KZBlog

An American expat living in Astana, Kazakhstan

Tag archive for ‘Russia’

  • Commentators Are Just Checking Out the Chicks

    In what was likely not an isolated incident, commentators for Russian TV channel Sport, broadcasting over the Internet made some personal comments about Aliya Yussupova, the Kazakh rhythmic gymnast who has a world class record. Apparently these guys thought they were speaking off the record when they said: “Look at this Yussupova. What has she […]

    8/26/08 • (Comments Off on Commentators Are Just Checking Out the Chicks)

  • Joe Biden on Central Asia

    The biggest news of the past months has broken: Barack Obama, the US Democratic Party Presidential candidate, has picked Joe Biden as his vice-president. As many pundits have been pointing out for months, one of Obama’s weak points is his lack of foreign policy credentials. Biden, a Democrat from the state of Delaware, is a […]

    8/23/08 • (1)

  • Some Other Trivial Events Besides the Olympics

    I have been avoiding writing on the crisis in Georgia primarily because it doesn’t concern Kazakhstan particularly. That being said, Nazarbayev was one of the first Heads of State to make a statement urging for a peaceful and diplomatic resolution. And he made an interesting suggestion that other CIS nations should not be silent on […]

    8/16/08 • (Comments Off on Some Other Trivial Events Besides the Olympics)

  • Movie Tickets Wanted

    Go see Wanted [Особо Опасен in Russian] which opened on June 27th in the US and on June 26th in Kazakhstan. Why am I talking about this film and why did it open in Kazakhstan before it opened in the US? Because the director, Timur Bekmambetov is a native son of Kazakhstan, born in Atyrau. […]

    6/22/08 • (Comments Off on Movie Tickets Wanted)

  • Medvedev Chooses Kazakhstan First

    Thanks to Net News Publisher for bringing this to my attention. However as a resident of Astana it was hard to miss the fact that the newly inaugurated Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was recently here. Roads were blocked off, Russian flags were hanging from hotels and planted outside Bayterek. Black Mercedes and Land Cruisers with […]

    5/28/08 • (Comments Off on Medvedev Chooses Kazakhstan First)

  • Useful Russian for English Football Fans

    Something a dear friend send me that’s going around the Russian Internets 20 phrases in Russian That Will be of Use to English Football Fans during the Champion League Finals in Moscow. It appears to have originated with Prosports a popular Russian sports journal, but I can’t find it linked there. It’s very funny and […]

    5/23/08 • (Comments Off on Useful Russian for English Football Fans)

  • Neo-Nazis in Russia Getting More Violent

    Patrick Frost at Central Asia Foreign Policy Blog recently posted a disturbing article about violence against minorities in Russia. Of course, most of the non-Slavic residents are from Central Asia and the Caucacus. Around 50 people were killed in clear hate crimes in the first three months of 2008, according to human rights groups. That’s […]

    5/14/08 • (Comments Off on Neo-Nazis in Russia Getting More Violent)

  • Shooting from a Balcony

    According to the nomad.su the car of the Russian ambassador to Kazakhstan was shot at in Astana on the 7th of February from the balcony of an apartment building near the Russian Embassy. According to the story (originally broadcast on Channel 31 ) four 15-year olds are under suspicion. The teenagers and their parents claim […]

    2/10/08 • (Comments Off on Shooting from a Balcony)

  • 19th C Photographs

    19th C Photographs

    The Library of Congress has put up four albums of photographs of Turkestan commissioned by the first Russian governor of Turkestan, Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman, which were taken from 1850 to 1860. The Archeological Album focuses on Islamic architecture, mainly in Samarqand. The Ethnographic part includes individual portraits of different ethnic groups (c.f. the Kara-Kazakh […]

    10/10/07 • (Comments Off on 19th C Photographs)

  • Bread Revolution?

    For the past two weeks, there has been quite a bit of coverage on TV and in the print media about the increases in prices of bread in Central Asia. This week, in Kazakhstan the issue came to a head and was brought to the government’s attention. Some report that in Shimkent a leposhka (flat […]

    10/03/07 • (Comments Off on Bread Revolution?)