"Barack Obama’s last visit to Russia, as a senator in 2005, did not end so well. He was detained by the security services at an airport near Siberia for three hours, locked in a lounge, his passport confiscated, like a scene from a John le Carré novel. The Russians later called it a “misunderstanding."
Decoding Russia - A Six-Step Plan - NYTimes.com (h/t Tyler Cowen)
This reminded me that I wanted to post a bit from BusinessWeek’s article on IKEA in Russia:
On June 23 the retailer said it was putting on hold all new investment in Russia. Ikea’s Russia country manager, Per Kaufmann, said in a statement that the decision was “due to the unpredictability of the administrative processes in some regions,” specifically Samara… .
While Ikea hasn’t said so directly, company officials have implied they’re tired of corruption in Russia. Samara regional authorities, they say, are creating artificial obstacles, such as a requirement that the mall be able to withstand near-hurricane force winds, even though there’s no history of such weather conditions there. In an interview with the German paper Handelsblatt, Kaufmann said a Samara official had suggested a particular local construction company could “quickly help” fix the alleged deficiencies.
Despite all of my complaining, I feel very lucky to live in the U.S.
