Posted on 08/15/2010 9:46:32 AM PDT by La Lydia
Russians fainting in the subway. People jumping into city pools and the Moscow River drowning. Ambulances racing around a city eerily free of its normal traffic congestion...These seem like scenes from a horror movie, but they are all too real. Between hundreds of wildfires in Russia and record-breaking heat, this has been the worst summer in Russian memory. Nearly 100 deaths are officially attributed to the fires...and officials report that the death rate in Moscow has doubled from its customary levels, to 700 per day, owing to heat-induced illness and smoke-filled air. Thousands of homes and dachas have been destroyed, with direct losses estimated at $15 billion and rising.
...Russia's leaders were slow to grasp the gravity of the situation and slower to respond. As his country burned, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev went on vacation in the resort town of Sochi -- and then, inexplicably, headed off to the Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia...
Despite the dire situation Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov departed for his own holiday, in the Alps, returning only grudgingly. The state forestry agency's Moscow director was fired for refusing to cut short his own vacation, while Medvedev, in a striking display of hypocrisy, threatened to dismiss other forestry officials who remained on leave....
...it is no wonder that firemen in some regions, ordered to protect the local bosses' dachas, watched helplessly as the homes of ordinary people were reduced to ashes. And it is no wonder that, despite the raging fires, officials have in recent weeks managed to find the personnel and resources to crack down on ongoing protests against cutting down part of the Khimki forest on the outskirts of Moscow, innocuous opposition rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and a protest this past Thursday against the AWOL mayor of Moscow....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yeltsin’s fault...
Just another pair of libtards would somehow drag GWB’s name into it. They are just so f-ing stupid.
In the first place, the only way their comparison would make sense is if Katrina had flooded Washington DC.
Putin looked like a saviour when the oil prices went through the roof. That’s all.
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