When I woke up, I saw a bit of news on my Twitter feed about an explosive device that was found at Ploschad' Vostaniya station, one of the busiest stations in St. Petersburg subway. It was afternoon rush hour in my home city, and I remember thinking that I was glad it ended well ( Read more... )

It's not really clear what happened to "Andrei R," a Digger who had sex with his girlfriend in the service tunnel of the Moscow subway, took pictures and posted them online. His social media accounts have been silent for the past few days, and I can't find any reference to his fate on the news. And there's nothing about his still-anonymous ( Read more... )

I found out about this bit of news over at Gazeta.ru, and soon, I wound up falling down the rabbit hole of Russian-language sources ( Read more... )

Growing up in St. Petersburg, Петербуржское метро (the St. Petersburg subway) was a huge part of my life. It's hard to travel long distances without it. And, back in the 90s, whenever you went down the escalator to the station, you'd hear all of the St. Petersburg subway rules of conduct read out loud. Because of St. Petersburg topography, the ( Read more... )

Somehow, I wound up doing two translations of two articles dealing with LGBT rights in a row. But I can't help it if that sort of stuff keeps making Russian digital news.

According to Bumaga (Paper), an online newspaper covering my home town of St. Petersburg, LGBT activists attempted to stage a protest at Mayakovskaya station, one of the busiest ( Read more... )

The City of St. Petersburg government acquired all the of Metrostroy, a construction company in charge of building new lines and stations for the city's subway. I used to assume that it was a private company, but a more in-depth research revealed that it was actually a public limited company, and Russian federal government used to own most of the ( Read more... )

So apparently, a couple of days ago, some moron decided to that it would be fun and peachy to climb off the platform at St. Petersburg Metro system's Sadovaya station (tweelore has been there, but I doubt she remembers it by name) and sit on the freaking tracks. Nobody was hurt, but the northbound trains had to wait until members of Metro militsiya ( Read more... )

Just as Chicago 'L' trains stop for no reason every once in while, so do subway trains in Russian cities. The only difference is that the riders don't even get a canned announcement or an explanation, which, as tweelore  will tell you, can be a bit unnerving.

But now, there is an explanation (found here)


( Read more... )