Igor Tabakov / MT The Foreign Ministry building in downtown Moscow looming in the morning fog.
The ministry lost records of at least nine Russians living abroad. Imagine waking up one morning without your citizenship. That’s what essentially happened to at least nine Russians after their names simply vanished from Foreign Ministry computers.
Viktor Gorn, 70, and his 72-year-old wife, Taisia Kirichenko, found out the hard way when they turned to the Russian consulate in Leipzig, Germany, to renew their passports in 2008.
Consulate officials informed them that their names were not listed in the Foreign Ministry’s database, Gorn said.
When the couple applied with the consulate in Hamburg in 2009, they faced another rejection - and consulate officials confiscated their expired passpor…

A convicted murderer who is dying of diabetes has asked to be put to death rather than to slowly waste away in prison.
The request for euthanasia, which cannot legally be granted in Russia, comes after judges have persistently refused to free the bed-ridden veteran of the Chechen war - even though the law gives courts the discretion to release terminally ill inmates.
A third request for release was thrown out Monday. Gennady Uminsky, who is serving an 18-year sentence for killing two businessmen in an extortion attempt, asked for euthanasia in an open letter last month.
“I am suffering from a severe form of diabetes. I can’t walk without assistance and a pair of crutches. I have a progressing form of dystrophy. Most of my teeth have fallen out. I can’t even chew,” the 43-year-old Uminsk…

A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and an American on Thursday successfully docked with the International Space Station, after a two-day journey, TASS news agency quoted the mission control centre as saying.

Serbia may become one of the largest buyers of Russian arms. This can become possible after Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW (AFP) ndash; Russian investigators have issued a summons for the president of the Bank of Moscow, reportedly hiding in London, in their probe of an alleged fraudulent loan, the RIA Novosti agency said.
The bank chief, Andrei Borodin, was reported by Russian news agencies Tuesday to have fled in fear of criminal prosecution over a loan of 13 billion rubles (460 million dollars, 320 million euros) to the wife of Moscow’s then mayor Yury Luzhkov in 2009.
Luzhkov, sacked last September, created the Bank of Moscow, which became the country’s fifth largest bank after gaining Russia’s wealthiest city as a client.
Quoting from a document it attributed to the commission of inquiry, RIA Novosti said a summons has also been issued for Borodin’s deputy, Dmitry Akunine….