It’s unfortunate that the articles on ft.com get archived under a pay wall after a little while, but if you have the chance to read this article about the Russian Mob (not sure why it’s in the Financial Times…), then count yourself lucky! I’m not sure this journalist does though:
His authority on the subject of the mob is unimpeachable. Just a week before I met with him, he was sitting across the table from Andrei Burlakov, a businessman involved in a messy dispute over the sale of a stake in Russia’s fifth-largest bank, the Bank of Moscow, and his wife.
As the trio enjoyed their lunch, an assassin calmly walked up and shot Burlakov in the head; the bullet fragments seriously injuring his wife. Burlakov died hours later; the hitman simply melted into the lunchtime crowds.
Most journalists whose lunch interview had been so brutally curtailed would have been given time off and counselling for post-traumatic stress. But in Russia, the treatment is simply a couple of shots of vodka and straight back to work.
Crazy!
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