A headline quibble: the use of allegedly. It’s a journalistic reflex now. In this case, isn’t there direct evidence of the boast?
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Stoli when better brands are not available.
Wasn’t Strelnikov Lara’s husband who became a fanatical Bolshivik in Dr. Zhivago?
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Sounds like he’s the kind of guy who should move to Arizona and run for John McCain’s Senate seat. They’d love him out there. Except, of course, civilian flight paths near Arizona airspace.
A new hero for the Gun-Fondling extremist right.
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Right. We have to blame “the Russians” and not Putin and his criminal clique. Oh yes, the “barbaric red neck culture” which gave us Tolstoi and Dostoevski, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Rostropovich and Richter, Pushkin and Turgenev. All these barbarians.
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I suggest you go live in East Europe for most of a decade, and travel extensively through the formerly occupied countries. Which I did quite recently. Estonia through Latvia and Lithuania and Poland down into (formerly) East Germany.
I met hundreds of Russians, socially and through business necessity. I can name two of them that aren’t complete criminal scum. When doing any business in Europe, if you are dealing with a Russian, just assume they are positioning themselves to steal everything and anything they can from you.
The general people on the street fall largely into two categories: 1) petty thugs trying to make a name for themselves so that they can 2) get into a gang or organized crime cell. Probably less than ~5% fall outside those categories. Just really horrible people in general. Some of the most homophobic, racist drunkards you can barely imagine; you rarely encounter anything so scummy in the U.S., even in deep red teabagger country.
Naming four or five exceptions from the elite circles from nearly a century ago does not mitigate what a horrendous mob of complete low lifes the Russian people have become. It really is a nation of about 130 million skinheads and teabaggers. On steroids and vodka and any other drink-like substance or other drug they can obtain.
But, you know. Don’t take my word for it. Go live the dream for five to ten years. Come back (if you survive) and tell us all how wonderful it was.
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Yes, I remember Lara’s husband Pasha took the name Strelkov, meaning ‘rifleman.’
good memory RadGal70.
The banality of evil
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a thorn in the side for Putin. I have to wonder how long it will be before the Russian equivalent of a Seal Team go in and take him out.
Really, relax a bit.
If Putin’s team wants a serious word with him, they can just send over a coupla guys in a taxi, chat him up, or even take him to Moscow for consultations. They know where he is, he’d gladly comply and they can have a talk about adjusting his tactics, taking him to the sidelines for a few weeks, re-assigning to North Ossetia, whatever. He can go to Moscow by car, plane, overnight train. No big deal.
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A few militia men celebrated 9/11 as trapped New Yorkers were still leaping to their deaths: “If only my members had this much courage!,” I remember one public enemy intoning.
I don’t have such an extensive history as you do, but I did play a lot of Uki and Russian folk music when I was a musician. It really defined what I think of each side of this drama. I’ll let you guess who ended up being my best friends for years.
Later on I did one big deal with some Russian businessmen. I survived, so I guess you can say things turned out well. I know it’s a low bar.
Better than being named after a little pickle.
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Hey, I wonder if some of our home grown ammosexuals can spare a few weeks from their busy schedules thuggin’ and brandishin’ to form a brigade and help out this mini-Milosevic.
It will get the chicken outta their hawks; the itch outta their triggers. Come on now; Goops have a third-rate Hemingway novella playing in the cranium, well, that is when “Atlas Shrugs” or “The Turner Diaries” aren’t up first.
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Their BUK missiles appear to work well.
He’s probably responsible for more deaths than a Bundyite wet-dreamer. And thank heavens the US has yet to come to that.
Yes, played by the wonderful actor Tom Courtney.
Not really. It seems he is Russian, not Ukrainian, and directing “Ukrainian” break-away rebels with Russia’s de facto cooperation.
Why do your pictures on the main page for both of these stories show some anonymous person standing to the side of the actual Igor?
Another ruthless KGB nutcase just like Putin? Who would have guessed that the Russians had as many neocon nutcases as we did. Cheney just may have found his own true love.