Russians

Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble. The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground's cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol. Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization. "So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."

MOSCOW — Russian riot police cleared a Moscow park early Wednesday of a weeklong encampment considered a local version of the Occupy movement, and hours later clashed with antigovernment protesters outside a Stalinist skyscraper in a different part of downtown. The dispersal of several dozen protesters at the park encampment, called Occupy Abai, preceded a nighttime confrontation at Kudrinskaya Square, where several hundred protesters had gathered to oppose President Vladimir Putin.

Over a bottle of vodka and a traditional Russian salad of pickles, sausage and potatoes tossed in mayonnaise, a group of friends raised their glasses and wished Igor Irtenyev and his family a happy journey to Israel. Irtenyev, his wife and daughter insist they will just be away for six months, but the sadness in their eyes on this recent night said otherwise. A successful Russian poet, Irtenyev says he can no longer breathe freely in his homeland, because "with each passing year, and even with each passing day, there is less and less oxygen around.

MOSCOW - A new Russian passenger plane with 50 people aboard went missing Wednesday during a demonstration flight over Indonesia, officials said. The Sukhoi Superjet 100, on a South Asian promotional tour, disappeared from radar screens 20 minutes into its second flight from Jakarta. The crew last spoke to ground control while over Mt. Halimun Salak National Park in West Java province, the Rossiya 24 television network reported. "Before communication was lost with the plane, there was no information about the malfunction of the systems," said Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, president of Moscow-based Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. "The plane has conducted about 500 flights with the overall flight time over 800 hours [and]

A boy from a poor family makes good, opens the first sex shop in his hometown, wins the mayor's job by a landslide, defies the Kremlin, goes to prison, gets barred from politics and ends up where he started: surrounded by sex toys, including a set of erotic Matryoshka nesting dolls that he delights in showing off. The story of Alexander Donskoy's entrepreneurial and political odyssey, complete with his decision to open Moscow's first sex museum, might...

When I was 3, I heard the story of Henny Penny shouting, "The sky is falling--the sky is falling!" I am now 71, and since then I have heard nothing but, "The Russians are coming!--the Russians are coming!" I didn't believe it then--and I don't believe it now! K.N. HAWK Palm Desert

Cowboys, quarter horses and 1,434 purebred beef cattle ? just add grasslands, and you've got a transplanted Montana ranch. Those livestock basics ? and some training in animal care ? are what Montana cattle producers have shipped to southwestern Russia, where the landscape is similar to the grassy high plains of eastern Montana. It's part of a Russian-subsidized deal to make that country's cattle industry more self-sufficient. "It's like an instant ranch," said Kate Loose, a representative of one of the Montana ranchers involved in the deal.

You'd never know, looking at the Gastronom European Food delicatessen in a shopping mall on Santa Monica Boulevard, that the "European Food" is almost exclusively Russian in origin--and sentiment. The owner, Inna Katsnelson, is a recent emigre from the Soviet Union, and so are her employees. All women. All wearing red aprons.

For five years, as the world convulsed with war, the unassuming Soviet couple rubbed elbows with the likes of Walt Disney and Orson Welles. They took in a private screening of "The Great Dictator," at the invitation of Charlie Chaplin. Their son's earliest memories are set in Los Angeles -- the yellow house nestled in flower beds with a view of the Griffith Observatory; the animal crackers bought with the proceeds of a sidewalk lemonade stand; the author Theodore Dreiser drinking so much vodka that he crawled under the table.

Day after painful day, the failures have been piling up: The Russians couldn't catch any Olympic gold in figure skating, fumbled the early biathlon races and, most crushing of all, got trounced at ice hockey. And, for once, this country of stoical nationalism and deep, black humor is showing signs of rage and a rare flash of public humility. From the penniless to the powerful, Russians lashed out against officials this week over the country's performance in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics with a vitriol seldom seen, even amid pervasive graft and lawlessness.

MOSCOW - Russia may consider a preemptive strike on a missile defense system in Europe if the U.S.-led NATO project continues as planned, a top official said Thursday. Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov, in a sign of the tension between Russia and the United States over the missile defense plans, said during an international conference that a strike by his country might be possible. "A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Makarov said.

CHICAGO — Batteries made in America for America and backed by America. That's how politicians hailed Ener1. The company tapped the country's top scientists at Argonne National Lab in Illinois, and U.S. taxpayers pledged up to $118 million in federal stimulus funds and $80 million in state and local incentives to help Ener1 produce cutting-edge battery technology for electric cars and the U.S. military. "This is about the future. And the question is which nation is going to seize the future.

MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of people came to the square in front of a Moscow cathedral Sunday in a show of support for the Russian Orthodox Church, which is facing criticism for its close ties to the Kremlin and the wealth of its leaders. Under golden cupolas and a warm spring sun, church leaders dressed in red-and-gold robes carried crosses and icons around the mighty white walls of Christ the Savior Cathedral in a procession led by Patriarch Kirill. "What are we doing, my dears, here today, having gathered in such a multitude?"

KARABANOVO, Russia - His unruly mane of white hair giving him the look of Moses, Father Georgy Edelstein struggled over the grayish snow that is the late-spring landscape of this barren village, heading to his church for Good Friday services. When he got to its small, darkened main hall, the 79-year-old put a simple silver cross over his robes and began saying prayers on one of the holiest days in the Russian Orthodox Church. His audience: his assistant and one villager. Two days later, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, exchanged hearty Easter kisses with President-elect Vladimir Putin amid the lavish interiors of Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, his jewel-encrusted cross and gold brocade robe shining in the television limelight.

NEW YORK — A federal court judge sentenced convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison on Thursday, but in a swipe at prosecutors said there was no convincing evidence that he would have committed crimes they alleged if he had not been the target of a sting operation. Judge Shira Scheindlin gave the 45-year-old Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death," the minimum mandatory sentence for conspiring to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles. She also sentenced him to 15 years on three other counts of conspiracy to kill Americans and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.

For more than a year, Russia has prohibited its government-run museums from sending artworks to exhibitions in the United States. The ban has frustrated and puzzled American museum officials, because it was spurred by a legal decision unrelated to anything the museums themselves have done. Diplomacy has failed to lift it. Hopes have risen recently that the impasse can be broken by a bipartisan bill that passed unopposed in the U.S. House of Representativeson March 19 and is pending in the Senate judiciary committee.

From Russia, with love For "The Tourist" and "Gulliver's Travels," Russia has turned out to be much warmer than the U.S. This past weekend, the action drama starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and the 3-D comedy starring Jack Black enjoyed strong openings in Russia of $10.3 million and $9.5 million, respectively. Both films, meanwhile, have been major disappointments at the domestic box office. Although Russia has become one of the hottest foreign markets for movies in recent years, its theatrical industry is still nowhere near as developed as that of the U.S. or some other countries, including Britain, France and Germany.

What's all the hubbub? The headline on your April 20 article states: "Firetrucks' Color Change Sparks Debate." Think about it. A fire engine can have four riders and eight hoses. Four plus eight equals 12 and there are 12 inches in a foot. A foot is the length of a ruler and Queen Elizabeth is a ruler. Queen Elizabeth was also a ship that sailed the seven seas. The seas have fish, the fish have fins, and the Finns fought the Russians. Russians are synonymous with the color red and fire engines are always rushin'.

MOSCOW - The only thing missing from the scene was one of those heroic images of Lenin peering from a shop window, or perhaps a glimpse of the Soviet hammer and sickle fluttering over the nearby Kremlin. When the new U.S. ambassador to Russia arrived this week for a private meeting with a prominent human rights activist, he was confronted by a crew from a Kremlin-controlled television station that blocked his path and peppered him with questions. Uniformed men, tall wool military hats on their heads, were there too. And a burly civilian held up a sign with a pointed question for Ambassador Michael McFaul's host: "What is the price of the motherland today?"

U.S. politics combined with diplomacy as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a swipe at Mitt Romney and President Obama, pointing to an uncooperative Congress and a toxic political environment at home to explain why he was delaying negotiations with Russian leaders over missile defense. Romney, in a CNN interview Monday, had referred to Russia as "our No. 1 geopolitical foe," prompting Medvedev to tell reporters here that the Republican front-runner's language seemed out of date and "smelled of Hollywood" stereotypes.