#Mariinsky Palace

[vintage-ukraine]

Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv, 1966

[avrelia]

I watched RRR over the weekend, and beyond how awesome it was, one moment was the most surprising. Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv behind the dancing people in Naatu Naatu. I couldn’t’ believe it the great Indian blockbuster and Kyiv? A huge Bolliwood dance number in front of the residence of the Ukrainian president? Seems unlikely. But this is the age when unlikely stuff happens. Especially when Ukraine is concerned. It was indeed filmed in front of Mariinsky Palace.

The reason for this unexpected filming location was COVID and related travel restrictions. It was being filmed in 2021, and Indian actors couldn’t go to UK, while UK actor couldn’t go to India, so the production team started looking for middle ground, and found it in Ukraine. As Mariinsky Palace is the official residence of the Ukrainian president, it was not considered as a filming location, but the director S. S. Rajamoulifell in love with it, and eventually, the arrangements were made.

So lots of non-Indian dancers and extras you see there are not British, but Ukrainian. The movie also used other filming locations and movie studio in Ukraine, but they are not as instantly recognizable.

More on the palace

More on filming

[simplicius-simplicissimus]

St. Petersburg: A stroll through the city

[mothmvn]

hmm. i think it's time to rewatch season 1 of doctor who empathising primarily with the 9th doctor rather than rose for a change

[rnope-c1e]

LMAO

Oh what a shitshow

Skibidi Toilet was shown in the Legislative Assembly and criticized by the Commissioner for Children's Rights in St. Petersburg, Anna Mityanina. The ombudsman also does not like the voice assistant "Alice" from Yandex and the title of the last year’s publication by ЗАКС.ру about her report:

«I want to turn now to those Telegram channels, the media, which, after each of my speeches, allow themselves such snide headlines: "Defender from the Internet in the Mariinsky Palace." I have talked and will talk about information security and hygiene. Both children and parents should be taught that it is dangerous and very harmful to health. Please take this into consideration.»

This is hysterical

[thugnificent714]

1st Reserve Apartment

Consisting of rooms 290-301 (located in the south western corner of the inner courtyard), these rooms were occupied by Grand Duchess Maria Nicholaevna, daughter of Nicholas I and sister of Alexander II, and her husband Maximilian de Bauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenburg, grandson of Napoleon and Josehphine. The coupled lived in these rooms for only 5 years after which they moved into Maria's new palace, the Mariinsky Palace, in 1844. On December 17,1837 a fire broken out in the Field Marshal's Hall and burned for 3 days. The palace was rebuilt by 1838 and Maria and Maxililian were the first to occupy these rooms following the renovation.

Room 300

Room 301 was an anteroom through which you gained entry into room 300, Maria's Small Study.

Room 299 Maria's Dressing Room

Room 298 Bedroom

Room 297 Duke's Dressing Room

Room 296 Maria's Study

Room 295 Yellow Drawing Room

Room 294 Large Drawing Room

Room 293 Duke's Salon

Room 292 Duke's Drawing Room

Room 291 Duke's Study

Room 290 Duke's Valet Room

[ernanileal]

Mariinsky Palace (1744-52) - Kiev - Built for the Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna. Official residence of the President of Ukraine...

[adini-nikolaevna]

Which of Nicholas I children was his favorite? Or which one did he like more and was closer to him? Did he miss his daughter, Queen Olga of Württemberg, when she was away? Did they stay in touch? Can you tell me your 2 favorite children?

In general, the family of Nicholas I was very close-knit, and he loved all his children dearly, but I suspect that Alexander II, as his firstborn and heir, was his favorite son (although he worried that “Sasha” was too sensitive). Maria Nikolaevna, who was called Mary by those close to her, was probably his favorite daughter. She resembled him physically, especially in profile, which is why she was often painted with her head slightly turned, but her steely will was equal to that of her father—there is a story about Nicholas and Mary having an epic staredown that made everyone nervous because neither father nor daughter was willing to give in. As the emperor’s eldest daughter, Mary was expected to make a splendid dynastic marriage, but refused to leave Russia, and then she fell for Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg, who was a minor prince and the step-grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte to boot. Not quite the catch that Nicholas must have had in mind, but for Mary, he agreed to the match. He granted Maximilian the style of “imperial highness, ” as well as the couple’s children, who would be Prince/Princess Romanovsky and treated as Russian grand dukes/duchesses. As a wedding gift to Mary, Nicholas gave her her very own palace, which was even named after her (the Mariinsky Palace), and after the marriage took place, he insisted that his daughter was called “the Grand Duchess Maria” rather than “the Duchess of Leuchtenberg,” which probably didn’t sit well with her husband, but no one (save for his eldest daughter) ever contradicted the Iron Tsar!

[antizionistrussophile64]

May 30, 2003

Vladimir Putin on the renovation of the Constantine Palace.

“It was the opening night of ‘War and Peace’ at the Mariinsky Theatre. I was waiting for my guests. A young man approached me about the issue of the Constantine Palace. When I returned to Moscow, I put it on the backburner but kept going back to it: No, it is too expensive, we don’t have the money now, and there are more important matters… And then we appealed to our large private companies, which covered 99.90 percent of restoration costs, some $300 million. We only allocated 5 to 10 billion rubles so as to have the right to monitor the project. By the way, I never saw that young man again. If he is listening to us now, I ask him to contact [St Petersburg Governor Valentina] Matviyenko. We have things to discuss.”

[harri-etvane]

For the Wip Game:

1. Eat

Shevchenko - Testament

Hello anon!

1.Eat is another of those vague google docs that I don't think I'll ever end up posting. It was a really vague concept around how food is so very tied to ones memories. I wanted it to be a reflective piece with Ukrainian national dishes as focus points, mostly for Volodymyr, as a way to connect to memories, moments, people & ideas from the past, but hope for the future as well. (I also have a terrible habit of giving characters bowls of soup or borscht whenever my brain is like ffs, give them some comfort and coziness damnit). It never really got off the ground because I think the idea was a bit.. too specific and a bit too similar to things I've already written.

Shevchenko - Testament is very much a work in progress; but here's a wee snippet:

Despite the sunlight pouring into the gardens of Mariinsky Palace, too-bright, especially after today, Maks feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise, a slow tendril of fear snaking around his heart, pressing there. Something feels off, wrong - something he can't quite put his finger on. There's something missing.

[vintage-ukraine]

Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv, 1985

[blueguitar]

Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv.

This is the backdrop for "Naatu, Naatu" in RRR.

[parttimereporter]

BIDEN MAKES SURPRISE VISIT TO UKRAINE

AP DISPATCH FROM KYIV:

President Joe Biden paid an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Monday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a defiant display of Western solidarity with a country still fighting what he called “a brutal and unjust war” days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

“One year later, Kyiv stands,” Biden declared after meeting Zelenskyy at Mariinsky Palace. Jamming his finger for emphasis on his podium, against a backdrop of three flags from each country, he continued: “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

Biden spent more than five hours in the Ukrainian capital, consulting with Zelenskyy on next steps, honoring the country’s fallen soldiers and seeing U.S. embassy staff in the besieged country.

This is how the DAILY BEAST heralded the surprise trip:

Joe Biden arrived in ten hours on a train ride from Poland normally priced at $50 to celebrate Presidents’ Day with Voldoymyr Zelensky. Wearing his signature Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, Amtrak Joe strolled the capital’s streets accompanied by the promise of an additional $500 million in weapons for Ukraine and the blare of klaxons warning of a possible Mig-31 jet fighter heading south from Belarus and armed with a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. The Ukrainian military has no defense against attack from hypersonic missiles.

MORE..

According to AFP, the alarm was heard when Biden and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, flanked by armed security, were exiting St Michael’s Cathedral where the leaders had a meeting. The siren did not cause any panic, the news agency said...

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.2

1513 – Having spotted land on March 27, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León comes ashore on what is now the U.S. state of Florida, landing somewhere between the modern city of St. Augustine and the mouth of the St. Johns River. 1755 – Commodore William James captures the Maratha fortress of Suvarnadurg on the west coast of India. 1792 – The Coinage Act is passed by Congress, establishing the United States Mint. 1800 – Ludwig van Beethoven leads the premiere of his First Symphony in Vienna. 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: In the Battle of Copenhagen a British Royal Navy squadron defeats a hastily assembled, smaller, mostly-volunteer Dano-Norwegian Navy at high cost, forcing Denmark out of the Second League of Armed Neutrality. 1863 – American Civil War: The largest in a series of Southern bread riots occurs in Richmond, Virginia. 1865 – American Civil War: Defeat at the Third Battle of Petersburg forces the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate government to abandon Richmond, Virginia. 1885 – Canadian Cree warriors attack the village of Frog Lake, killing nine. 1902 – Dmitry Sipyagin, Minister of Interior of the Russian Empire, is assassinated in the Mariinsky Palace, Saint Petersburg. 1902 – "Electric Theatre", the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles. 1911 – The Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts the country's first national census. 1912 – The ill-fated RMS Titanic begins sea trials. 1917 – American entry into World War I: President Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. 1921 – The Autonomous Government of Khorasan, a military government encompassing the modern state of Iran, is established. 1930 – After the mysterious death of Empress Zewditu, Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. 1954 – A 19-month-old infant is swept up in the ocean tides at Hermosa Beach, California. Local photographer John L. Gaunt photographs the incident; 1955 Pulitzer winner "Tragedy by the Sea". 1956 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiere on CBS. The two soaps become the first daytime dramas to debut in the 30-minute format. 1964 – The Soviet Union launches Zond 1. 1972 – Actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s. 1973 – Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal research service. 1975 – Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees flee from Quảng Ngãi Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops. 1976 – Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest. 1979 – A Soviet bio-warfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 plus an unknown amount of livestock. 1980 – United States President Jimmy Carter signs the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act. 1982 – Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands. 1986 – Alabama governor George Wallace, a former segregationist, best known for the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door", announces that he will not seek a fifth four-year term and will retire from public life upon the end of his term in January 1987. 1989 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana, Cuba, to meet with Fidel Castro in an attempt to mend strained relations. 1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm (who had resigned) as Premier of British Columbia. 1992 – In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison. 1992 – Forty-two civilians are massacred in the town of Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2002 – Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, into which armed Palestinians had retreated. 2004 – Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid; the attack is thwarted. 2006 – Over 60 tornadoes break out in the United States; Tennessee is hardest hit with 29 people killed. 2012 – A mass shooting at Oikos University in California leaves seven people dead and three injured. 2014 – A spree shooting occurs at the Fort Hood army base in Texas, with four dead, including the gunman, and 16 others injured. 2015 – Gunmen attack Garissa University College in Kenya, killing at least 148 people and wounding 79 others. 2015 – Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area in what has been called the "largest burglary in English legal history." 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: The total number of confirmed cases reach one million. 2021 – At least 49 people are killed in a train derailment in Taiwan after a truck accidentally rolls onto the track. 2021 – A Capitol Police officer is killed and another injured when an attacker rams his car into a barricade outside the United States Capitol.

[mariacallous]

It was the tale of two explosions: the first, a likely Ukrainian attack on the Russian-built Kerch Strait Bridge sent smoke billowing into Crimea’s skies and lit up social media in the wee hours of Saturday. The second, Russian cruise and ballistic missile strikes hit the heart of downtown Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Monday morning, targeting a 3-year-old glass pedestrian bridge in a Kyiv park in addition to some playgrounds. A chunk of the Russian bridge collapsed into the Black Sea; but even amid ongoing air raids on Monday, the glass bridge was still standing.

That was the split screen that Ukrainian officials tried to emphasize on Monday, as Russia launched cruise and ballistic missile strikes across the country, which targeted civilians and energy infrastructure, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 87 people. The reprisals struck Kyiv for the first time in months, during rush hour, in what Ukraine’s National Police described as the largest missile assault on the country in its history. But even as Ukrainian and Western officials described the attacks that left a smoking crater in Kyiv’s Taras Shevchenko Park as an act of desperation, and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stepped outside Mariinsky Palace to record a defiant Telegram message, they acknowledged that the war-torn country would need more air and missile defenses to guard against the Kremlin’s increasing salvos—and fast.

For months, Ukraine had been seeking long-range rockets and plentiful artillery shells; after Russia destroyed public schools, parks, playgrounds, and power plants, Ukrainian officials were urgently resorting their weapons demands to NATO nations. On Monday, Ukraine’s top parliamentarian, Ruslan Stefanchuk, sent letters to congressional leadership calling on the United States to prioritize the delivery of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), which are jointly produced with Norway, as well as counter-rocket, mortar, and artillery systems—a clear sign that those defensive weapons had moved up the Ukrainian military priority list ahead of multiple rocket launchers, fighter jets, and long-range rocket systems that Kyiv has been demanding for months. Zelensky, after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden, stated that obtaining air defenses was his No. 1 priority.

“Ukrainian Armed Forces had successfully [shot] down almost half of the missiles and Iranian drones, but unfortunately our air defense resources are limited,” Stefanchuk wrote in the letter seen by Foreign Policy. “By this attack, Russia received no military advance; it was an act of terror, targeted exclusively against the civilian population. NASAMS Ground Air Defense Systems are crucial to secure critical civil and military infrastructure from Russian cruise missiles and bombings, while Land-Based Phalanx Weapon System (C-RAM) would allow for the closest point protection of the most important objects, especially crucial power plants.”

Stefanchuk said Ukraine was also seeking American F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian cruise missiles and bombers, possibly with air-to-air missiles. Ukraine also wants the Biden administration to shake off its reticence and provide longer-range U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems—known as ATACMs—which could hit Russian targets 200 miles away, and Gray Eagle strike drones to counteract the off-the-shelf Iranian drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian lines. Politico reported this month that Ukrainian officials were putting greater emphasis on requesting air defenses from the West.

Although Western air defenses could provide a patchwork shield against Russian missile strikes, the arrival of new batteries would not make Ukrainian airspace a no-go zone, even as the country’s native air defenses have held up for more than 200 days—far longer than Western intelligence agencies initially anticipated. Russian Kalibr cruise missiles, the Kremlin’s weapon of choice in Monday’s strikes, fly at lower altitudes that allow them to more readily evade air defenses. Western officials believe that the Kremlin’s stocks of precision-guided missiles have dwindled significantly since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February.

But nearly eight months into the war, Ukrainian troops are still left with makeshift options to defend against Russia’s onslaught from the skies—and today’s strikes only brought more urgency after the attacks shattered the relative calm that had fallen over Kyiv in the past few months. On Monday, a Ukrainian territorial defender managed to shoot down an incoming Russian missile with a shoulder-launched rocket. In downtown Kyiv, missiles blew out the windows of university buildings and a blood-soaked older woman, who had been walking her two dogs in the park, was hustled away from the scene by a firefighter.

And officials are warning that the worst is yet to come. Stefanchuk, the top Ukrainian lawmaker, said Russia was likely to continue to escalate attacks on civilians as Ukraine advanced on the battlefield in an effort to cut the public off from heat and electricity ahead of looming subzero temperatures with the coming winter—threats that have been echoed by Putin’s allies. Zelensky, who huddled with his top advisors to discuss the energy situation, said Russia had targeted energy facilities in nearly a dozen regions of the country and called on the Ukrainian public to reduce electricity consumption for a five-hour period on Monday evening to prevent an emergency shutdown after a series of strikes on power plants.

For weeks, the Kremlin has telegraphed that it has wanted to slow down Ukraine’s battlefield advances with strikes targeting infrastructure and civilians. Russian troops’ cruel logic, experts said, is that if they can’t beat Ukrainian troops on the battlefield, they will try to harm their wives and children at home. And Putin also has to play for time, spreading out Ukrainian defenses, with a purported 300,000 mobilized Russian reserves not set to be ready for weeks, if not months, to prevent ceding more ground.

“If the strategy that Putin is pursuing is to play for time so that you can build up your own new forces through mobilization and gain time for economic warfare against Europe to properly bite, moving to the point where it really starts to genuinely wreak havoc, … then you don’t really want to cede somewhere that’s actually quite defensible and where they have a lot of prepared positions,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

With images of Kyiv’s blood-spattered streets all over the news, Western leaders rallied around Zelensky. Following a call with the Ukrainian leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, who has hesitated to send more weapons, called today a profound change. The German defense ministry pledged that the first of four IRIS-T air defense systems, a truck-mounted infrared missile that can hit targets miles away, would show up in Kyiv “within days.” U.S. officials have also said that some of the eight NASAMS batteries pledged to Ukraine will begin arriving in the coming months, though some of those systems are not available to be pulled out of defense stocks and will need to be manufactured.

Zelensky is also set to join a virtual meeting of the G-7 nations tomorrow. And U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley are set to head to Brussels on Wednesday for the latest meeting of the 50-nation Ukraine Defense Contact Group that will hash out Kyiv’s latest arms requests.

But for some Ukrainian officials, Western military aid is coming too little, too late—feelings that were echoed within Zelensky’s inner circle.

“I think it’s obvious to everybody they should have been here before today happened,” Oleksandra “Sasha” Ustinova, a Ukrainian lawmaker who has made several trips to Washington in recent months to urge U.S. counterparts and administration officials to speed up weapons transfers, told Foreign Policy in a phone interview. “I don’t know what the excuses are, but it costs lives for Ukrainians. We’re not asking for offensive weapons. This is purely defensive—for the civilians.”

And that’s becoming more urgent, former U.S. officials said, as Putin is increasingly falling behind in the military ground game.

“This shows that Russia only has one option to respond to successes by the Ukrainian military: attacks designed to terrorize Ukrainian civilians,” Mick Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, told Foreign Policy in a text message. “The Russians are losing the war on the ground and are not turning that around.”

“The U.S. and the international community must immediately provide the Ukrainians with the most advanced air and missile defense systems available to guard population centers,” he added. “[T]hese attacks will likely only get worse.”

[thugnificent714]

To continue with my research on the rooms of the winter palace, I would like to draw your attention to the rooms occupied by Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (Eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas I) and her husband, Maximilian Joseph Eugene Auguste Napoleon de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg. Also known as the 1st Reserved Apartment, this suite of 11 rooms (rooms 301-290) is located at the end of the Dark Corridor of the private apartments and runs along the inner courtyard side of the southwestern and southern wings (rooms above the famous Gates of the Palace). The couple were married on 2 July 1839 in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace. As Tsar Nicholas I's eldest and favourite child, she was given this suite of rooms following her marriage to the Duke as they waited construction of her own Palace which was completed in 1844 (known today as the Mariinsky Palace in St. Petersburg).

Room 167 - Small Fieldmarshal Hall

This room was used for the ceremonial change of the Palace guards. It allowed access to the 1st Reserved apartment (door located behind the view of the screenshot) and the apartments of future Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II (doors shown in picture).

Room 301- Anteroom of the 1st Reserved Apartment

No paintings exist for this room but it served to received guests into the apartment suite.

Room 300- Small Study of Grand Duchess Maria

Room 299- Grand Duchess Maria's Dressing Room

Room 298- The Duke and Grand Duchess' Bedroom

Room 297- The Duke of Leuchtenberg's Dressing Room

296- Large Study of Grand Duchess Maria

Room 295- Yellow Salon of Grand Duchess Maria

Room 294- 1st Reserved Apartment Drawing-Room

Room 293- The Salon of the Duke of Leuchtenberg

Room 292- Drawing-Room of the Duke of Leuchtenberg

Room 291- The Study of the Duke of Leuchtenberg

Room 290- The Duke’s Valet/Wardrobe

This room was for the Duke's valet or manservant who tended to the Duke's clothes.