Kremlin’s state-funded English language TV station is derided for its more sinister motives but its World Cup coverage has largely proved a pleasant surprise
Two things in Russia are fairly constant. First, there is the scale. In St Petersburg I stayed in an average chain-style hotel that was like a ziggurat for alien giants, its footprint spread over roughly 4% of the world’s crust, spooling down into sub floors and bunkers and swimming lagoons, upper floors dusted with rock deposits from the rings of Saturn.
Everything is massive. It’s also, and this is crucial, very far away.
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