I'm blogging from the Amerikanski Bar and Grill near Mayakovsky Metro station, a five-minute walk from our house. Moscow is really a study in contrasts. This place has an 11 Mbps WiFi connection c/o Yandex (a Russian Yahoo) and IBM. But they only seem to be found in restaurants--not the many coffee shops (no Starbucks here yet) where it might be more convenient.
From our house we only have a dialup connection, via RussiaOnline, at 44 k,and only a pulse dial phone, no touch tone.
Two realities at one time--modern Western and old Soviet.
As far as the Ukraine goes, it dominates the news here.Since the Kievan Rus founded Russia, and the TV has had coverage going back to the time of Mazeppa (an opera in repertory here), so the perspective on events there differs a little from the BBC world news coverage.
Lots of talking heads about America wanting a puppet state, western agression, a replay of same script used in Yugoslavia, Georgia, etc. The geopolitical angle looms large, rather than the fraud allegations made by the BBC. It is taken for granted that the Western powers are backing the nationalists. Also not forgotten are the scars from WWII, when Ukranian nationalists sided with the Nazis against Russia.
So stay tuned, there may be some twists and turns in the days ahead...
