“Germans and Russians are one and the same people!” Igor exclaimed during the match Germany vs Mexico at a Bavarian pub in Moscow. He was convinced that Germany would win the world cup, but nevertheless supported Mexico during the game. He is often in Germany and claimed that he just…
Category: Russia
Kalash, as he is called by his friends, is a musician, poet and lumberjack, chopping wood at new resource exploitation sites for Gazprom in Western Siberia. He also used to be a kontraknik (contracted) soldier for the Russian army for 3 years, a topic he did not want to discuss…
This troupe of young dancers in classic Caucasian attire are doing shows at old Soviet style sanatoriums in the traditional Russian spa towns of Piatigorsk and Kislovdsk in the Russian Caucasus. Both were favourites with the Russian tsars, aristocracy and artists like Tolstoi, Lermontov and Tchaikovsky. Later the Soviets opened…
Hamzat and Khambek are both Chechen anti-terrorist fighters at the rapid reaction taskforce GBR. I met them at a wedding in Gudermes, where they are based. They said that they are “always ready to fight bandits”. Indeed there are still occasional attacks of rebels, such as one on an Orthodox…