I should have blogged this weeks ago but I was off the net. And maybe by now the New York Times has forgotten about Kaliningrad again. But at least its reporter, Ellen Barry, actually pitched up here.
I’m impressed. Ellen Barry really does work out of Russia (NYT’s Moscow office) and doesn’t sit in a London pub making stuff up like the Daily Telegraph boys.
Ellen contacted me at the height of the Kaliningrad Missile Crisis, when a siloful of Iskanders were about to be trained on Poland in response to the US Missile Shield. Mind you, it is hard to be precise about the height of this crisis, like how high exactly and when even. It still hasn’t totally gone away, but it’s well on the back afterburner now they’re talking. By contrast, the legendary Cuban Missile Crisis was sorted in two weeks flat. I wonder if that says anything about the stalemate of modern diplomacy?
But, back to Ellen’s piece on the Kaliningrad Missile Crisis which I thought was truly wonderful. A couple of choice extracts:
‘Attracting tourists to see an Iskander is a creative idea,” said Mr. Abramov, a political scientist. ‘Especially for the Poles. When it is flying toward them, they may not be able to see it. Come to Kaliningrad! Pose next to the missile which is going to kill you.’
Ellen also took time out to visit Kaliningrad’s famous Zoo.
Lyudmila M. Anokha, the director of the Kaliningrad Zoo, found herself in an awkward position last month when she held a contest to name a new baby giraffe. One of the most popular suggestions was ‘Iskander,’ but Ms. Anokha immediately saw the problem. ‘The giraffe was delivered to us by the Berlin Zoo’ she said. ‘The giraffe came from the West. The Iskanders would be pointed toward the West. We at the Zoo are beyond politics.’
More Russia articles from Ellen are filed here
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