Behind the scenes stories from a Canadian Journalist overseas
Some stories are worth coming back to over and over again. Margarita Gracheva’s is one of them. We profiled her more than a year ago in Saint Petersburg and told the story of how her sadistic husband cut her hands off in a fit of jealousy and rage. But she as been incredibly resilient, getting…
Siberia is hardly the first place that comes to mind for an invigorating trip in the dead of winter, but our CBC Moscow crew discovered the people and places of this vast territory have plenty of warmth to share. For me, the city of Irkutsk was once just space on the “Risk” board in the…
Travelling anywhere is obviously difficult during this pandemic but the rules here in Russia are arguably the loosest anywhere. While that doesn’t mean you SHOULD take advantage and travel, it does mean there are some opportunities – and we decided to take a short flight up to Murmansk. At 69 degrees north, Murmansk (pop 300k)…
We were shooting a story at the fancy shopping mall on Red Square the other day and we needed to do an on-camera with an iconic backdrop. There are plenty of those in that particular neighbourhood, so we took a moment to snap this “selfie” of the three of us. Dima is an excellent still…
Weekend two of Russia-wide protests. Looks like Russian protest leaders are taking some cues from Hong Kong and moving their opposition around cities such as Moscow, trying to keep authorities off guard. Not sure its working though. The riot squads are able to move much faster. And deploy quickly. Having said that, the size of…
Turns out, Navalny got the big crowd he badly needed. The riot police got in some fights but notably it didn’t turn into a Belarus-style fiasco. The security services held back, no doubt hoping this will fizzle in a few weekends. Or maybe something has fundamentally changed here with Navlany’s imprisonment – and his video…
With thuggy looking security people watching our every move, our crew was among those at Vnukovo airport for Alexei Navalny’s arrival. Of course, he never did land at our airport as his plane was diverted to Sheremetyevo where he was promptly arrested. Navalny has mobilized vast crowds of protestors in the past and appeared on…
It has suddenly become very cold and very snowy in Moscow. Last winter, there was no snow at all. The previous two winters felt very short. Overall, the climate scientists say Russia is warming twice as fast as the rest of the northern hemisphere and it has certainly felt like that over the four winters…
There’s lot of discussion about travelling over the holiday break. We live in Russia. So returning home was something my family and I had to do. A couple of observations about flying: Flight attendants told us some flights are completely empty (like our one of out Vancouver), while many flights to Sun Destinations such as…
This is Zevengorod, about two hours from downtown Moscow. It’s where our CBC crew went to chat to “ordinary” Russians about what kind of year 2020 was for them. One of the most striking things about Russia is how detached people are from the political system, compared to Canada and other western nations. So many…