I asked one of my friend in Moscow how were things? She said, as though I had three heads, “It’s a police state, how do you think they are? People who can are trying to get out”. People in Sweden and Belarus are worried about war. Meanwhile Obama continues to dither.
Saint Petersburg (AFP) – Just when Russians thought it could not get any worse with the ruble tumbling as fast as the oil prices on which their economy depends, the people of St Petersburg are waking up to rationing.
But in President Vladimir Putin’s hometown, the martyr city that survived a nearly 900-day siege in which thousands starved to death in World War II, it is not food and drink that is being rationed, but metro tokens.
In one of the most bizarre episodes of panic buying in a nation notorious for its hoarding instincts in times of trouble, people have been buying up to 85,000 extra metro tokens a day so they can save three rubles (five cents) when the price goes up on January 1.