Posted by Sean on November 23, 2007
Yesterday Putin was running late to a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The reason why his limo zipped from northern Moscow to the Kremlin? As Kommersant commentator Andrei Kolesnikov reveals the President’s tardiness was because he was recording an address to the nation to be aired on 29 November on Ostankino TV.
Over the last week, Putin has been waging an aggressive political campaign for United Russia. The high point came the other day when he addressed a crowd of 5000 supporters at the Luzhniki sports stadium. He castigated the Russian opposition as “jackals” feeding off Western money (Who did he mean here? The Communists? Or does it even matter?) and promoted the UR’s commitment to economic and political stability. The state run Channel One devoted much of its news time hyping the speech.
The essence of next Thursday’s address will contain “almost nothing ..read more
Posted by Sean on November 23, 2007
By Ger Clancy , the Irishman
One of football’s most endearing and at the same time frustrating qualities is its ability to propel the weak to the summit, send the great into ignominy and deny an expected victor its spoils at the death. The Russian national team tasted the latter on Saturday night in Tel-Aviv and, in keeping with recent disasters, were entirely responsible themselves for their misfortune. But fate alone didn’t create the events at Ramat-Gan. Not only did Russia play badly; they played terribly. Their performance was what one might have expected from Israel. But already having been eliminated from Euro 2008 in all but name, Israel played like a team on the cusp of dumping football’s old money out of the competition and earning a famous qualification themselves.
Tales of teams with nothing to lose collecting major scalps are nothing new in football. Israel has caused France, ..read more
