An elite apartment registered under Queen Elizabeth II’s name is up for sale in central Moscow, the online tabloid 7days.ru reported Tuesday.
“Her Majesty the Queen, who rules over Canada” is listed as the owner of at least four low-rise block apartments overlooking Christ the Savior Cathedral, Russian media reported last year. The properties belong to the Canadian government, where Queen Elizabeth is the nominal head of state, Canada’s Embassy in Moscow told the Baza news outlet.

Some 41% of men in Russia consider the fact that they retire five years later than women to be discrimination, while only 28% of female respondents share this opinion, according to a Superjob.ru survey.
Russia’s pension reform, which started in 2019, is gradually increasing the retirement age and indexing pensions. Last year, Russian women could retire at the age of 55.5 and men at 60.5.
When responses from both sexes are combined, 34% of Russians think that men’s rights are being violated because of their later retirement. Both men and women pointed out that men have a lower average life expectancy than women.
The survey was conducted on Feb. 13 among 1,600 respondents over 18 years old in 340 Russian cities and towns.

Tourist arrivals to Russia have surged by 20.5% in 2019, according to official figures cited by the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) on Monday.
More than 5 million tourists visited Russia in January-December 2019, according to ATOR’s breakdown of Federal Security Service (FSB) border service data, up from 4.2 million tourists the previous year. The numbers come as Russia moves to simplify visa requirements for citizens of 53 countries next year and boost its tourism revenue.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia would not legalize gay marriage as long as he was in the Kremlin.
He made clear he would not allow the traditional notion of mother and father to be subverted by what he called “parent number 1” and “parent number 2”.
“As far as ‘parent number 1’ and ‘parent number 2’ goes, I’ve already spoken publicly about this and I’ll repeat it again: as long as I’m president this will not happen. There will be dad and mum,” Putin said.
During his two decades in power, Putin has closely aligned himself with the Orthodox Church and sought to distance Russia from liberal Western values, including attitudes towards homosexuality and gender fluidity.

Russia plans to commemorate the football World Cup it hosted two years ago with a monument installed at a popular gathering spot for fans in central Moscow, its architect has said.
Nikolskaya Ulitsa, a quiet street steps away from Red Square, quickly turned into party central for tens of thousands of visitors from around the world during the tournament in the summer of 2018.
Sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov, whose works include monuments to AK-47 designer Mikhail Kalashnikov and “Little Green Men” in annexed Crimea, recently won the contest to immortalize the World Cup on Nikolskaya.
The bronze monument to the World Cup will stand 5 meters tall and cost 5.7 million rubles ($90,000), Shcherbakov told Moskva News Agency on Thursday.

Russian airline Aeroflot has become a target for social media criticism yet again after two cats were killed and another diagnosed with frostbite after flying from New York to Moscow in the plane’s cargo hold.
The fatal incident is the latest blow to the airline’s public image after it stripped the airline miles from a passenger who snuck his overweight cat into the cabin because he feared the cat wouldn’t survive a trip in the cargo hold.
After the cats’ deaths, Russian users took to Aeroflot’s social media pages to leave negative comments, many of which were deleted. Soon, the comments transformed into a flashmob of photos showing pets in suitcases next to a sign saying “I’m not baggage. I’m a passenger!”
Some users told their stories of animal cruelty during flights and called for actions to be taken to hold airlines accountable for pets’ safety.
“After my experience, I started shouting about bad attitude toward animals and their owners during the flight to encourage people not to be silent and to call the airline and airport for responsibility.”

Russia is considering extending the maximum length of tourist visas from 30 days to six months to attract tourism, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper reported Wednesday, citing the Foreign Ministry.
The relaxed visa rules would allow visitors from anywhere in the world to apply with a hotel reservation, the ministry was cited as saying. Current legislation only allows tourist visas for those who apply with an invitation letter from a tour agency listed in the Russian government’s database.

McDonald’s has been forced to cancel plans for a bargain Big Mac promotion celebrating 30 years since the opening of its first restaurant in Russia due to coronavirus fears.
The U.S. fast food chain had been planning to sell Big Macs for the symbolic price of 3 rubles ($0.05) all day Friday at its first Russian restaurant on Pushkin Square in central Moscow. Three rubles represents the price of a Big Mac when the restaurant first opened on Jan. 31, 1990 — around half a day’s wages for the average Soviet worker at the time.