Flight 92-68
Transaero has one of the best safety records and Aeroflot has one of the youngest fleets in the world. But when a Russian family takes a vacation in Egypt, they have to turn to one of the smaller operators with…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category business
No signs of oil production decline, pace George Soros
George Soros has attributed Putin’s reluctance to use more force in Ukraine to a non-existent decline in Russian oil output. Russia’s average daily crude production in September 2015 was slightly higher than the May and June averages, setting a post-Soviet record.…
Wishful thinking is not what you expect from George Soros
I was puzzled by George Soros’ explanation why Moscow seems unlikely to break the Minsk agreement and launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine: The weakness of oil prices and the further downward slide of the ruble have put renewed pressure on…
Winter is coming and all that
I’m tempted to subscribe to somebody else’s theory that Russia is on its way to replacing Iran as the largest pariah state of the world. Whether it is a crackpot idea or something obvious, Russia is facing a major decline…
The latest on Russian libel tourism
Up until 2012, Vladimir Slutsker (Sloutsker) was a second-tier Russian oligarch. He was a member of the Federation Council, a senator in colloquial usage, in 2002-2010. His detractors claim that Slutsker largely owed his success to being good at obtaining…
What a loss
Recall Flirt, the sex ad rag that printed jingoist rants alongside pictures of sylphs for sale. The couple running the business have been detained on suspicion of procuring, along with 35 call center operators. Apparently Flirt served as a sort…
Independent funding for science is unwelcome in Russia
The first Russian company to list on the New York Stock Exchange after the fall of Soviet Communism was not a natural resource behemoth. It was a three-year-old firm providing mobile telephony services. The year was 1996; the company’s name…
Family business
My comment, expanded and modified, to Tim Newman’s post on the government-supported restaurant chain proposed by the Russian filmmakers Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov. As La Stampa writes incredulously, “what is somewhat astonishing” is that the people promoting “patriotic food”…
“The most powerful… tend to be the least intellectually distinguished”
The Russian media are excited that the Moscow State University (MGU, Lomonossov U.) hit the top 25 of The Times Higher Education‘s “reputation ranking,” while the St. Petersburg Uni (SPbGU, Mendeleyev U.) made the top 80. Reputation is important, of…
“The American Shales”
I admire the creativity and effort of those who made possible the digital revolution of the past 25 years, most of these creators US-based. I am immeasurably greatful for the Internet, the e-book, and mobile communications. But I also have…
What independence?
The Russian Central Bank’s decision to cut the key rate by 2 percentage points from 17% to 15% seems like an act of abdication, of renouncing its own independence. Actually the end-of-independence signal came in earlier, when Dmitry Tulin was…
Sour grapes
Putin has signed into law a bill making it legal – again – to advertise wine on TV, but only if it is produced in Russia from Russian grapes. While some wine-grade grapes grow in Russia proper, e.g. in Krasnodar,…