It was known last week that the branches of the British Council, contrary to the instructions of the Russian Foreign Ministry, will continue their work on Monday. It must be said that the situation with the branch in Yekaterinburg is special: last year it was announced that the British Council in Yekaterinburg is the cultural department of the embassy, ​​and this status was officially assigned to the Yekaterinburg branch.

“When you swim in lava, you don’t feel the temperature.” I think this is Yuri Trifonov. More and more often I try these words by heart in relation to myself. Do I feel it adequately? Or does the quiet daily life, the dilution of what is happening, still deceive, as it deceived millions of people before me? After all, in some thirty-five, they also went ice skating in Sokolniki, and excellent beer was brewed next door to Dachau...

It is generally accepted that Vladimir Putin's Munich speech opened a new stage in Russian foreign policy. In reality, she completed a turnaround that had begun three or four years earlier. The meaning of the turn is Russia’s return to the position of an independent player in the international arena, not bound by any “complex” relations with the West. Munich in this context is a dramatic change in the tone of communication, a sharp change in tactics, but not strategy.

When the conflict between Mikheil Saakashvili and the Georgian opposition is analyzed in Russia, skeptical or even simply dismissive assessments of the latter are often heard. She is indecisive, weak, and unable to engage in a tough confrontation with the president, having accomplished something similar to the “Rose Revolution” - the creation of Saakashvili in 2003.

Our security forces are decisively unlucky. On June 22, 2004, they conducted anti -terrorism exercises in the Far East: according to legend, the terrorists seized the hill there and proclaimed independence from Russia. The hill was gnawed by aviation and "Grad" - the exercises ended very successfully.

For some time now, the world has become global, and to summarize the year for one country is just as meaningless as to indicate the speed of the heavenly body 300 km per second. 300 km - relative to? (For example, regarding the earth or the sun?) Actually, the further globalization of the world is the main result of the 2007 year. This is a world in which Indian billionaire Mittal becomes the largest steel manufacturer, buying up European enterprises.

Branches of the British Council will resume work in Russian regions on January 14, despite the order of the Russian Foreign Ministry prohibiting the activities of British cultural centers from January 1 due to their “illegal status,” writes Kommersant. Previously, the Foreign Ministry accused branches of the British Council of illegally placing them on the territory of diplomatic missions, which gives diplomatic immunity to employees of cultural centers.