Putinova Rusija

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The Mountain Wolf: The only man in Russia that strikes fear into the heart of Mr. Big. So much fear, in fact, that Mr. Big routinely pays the Wolf millions of dollars from the state budget. The Mountain Wolf is a flamboyant villain, sporting gold-plated pistols, flashy cars, and an incredibly expensive cat.

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No I’m serious. There’s a guy beating up drug dealers in the Moscow suburb of Khimki and he’s dressed as Batman. Here’s an excerpt from Meduza:

“Law enforcement officers told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets that, earlier this month, a taxi driver in the Khimki area witnessed a man dressed as Batman exit a building that later proved to be a drug den. The taxi driver says the Batman threw some kind of fire bomb at the ground and then disappeared into the shadows (see the video below). Police officers soon arrived, entered the building, and soon walked out escorting two men in handcuffs.”

He even uses smoke bombs, as you can see in the video:

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Uporabnik Pac_Man pravi:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2...-in-small-homes

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Russia’s deputy prime minister thinks it’s funny that people live in small homes



While on an official visit to the city of Kazan last week, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was taken on a tour of new economy-class apartments now under construction. In particular, he was shown a 20-square-meter (215-square-foot) apartment. He later told journalists that he was amused to learn people actually buy such homes. Shuvalov said, “It seems ridiculous, but people buy such housing, and it's actually very popular. There's a niche for such housing.” Given that people usually opt for such small homes out of economic necessity and not because of an affinity for cramped spaces—and remembering that Shuvalov rents a 1,500-square-meter (16,145-square-foot) house in Austria and a luxury apartment in Great Britain—the deputy prime minister's comments raised some eyebrows in Russia.

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Ruska verzija "let them eat cake." V Franciji se ni dobro končalo.

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Ru vice-PM building "one flat to rule them all", buying via proxy a whole floor of this Stalin-era tower:

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On June 29, the Russian Defense Ministry announced it was purging the entire senior and mid-level command of the Baltic Fleet. It was a dramatic move that suggested deep structural problems within the fleet command. In total, 50 officers were dismissed from their post, including the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Viktor Kravchuk, and his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Sergei Popov.

Not since Stalin's purges had so many officers been ousted at once.

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In late June, a group of FSB Academy graduates celebrated the end of their studies by driving around central Moscow in twenty-eight luxury Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons – all in black.

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President Ergodan has written a letter of apology and had a telephone conversation with President Putin, who instantly ceased to regard the Turkish leadership as the devil incarnate.

Russians were asked to change their way of thinking in an equally short time. The Kremlin simply preferred to forget that for the last seven months the state propaganda machine has been churning out regular information to the effect that Turkey was involved in international terrorism and in oil trade deals with Islamic State.

Flashback: on 24 November 2015, a Turkish fighter plane brought down a Russian SU-24, which had been on a bombing raid over Syria.

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Cold with fury, resolute, President Putin made a series of announcements indicating that there could never be – absolutely never be – any reconciliation. To the Federal Assembly he said: “We know that Turkey is filling its pockets and allowing terrorists to earn money from the sale of oil it has stolen in Syria … By killing our people they have committed a heinous war crime, so if anyone thinks that they will be let off with some measures relating to tomatoes and restrictions on construction or other spheres of activity, then they are sorely mistaken. We shall keep reminding them what they have done and they will keep on regretting what has happened. And we know what has to be done.”

Soon everybody was falling over themselves with their rhetoric. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, for example, was not content to just hurl tomatoes; he was positively biblical: “We could take Turkey out with a nuclear missile strike. It would be very easy to destroy Istanbul: one nuclear bomb in the gulf, the city would be washed away by a terrible flood with a column of water 10-15 metres high and the city of 9 million would be destroyed.” But now Erdogan has apologised …

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And where the president leads, the foot soldiers will follow. Vladimir Zhirinovsky now sees Turkey somewhat differently. “Whatever the historical incidents that have taken place, it’s better to be on good terms with one’s neighbours.”

Not to be outdone, Dmitry Medvedev underwent a similar metamorphosis. In November 2015, the prime minister described the Turkish government’s military action as “senselessly criminal,” but seven months later, Mr Medvedev has been blinded by all that Turkish sunlight. “We in the government will hold talks with our Turkish partners at any level which they see fit … We’re talking about giving Russians who like holidaying in Turkey the chance to do this in the current season.”

And it’s worked! Turkey has once more – quicker than you can lay a towel on a sun lounger – become the most popular tourist destination for Russians.

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About 50 of its new recruits are being investigated for celebrating their graduation by renting a fleet of Mercedes, driving wildly around Moscow, being stopped by police and posting pictures and videos of themselves online.

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I see. And they’re embarrassed because this kind of triumphalism doesn’t suit the FSB brand?

Partly. And because secrecy is a bit of an issue when it comes to spying, and it’s not very secretive to publish your name and photograph on the internet while saying, “Hooray, we’re FSB spies!”

No.

Russian media even quote one graduate saying he failed to see “what the big fuss is about”.

I imagine his bosses will explain it shortly.

Yes, although this looks bad for them too. After all, they have just trained this band of nincompoops and declared them clever enough to work for the FSB.

Ah. Or maybe this is a cunning plan to make us think that the FSB are useless, when in fact they are geniuses?

Maybe. Besides the usual intelligence-gathering and overseas assassinations, they do like to use ingenious methods.

Such as?

John Kerry complained to Putin last month about the FSB targeting foreign diplomats and journalists with “home invasion tactics”.

What are they?

They’re a way of making people think they’re going mad. Diplomats in Russia have reported coming home to find their furniture rearranged, their remote control missing and their tyres slashed. Or to find that someone has defecated in the toilet and not flushed it.

Ew. Still, I guess the class of 2016 might yet prove useful for these defecation missions?

Yeah. I guess they still qualify for that.

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Russian and Turkish energy ministers are set to meet in Russia later this month, according to Russia’s First Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexey Likhachev.

“Energy issues, including major joint projects will be among the key topics for discussion,” Likhachev told journalists on the sidelines of G20 Trade Ministers meeting in China when asked about possible revival of the Turkish Stream project.

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Earlier on Saturday Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci also told journalists that Russian and Turkish energy ministers will hold talks later this month in Russia, stressing that “the Turkish Stream and nuclear energy projects are gaining momentum.”

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“It is well-known that Turkey has not supported the sanctions imposed by the EU and the US on Russia,” İsmayıl tokld Sputnik.

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On the evening of July 7, the staff attended a meeting with its new chief editors. Meduza has received an audio recording of this meeting, and published a transcript (with minor abridgements) on July 8. The next day, RBC General Director Nikolai Molibog invited whoever leaked the audio recording to resign, writing on Facebook, “those of our colleagues at RBC who did this, or who consider this act to have been acceptable, can [cenzura] off to hell.”

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