The Russia Blog
The Federal Registration Service has refused to register Great Russia as a political party.
Some analysts had been predicting that Great Russia, founded earlier this year by Dmitry Rogozin, the former leader of Rodina, is a nationalist party, would be capable of winning the 7% of the vote required to give it a presence in the Duma. … Read the rest
A bomb exploded in a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg last night, injuring six people.
The police have ruled out terrorism, and are calling it “hooliganism”, linking it to an explosion last week in a St Petersburg supermarket. St Petersburg based blogger Lex Libertas, who lives just down the road from the restaurant, agrees:… Read the rest
If you thought that the demise of the Soviet Union meant the demise of closed, or secret cities, then you’d be wrong. Today, it is thought that there are up to forty closed cities (also referred as ZATO’s, or Zakrytye Administrativno-Territorial’nye Obrazovaniia) in Russia, although the Russian government will only confirm the existence of ten.… Read the rest
