SHAWN MCCARTHY
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
02/03/07
MOSCOW — This city of 12 million has all the hallmarks of an oil-fired boomtown – traffic snarled at all hours of the day along roadways not built for three million cars, ubiquitous construction cranes hovering overhead, rampant consumerism in the luxury shops of the elite and the more prosaic housewares and electronic stores of the growing middle class.
Gone from the underpasses and Red Square itself are the legions of pensioners who just five years ago were begging and selling off family treasures to put food on the table. Flush with petro-rubles, the government of President Vladimir Putin cannot only pay their state pensions but has increased them.