion US dollars. To this, we should add another 18.4 billion US dollars incurred by the Ukrainian side as a minimal take-or-pay fine.

In this manner, during the past four years Russia has been subsidizing Ukraine’s economy by offering slashed natural gas prices worth 35.4 billion US dollars.  In addition, in December 2013, Russia granted Ukraine a loan of 3 billion US dollars. These very significant sums were directed towards maintaining the stability and creditability of the Ukrainian economy and preservation of jobs. No other country provided such support except Russia.

What about the European partners? Instead of offering Ukraine real support, there is talk about a declaration of intent. There are only promises that are not backed up by any real actions. The European Union is using Ukraine’s economy as a source of raw foodstuffs, metal and mineral resources, and at the same time, as a market for selling its highly-processed ready-made commodities (machine engineering and chemicals), thereby creating a deficit in Ukraine’s trade balance amounting to more than 10 billion US dollars. This comes to almost two-thirds of Ukraine’s overall deficit for 2013.

To a large extent, the crisis in Ukraine’s economy has been precipitated by the unbalanced trade with the EU member states, and this, in turn has had a sharply negative impact on Ukraine’s fulfillment of its contractual obligations to pay for deliveries of natural gas supplied by Russia. Gazprom has no intentions except for those stipulated in the 2009 contract, nor does it plan to set any additional conditions. This also concerns the contractual price for natural gas, which is calculated in strict accordance with the agreed formula. However, Russia cannot and should not unilaterally bear the burden of supporting Ukraine’s economy by way of providing discounts and forgiving debts, and in fact, using these subsidies to cover Ukraine’s deficit in its trade with the EU member states.

The debt of NAK Naftogaz Ukraine for delivered gas has been growing monthly this year. In November-December 2013 this debt stood at 1.451,5 billion US dollars; in February 2014 it increased by a further 260.3 million and in March by another 526.1 million US dollars.  Here I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in March there was still a discount price applied, i.e., 268.5 US dollars per 1,000 cubic meters of gas. And even at that price, Ukraine did not pay a single dollar.

In such conditions, in accordance with Articles 5.15, 5.8 and 5.3 of the contract, Gazprom is compelled to switch over to advance payment for gas deliveries, and in the event of further violation of the conditions of payment, will completely or partially cease gas deliveries. In other words, only the volume of natural gas will be delivered to Ukraine as was paid for one month in advance of delivery.

Undoubtedly, this is an extreme measure.  We fully realize that this increases the risk of siphoning off natural gas passing through Ukraine’s territory and heading to European consumers. We also realize that this may make it difficult for Ukraine to accumulate sufficient gas reserves for use in the autumn and winter period. In order to guarantee uninterrupted transit, it will be necessary, in the nearest future, to supply 11.5 billion cubic meters of gas that will be pumped into Ukraine’s underground storage facilities, and this will require a payment of about 5 billion US dollars.

However, the fact that our European partners have unilaterally withdrawn from the concerted efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, and even from holding consultations with the Russian side, leaves Russia no alternative.

There can be only one way out of the situation that has developed. We believe it is vital to hold, without delay, consultations at the level of ministers of economics, finances and energy in order to work out concerted actions to stabilize Ukraine’s economy and to ensure delivery and transit of Russian natural gas in accordance with the terms and conditions set down in the contract. We must lose no time in beginning to coordinate concrete steps. It is towards this end that we appeal to our European partners.

It goes without saying that Russia is prepared to participate in the effort to stabilize and restore Ukraine’s economy. However, not in a unilateral way, but on    equal conditions with our European partners. It is also essential to take into account the actual investments, contributions and expenditures that Russia has shouldered by itself alone for such a long time in supporting Ukraine. As we see it, only such an approach would be fair and balanced, and only such an approach can lead to success.

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Up until a few weeks ago, I would have said, “The world needs to sanction the U.S.!”

Now I realize after what I have seen with Iran and now Russia, plus many other countries. That sanctions are a blessing and not a destruction. Sanctions against a country cause a country to unify and develop its own resources. A country like Russia needed to get everything in gear and start producing what it needs. The sanctions that America has played with against Russia,is just the motivation needed to get in gear what I am talking about…

When we (U.S.) try to isolate a country from others, we also isolate the country from ourselves and we lose more than we gain. In this case we are losing big time as when the games end, Russia will be much more self-sufficient than it was to the start of the sanctions against her…

I have talked right here many times on this blog about how Russia is developing its own beef, corn, chickens, wheat and hundreds of other agricultural items. The fact is that there are factories to produce farm equipment, new cars and storage facilities for most of the biggest world companies. Nothing will leave Russia as it is all on Russian soil and these companies stand to lose billions of $ (actually more like trillions of $) if the games are kept going. I have talked about all this right here on this blog and I see that Russia has become much more resilient, if not resistant to the west and the western piss games…

So while I realize that sanctions are not the way to go! Sanctions are the motivator for a country like Russia and Russia has the resources. The resources that many countries could only wish they had, Including the USA. These resources are the key to continuation…

The truth is that the U.S. needs sanctions against her and cause her to wake up. That would be the ticket to becoming self-reliant again. That is why no one cares to sanction America, because we are slowly hanging ourselves to death with a false sense of superiority and a plenitude of ignorance. Sanctions of the U.S. would break that bovine zombie existence and then the world would have to find someone else to buy all its stuff…

I realize that the world is “milking the cow, for all she is worth,” because like all cows they die before you know it and America is no different than that cow in the field. One day they stop giving milk and they either die on their own or we butcher the cow for meat. Usually butchering is best, for we need the meat to live…

So I retract my thoughts about sanctions against the U.S., I say no and keep the ignorant, ignorant and reliant upon the world for its toys…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

I use to work days so long that I would forget what day it was, as I found myself, sometimes 48 hours straight, nonstop and working. It was so bad that I would have a dorm room at the university I worked for, set aside, so that I could sleep two or three hours and start all over again. I spent many years working like that and I realize that I was as much of an issue in my marriages, that they were. I had become the typical farmer to city conversion and almost died from that conversion. My family did die (rhetorically) from that conversion…

So today over that wonderful cup of coffee, I was thinking about how last night I sat here and sewed up my favorite, worn out and decrepit jeans. I just love them too much and even as they start to unravel, I am stitching them back together by hand. Now if you understood that I cannot sew, then you would realize that I am losing the battle…

That thinking’s of sewing up jeans, has resulted in this post…

A post about “Life!”

I had 11 suits of medium quality material and I had 11 suits of expensive material. Each suit had a shirt, tie and belt to match. In all I had 22 suits to wear. The lessor quality were for hands on work and as expected the high quality for the effect. Why I even had a William Fioravanti Bespoke made suit. It ran me $10,000 and it actually really paid for itself…

That was my life and I had gone from farmer’s overalls to Italian suits…

Then my thinking went to my Volga out back of the flats we live in. It is the best car I have ever owned and I have owned some of the best. One that comes to mind is a Cadillac that I had. I lived the life in a $10,000 suit and a 2004 Cadillac CTS-V…

That car could move and it helped me to move some contracts, to pay for itself in less than 6 months…

Then I had heart attacks (6 exactly) and life changed and the story can be found amongst the pages of this website, that you are on right now. I realize that I made the right decision to come to Russia and maybe, just maybe, I will live another 20 years, because of that move… (Maybe not!)

The main thing is that while I can buy new jeans every month if I wanted too. I could buy a fancy car if I wanted too. I could wear expensive suits, if it fancied me. But I have found happiness and that happiness does not have a tie, car or money attached to it and I hope to heaven that I never have to put on those things again…

I enjoyed sewing up my jeans and that simple pleasure was not in my life many years ago. Just like a good woman was not in my life for my whole time in the U.S. My life was chaotic and crushing in America, like it is for so many, just like me in America…

Oh I still have heart issues and they rear their ugly heads at the worst times. I spend many days now, struggling to survive and I spend many days in serious pain. The one and only factor that has kept me from leaving this planet, is a certain girl (Sveta) who cares about me more than life itself. She has shown me life and what the meaning of life is. She has stood by me for almost 9 years now and I still remember when I had my last heart attack and she would talk to me on the phone, as I was in the hospital. She was half way around the world and still took the time to find out if I was alive and what could she do to help…

That is the help she gave (talking to me on the phone) as I spent many days in Intensive care and no one cared if I lived or died. Then I found someone in Russia that cared and she even traveled to America to see me and that is when the magic happened. A man who had the world by the tail at one time and was now broke by life in the west and the pressures of the western world, found someone who cared in Russia. That was the work of God and that is that…

I came to Russia and found “What Life is About!”

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

We all know that McDonald’s being pressured by the American government shut the door on some very lucrative businesses in the Crimea. Three to be exact and Sveta and I have several times visited all three in the past. The volumn of business was very good and worth multiples of millions of dollars in gross sales to the mother company…

Now Burger King is ringing the counter bell and waving the red flag of attention and raising their hand to get noticed, as they try to keep the deep fryers from getting cold in the Crimea and take those empty McDonald’s and turn them into Burger Kings…

Dmitry Medovy, the CEO of Burger King Russia has been on the news and he is talking the talk of getting into the Crimea as soon as possible to get the Burger Kings in operation. He wants to get their now, but says clearly that, “We plan to enter the Crimean market, but I find difficult to answer when it will occur!” Red tape seems to be normal all over the world..

This is very important to understand. The fact that McDonald’s has allowed themselves to be pushed around and drop three money making stores, is a sign of internal issues and political pressure. The fact that Burger King is willing to take the spot and the Russian McDonald’s has not said a word is another sign of internal McDonald’s issues…

Burger King is hungry and as I know from past experiences, never think that you are to big to fail. There is always someone who wants your spot…

McDonald’s just might be in a world of hurt inside of Russia before long. That will then lead to a chain reaction on a McDonald’s that already is showing signs of weakness…

As Sveta says many times, “That’s just right!”

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

“There is a de facto redefinition of “the economy” when sharp contractions are gradually lost to standard measures. The unemployed who lose everything…easily fall off the edge of what is defined as “the economy” and counted as such. So do small shop and factory owners who lose everything and commit suicide. And so do the growing number of well-educated students and professionals who leave…all together. These trends redefine the space of the economy. They make it smaller and expel a good share of the unemployed and poor from standard measures. Such a redefinition makes “the economy” presentable, so to speak, allowing it to show a slight growth of GDP per capita.

The reality at the ground level is more akin to a kind of economic version of ethnic cleansing in which elements considered troublesome are dealt with by simply eliminating them. This shrinking and redefinition of economic space so that economies can be represented as being “back on track” holds for a growing number of economies in the European Union and elsewhere [like the United States]… One indication of a people’s economic despair is a sharp rise in suicide. This trend is evident in several countries worldwide from India to the United States…

The channels for expulsion vary greatly. They include austerity policies that have helped shrink the economies of Greece and Spain, environmental policies that overlook toxic emissions from enormous mining operations in Norilsk, Russia and the American state of Montana…if our concern is environmental destruction rather that interstate politics, the fact that both these mining operations are heavy polluters matters more than the fact that one is in Russia and the other in the United States…The diverse processes and conditions I include under the notion of expulsion all share one aspect: they are acute. While the abjectly poor worldwide are the most extreme instance, I do include such diverse conditions as the impoverishment of the middle classes in rich countries, the evictions of millions of small farmers in poor countries…Then there are the countless displaced people warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, the minoritized groups in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons and the able bodied unemployed men and women warehoused in ghettoes and slums…Some are new types of expulsions, such as the 9 million households in the United States whose homes were foreclosed…”

Saskia Sassen’s forthcoming book Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard-Belknap Press, May 2014) begins its sobering journey with an Introduction titled, “The Savage Sorting.” The Savage Sorting seems destined to become the short-form description of 21^st Century to be remembered, if at all, in some distant future by a genetically reengineered humanity (and biosphere).

Most television watchers are familiar with programming on National Geographic or Animal Planet that depicts “life in the wild” for non-human animals. Typical scenes from “nature” programming include lions and hyenas hunting down young, old and infirm wildebeests or zebras. Ultimately successful, they engage in a feeding frenzy. Sometimes the prey is still alive as it is being disemboweled by the predators. Chimpanzees attack, kill and eat rivals whilst emitting screams that unsettle the viewer’s nerves. Aging grizzly bears are observed losing their prized hunting spots to the young and are left to feed on scraps, themselves destined to be prey for creatures large and small. As the “nature” show goes on, the soothing voice of the human narrator assures the audience that it is all part of the “natural order of things.”

That “natural order of things” also includes human-on-human expulsion and extermination. But before touching a bit on the 21^st Century culling of the human herd, it is worth noting that human-on-non-human carnage continues into this “modern” century. One of the practices of this new age of enlightenment is “Canned Hunting” in South Africa. European, North Americans and Chinese big game hunters, according to the Guardian newspaper, sometimes sit on the back of pickup trucks and wait for lions—bred for a “guaranteed kill”–to run by or walk up to the truck. In the Guardian’s “The lions bred for slaughter: Canned hunting is a fast-growing business in South Africa, where thousands of lions are being bred on farms to be shot by wealthy foreign trophy-hunters,” the reader is confronted with a repulsive picture of a happy hunter gloating over a dead lion.

Humans Don’t Discriminate, They Eliminate Non-Humans and Humans Equally

Then there is the case of the Gray Wolf in the United States. According to The Wolf that Changed America, “Wolves have been feared, hated, and persecuted for hundreds of years in North America. Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans incorporated wolves into their legends and rituals, portraying them as ferocious warriors in some traditions and thieving spirits in others. European Americans, however, simply despised wolves. Many, including celebrated painter and naturalist John James Audubon, believed wolves ought to be eradicated for the threat they posed to valuable livestock. This attitude enabled a centuries-long extermination campaign that nearly wiped out the gray wolf in the continental United States by 1950.”

Now that Grey Wolf populations are increasing—thanks to the work of some bright humans–denizens in American states like Idaho, Wyoming and Michigan want to get back to the way things were in the good old 1950’s. Killing a wolf and taking a “selfie” with the fur that once adorned its body is still an acceptable practice in some quarters. Those quarters are typically dominated by weekend warriors (take another look at the canned hunter on display in the Guardian for the classic “smirk”). Then again American hunters assisted in the near elimination of the America’s mascot: the Bald Eagle.

But it is not just Americans that seek the death penalty for the Gray Wolf (or are crushing the biosphere that that supports life on Earth). It is the same story, for example, in France. According to the Telegraph, UK, “Conservation groups are furious. To return to wolf hunts as if we were in the Middle Ages is scandalous. That the local authorities are organizing them is even worse, said Jean-François Darmstaedter, president of Ferus, who threatened to challenge their legality in the European courts.

We call them ‘political killings’ as their only aim is to allow farmers to let off steam but they will solve nothing. Blindly shooting wolves will have no effect other than to exacerbate the problem. If you kill the alpha male, you can split up a pack, which will cause far more damage. The only solution, he said, was to protect flocks properly by using fierce Pyrenean Patou mountain dogs, penning sheep inside high electrified fences at night and firing warning shots if wolves approach. These measures can reduce predation to almost nil, he insisted.”

Just Like the Wolves: Humans Negated, Written off, Warehoused, Displaced

There is a statement in the comment section on PBS’ The Wolf that Changed America. It serves as a brutal reminder of the willingness of humanity to expel through genocide, war, and economic/statistical cleansing many collections of human and non-human beings. Those expulsed rarely have the honor of even being lost to recorded history. America’s Native Americans provide an example. “The context omitted by this film [The Wolf that Changed America] is the conquest and colonization of New Mexico by the United States and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Americans to make way for cattle ranching, to which the wolves were a threat. Now we speak of the conservation of the “wilderness” and its wild inhabitants. But why are the human inhabitants denied and negated?”

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), there are nearly 30 million internally displaced people (IDP’s) around the globe who are, essentially, homeless. War is a primary cause. Making war is a conscious decision by politicians and military leaders who rarely consider the destructive consequences for the indigenous population, culture and infrastructure. As Sassen has pointed out, expulsions are “made” and war may be the ultimate form of expulsion. For example, America’s covert actions in the Syrian civil war and its two invasions of Iraq have contributed significantly to the IDP numbers. Remarkably, as a consequence of US war-making the Christian cultures of Iraq and Syria have nearly vanished.

IDMC notes that IDP’s are the result of “conflict, generalized violence, human rights violations and natural hazard-induced disasters. It should be noted that these figures do not include all IDP situations by other causes, such as development projects. Furthermore, while the figures have been presented separately here, our analysis shows that conflict, disasters and resulting displacement have multiple and often overlapping root causes and impacts. Over half of the countries affected by conflict since 1970 were also affected by disaster-induced displacement in the last five years alone. This is an important consideration for those tasked with policy-making, protection and assistance.” IDMC reports that there are another 37 million IDP’s due to “disasters”. The USA accounts for 900,000 of that number. Where do they go?

If You Want a Good Job, Commit a Crime and Go to Prison

The invisible laborers in America’s prisons reduce the costs for goods and services offered by many large US corporations. Skilled and captive prison labor is used by business and state governments on a regular basis ostensibly to cover the costs of incarceration. There is irony here: What does it say about a society that allows government and business to hire prisoners rather than employing law abiding citizens who are equal to the task? What’s the point of being a “good citizen” when there is little reward in playing by the rules of the State-Corporate designed system of life?

Sassen notes that “Mass incarceration has long been present in extreme dictatorships. But today it is emerging as inextricably linked to advanced capitalism…Most of the people who are being incarcerated are also the people who do not have work and from whom work will not be found in our current epoch…today’s prisoners in the United States and United Kingdom are increasingly today’s version of the surplus laboring population common in the brutal beginnings of modern capitalism…many transnational corporations have set up satellite factories inside prisons…Available evidence suggests that the majority of corporations profiting [in some form] from prison labor [include] Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, Starbucks and Walmart…the profits of private prisons are represented are represented as a positive addition to a country’s GDP even as they are a government cost; in contrast, government run prisons are only represented as government debt.”

The State-Corporate Complex consciously makes decisions that “expel” one collective group and incorporates another. According to Sassen, “One familiar example in the West that is both complex and extreme is the expelling of low income workers and the unemployed from government social welfare and health programs, as well as from corporate insurance and unemployment support…These expulsion are made. The instruments for this making range from elementary policies to complex institutions, systems and techniques that require specialized knowledge and intricate organizational formats.”

Fight the Power! OK! But Where is It Located?

“People as consumers and workers play a diminished role in the profits of a range of economic sectors… This tells us that our period is not quite like earlier forms of capitalism that thrived on the on the accelerated expansion of prosperous working and middle classes…What is next? Historically the oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive at a great distance from their “oppressors”. Further, the oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks and machines with no obvious center” notes Sassen.

The worst elements of capitalism/globalization are everyone’s problem. Destruction of the biosphere and much of human and non-human life, and expulsion from society and the record books is a transnational matter. Someone has to care and someone has to remember. It is no coincidence that wherever on the planet one finds one of the tentacles of the globalized State-Corporate System, Expulsions of every kind take place.

Culling the human herd is, of course, best accomplished through a regional or global conflagration pitting one state, or proxy, versus another. In such a conflict everything “is game” (non-humans too).The preeminent warring power on the planet, the United States, is—in a case of acute irony– threatening military action and stiffer economic sanctions on Russia if it proceeds under the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to “save” Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine. And for good measure the US recently warned China not to look to Russia’s annexing of the Crimea as a model for an invasion and occupation of the disputed Diaoyu Islands that Japan claims.

How About a Canned War with Humans?

So is the State-Corporate System. designed and led by the USA, gearing up for a shooting/economic war against both Russia and China? Can you say tactical nuclear weapons? The reality is that there are too many people in the world. A large number of them are a drag on economic performance. Many of them are “old” and blocking opportunities for the young. There simply is not enough work and the State-Corporate System does not want to pay “living wages.” Why should they when prison labor is widely available.

Odd that the centenary of World War I takes place in 2014.

Humans can only hope that the mystical deity “God” does not become a reality. Worse still would be the appearance of an extraterrestrial species that arrives and demands an accounting of humanity’s stewardship of the Earth and the life it supports.

Being expelled from the planet would be quite painful.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer. Reach him at captainkong22@gmail.com

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

I am not always sure what makes Sveta and I do certain things, but I feel that a change in the atmosphere is what drove us to install a better door on our flat. That atmospheric change which was along the lines of “flat number 5,” (we are number two by the way) showing signs that are inconsistent with proper social behavior. I have always known that this young lady (loosely said,) who lives in number 5 is not a good influence on the world at large…

Sveta finally saw the writing on the wall and we installed a new door on this past Sunday. For we decided that any loosely said young lady who would steal from her own family, will not hesitate to gather her following of zombies and try to break into other flats…

The new door is very secure and very heavy steel. We decided to get this door because we travel a lot and now everyone after many years knows this fact. Then the fact that someone was let in to steal some objects in the hallway in front of our flats. That helped the decision…

I guess that is the atmospheric changes that happened…

We decided to install it before our upcoming Estonia trip and now we will feel safer, but I will feel more pissed, because we had to install something to stop something that should not happen…

Actually we love the old door and in fact it has not been removed. We are leaving it up. I did a lot of work on that door and it was the original door that came with the flat. But as it was as cheap as possible of a door that can be bought and Sveta could even kick it in. It was time to secure our home better. For we have been here years now and have acquired lots of memories and stuff. That stuff needs to stay in our flat…

(I realized that we were some of the first ones to move into this huge building…)

The inner door as I call it now is part of the family and it has the correct look for the interior of our flat. So it looks like it will stay…

Oh by the way! Happiness was evident yesterday as the door went up. The men who installed the door looked like Moldavian and when they found out that I was from America, one of them, had that follow me around puppy dog look. He was so proud to be putting a door up for this American…

It has been awhile since I have seen that look. It use to be common when I first came to Russia, but with times changing and America pissing off people left and right, I do not get to see that reaction very many times anymore….

They did a good job by the way…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

P.S. We will deal with the number 5 issue, for the neighbors all all getting pissed. No you do not call the cops in Russia for literally anything short of death and even then you may not call them…

That is the way it is and that is why I love Russia…

(Western) Easter Sunday is April 20, 2014
(Orthodox) Easter Sunday is April 20 , 2014
Ash Wednesday is March 5, 2014
Palm Sunday is April 13, 2014
Good Friday is April 18, 2014

This year in a rare occurrence, the Easters are on the same day all over the world…

I found that interesting, because many times they are even up to a month different. Strange how we have a different day each year to celebrate something that happened only at exactly one point in time…

But hey who am I to question wisdom of the elders?

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Vladimir Zhirinovsky man who guides the Liberal and Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR,) wants all McDonald’s fast food restaurants in Moscow and anywhere in Russia closed. Tossed out and removed. Then Pepsi Cola is next in line…

“McDonald’s has closed its restaurants in the Crimea – this is very good. Now it needs to close all restaurants in Russia. I ordered the teams of municipal organizations of LDPR to put pickets in front of all McDonald’s restaurants in Moscow and across the country. They should get out of the country … as soon as possible,” Zhirinovsky told the news on Friday….

“We will close them across the country and then proceed to Pepsi next!,” Vladimir Zhirinovsky then said…

You know? The more that I read about this guy and the more that I watch what he says and responds to, the more I like him. He says what ever comes to his mind and he pulls no punches. Now I think Putin is a better leader for Russia, but this guy would do the same as I would do and tear the west right out of Russia and toss the carcass on the shores of the USA…

As pissed as I am at how America is acting over this Ukraine situation, especially the fact that America is the main reason it all happened, I hope they send all American companies back home and slam the door. I guess it is a good thing that I have no say in the matter and probably a good thing that Vladimir Zhirinovsky does not have anymore say in the matter than he does…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The picture above talks to me! It is impressive and it immortalizes time suspended. It brings my younger years back into focus and that sometimes is important. That photo above says power, power and more power. The power to reach the stars…

I know that Americas Saturn V is the most powerful and the most wonderful and the most fantastic, but all that fades quickly and becomes irresolute in the background as time marches on.  How we allowed ourselves in America to send the space program to the dust bin, is beyond me…

So when I look at a photo like that one above of a Russian Soyuz-ST and I read a great propaganda article, talking about how cool it is and how powerful it is, as it lifted off the launchpad yesterday from the Kourou spaceport in the French Guiana…

My memories were stirred and I looked at awe, as I watched several videos and looked at several photos…

That photo above really caught my eye and my soul, as I became saddened at the thought that America has a bunch to do to reclaim her past glories. I am not sure that it can be done and we do not have the money anymore…

So no matter how bad-ass our rocket was! It don’t fly no more and that means, that don’t fly no more either…

That is the big issue, isn’t it?

Next photo above is another interesting situation for me. It should be for you and most likely will be if you are old enough…

The Datsun, a car that has been revived in Russia. A older plant and a new car with an old name. AVTOVAZ of Russia has begun rolling a Datsun off the assembly lines, the same lines that turn out the time proven LADA…

So again I have been taken to the past. I owned several Datsun’s and they were tough, rough and built like a sewing machine. They lasted forever and I got every penny back when I sold them. One of them (A Datsun 210!) had way over 300,000 miles on it, before I sold it and it still got me more than what I paid for it new from the showroom floor…

Now I am not saying that these new Datsun’s are as good or better, but I will say that since they were designed for Russia, by the Japanese, then I would have to conclude that they will be one tough little brother to the original Datsun…

It is interesting living in Russia: The old days are not gone for me here. Everyday I get to glimpse remnants of my past and it is the present and future for Russians.

Lucky devils…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Even I am getting tired of the snow and we have had very little snow compared to the past eight years I have been here. But I think that the up and down of snow layers, has been worse than three feet of solid ice that is normal. We actually had a touch of early spring and it just made it mentally worse…

I am ready (just like Sveta and all the other Russians) to get to the village or dacha and get life in gear. Time for planting vegetables and painting the village home…

This spring / summer I am planning on staying at the village for about a month, just Boza and I will be there. Sveta will visit on the weekends and travel by train to see us. Then in the fall Sveta, Boza and I will spend about a month there. The big village has a railroad station and we will pick her up in town. I have to work on the village house and I have to work on the car. I need to do some bodywork to the car and get her ready to paint…

The village is a perfect place to do all that. I just have to survive the mosquitoes…

But alas we will have to wait a little bit longer and be patient a little bit longer…

That is one thing that Russians are good at: Patience…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…