I've been catching up a little on my reading tonight and came across several things good and tangentially related to this trip.
First, a terrific account of a press event put on by OMON, the Russian special police, by a good friend of this blog writing in the eXile:
If you saw any of the next-day press accounts of the OMON event, you know it was no normal press conference. It was a well-choreographed martial arts and machine gun extravaganza that left ears ringing and minds reeling. In the Guardian's laconic words, it was "at the odder end of the spectrum."
Or as we say in America, "at the pretty fucking awesome end of the spectrum."
Read the whole thing, it's good. I saw OMON soldiers break up a group of rowdy teenaged boys that was disrupting a Victory Day concert in South Ossetia, but frankly, they didn't live up to their brutal/effective reputation: the kids kept making noise even when OMON told them to stop. I mean, if you can't manage obnoxious 14-year-olds, how are you going to deal with Chechens?