The Russia Guy

St. Petersburg hotel prices jumped 48% ahead of Kanye West's announced concerts, according to the nationalist outlet Tsargrad, which is disgusted to see Russians desperately scrambling to hear an "actual American" rap about "cocaine, Hitler, and whores." Give the people what they want? https://t.me/tsargradtv/140377 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/IUeFqcp

Russian Post CEO Mikhail Volkov denies a recent Bloomberg report that the Russian govt might open the postal service's infrastructure to Wildberries sellers hit by drone attacks. Volkov says marketplaces need a scale of warehouses the postal service doesn't have. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8890825 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/iScyre5

Dmitry Larin, a deputy board chairman at Genbank, died Tuesday morning when his motorcycle collided with an ambulance in central Moscow. Genbank is one of the largest banks operating in Crimea and has been under U.S. sanctions since 2015 for its work there. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8891883 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/8oPAREB

A Russian missile strike on Pechenihy in Ukraine's Kharkiv region killed 10 people and wounded 8, the regional governor said. Homes, a café, a post office, and a shop were damaged. Two more people died in a Russian drone attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia. https://t.me/synegubov/24805 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/BNWdi5f

Samara officials refused to authorize rallies by Communist lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev, who was barred from the State Duma ballot last week. They cited paperwork errors and said protesting the court's ruling is prohibited anyway as it conflicts with wartime restrictions on public assemblies. https://t.me/kontext_channel/76603 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/8rGd0UD

Russian officials say a Ukrainian drone attack near a bus stop in occupied Enerhodar killed one person and wounded 15. Russia's governor in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, says the victims were waiting to catch the bus to work. https://t.me/astrapress/122444 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/pUYEfZy

lol, Russia's tax service barred pop singer Philipp Kirkorov from opening businesses for 3 years after striking his company off the state register over false data. It has repeatedly suspended his clothing firm's accounts since 2021 over "unfiled returns." https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8891673 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/uqy1Vz4

"These wild speculations about my intelligence, these preposterous inventions, would be better suited to the pages of Amazing Tales magazine" is a line that regularly pops into my head via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/TphOCU6

This is truly something, even given everything: Russia's feds have charged SOVA Center researcher Olga Sibireva with illegally "cooperating" with a banned foreign organization because that org (a religious anti-discrimination group) *cited* her published work. https://t.me/sovacenter/507 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/oe6BTfF

Lev Shlosberg, deputy chair of Russia's Yabloko party, was sentenced today to 11+ years in prison for "speech crimes" related to his antiwar position. A principled man, Shlosberg has for years feuded with antiwar émigrés who back Ukraine directly. He articulated why in these thoughtful remarks: via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/zm365Ox

Kanye West will play his first-ever Russian concerts Oct. 10 and 11 at St. Petersburg's Gazprom Arena, tour promoters say. He might want to leave his Hitler apparel at home (or not). https://tinyurl.com/28pleh3j via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/YQsfanV

Russian opposition politician Lev Shlosberg gets more than 11 years in prison, partly for reposting a Daily Mirror cover that paired Putin with a bloodied woman and the headline: “Her blood... his hands.” The court convicted Shlosberg of repeat “discrediting” of the army and of spreading “fakes.” via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/3ywWiC5

Russia's Supreme Court rejected every motion filed by lawyers for Yabloko, the liberal opposition party appealing its removal from September's elections. The court wouldn't hear the party rebut the alleged copyright breaches cited in the case that got it kicked off the ballots. https://t.me/currenttime/58454 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/YN2w9Hf

Russia's state development bank VEB fired chief economist Andrey Klepach over a speech (in May!) predicting Russian defeat in the war of attrition, The Bell reports. Klepach argued that neither economy is near collapse. He'd held the job 12 years, after a decade at Russia's economy ministry. https://t.me/thebell_io/38729 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/4ZjF6PR

Six people died in a Ukrainian strike on the Russian village of Koloskovo that left a building burned and a car damaged, Belgorod's acting governor says. https://t.me/aleksandr_shuvaev/1156 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/itGrES0

A Ukrainian drone strike reportedly killed a man and wounded his 3-year-old daughter in Horlivka, in occupied Donetsk. Russian officials put the day's toll at 10 people injured across the region. https://t.me/mash_donbass/12586 via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/TUgkSCJ

Finally finished reading Daniel Mendelsohn's new translation of The Odyssey, & so I went to read his review of Nolan's film adaptation in NYRB. He nails the sad lack of "wily charm" in the Nolanverse, though I think he's too hard on Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024), which does the realism better.I also read Emily Wilson's review in LRB (though I haven't read her translation of The Odyssey), and she's even harsher on the film by Nolan (whose work she seems to dislike generally, unlike Mendelsohn, who writes favorably about Interstellar and Oppenheimer). Her description of Nolan's "Hollywood version of Mycenaean Greece" confuses me, given that she later calls him out for a "relentlessly didactic" cautionary tale against xenophobia. I didn't get the impression from the film that Nolan was celebrating Greece as "the only civilization in the world."Anyway, here are links to the two reviews: Mendelsohn: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/08/20/artful-weaving-odyssey-christopher-nolan/Wilson: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/K9pWNJE

For what it's worth, I think Shuster's recent piece in the Atlantic does a better job capturing what changed after the Oval Office meltdown: that Kyiv pivoted from talk of humanitarian and democratic ideals to more transactional PR in its outreach to Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/ukraine-war-zelensky-trump/688203/ via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/wxtQdHX

When Trump said this in February 2025, Ukraine still literally occupied parts of Russia's Kursk region. "Then Kyiv took the war to Russia" is an imbecilic framing. via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/8eluhWN

Muscovites gather on the Arbat to honor Soviet rock icon Viktor Tsoi on the 36th anniversary of his tragic death. A truly great musician. (The mural, incidentally, is emblazoned with the Kino lyric: "Our hearts demand change.") via Kevin Rothrock https://ift.tt/Pnpm1yr