Where is it? Ryazan Oblast, or region, is located in the center of the European side of Russia, southeast of Moscow Oblast. It is also bordered by the oblasts of Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Tambov, Lipetsk and Tula, and the Republics of Mordovia. Ryazan is in the Moscow time zone .

What's the biggest city? Ryazan, which accounts for 535,000 of the region's 1.2 million people, according to the 2002 census. Kasimov, Sasovo, Skopin and Ryazhsk are its other large cities. The city of Ryazan is more than 900 years old, making it one of the oldest in Russia. The oldest extant parts... more

Early this summer, I took a look at hosting programs. They bring older Russian orphans to the United States for a vacation that, with luck, leads to adoption by the hosting family. Many of the programs have been on hiatus as adoption agencies tried to decipher whether hosting and adoption can co-exist under the new accreditation rules.

At the time of that post, I was alerted that there was one program I missed, the Russian Orphan Lighthouse Project.... more

President Vladimir Putin spent three hours in front of the television cameras on Thursday, taking and answering questions from citizens on a wide range of economic, social and political issues. According to the official Russian government Web site, Putin answered more than 60 questions during the show, which came from people in Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh region, Arkhangelsk region, six other regions and Kazakhstan. The government site doesn't yet have the transcript posted, but promises one will... more

I've written before about how central potatoes are to the Russian diet. But there's one kind of potato that everybody wants to avoid, and that's a political hot potato. Which is why so many people in Russia are steamed up now over inflation.

The price of just about everything in Russia right now is rising, and at a pretty good clip to boot. According to the Moscow Times, milk prices have risen 16.5% over the last year, while butter is up more than 20%, vegetable oil has risen 17.1% and the cost of meat is... more

A while back, I asked those of you who are blogging about your adoptions in Russia if I could share your writing with the readers of this blog. Many of you responded in the affirmative, so here is what is going on on the Russia family blogroll now.

I'm going to start with the really good news. Almost two years after Zack and Laura at "The Winding Road to Chelyabinsk" first met their son Dimitry they have finally gotten a court date to bring him home!... more

When I first visited Russia more than 20 years ago, I don’t think I could have spent $1,000 there if I had stayed a month. Now, you can blow that in a day. Or maybe in an hour.

Want proof? Check out the October issue of Departures magazine. It is devoted entirely to Russia.

For $1,000 in the new Russia you could have lunch with six friends at the Central House of Writers (which was an orphanage early in the 20th century, according to Departures), or dine with six friends at Moscow's Café Pushkin (both... more

There were two interesting stories about older children adopted from Russia in the last week, and I'd like to tell you about them both.

The first appeared in The St. Cloud Times, under the headline "Prep soccer: He's from Russia, with (game) love". Now, let's just agree to pardon the pun, which is getting a bit tired. Headline writers can be pressed for space and they often revert to the obvious, even when it has nothing to do with Sean Connery.

The story is about... more

Maybe it's because Halloween is coming and everybody in my neighborhood has fake tombstones on the lawn. Or maybe, again because it's almost Halloween, I've been thinking of going to Brooklyn for the annual Green-Wood tour. Whatever the reason, I've been thinking cemeteries, and so has the Moscow News.

The English language news weekly has a feature this week on Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, and how to tour it. Before you say, ewwwww, visiting dead people, stop and think: A cemetery is probably... more

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates got an earful when they visited Moscow on Friday. Russian President Vladimir Putin again blasted America's plan to base a missile defense system in eastern Europe--this time with the TV cameras rolling and the American officials in the background. “Of course, we can some time in the future decide that some antimissile defense should be established somewhere on the moon,” The New York Times quoted... more

Ordinarily, I do everything I can to avoid printing rumors about what is or isn't happening with adoptions in Russia. There's enough of that kind of stuff floating around on the Internet and an unconfirmed rumor is just that, an unconfirmed rumor. And unconfirmed rumors drive people nuts.

But I've gotten e-mails from several of you recently asking when I think the next round of accreditations will be issued. The truth is, I don't know and probably no one in Russia does either, with the possible exception of Andrei Alexandrovich Fursenko, the minister of education, whose signature... more