On October 22, Ekho Moskvy radio station in Moscow reported that in an act of desperation a local political activist in the Ural Mountains region, Vladimir Chukavin, managed to have a thoroughfare renamed "Putin Straße." The new name is now written on street signs in Germanic Latin script above its former name, still shown in the original Cyrillic.The renaming of this stretch of road was reportedly an effort to embarrass the region's administrative apparatus into doing something about its abysmal condition. Given the near-deity status Putin is now accorded, Chukavin and his associates reasoned, no street named for Russia's one-time KGB Lt. Col. turned president-for-life could be allowed to remain riddled with potholes.
Anyone who has driven in regions outside of either Moscow or St. Petersburg can tell you that roads rendered almost impassable due to potholes are anything but a rarity in Putin's Russia. But what makes Putin Straße stick out is its location: running from a cemetery (which is why the original name of the street was Heaven's Road) to a railroad crossing outside the city of Nizhni-Tagil.
Nizhni-Tagil is home to none other than one of the most famous defense enterprises in all of Russia, the UralVagonZavod (UVZ) battle tank design and production centre. The firm's latest product, the T-14 Armata tank
the Armata offers much-better crew survivability than any previous Russian or Soviet tank-assuming all of its features actually work,
was (despite one of them breaking down during a dress-rehearsal
ahem, actually work)
the centerpiece of the lavish May 9 70th Anniversary Victory Day parade in Moscow. It is billed as one of the key, new-age weapon systems in a massive military modernization. The plan, at a cost of hundreds of billions, aims to increase by the year 2020 the number of weapon systems in Moscow's arsenal that could be categorized as "modern" in their design from the 10 percent today to 70 percent.