The main highlight of the week was the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
The main highlight of the week was the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Photo: Yekaterina Ilyukhina won Russia’s first ever Olympic medal in snowboard after snatching the Olympic silver in ladies' parallel giant slalom.
Russia is currently in 11th place for overall medal counts, with a total of 15 medals (3 gold, 5 silver and 7 bronze). Photo: the Russian women’s biathlon team of Svetlana Sleptsova, Anna Bogaliy-Titovets, Olga Medvedtseva and Olga Zaitseva (left to right), who took Olympic gold in Vancouver on Tuesday in the women’s biathlon relay.
The major blow of the week came when Russia’s superstar ice-hockey team was swept off the ice by a rampant Canada, losing 7-3 to the Olympic hosts in the quarterfinals of the competition.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin toured on Wednesday the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant, the largest in Russia. A massive accident at the plant last August destroyed turbines and killed 75 people. Putin switched on the plant’s hydroelectric unit No. 6 for industrial load, which was put into no-load operation along with unit No. 5 on December 30, 2009.
Moscow spent February holidays buried under a thick layer of snow, with municipal services working day and night on clearing a record 400,000 cubic meters of snow each day.
