Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow
@kotelnaya.bsky.social
It's very much boeuf bourguignon weather in Moscow today
October 8, 2025 at 10:09 AM
It's very much boeuf bourguignon weather in Moscow today
Drinking in Moscow in 2025. You can now get far more beer imported from the West than you could before February 2022. kotelnaya.substack.com/p/a-pint-of-...
July 4, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Drinking in Moscow in 2025. You can now get far more beer imported from the West than you could before February 2022. kotelnaya.substack.com/p/a-pint-of-...
A great novel and an absolutely spot on depiction of the vapidness of the sort of image-obsessed, Instagram-reliant generation of yuppies found all over Europe
June 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
A great novel and an absolutely spot on depiction of the vapidness of the sort of image-obsessed, Instagram-reliant generation of yuppies found all over Europe
I have no great interest in LBJ but these books are so good. The way Caro writes, his level of detail, the way he expresses his thinking and marshals his evidence, the way he unites the micro with the macro without bludgeoning the point. I’m not saying anything new here, but what a piece of work.
June 14, 2025 at 10:37 AM
I have no great interest in LBJ but these books are so good. The way Caro writes, his level of detail, the way he expresses his thinking and marshals his evidence, the way he unites the micro with the macro without bludgeoning the point. I’m not saying anything new here, but what a piece of work.
Green Beat looks exactly the same and tastes exactly the same as Tuborg and is still produced in the same factory. There’s also an Amstel alternative, called Gold Bier, which looks and tastes the same as Amstel and sits next to Amstel in the fridge in my local shop.
June 13, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Green Beat looks exactly the same and tastes exactly the same as Tuborg and is still produced in the same factory. There’s also an Amstel alternative, called Gold Bier, which looks and tastes the same as Amstel and sits next to Amstel in the fridge in my local shop.
Was discussing the Russian beer market yesterday and some of the odd changes. Carlsberg owned Baltika before nationalisation and produced Tuborg in Russia. Baltika is still producing Carlsberg, which is available in every shop, and also Tuborg, but for some reason changed the name to “Green Beat”
June 13, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Was discussing the Russian beer market yesterday and some of the odd changes. Carlsberg owned Baltika before nationalisation and produced Tuborg in Russia. Baltika is still producing Carlsberg, which is available in every shop, and also Tuborg, but for some reason changed the name to “Green Beat”
Fascinating reporting, but it's not just Moscow reaching out to freelancers via dodgy Telegram accounts, is it. That's what Ukraine did in the Vladlen Tatarsky killing in April 2023. Seems to be a developing trend across espionage services. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
June 3, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Fascinating reporting, but it's not just Moscow reaching out to freelancers via dodgy Telegram accounts, is it. That's what Ukraine did in the Vladlen Tatarsky killing in April 2023. Seems to be a developing trend across espionage services. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Every Wednesday, friends from my “local” in central Moscow go to the banya at Kalitniki. Last time I joined them, I walked from Aeroport to Grazhdanskaya, transitioning from Metroland to МЦДland, the unregenerated periphery flanking the centre
kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-projec...
kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-projec...
June 3, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Every Wednesday, friends from my “local” in central Moscow go to the banya at Kalitniki. Last time I joined them, I walked from Aeroport to Grazhdanskaya, transitioning from Metroland to МЦДland, the unregenerated periphery flanking the centre
kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-projec...
kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-projec...
Repeatedly seeing this. The centrists, or liberal centre-right, manage to get back in to power and disappoint everyone who voted for them, like Starmer. When the people who didn't vote for you hate you, the least you can do is give your voters a reason to vote again. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/o...
June 3, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Repeatedly seeing this. The centrists, or liberal centre-right, manage to get back in to power and disappoint everyone who voted for them, like Starmer. When the people who didn't vote for you hate you, the least you can do is give your voters a reason to vote again. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/o...
Find it odd but not surprising that Starmer is giving out these lines a press conference and the most obvious question -- why? -- seems to be the only question not being asked.
June 2, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Find it odd but not surprising that Starmer is giving out these lines a press conference and the most obvious question -- why? -- seems to be the only question not being asked.
Try working in a client facing role in any country and see if not drinking is better for your career than drinking. Maybe this applies if all of your clients are Silicon Valley incels, but in London and most of the rest of the world, you gain and keep business by being good over drinks.
May 31, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Try working in a client facing role in any country and see if not drinking is better for your career than drinking. Maybe this applies if all of your clients are Silicon Valley incels, but in London and most of the rest of the world, you gain and keep business by being good over drinks.
Hilarious, maddening, absolutely stupid, and very American. By the way, Russia is 112th in the world for abortion rates, three places behind the US....
March 27, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Hilarious, maddening, absolutely stupid, and very American. By the way, Russia is 112th in the world for abortion rates, three places behind the US....
Manchester United's proposed new stadium is clearly inspired by Khrushchevki www.nytimes.com/athletic/618...
March 11, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Manchester United's proposed new stadium is clearly inspired by Khrushchevki www.nytimes.com/athletic/618...
One of the reasons I absolutely despite newspapers using capital cities (Kyiv/Moscow/Washington) to denote governments is you end up with absolutely brainworm-inducing headlines like this, which make no sense outside of media jargon. How could "Kyiv" be in Saudi Arabia? It's a city in Ukraine
February 18, 2025 at 12:18 PM
One of the reasons I absolutely despite newspapers using capital cities (Kyiv/Moscow/Washington) to denote governments is you end up with absolutely brainworm-inducing headlines like this, which make no sense outside of media jargon. How could "Kyiv" be in Saudi Arabia? It's a city in Ukraine
It's not a universal thing. Vkusvill use the English word for cherry and the English word for tomato. But, I note to my extreme ire, they are included in the "vegetables" section. We all know that tomatoes are, famously, a fruit.
January 25, 2025 at 9:08 AM
It's not a universal thing. Vkusvill use the English word for cherry and the English word for tomato. But, I note to my extreme ire, they are included in the "vegetables" section. We all know that tomatoes are, famously, a fruit.
An absolute classic to wake up to over there in San Jose
January 24, 2025 at 5:45 AM
An absolute classic to wake up to over there in San Jose
January 8, 2025 at 10:46 AM
The next post will be about Opalikha, where I spent a lot of last summer. But, as I mention the place a lot in the introduction to the project, here are pictures of the gloomy, tired platform that stood before 2020 and the new МЦД station which took its place.
January 3, 2025 at 9:51 AM
The next post will be about Opalikha, where I spent a lot of last summer. But, as I mention the place a lot in the introduction to the project, here are pictures of the gloomy, tired platform that stood before 2020 and the new МЦД station which took its place.
We came out to hurl ourselves down the hill on the ice and saw a moose at the bottom of the runway. It scarpered before I had time to get a photo.
January 1, 2025 at 1:51 PM
We came out to hurl ourselves down the hill on the ice and saw a moose at the bottom of the runway. It scarpered before I had time to get a photo.
Benjamin is extraordinary, isn’t he. I finished his Moscow Diaries and moved on to his observations of Naples, Marseille and Berlin.
December 30, 2024 at 6:13 PM
Benjamin is extraordinary, isn’t he. I finished his Moscow Diaries and moved on to his observations of Naples, Marseille and Berlin.
I was never a huge walker but spending too much time in Dubai, where you can’t walk anywhere, means I’ve become a convert. There’s something special about a Russian forest in winter, and then returning home to sit in front of a fire to finish Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diaries.
December 30, 2024 at 1:07 PM
I was never a huge walker but spending too much time in Dubai, where you can’t walk anywhere, means I’ve become a convert. There’s something special about a Russian forest in winter, and then returning home to sit in front of a fire to finish Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diaries.
The winter store in the basement of Babushka’s house
December 30, 2024 at 10:18 AM
The winter store in the basement of Babushka’s house
Russian pastoral
December 30, 2024 at 8:24 AM
Russian pastoral
The endless white of Russian winter
December 29, 2024 at 10:48 AM
The endless white of Russian winter