minsk

That someone in Minsk may well be US operative working at huge IBM facility in Minsk.

Photos look a bit like Minsk by the river northwards from centre, the combination of high rises, park and river.

Warsaw is happy to have any walls - Minsk was reduced to runis completely (you could say, bombed to be like moon ground).

I even remember going to a Polish-owned cafe in Minsk where the owners spoke Polish, but customers spoke Russian.

Not true, a lot more in Minsk remained after a war with some 10% of the housing stock intact, with more damaged but inhabitable.

Also, I would go as far as to say that his deputy's trip to KGB HQ in Minsk was totally unnecessary.

This pattern follows from Minsk to the provinces.

Disclosure: I am Russian, we opened a filial in Minsk this year.

I don't even say that almost all of the damage was done by the Soviets (there are pics of Minsk from spring-early summer 1944 where city is largely intact).

Hope these things will get sorted out in a few years:) However, if someone decides to go work from Minsk - send me note, I will show you around.

If I'm a Russian orthodontist in Minsk and I buy 500 shares of Google, the Fifth Amendment protects me having them expropriated by the US government even if I never go near the States.

(In a "small world coincidence", I happened to work with the son of the designer of the Minsk-32 -- the most advanced machine in the series -- at Yahoo.

Is Mapstor paying royalty to specialists still operating at the 5th Cartography Enterprise in Minsk?

I'm in Minsk, Belarus (very similar to Russia) from SV for the next month to finish our mobile app.

Even the short London-Moscow route passes through Antwerp, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Warsaw and Minsk.