Moscow, Russia
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – When I first heard about the International Medical Leech Center from a colleague, my reaction was probably a typical one for an American: Yuck. Gross.
A breeding center for 150,000 leeches in a small village just outside Moscow did not sound like my ideal location for a story. But when I heard the center’s claims that they raise and sell 10 times the number of leeches than the rest of the world combined, curiosity overcame my initial disgust.
Natasha Lepyoshkina is one of the 29 leech breeders at the center, all of whom are women. According to her, the gender choice is no accident. "You need to have patience with the leeches. You have to be industrious and patient. A man couldn’t do that," she said.
Most of the breeders live in the local village and take shifts on weekends to check on the leeches, lending the center a family-like atmosphere. "They won’t ever bite us – they know us too well," said one breeder as I prepared to dunk my hand in a jar full of hungry leeches. (Maybe it was leech breeders who coined the phrase about biting the hand that feeds you?)
The breeders often referred to the leeches as their children. "Just like a child – we raise them and love them, and once they grow up they leave us," said Lepyoshkina, as she prepared a batch of 1,000 live leeches to be shipped from the center.
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – At the Russian Orthodox Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in central Moscow, attendance has almost doubled in the past year alone. At most churches, this would be a blessing.
But for this church, the spike in attendees is not attributed to successful preaching or newfound faith. Instead, it’s due to the soup kitchen that serves up free meals four times a week in the midst of the ongoing financial crisis.
"Last year our biggest meals would have around 300 people," said Boris Kleparsky, a volunteer who led prayers before serving soup, potatoes and sausages to rows of people sitting at long tables running the length of the church. "But this winter we were already routinely getting over 500 people a meal. And it’s all because of the crisis."
 |
| Oxana Onipko / AFP - Getty Images |
| Unemployed Russians read classifieds while waiting in line at a job fair in Moscow on March 18, 2009. |
Kleparksy and other volunteers say the majority of the new faces they are seeing at the soup kitchen are not the customary pensioners or homeless clients, but newly unemployed who can’t make ends meet in an expensive city like Moscow.
"They came here from all over Russia, even Ukraine and Kazakhstan looking for work, and now those jobs have dried up," said Kleparsky.
CONTINUED >>
Reporter's Notebook
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
ELEKTROSTAL, Russia – Electric Steel – "Elektrostal" in Russian – is the epitome of a "one-company town" whose citizens traditionally either worked at, or depended on, the heavy machine factory that bears the town’s name.
About an hour’s drive from Moscow, Electric Steel became, starting in the 1930’s, a symbol of Soviet strength and economic security. Entering this Stalin-era town, one can’t escape Electric Steel’s insignia – a striking red and yellow icon of a Roman blacksmith pounding a steel slab against a black anvil, setting off electric sparks – which adorns just about every workplace, store and street light.
The town has grown over the years – about 150,000 now live in pastel-painted houses along avenues with names like "Soviet," "Karl Marx" and "Lenin." A large statue of Lenin – frozen in a speech-giving pose – stands in the middle of the main square, next to a hockey rink.
We traveled to Electric Steel to see how the deepening economic crisis was affecting this so-called "mono-town," one of hundreds of industrial projects the old Soviet leadership spread across the nation.
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – At Papa’s Place Bar & Restaurant in Moscow, inauguration night was in full swing. Red, white and blue balloons hung from the ceiling, while a steady supply of hamburgers and pizza gave the mixed crowd of Russians and expatriates a little taste of America as they gathered to watch Barack Obama’s historic inauguration.
"We decided we had to do something for our American friends…and for us Russians….It’s not just great for America, it’s great for the whole world," said Ekaterina Yezdina, director of the Executive Language Center, who hosted the event.
 |
| Max Avdeev / AFP - Getty Images |
| Russians and American expatriates watch the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama on big screens at an American-style diner in Moscow on Jan. 20. |
Other partygoers agreed. "By looking at this now, I have…a feeling of hope that something might actually change. For the better," said Igor Budantsov, 33, a lawyer sporting an American flag in his lapel.
But for Moscow, this gathering was the exception rather than the rule. Unlike elsewhere in the world, there was no sense of urgency here to watch the inauguration or groups of people gathering to watch in homes and bars.
"I don’t plan on watching it," said Alexander Moroz, an 18-year-old student, while on a cigarette break outside of the European Shopping Mall in central Moscow hours before the inauguration.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise. The political instability during the 1990s here, followed by the stable but de facto one-party rule of the Putin era, has left many in Russia disillusioned and apathetic about politics, whether domestic or international. Pre-election polls showed that while Obama consistently topped McCain, both candidates were easily beat out by those saying they simply had no preference.
CONTINUED >>
Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin unveils a new instructional judo DVD, adding to his legendary 'tough guy' image.
NBC News' Yonatan Pomrenze reports from Moscow on how in many ways, Putin, Russia's former president and current prime minister, is still center stage in Russian politics.
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – "I’m against that one – the aggressive one – I'm for Obama," said Valentina Savina, a lottery ticket seller on the Old Arbat, Moscow’s busy central pedestrian thoroughfare.
"[I’m] against McCain," she added when asked what her views were on the U.S. presidential candidates. "He's against Russia."
Alexander Maleshov, a cab driver in Moscow, agreed. "As far as I know, the Republicans are strongly against us," he said.
Savina and Maleshov are not alone in their views of McCain and the GOP, according to a recent poll of Russians conducted at the beginning of September by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center. The survey found that 27 percent of respondents would choose Sen. Barack Obama if they could vote in the U.S. elections, as opposed to just 6 percent choosing Sen. John McCain.
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – Russia’s plethora of national holidays are tricky things. Nearly two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is still looking for its national identity – and nowhere is this seen better than in its holidays.
Some holidays have survived the transition from Soviet superpower to resurgent Russia via a weak and chaotic ’90s. These include New Years, International Women’s Day (March 8), Defenders of the Fatherland Day (February 23) and Victory Day (May 9). Others were done away with, like Constitution Day.
The most interesting batch are those holidays which were either recast from old ones or simply created anew.
 |
| Yonatan Pomrenze / NBC News |
| A wedding party celebrates Family Day in Moscow's Tsaritsino Park on July 8. |
Take National Unity Day (November 4). It was introduced in 2004 to replace the Day of Accord and Reconciliation, which came into being in 1996 to take the place of the old Soviet Revolution Day, which commemorated the 1917 Communist Revolution. With such a convoluted history, it’s no wonder that polls consistently show low percentages of the population actually knowing what some new holidays are supposed to commemorate.
And Unity Day has become the opposite – in Moscow, ultranationalist groups mark the day with anti-foreigner rallies.
So I was curious to see how the newest of the new Russian holidays – the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, marked on July 8 – would fare. (It should be noted that the day is recognized as a holiday – but it is not an official day off from work.)
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – Russia inaugurated a new president today. And while there was never really any doubt or drama in the March presidential elections here – Dmitry Medvedev was assured of victory the moment Vladimir Putin announced him as his chosen successor – it is still a mystery what exactly this inauguration will mean for Russia.
Since the elections, Russian media and chat rooms have been trying to guess what the power balance will look like after Medvedev takes over the presidency and Putin becomes prime minister – which is expected as early as Thursday.
The question is: who will really be in charge? Can a "tandem-ocracy," with two leaders at the head, actually work – or will there be power struggles between the two? Media reports say Putin may have as many as 11 deputy prime ministers. The president is the stronger post on paper, but can Medvedev compete with the political capital that Putin enjoys?
CONTINUED >>
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
MOSCOW – The Russian elections are over, all the votes have been counted, and the results will be officially certified on Thursday. We all know that Vladimir Putin's former chief of staff – Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev – won.
In December, at the start of the campaign, the Kremlin reportedly sent out notice to all the regional governors on its payroll that it wanted to see a 70/70 result: 70 percent turnout and 70 percent support for the bureaucrat who Putin hand-picked to succeed him. And the Kremlin got what it demanded – almost to the vote. Medvedev's total count was 70.24 percent on 69.65 percent turnout.
Andreas Gross, the spokesman for the only group of Western observers who dared venture into this electoral experiment Putin calls "managed democracy," said at a press conference that the election was "not free, not fair, but accurate all the same."
That's a diplomatic way of saying, remove all the free TV coverage, the biased reporting, the state broadcast media’s ability to create rock stars from rocks, the pressure on employees and students to vote the "right way," the discounted food, the lotteries, the prize money, and the crackdown on all real, anti-Kremlin opposition – and the numbers would still add up to produce a Medvedev victory. There was no need to massage them.
That tells you a few things: how popular Putin is with his people and how disinterested Russians are with politics in general and democracy in particular.
CONTINUED >>
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
MOSCOW – A generation ago, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin defined the no-go zone between East and West. If you listen to Russian officials these days, that geopolitical schism
has now shifted to the Serbia-Kosovo border.
On one side, Russia defends its nationalist proxy, Orthodox Serbians, who say they will never accept a non-Serbian Kosovo; on the other side, Kosovars – more than 90 percent of whom are Albanian Muslims – are backed in their desire for independence by the United States and most of Western Europe.
Russian warning
This new East-West gap should surprise no one who's watched and listened to Russia's take on Kosovo since June 1999.
Then, just as Serb forces were involuntarily withdrawing from Kosovo, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered his general to take his troops – part of an international peacekeeping mission – and occupy the strategic airport in Pristina before NATO could get there.
Those Russian troops eventually re-joined the peacekeeping operation, but only after days of intense negotiations in Finland between U.S. and Russian officials. Most Serbs believed that Yeltsin had abandoned Serbia by acquiescing to NATO’s demands.
For years, every time rumors of an Albanian declaration of independence for Kosovo were whispered in Pristina or Brussels or Washington, Moscow would weigh in, warning that such an illegal act could plunge the whole European continent into another spasm of violence. But no one seemed to take notice.
Then Russia started to muscle up: President Vladimir Putin is no Yeltsin, and Russia under Putin has grown into an economic powerhouse, no longer afraid to throw its weight around. During Thursday’s massive rally against Kosovo independence, Serbian protestors were holding up posters of Putin, showing that they consider the Russian leader to be their chief ally in the current stand-off with the West
CONTINUED >>
