R. K. Patrick reports on the first May Day parade in Red Square since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
MOSCOW — Last Thursday, over 100,000 people paraded through Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate May Day. It was the first time any such parade has happened in Red Square since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (more…)
Anthony Mamo shares his views on the release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Yesterday, by virtue of executive order #922 signed by the President of Russia himself, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was freed from prison and is now in Germany visiting his seriously ill mother. (more…)
‘The Steeple Times’ takes a look around a palace that allegedly cost $1 billion to construct
Located on the Black Sea coast is a palatial residence that the press have named ‘Putin’s Palace’. The reported construction cost of this property is an astounding $1 billion.
Russians in London up their security
Following in the wake of the death of Boris Berezovsky, a number of his friends and acquaintances have stated that they believe he did not commit suicide.
Berezovsky, like many other London based oligarchs, was always surrounded by bodyguards. Both he and his former associate Roman Abramovich were accompanied to court by them last year and on the occasions I saw either man elsewhere, they were never far away either.
Today, as I walked through Knightsbridge’s Lennox Gardens and Belgravia’s Eaton Square, I saw two separate sets of bodyguards accompanying two separate sets of wealthy looking Russians as they walked nervously along.
Though the sight of Russians with protection in the area is not uncommon, today the mood was markedly different. In the past, the bodyguards of the elite were discretion personified. Today, they openly displayed their walkie-talkies and when a passerby got, as they perceived it, too close, they agitatedly shoed them away.
However Mr Berezovsky met his end, the thoughts of the most elite Russians in London must now be: “Who’s next?”
Mr Novikov controls over 50 restaurants in Moscow but doesn’t have an office. He started out with a loan of $50,000 from a Soviet cooperative after being turned down for a job at McDonalds. He now also owns supermarkets, cinemas and florists and is dubbed the “blini baron.” Aside from his 7,000-person empire, he owns the £26m Villa Fontanelle on Lake Como and is said to be especially partial to bread, black cherries and apricots.