It looks like the dust is beginning to settle after yesterday’s raid on the Southern Russian city of Nalchik, and the city is securely in the hands of the Russian military. In this post I’m just going to...
AndyMajor raid on Russian city – 60 reported dead
Reports are coming out of a major raid – presumably by Chechen militants – on Nalchik, a Southern Russian city. It looks like the raid, by approximately 150 gunmen according to reports, has been beaten back...
Captain Kirk in Irkutsk
One of the joys of writing siberianlight.net is the random stuff I find while searching the net. Take this piece of Star Trek fan-fiction I found today on Technorati, for example, in which Capain Kirk takes a trip down...
The Russians invented blogging
Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you thought blogging was a modern phenomenon. How foolish can you be? A Russian thought up the concept of blogging way back in 1837. Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, a science fiction writer...
Closed cities from the inside
Last week I wrote about the disgraceful number of closed cities in Russia, another of those leftovers from an anarchic age that Russia remains addicted to, despite (or perhaps because of) the restrictions it places on...
Russian-Indian military exercise begins
Hot on the heels of Russia’s recent military exercise with China (see here for details) 1,600 Russian troops, 9 airplanes and 5 warships are taking part in a military exercise with India. The exercise, which will...
UNESCO may designate Lake Baikal as “in danger”
The Moscow Times reports that UNESCO are becoming so concerned about the environmental safety of Lake Baikal that they are considering putting the Lake, already a World Heritage site, on their “in danger”...
Closed cities and the Democratic Deficit
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...
Russian visas and the cost of business
Have you ever wondered why small-medium sized businesses don’t seem all that keen on investing in Russia? The same reason that smaller domestic businesses generally don’t flourish in Russia –...
Solider Nixon
What happens when you try to buy Russian literature in small town Queensland? So I asked the old half-deaf biddy in the second hand bookshop if she had any books by Solzhenitsyn. “Soldier Nixon, I don’t...