Good weather is a relative thing. To really enjoy warmth and sunshine, you don’t have to go to the south of France. It’s enough, as I did, to return from Surgut (-1°C, snow, wind) to Moscow (+15°C, sunshine). At moments like that, you realize that you, too, live in a “warm climate.” And yesterday in Surgut there was even a May Day parade (brrrr). I’m not going to write a report on this very useful trip. Vedomosti did it for me: Bogdanov Doesn’t Know Who Owns Surgut I’ll just note that Bogdanov from Surgutneftegaz (a major Russian oil company) did not, either in appearance or in manner, resemble the Siberian ghoul he is so often made out to be. He was perfectly polite, though clearly displeased. When the word “Gunvor” came up, he practically winced, but he answered the question and even later sent over the head of the export department, who explained to us how oil export tenders are conducted. Overall, it was obvious that 99% of those present at the meeting were slightly stunned by the fact that an uninvited guest was speaking—and criticizing the management, no less. That’s not how things are done here. But afterward, in the corridors, once they had recovered from the shock, the “representatives of the workforce” started intercepting us, pulling us aside, taking down our phone number, and launching into conversations along the lines of you-have-no-idea-what’s-really-going-on. So the idea that if you hole up in Surgut you can keep a lot of secrets apparently doesn’t work 100 percent.