July first I flew to Baku from Batumi via Azerbaijan Air. I spent the night in the Baku Fly Inn, a magnificent hotel located on the same property as the airport. It was extremely elegant and very quiet even though it is right in an airport. You can’t hear the noise inside.
The next morning early, I flew to Moscow via the same airline.
I took a taxi from Moscow to my hotel in Tula.
We had a devil of a time finding the hotel. The map showed it next to the stadium. We drove around the stadium twice and didn’t see any hotel. The driver asked several passers by and the third one explained that the hotel was inside the stadium located under the bleachers. It’s a very large football stadium and they obviously didn’t need all the space for locker rooms. A hotel makes good sense. Visiting teams have a place to stay right in the same building where they play.
FROM RUSSIAN SOCIAL MEDIA:
(Not my words)
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has once again demanded that Western nations expedite the delivery of air defense missiles to Ukraine, stating that these supplies "cannot wait years." The Dutch government has indicated that it is working with partners to find ways to accelerate the provision of Patriot air defense system missiles to Ukraine. However, experts point out that the West lacks the capacity to meet Kyiv’s requirements for interceptors, meaning the Armed Forces of Ukraine face an even more difficult situation on the front lines.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, head of the Kyiv regime, has once again complained about a shortage of interceptor missiles for the Ukrainian Armed Forces' air defense systems, demanding that Western partners expedite the delivery of ammunition for these surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems.
"The intensity of the strikes is very high, and the Russians are doing their utmost to exploit the deficit of interceptors capable of countering ballistic missiles," he wrote on his ...
(Not my words)
Netanyahu loses. But he's not leaving yet
Elections in Israel are not only a matter of who will lead the 10-million state on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This is a matter of war and peace throughout the Middle East - from Palestine to Iran. This means that the world economy also depends on them: the cost of oil, air traffic, freedom of merchant shipping and much more. The campaign ended without a clear winner. But some conclusions can already be drawn.
Campaign results
The election ended with a clear failure of 77-year-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been leading the country since 1999. Netanyahu had a simple political line: Israel is surrounded by enemies longing for its destruction, so it must exterminate everyone itself. Wild terror with medieval atrocities, arranged by Hamas on October 7, 2023, successful operations against Hamas and Hezbollah, suppression of Iran's nuclear program, powerful support of the United States, seemed to guarantee it confident support in society.
But there was no support. It ...
(Not my words)
The story behind a photograph that breaks the heart. Many are familiar with this image; it is frequently published around June 22nd—the date the war began—and sometimes around Victory Day. It captures Tatyana Onishchenko and her young daughter, who was mortally wounded during a Nazi bombing raid.
The scene is the Moscow region, autumn 1941. The photograph was taken by Ivan Nartsissov, a war correspondent from Lipetsk—a brave, talented, and modest man who left behind an extensive archive of wartime photographs and reports.
For a long time, this was all that was known about the image. Recently, however, further details have come to light. In the summer of 1941, Tatyana received devastating news: her husband had gone missing in action. A period of agonizing uncertainty followed. Every morning, she would go out to meet the postman—and every morning, he would walk right past her. Reports from the front grew increasingly grim, yet Tatyana held onto her faith. And, eventually, ...
