Disinformation » Russia

The St. Petersburg ‘Bomb’ Flash

majestic — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:34:09 +0000

This massive flash of light at a power station near St. Petersburg, Russia, has that country’s conspiracy theorists suggesting it was a test of a neutron bomb and other unlikely scenarios. For me the best part is the driver’s choice of music as the “bomb” goes off. Note that Russia Today advises:

Authorities say the flash was caused by ‘technical malfunctioning’ which led to a temporary power blackout. No one was hurt in the incident.

Shostakovich vs. Stalin

Good German — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 05:23:08 +0000

A 1997 documentary on composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s attempts to both live and not completely sell out his art in the face of Stalin’s dictatorship:

Sneaking Into A Russian Military Rocket Factory

JacobSloan — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:03:49 +0000

When you walk by a topnotch military rocket factory and notice that there are no guards on duty, it’s an opportunity for fun. A set of unbelievable photos, via Gizmodo:

Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.

It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After all, this is an active industrial installation that belongs to one of the top manufacturers of liquid-fuel rockets in the world.

And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery.

While some of these zones look decrepit and abandoned, the factory is active. In fact, the government is really pissed off about Lana’s adventure. The authorities have sent her letters saying that her situation will get “much worse” if she keeps posting photos from the factory.

But Lana doesn’t seem to give a damn about it. She posted the letters on her site, which makes me want to go to Moscow, become her friend and party hard for a whole week. This girl is cooler and more badass than I will ever be.

Russian Woman Stores Alien Corpse in Fridge for Two Years?

SpaceNeedle — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:17:48 +0000

Molly Fergus reports via Yahoo News:

Has a genuine alien corpse been discovered? One woman in Russia certainly thinks so. Marta Yegorovnam claims she salvaged an extraterrestrial body from the site of a UFO crash in 2009 and stored it in her fridge for two years before authorities took it away from her for examination, according to the Daily Mail.

The being is about 2 feet tall and looks suspiciously like stereotypical extraterrestrial beings: It’s skinny, sort of slimy looking, with a large, bobbly head, bulging eyes, and twiggy arms. The two men who confiscated the supposed body said they were from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Of course, the odds are high that this could all be a hoax.

In April, an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old student set off an Internet frenzy by planting what looked like an otherworldly being’s remains in the snow in Irkutsk, Siberia, according to the Daily Mail. When police questioned the scheming teens, they admitted that the body was not in fact from another planet but from the grocery store shelves: They had created what looked like a decimated body using stale bread and chicken skin.

Vladimir Putin Ad Shows Couple Having Sex In Voting Booth

JacobSloan — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:12:26 +0000

Putin pushes the envelope, and points the way towards the future of political campaigning, by making pulling the voting lever seem to be some sort of sex act. Via Politico:

In a new ad for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, the weirdness of that country’s fake democracy is on full display.

The ad conflates voting and sex in a way that makes no sense but has great production values and a compelling beat. The slogan: “Let’s do it together.”

Russian Historian Lived with 26 Female Corpses Dressed Up As Dolls

SpaceNeedle — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:34:27 +0000

Via MSNBC:

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Police have discovered the remains of more than two dozen women who were dug up from their graves by a man some described as a “genius.” The bodies were found this week in the home of 45-year-old Anatoly Moskvina, who lives alone in the city of Nizhny Novgorod in western Russia. The discovery was made when Moskvina’s parents visited him after returning from a vacation.

Russian media reported that Moskvina kept at least 26 bodies in his small, three-room apartment. They all belong to females aged between 15 and 26 who died years ago. The bodies were “dried up,” Interfax reported.

Life News reported [translated link] that Moskvina, who is a historian and was also involved in journalism, visited hundreds of cemeteries at night and dug up the bodies with a shovel. He then put the remains in plastic bags and dragged them to his home. Once the bodies were in his apartment, Moskvina dressed the bodies up as dolls. Photos released by Life News showed one skeleton wearing a dress, stockings and other clothing while another body appeared to have been dressed as a teddy bear.

More: MSNBC

Dau: The Biggest, Most Insane Movie In Cinema History

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:06:21 +0000

From GQ, Michael Idov visits the cult-like set of the Ukrainian film Dau — an enclosed bubble where thousands of actors have been living the lives of their characters 24 hours a day, ever since production began in 2006, using Soviet passports and money, in a world that is exactly as things were in the 1950s, while their real lives recede into the past:

Five years ago, a relatively unknown (and unhinged) director began one of the wildest experiments in film history. Armed with total creative control, he invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home.

The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town of 1.4 million in the country’s east, making…something. A movie, sure, but not just that. If the gossip was to be believed, this was the most expansive, complicated, all-consuming film project ever attempted.

A steady stream of former extras and fired PAs talked of the shoot in terms usually reserved for survivalist camps. The director, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, was a madman who forced the crew to dress in Stalin-era clothes, fed them Soviet food out of cans and tins, and paid them in Soviet money. Others said the project was a cult and everyone involved worked for free. Khrzhanovsky had taken over all of Kharkov, they said, shutting down the airport. No, no, others insisted, the entire thing was a prison experiment, perhaps filmed surreptitiously by hidden cameras.

I’m about to write the rumors off as idle blog chatter when I get to the film’s compound itself and, again, find myself ready to believe anything. The set, seen from the outside, is an enormous wooden box jutting directly out of a three-story brick building that houses the film’s vast offices, workshops, and prop warehouses. The wardrobe department alone takes up the entire basement. Here, a pair of twins order me out of my clothes and into a 1950s three-piece suit complete with sock garters, pants that go up to the navel, a fedora, two bricklike brown shoes, an undershirt, and boxers. Black, itchy, and unspeakably ugly, the underwear is enough to trigger Proustian recall of the worst kind in anyone who’s spent any time in the USSR. (I lived in Latvia through high school.)

The twins, Olya and Lena, see nothing unusual about this hazing ritual for a reporter who’s not going to appear in a single shot of the film—just like they see nothing unusual in the fact that the cameras haven’t rolled for more than a month. After all, the film, tentatively titled Dau, has been in production since 2006 and won’t wrap until 2012, if ever. But within the walls of the set, for the 300 people working on the project—including the fifty or so who live in costume, in character—there is no difference between “on” and “off.”

One of the twins admiringly touches my head. Before coming to wardrobe, I’d stopped in hair and makeup. My nape and temples are now shaved clean in an approximation of an old hairstyle called a half-box. All to help me blend in on the set. Only, from here on, I can no longer call it that. According to a glossary of forbidden terms posted right in front of me on the wall, the set is to be referred to as the Institute. Likewise, inside the Institute, there are no scenes, just experiments. No shooting, only documentation. And there is certainly no director. Instead, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, the man responsible for this madness, is to be referred to as the Head of the Institute or simply the Boss.

Read the rest at GQ.com

Scientists Say Mythical Monster The Yeti Is Real, Lives In Siberia

JacobSloan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:06:41 +0000

The existence of a giant, apelike monster, alternately known as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, et cetera, has long been scoffed at and dismissed as a hoax. However, an international team of scientists say the mythical beast is real and roaming the furthest reaches of Russia. Via TIME:

Scientists and yeti enthusiasts believe there may finally be solid evidence that the apelike creature roams the vast Siberian tundra.

A team of a dozen-plus experts from as far afield as Canada and Sweden have proclaimed themselves 95% certain of the mythical animal’s existence after a daylong conference in the town of Tashtagol in the Kemerovo region, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow. In recent years, locals there have reported sightings of the yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.

The Kemerovo government announced on Oct. 10 that a two-day expedition the previous weekend to the region’s Azassky cave and Karatag peak “collected irrefutable evidence” of yetis’ existence on the wintry plateau.

“Conference participants came to the conclusion that the artifacts found give 95% evidence of the habitation of the ’snow man’ on Kemerovo region territory,” read a statement. “In one of the detected tracks, Russian scientist Anatoly Fokin noted several hairs that might belong to the yeti,” it added. The group also discovered footprints, a presumed bed and various other markers.

The scientific community has historically disputed the existence of the yeti given scant conclusive evidence. But numerous sightings of such creatures have been reported in Himalayan countries and in North America, where it is known as Sasquatch, or bigfoot.

Putin Calls For ‘Eurasian Union’

majestic — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:40:33 +0000

Putin (right) with President Dimitri Medvedev. Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office (CC)

Uh-Oh, this is bound to rile up One World Government conspiracy theory types … from Reuters:

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a “Eurasian Union” in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country’s next president.

Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries.

“We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal — to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union,” Putin wrote in an article which will be published in Izvestia newspaper on October 4.

Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election and his current public approval ratings show that he is set to win…

[continues at Reuters]

Russian Scientist Photographs The Soul

Pelliciari — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:17:05 +0000

MosNews reports:

The activity of Konstantin Korotkov, deputy director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Physical Culture and world-renowned authority on Kirlian photography, was recently highlighted by Life.ru. Korotkov is the developer of the gas-discharge visualization (GDV) technique in Kirlian photography.

Kirlian photography takes its name from Soviet electrician Semyon Kirlian, who discovered the process in 1939. It was the subject of extensive research in the 1970s in the Soviet Union and the West. It is commonly described as photographing an object’s aura. According to a website associated with Korotkov, he “confirmed earlier observations … that the stimulated electro-photonic glow around human fingertips contained astonishingly coherent and comprehensive information about the human state — both physiological and psychological.”

In other words, the GDV technique, which was developed in the late 1990s, can be used for diagnostic and assessment purposes. It is already used to measure stress and monitor the progress of medical treatments. In its most sophisticated form, the GDV technique is incorporated with computer imaging.

[Continues at MosNews]

Putin Calls U.S. A ‘Parasite’ Over Its Debt

Join Or DIE — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:15:16 +0000

Just over its debt, Mr. Putin…? Richard Boudreux writes in the Wall Street Journal:

MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the U.S. “a parasite” because of its huge debt load, evoking a term used by Soviet leaders to demonize people who didn’t work, study or serve the Communist state.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, shown at a youth forum, on Monday labeled the U.S. ‘a parasite’ for its debt load. The term is steeped in Soviet rhetoric: Lenin invoked it after the 1917 revolution, and Stalin, himself denounced as a parasite by Trotsky, used the label against Jews, dissidents and others.

In a speech Monday, Mr. Putin said Russia and other countries should seek new reserve currencies to hedge against “a systemic malfunction” in the U.S. Both Russia and China in the past have questioned the dollar’s pre-eminence as a reserve currency and its role in international trade and investment.

Russia keeps almost half its reserves in dollar assets.
“The country is living in debt,” Mr. Putin told a pro-Kremlin youth rally in central Russia. “It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite.”

More: Wall Street Journal

Congressman Paul Ryan Hands Cold War Victory to the Ruskies

Liam McGonagle — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:31:48 +0000

Well, there it is folks. Plain as day: Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap to Ruin” austerity program sh*tcanned the U.S. Spaceshuttle program and left us dependent upon the charity of ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin.

No you wouldn’t hear much about that from the Fox News(tm) Politburo. Seems that we have to rely on our Aussie cousins to get the scoop.

It’s true. Now without an independent space program of our own, we’ll be at the tender mercies of the apparatchiks in Moscow to support our telecommunications satellite infrastructure.

Now I don’t have definitive proof yet that Paul Ryan is a sleeper agent for Uncle Vanya, but all signs point to yes. In debt ceiling talks this week his lot are trying to force American-born grandmothers to give up their cat food money in order to support the vodka habits of his Wall Street buddies like Frenchman “Fabulous” Fab Torre.

More proof that the Truth often hurts, from the Dystopia Diaries

Woman Dies Of Heart Attack After Awakening At Own Funeral

JacobSloan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:54:32 +0000

When someone miraculously returns to life at their own funeral, but then dies of shock at what’s taking place, is it perhaps best to continue on with the service as if nothing happened? The Daily Mail reports:

A woman died from a heart attack caused by shock after waking up to discover she had been declared dead – and was being prepared for burial. As mourning relatives filed past her open coffin she suddenly woke up and started screaming as she realized where she was.

Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, of Kazan, Russia, had been wrongly declared deceased [the first time] by doctors. Her eyes fluttered and [she was] immediately rushed back to the hospital but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good.

Krokodil, The Cheap Heroin Alternative That Eats Your Flesh

JacobSloan — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:34:04 +0000

It’s cheap, made from codeine and paint thinner, leaves you disfigured or dead, and not surprisingly is Russia’s most popular new activity. Death and Taxes writes:

The name krokodil comes from its trademark side effect: scaly green skin like a crocodile around the injection site. A quick search for that will bring up graphic images of people with swollen faces, exposed bones and muscles and skin rotting off on any given body part.

The reason the drug is so anatomically destructive is due to its mix-ins. Users stir in ingredients “including gasoline, paint thiner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorus which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes.”

Video is in Russian but the sight of someone’ skin melting away is the same in every language:

Alex Jones On WWIII (Video)

BananaFamine — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 17:11:16 +0000

Apply as many grains of salt as you see fit (personally I think he makes many good points, but WWIII? I’d be surprised), but here is Alex’s predictions on the impending WWIII:

New Russian ATMs To Contain Lie-Detectors, Facial Recognition

BananaFamine — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:48:18 +0000

“While Sberbank’s technology might strike Westerners as too intrusive, many Russians already assume the government can watch or listen to them when it chooses to.” Andrew E. Kramer writes in The New York Times:

MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.

Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.

The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”

The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients include the Federal Security Service — the Russian domestic intelligence agency descended from the Soviet K.G.B.

Dmitri V. Dyrmovsky, director of the center’s Moscow offices, said the new system was designed in part by sampling Russian law enforcement databases of recorded voices of people found to be lying during police interrogations.

Story continues at The New York Times.

Russian Cannibal Who Ate Victim’s Liver Arrested

JacobSloan — Fri, 20 May 2011 16:37:04 +0000

“He was always different,” says his mother. Moscow resident Nikolai Shadrin murdered and ate a stranger and scattered body parts in various locations across the city. When the police arrived at his apartment to arrest him, they found Shadrin eating a human liver with potatoes. Also, he has a very sunny demeanor and says he can’t remember the whole episode because he was very drunk when it happened.

Another Russian UFO Coverup?

majestic — Wed, 18 May 2011 22:37:13 +0000

It used to be that UFOs only visited the United States. Now it seems aliens prefer Russia (maybe they know that’s where the money is these days…). Michael Cohen gives his opinion on this Russian TV report for AllNewsWeb:

An important UFO event has taken place yet again in Russia, receiving massive media attention in that nation while being blacked out by the international UFO cover-up in the West.

Residents of the village Lesopilniy in the region of Khabarovsk noticed a huge revolving object descend on the settlement. The alien spacecraft was described as glowing and two lights were seen on its body. Dozens of stunned locals, young and old, gathered on the streets as the object silently hovered just above the rooftops.

The object was picked up by military radar and soon flares and shots were fired at the UFO from a nearby military base. The object changed direction at this point and eventually shot off into the sky. The event lasted over two hours. A number of residents filmed the event on their mobile phone cameras, however the object was not visible when they replayed their clips.

It is now believed international talks, behind closed-doors, will commence and an investigation as to why the military fired on a peaceful alien craft far more capable of doing damage than any human contraption.

Political leaders will be hoping that this action will not jeopardise Humanity’s galactic standing, and will be put down to our primitive nature.

Wikileaks Cables Show Race To Carve Up Arctic

BananaFamine — Sat, 14 May 2011 19:38:14 +0000

BBC News reports:

Secret US embassy cables released by Wikileaks show nations are racing to “carve up” Arctic resources — oil, gas and even rubies — as the ice retreats.

They suggest that Arctic states, including the US and Russia, are all pushing to stake a claim.

The opportunity to exploit resources has come because of a dramatic fall in the amount of ice in the Arctic.

The US Geological Survey estimates oil reserves off Greenland are as big as those in the North Sea.

The cables were released by the Wikileaks whistleblower website as foreign ministers from the eight Arctic Council member states – Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland – met in Nuuk, Greenland on Thursday to sign a treaty on international search-and-rescue in the Arctic and discuss the region’s future challenges.

The cables claim the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller joked with the Americans saying “if you stay out, then the rest of us will have more to carve up in the Arctic”.

For more information, see original article.

All-Female Cult Worships Vladimir Putin As Saint’s Reincarnation

JacobSloan — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:24:09 +0000

Let’s face it — at one time or another, you’ve wondered if Putin was, in fact, something more than an ordinary mortal. The Telegraph reports:

Vladimir Putin has become the object of veneration for a bizarre Russian all-female sect whose followers believe that the prime minister is a reincarnation of the early Christian missionary Paul the Apostle.

“According to the Bible, Paul the Apostle was a military commander at first and an evil persecutor of Christians before he started spreading the Christian gospel,” the sect’s founder, who styles herself Mother Fotina, said.

As befits a sect that worships a man who has denounced the decadence of the oligarchs, the sect’s members are said to survive on a Spartan diet of turnips, carrots, peas and buckwheat.

Father Alexei, the priest in the local village church, has dismissed the sect. “Her so-called teachings are a nonsensical mixture of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, the occult, Buddhism and political information,” he said.

The Russian Dead Alien Video

majestic — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:22:59 +0000

Just what the bleep are those Russians saying?!? This video has stormed the Internet, whatever it is, but it’s almost certainly a fake. Isn’t it?

Russia Today says:

A video of what was claimed to be a mutilated alien corpse is said to be fake. The tiny “dead alien” is just skin from chicken filled with bread, reports the website 7d.org.ua. Police questioned the men who claimed to have found the “body” and they allegedly confessed to creating it themselves. The chief editor of the local Kabansk-Info newspaper initially thought that it was the body of an infant in the video and alerted the police. Officers immediately started the investigation and identified the alleged author. They went to his house and asked him about the infant’s body. The scared man reportedly showed a fake alien corpse. It was even painted in “alien colors”. Scolding is the only possible punishment for such a stunt as it cannot be considered a crime, the report says. The footage was taken near the village of Kamensk in the Russian republic Buryatia, just north of Lake Baikal. It showed what appeared to be a humanoid body less than a meter high with a skeletal big-eyed head and thin naked body. One of its legs was missing. Emotional off-screen comments said the body was found a couple of hours before and was clearly very dead. Local media reported there were numerous reports of UFO sightings in the area in March, some of them later attributed to bombing training at a nearby military range.

Migrants Found In ‘Underground Town’ In Moscow

Pelliciari — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:49:42 +0000

Photo: Dmitry Azovstev (CC)

110 migrants were found in an underground town in Moscow and are now facing deportation and criminal charges. The ‘town’ was fit with “bathrooms, bedrooms and even prayer rooms.” BBC reports:

Police in Moscow have discovered what they are calling an “underground town” housing illegal immigrants from Central Asia in a Soviet-era bomb shelter in the west of the city.

The discovery was made by police and agents from the FSB security agency and Federal Migration Service.

The underground area was guarded by a four-metre-high [13 feet] concrete wall and barbed wire, said Andrei Mishel of the Russia’s ministry of the interior.

It housed 110 men and women.

[Continues at BBC News]

Russian Jailed For Hacking Highway Sign With Porn

BananaFamine — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:40:28 +0000

Yahoo News reports:

MOSCOW (AFP) – A Moscow court jailed a Russian hacker for 18 months after he altered an electronic advertising billboard so that it screened a pornographic video, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday.

Hacker Igor Blinnikov stopped traffic in January last year by breaking into a computer system and screening a graphic sex video for around 10 minutes on a video billboard beside a busy highway in central Moscow in the late evening.

Blinnikov, who comes from the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk, was found guilty late Wednesday of illegally gaining access to information on a computer and distributing pornographic materials.

He called the video prank on Moscow’s Garden Ring highway a “joke that went wrong” and said that he would appeal against the sentence in a video of the courtroom posted on RIA Novosti’s website on Thursday.,,

For more information, see original article.

Russia Sets Up University Institute To Study Yeti Sightings

BananaFamine — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 09:22:07 +0000

Kevin Makice writes on Wired:

As geeks, we are encouraged to suspend our disbelief while simultaneously challenging everything we see and hear. In the words of Agent Mulder, we want to believe, but our geek roots are firmly planted in the scientific method.

That tension is possibly being resolved on one front. The Russians are establishing a scientific institute on the study of yetis, hairy ape-like creatures rumored to inhabit the Himalayas.

Officials in coal-mining region of Kemerovo Oblast announced plans today to open a Yeti Institute at the Kemerovo State University, a 38-year-old higher education entity in western Siberia. KSU boasts 31,000 students and is best known for reviving regional languages, like Shor. Yeti researcher Igor Burtsev reportedly claimed that 30 Russian scientists are currently studying yetis, or Abominable Snowmen, and the Institute could allow them to better collaborate.

For more information, see original article.

Mass Privatization Can Kill

Good German — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:00:49 +0000

Source: BBC/The Lancet

The BBC reported in January of 2009:

The rapid mass privatisation which followed the break up of the Soviet Union fuelled an increase in death rates among men, research suggests.

The UK study blames rapidly rising unemployment resulting from the break-neck speed of reform.

The researchers said their findings should act as a warning to other nations that are beginning to embrace widespread market reform.

The study features online in The Lancet medical journal.

The researchers examined death rates among men of working age in the post-communist countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2002.

They conclude that as many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies.

Following the break up of the old Soviet regime in the early 1990s at least a quarter of large state-owned enterprises were transferred to the private sector in just two years.

This programme of mass privatisation was associated with a 12.8% increase in deaths.

The latest analysis links this surge in deaths to a 56% increase in unemployment over the same period.

Spam Kills: A Text Message Blows Up Russian Suicide Bomber By Accident

HAL9000 — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:46:20 +0000

Wow, can’t believe I didn’t read this story before. From Andrew Osborn in the Telegraph:

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year’s Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else.

She was at her Moscow safe house at the time getting ready with two accomplices, both of whom survived and were seen fleeing the scene.

Islamist terrorists in Russia often use cheap unused mobile phones as detonators. The bomber’s handler, who is usually watching their charge, sends the bomber a text message in order to set off his or her explosive belt at the moment when it is thought they can inflict maximum casualties.

The phones are usually kept switched off until the very last minute but in this case, Russian security sources believe, the terrorists were careless.

Beer To Be Classified as Alcohol for First Time in Russia

bluemana — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 06:21:08 +0000

Andrew Osborn writes in the Telegraph:

The beverage is technically classified as a foodstuff for now, an anomaly that has allowed producers to avoid a sweeping new crackdown on alcohol advertising and night-time sales.

But a new Kremlin-backed bill that passed its first reading in the lower house of the Russian parliament on Tuesday will abolish beer’s special status, dragging Russian alcohol regulation into the 21st century.

“Normalising the beer production market and classifying it as alcohol is totally the right thing to do and will boost the health of our population,” Yevgeny Bryun, the ministry of health’s chief specialist on alcohol and drug abuse, said.

“We have been talking about and have wanted such a measure for ages. I take my hat off to the parliament.”

The new law would restrict beer sales at night, ban its sale in or close to many public places such as schools, and limit cans and bottles to a maximum size of 0.33 litres.

‘Super Pack’ of 400 Wolves Terrorize Remote Russian Town

BananaFamine — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:35:44 +0000

Photo: Daniel Mott (CC)

The Daily Mail Reports:

A ’super pack’ of wolves has been terrifying a town after leaving more than 30 horses dead in just four days.

Four hundred bloodthirsty wolves have been spotted prowling around the edges of Verkhoyansk, in Russia, attacking livestock at will.

Twenty four teams of hunters have been put together to get rid of the wolves, with a bounty of £210 for every wolf skin brought to officials.

Stepan Rozhin, an administration official for the Verkhoyansk district in Russia, said: ‘To protect the town we are creating 24 teams of armed hunters, who will patrol the neighbourhood on snowmobiles and set wolf traps.

‘But we need more people. Once the daylight increases, the hunters will start shooting predators from helicopters.’

A pack of wolves this size is unheard of, with the animals usually preferring to hunt in smaller groups of just six or seven.

The massive group is believed to be made from hundreds of packs and has left animal experts baffled

For more information, see original article.

Russian Spy Anna Chapman Reveals ‘The Secrets of the World’ On TV

majestic — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:02:40 +0000

Remember Anna Chapman, the sleeper spy and Internet sensation? Now that she’s safely back in Russia, in addition to becoming a Maxim Mag cover girl, appearing in movies and generally being a contemporary Moscow “It Girl,” she has, of course, garnered her own TV show, debuting tonight on Ren-TV. The producers of the show told AP that Anna will “use all her talents to solve the world’s most complicated mysteries.” Ren-TV’s website, in dodgy translation, describes the show as follows:

This is the only TV project, which has agreed to Anna Chapman. Viewers will be able to see her only on REN TV. “The mysterious woman is the most mysterious program” – so says the project director of the Documentary and journalistic program Mikhail TUKMACHEV.

The program “Secrets of the world and Anna Chapman is dedicated to the most puzzling phenomena of modern times. It is no coincidence that the leading program has become the most mysterious woman of our time. Only on REN TV, it will use their talents to reveal the most intricate hoaxes.

The creators of the program say: this format – the pilot. Intriguing new genre. The program is filmed at a completely new hardware, which Russian television in the creation of television programs have not worked.

“While it is safe to say only that all the materials in this program will be exclusive and in contemporary Russian television can only appear on REN TV. Due to the fact that Ren-TV – a very special channel “, – adds Michael TUKMACHEV.

What exactly will the new documentary series, while kept in the strictest confidence. On this you can learn just by looking first edition of the program. But for sure – the first time Chapman reveals all the secrets …

UFOs Are Making Friends with Russians? (Video)

vulcan — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Despite what Kirsan Ilyumzhinov says, this looks like a no-go. As Russia Today reports:

Mysterious UFOs are believed to have become frequent guests in Russia’s southern Republic of Kalmykia. Every ten days this month, hundreds in the city of Elista, the capital of Russia’s southern Republic of Kalmykia, witnessed several UFOs at the same time, Nezavisimaya newspaper has reported.

The last one was noticed on December 22 between 3 and 7 p.m. Some say it looked like two circles rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise, while others describe it as a lit triangle. People managed to record the video of UFOs. However, local journalists believe it could be simple man-made objects, but promised to investigate.

Meanwhile, the republic’s former governor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, claims that he has made friends with aliens after they first allegedly abducted him from his Moscow apartment…