iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It's good to see on the ground reporting in Russia from the NYT, even if the premise is a few years out of date and the tone is quite dramatic. There are a few NYT people in Moscow at the moment. Would like to see other publications also do some reporting. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/w...

nytimes.com

The New Moscow: A Digital Utopia Doubling as a Surveillance Trap

Cutting-edge technologies have reshaped the Russian capital, making it safer, more convenient — and more closely watched.

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Reposted by Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow

Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A piece about the architecture of Moscow in the 2020s, the regeneration around Elektrozavodkaya, or why I think Moscow property developers are like Turkish hair transplant surgeons open.substack.com/pub/kotelnay...

open.substack.com

Detours on the Diameters: The Architecture of Late Putinism, of the Turkish Hair Transplant

Elektrozavodskaya and the three archetypes of urban regeneration in Moscow

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Новый хоккейный сезон уже не за горами. СЭ оценивает шансы ЦСКА гораздо оптимистичнее, чем я. Посмотрим, конечно, но мне кажется, нам нужен как минимум ещё один год на перестройку, прежде чем мы сможем тягаться с такими командами, как Локо и Ак Барс www.sport-express.ru/hockey/khl/r...

sport-express.ru

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

open.substack.com

Detours on the Diameters: The Architecture of Late Putinism, of the Turkish Hair Transplant

Elektrozavodskaya and the three archetypes of urban regeneration in Moscow

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

There's never much going on here, is there?

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

What has it been like living in the same Moscow building, with the same cast of characters, for the past seven years, as Moscow, and Russia, has changed course? kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-grille...

kotelnaya.substack.com

The Grilled Door: Tales from Seven Years in the Raion

Your Friends and Neighbours

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Tales from seven years in one Moscow building -- be friends with your neighbours, as my late neighbour Dmitriy Ivanovich, whose grandfather was denounced by a neighbour, told me kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-grille...

kotelnaya.substack.com

The Grilled Door: Tales from Seven Years in the Raion

Your Friends and Neighbours

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Weird things happening with Moscow mobile internet. While its down in parts of the centre, a few apps which have needed VPNs for months -- WhatsApp, Instagram, Signal -- are now working for me on mobile data without a VPN.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Sheila Fitzpatrick really is the best in the business www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

There's so much football writing out there these days, and, unlike the halcyon days of peak football twitter between 2008 and 2012, most of it isn't worth reading. But, every now and then, great storylines bring out the best in the great football writers

theguardian.com

It would be a macabre story but relegation needs to happen for Tottenham | Jonathan Liew

All the managers since Mauricio Pochettino have drained life from the club, which appears interested in anything but football right now

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Хотя снег еще лежит и для прогулок все еще нужны ботинки, есть, наконец то, признаки того, что в Москву приходит весна. Воздух пахнет иначе, светит солнце, и на деревьях в моем дворе появились первые почки.

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Reposted by Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow

Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

It is surreal that we are still locked in the never-ending debate over whether military intervention on behalf of democracy and human rights is good, when the current administration has been extremely explicit they are not intervening on behalf of democracy and human rights

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Iran, by the way, are supposed to be playing New Zealand in California in their opening World Cup game in just over 15 weeks time.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

There is still an Ural Airlines flight from Yekaterinburg to Dubai flying over Iran. Most flights I've taken to Dubai, whether from Moscow, Istanbul or the UK have flown over Iran. No more, I guess.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

In all my years here, I can't remember such sustained snowfall in Moscow over a 2-3 week period. It's been snowing for about 4 days straight now and a couple of weeks ago we had 5 continuous days of snowfall. I remember heavy snowfall, especially in 2017, but never so prolonged.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Kotelnaya Weekly, with some thoughts about why that New York Times Russia correspondent job speaks to a wider disaster for the future of Russia coverage in the Anglosphere -- the rest of the West's journalists are largely still here, btw kotelnaya.substack.com/p/kotelnaya-...

kotelnaya.substack.com

Kotelnaya Weekly - 18 February 2026

This week: Khrushchev's Thaw on screen, a disaster for Russia-focussed journalism and how Viktor Tsoi and Kino taught me Russian

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Ferocious blizzards for the lat 12 hours in Moscow. It's brutal out there. My walk to Krasnoe Beloe just now was like a full polar expedition.

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Reposted by Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow

Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The second instalment of Kotelnaya Weekly, on the film of the Thaw era, what I think is a disaster for Russian journalism, how Viktor Tsoi and Kino taught me Russian and reflections on the Tsoi exhibition in St P. kotelnaya.substack.com/p/kotelnaya-...

kotelnaya.substack.com

Kotelnaya Weekly - 18 February 2026

This week: Khrushchev's Thaw on screen, a disaster for Russia-focussed journalism and how Viktor Tsoi and Kino taught me Russian

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

kotelnaya.substack.com

Kotelnaya Weekly - 18 February 2026

This week: Khrushchev's Thaw on screen, a disaster for Russia-focussed journalism and how Viktor Tsoi and Kino taught me Russian

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Non Moscow post, sorry, but what a win for my one-time local team Galatasaray. I remember a few special Champions League nights there. What a place. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k0...

youtube.com

Gol Şarkısı Galatasaray / Goal Song (I Will Survive)

YouTube video by Hermes House Band - Topic

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

It's quite something to see EU bankers begin to say the same sorts of things about Visa and Mastercard and payment processing that Russian bankers were saying from about 2010 onwards www.ft.com/content/fcc2...

ft.com

European alternatives to Visa and Mastercard ‘urgently’ needed, says banking chief

US payment processing companies account for about two-thirds of card transactions in Eurozone

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Last week in Moscow - Indian restaurants, the Turkish and Russian languages and their approach to ethnicity, Cubans clearing snow in Krasnogorsk kotelnaya.substack.com/p/kotelnaya-...

kotelnaya.substack.com

Kotelnaya Weekly - 6 February 2026

Masala, retrofitted beerhalls, Adam Tooze, the Russian and Turkish languages

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

My monthly trip to Falanster to pick up Russian journals followed by a walk to Clovelly, a pub in Moscow made up completely of antique furniture from a village in Cornwall

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

The first Kotelnaya Weekly, a collection of things from around Moscow and the internet that I found interesting in the last 7 days. This week: masala, a beerhall, Adam Tooze's Chinese 1989 and ethnicity in the Turkish and Russian languages kotelnaya.substack.com/p/kotelnaya-...

kotelnaya.substack.com

Kotelnaya Weekly - 6 February 2026

Masala, retrofitted beerhalls, Adam Tooze, the Russian and Turkish languages

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I have no idea what the word "Exclusive" means in journalism anymore. In what way are these articles on the FT exclusives? They're summaries of emails the whole world has access to. What is exclusive about reading publicly-available emails and writing a story about them?

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

It might sound strange, at minus 13, but there's a hint of spring in Moscow today. The sun is shining, so much so that I've had to open the windows in my flat because it's too warm, birds are chirping and the ice is melting. We're creeping steadily towards zero from next week.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Wow, Industry season 4 is terrible, just designed to shock. It's popularity, and the more money HBO spend on it and its promotion, is inverse to quality. The first season was great, but nobody watched it so HBO made sure the second season was previewed everywhere and it became a hit.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead, but everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed — Elvis Costello in 1980 perfectly describing Moscow in 2026

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

The last few years have been extremely instructive about the publishing industry in the UK and US. 1) Make bold overarching claim (about Russia in most cases) 2) Use popular semi-academic buzzwords 3) Ensure a complex explanation of something quite simple 4) Pander to reader bias

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Burger King’s operations in Russia have been totally unaffected by sanctions, so much so that they now have a range of frozen Burger King products in Russian supermarkets

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

After a few days of near-constant snowfall, it’s minus 20 and blue skies in Moscow today. Municipal workers are on roofs, shovelling snow onto the ground. If you’re sat by the window, watching huge chunks of snow fall in front of you, it feels a bit like a drive-in car wash.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I like Orhan Pamuk’s work, especially Snow, but The Museum of Innocence is absolutely unbearable. I see what the middle section, with 200 pages of endless repetition and 8 years of visits to the same house, tries to do but it’s just endless grind, labouring the same point.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

When I saw that video doing the rounds, I presumed it was just some classic American rage bait. But it seems it was serious and the New York Times has now published a piece explaining to the weirdest nation on earth why the rest of us... open our windows. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/r...

nytimes.com

Should We All Be ‘House Burping’?

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

There have always been Indian restaurants in Moscow, many of them quite bad. The one exception was always Jai Hind, off Prospekt Mira. It’s still the best, by far, but the quality of Indian restaurants and the preponderance of Indian chefs and waiters has skyrocketed recently.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Snow has been coming down in Moscow for about 48 hours now

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

A new bar has just opened up near me, about a 3 minute walk away across the dvor. That's the good news. The bad news is they serve beer in 400ml pilsner glasses, despite not serving any pilsner.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

My next post, next week, is going to be about how the late Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, known now to everyone as Zhirik, has reached much more people as an Insta/TikTok meme than he did in life. His memeificiation was complete with a few left friends quoting clips of him in the pub

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

This week's piece about my favourite lunch spot closing down after 8 years and the enshitification of Moscow's Patriarch's Ponds neighbourhood kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-slow-d...

kotelnaya.substack.com

The Slow Death of Patriarch's Ponds

Or, how influencers enshitified a neighbourhood

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

In 2025, 17 restaurants, bars and coffee shops in Moscow's Patriarch's Ponds closed. It used to be the place to be seen. What does it's slow decline tell us about Moscow in 2026? kotelnaya.substack.com/p/the-slow-d...

kotelnaya.substack.com

The Slow Death of Patriarch's Ponds

Or, how influencers enshitified a neighbourhood

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

A new post: The Slow Death of Patriarch's Ponds, or how influencers enshitified a neighbourhood open.substack.com/pub/kotelnay...

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

A new development from the middle of December, for me at least, is that WhatsApp no longer works in Russia without a VPN. A minor inconvenience, as I always have a VPN on anyway, but it seems people are being heavily nudged towards MAX.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

So the US imposes economic sanctions on other countries when they annex part of or invade a sovereign state but is also set to impose economic sanctions (tariffs) on it's supposed allies because those allies don't support the US annexing part of a sovereign state. Western values at work.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Coming from the UK, where there has been snowfall overnight and the country is at a standstill, I’m always surprised by how a severe snowstorm is shrugged off in Moscow. The bin men are still out.

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Kotelnaya: Life in Moscow @kotelnaya.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I've been reading Owen Hatherley for close to two decades now. There's no other British author quite like him. His most recent NLR piece is fantastic. newleftreview.org/issues/ii155...

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