As its terminals gradually reopen, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport has launched express coronavirus tests.
Advertised in B and D terminals, the test costs R2,750, with results reportedly delivered in just 60 minutes. Travelers to Russia are required to have a negative test result within 72 hours of arrival, according to rules available at press time.
Novgorod has announced a contest for the best plan to renovate its eclectic Drama Theater. Built in 1987 in the Soviet brutalist style, the building looks something like a cross between a deep-sea creature and a spaceship. Designed by architect Andrei Somov, additional elements were added by Andrei Makarevich, a Russian rocker who is the frontman for the band Машина времени (Time Machine). The building stands on the banks of the Volkhov River, a towering testament to perestroika era confusion.
Regional governor Andrei Nikitin has promised to revitalize the area surrounding the theater as part of a project to improve the Volkhov embankment. The International competition for an architectural concept for the Novgorod Drama Theater starts in August.
In something that sounds straight out of the medieval era, Russia’s Orthodox Church has been battling with a renegade, defrocked cleric who has taken control of a monastery in the Urals.
The priest, Father Sergiy Romanov, is known as a coronavirus denier and conspiracy theory spreader, and has attracted a number of supporters of his ultraconservative view of Orthodoxy.
The monastery, off-limits to most journalists, has for several months operated as a kind of renegade fiefdom, and no one seems to know exactly how many people are still on the premises and what exactly is going on there.
The priest, who regularly records appeals (in one, he calls on President Vladimir Putin to step down and hand power over to him), cuts a striking figure with his black robes and white beard. Reports have also claimed that children in the monastery are physically abused, and that one teenage girl died – though investigators have concluded she passed away from terminal cancer.
Journalists have also discovered that the priest served a term in prison after confessing to killing two people – which should have precluded him from being ordained. In late July, Patriarch Kirill formally defrocked Father Sergiy and told all worshippers to leave the monastery. But it seems unlikely that the priest will willingly relinquish his hold on the site.
An unprecedented wave of protests engulfed the Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk this summer, after the abrupt arrest of the local governor, Sergei Furgal (he was subsequently dismissed from his post by Putin). Locals did not believe the official story that Furgal, who was elected in 2018, defeating a majority party opponent, was arrested because of murders he was supposedly involved in nearly 15 years ago.
Crowds that some estimated to reach 90,000 – which would be an impressive turnout for Moscow, to say nothing of a provincial city – marched through central Khabarovsk several weekends in a row in July and August.
Russian officials are bragging about registering the world’s first coronavirus vaccine. Meanwhile, researchers and the World Health Organization are cautioning that the government may be acting prematurely by giving the drug a green light.
The vaccine was developed by the Health Ministry’s Gamaleya Institute, and the ministry announced that it had received official registration – the required step for legal sales – on August 12.
As early as May, the institute reported that researchers were injecting themselves with the vaccine, and the director of the institute praised its “safety.” This was harshly criticized by the Russian Clinical Research Association as “a crude violation of the foundations of clinical research conduct.”
Scientists in the field said they can only guess how Gamaleya’s vaccine works, as the institute has not published any scientific studies. It is only known that the vaccine uses a “viral vector” approach: it employs another virus, the adenovirus, to carry the coronavirus’ genetic material into subjects’ cells in order to provoke an immune response.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier cautioned that “between finding or having a clue of maybe having a vaccine that works, and having gone through all the stages, is a big difference.” Even some Russian scientists have said there is no way the vaccine has been tested widely enough to prove its safety to required standards.
A new bar in Moscow has laid claim to the title of “smallest bar in the world.” Called Troinichok, it only has two bar stools facing the bar. The menu includes an offering of “immersive” experiences, with names like “Soviet Citizen’s Plane” or “Buffet in the Theater.” Troinichok is part of a new “bar cluster” – a sort of food court but with alcohol – that opened in the giant building housing the Molodaya Gvardia publishing house.
Following on the triumph of Khabib Nurmagomedov, Russia has produced another mixed martial art champion.
Petr Yan, from the Siberian town of Dudinka, has been declared champion in the bantamweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC). Yan grew up boxing and worked as a bouncer in Omsk while he trained. He won the fight in July against Jose Aldo and earned the 12th highest rank in the UFC pound-for-pound men’s ranking.
One of the Russian North’s few remaining functional village airports has been restored, and a museum wing will be created to commemorate the travel infrastructure that once served bustling rural routes, shuttling Soviets between hard-to-reach lake districts in Arkhangelsk Oblast.
The restoration of the wooden airport building in Lopshenga, on the White Sea coast, was a joint effort by Kenozersky National Park and the small northern airline whose helicopters and small Antonov planes still service seven village destinations. The airport served its first flight back in 1937, flying a village woman who was having a difficult birth to Arkhangelsk.
Upkeep of the airport has fallen on its manager, Ilya Ikonnikov, who has a detailed social networking account that documents all flights and goings on, with pictures of aircraft landing on the field of grass. (vk.com/id133406106)
The project received a grant from Vladimir Potanin’s Foundation and restoration work lasted two years, even as the airport continued to serve several flights a week. Ikonnikov says villagers prefer to take a plane to Arkhangelsk because it saves time: the flight is just 50 minutes, while the drive is difficult and circuitous.
Most of Russia’s small, Soviet-era airports have been shuttered. A rural exodus, combined with the aging of the Soviet fleet, makes upkeep of this infrastructure expensive and unprofitable.
The museum is expected to open in the fall, preserving and displaying hundreds of items from the Soviet heyday of rural air travel. (Kenozero.ru)
To boost travel into Russia’s less-frequented Golden Ring destinations – the historic towns north of Moscow – Russian Railways has launched a fast train to Kostroma through Yaroslavl. It cuts the travel time by two hours and uses brand new cars with comfortable seats, instead of the usual boxy bunks.
The Lastochka (Swallow) trains depart Moscow just after 3 pm and arrive to Kostroma just after 7 pm, in time to check into a hotel, stroll the town’s back streets, and have a nice dinner.
Similar Lastochkas already travel to Ivanovo, another Golden Ring town, as well as Smolensk and Tver. From St. Petersburg, you can take the train to Pskov or Novgorod, and more routes exist in the Urals and southern Russia.
A huge investment project is set to turn Kotlin, the fort island opposite St. Petersburg, into a huge museum. Launched in 2019, the Island of Forts project will convert 100 hectares into a site dedicated to the history of the Russian navy. It will include restoration of numerous buildings and structures in the area, including the three existing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forts. Currently, divers are inspecting the forts’ surroundings for items of archaeological significance. The Island of Forts project is being overseen by Ksenia Shoigu, daughter of the Minister of Defense.
Reachable by a levee from the mainland, Kotlin Island is home to Kronstadt, a town founded by Peter the Great after he took the island from the Swedes in 1703. Kronstadt has played a central role in Russian naval history and an enormous Naval Cathedral was built there in the early twentieth century.
Russia’s powerful Orthodox Church has slammed this summer’s decision by Turkish authorities to end the museum status of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia and open the building up for Muslim worship.
“It’s a blow to global Orthodox Christianity,” said Bishop Hilarion, who heads the Church’s external relations department. “The temple was built in the sixth century and is dedicated to Christ the Savior. For us it remains a temple dedicated to the Savior.”
Churches in Greece and Russia have been particularly concerned about remaining mosaics inside the Hagia Sophia. Turkey has said the images will be covered with curtains during prayer.
While the church was founded and originally operated as an Orthodox Cathedral from 537 to 1453, it was for almost 60 years a Roman Catholic cathedral, and from 1453 to 1931 it operated as a mosque. Since 1935 it has been a museum.
Some reports have said Russia will fund a replica of the Hagia Sophia, albeit of smaller size, in Syria’s Hama Province.
One of Moscow’s youngest art museums, the private AZ Museum, located just beyond the Garden Ring near Triumfalnaya Square, has marked the end of the lockdown with a new exhibit. The show commemorates the collection of George Costakis, a Greek diplomat who dedicated much of his life to rescuing Russian avant-garde artworks at a time when they were considered worthless. His Moscow apartment became an unofficial museum and gathering place for collectors and admirers.
Costakis was forced to leave Russia in 1977 after a campaign of state-sponsored intimidation. He split his large collection among several museums, and took some of the works with him back to Greece, where they were purchased by the Greek state and housed in a museum in Thessaloniki. Meanwhile, he dreamed of a museum space to house all the works he had collected.
The new exhibit, called “Costaki’s Choice,” runs through November 8 and aims to present some of his collection in a way that he envisioned. There is art ranging from Alexandra Exter to Viktor Pivovarov, on loan from several museums, as well as hundreds of works by Anatoly Zverev, which were given to AZ Museum by Costakis’ daughter. The exhibition also highlights the collector’s life, with a documentary film featuring those who knew the collector.
museum-az.com/event/vybor-kostaki
По сути, де-факто состоялся триумфальный референдум о доверии президенту Путину “In essence, this was a triumphant referendum on trust in President Putin.”
Некоторые критики часто обвиняют нас в том, что Центральная избирательная комиссия меняет правила по ходу действия. А я считаю, что это наш путь.
“Some critics often accuse the Central Election Committee of changing the rules as we go. But I feel this is our path.”
“It’s a Sputnik moment. Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping. It’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have gotten there first.”
Эти люди дали показания, что были отправлены специально в Беларусь. Команда была ждать... Мы по-человечески относимся к этим ребятам. И мы от этого получили определенный эффект – они рассказали все.
“These people testified that they were specially sent to Belarus. They were ordered to wait… We are treating them as normal human beings. And that has had a certain effect: they told us everything.”
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