Surf foaming at its bow, the great gray battleship seemed a potent symbol of Russian military might.
Yet officials in Moscow were licking their wounds on Wednesday after putting the ship on 20 giant billboards across the city to congratulate the military on its annual Defenders of the Fatherland day.
War veterans gearing up for the holiday yesterday were incensed to see the ship was clearly the famous World War II US battleship the USS Missouri.
"Did they want to insult us?" Captain Vladimir Zakharov asked a local journalist as he passed one of the billboards opposite the White House, home to the Russian Cabinet. "Like, you don't have any of your own hardware left, so take at look at someone else's?"
Despite its crumbling military, an intense pride is maintained in Russia's fighting prowess. The Missouri appeared next to a Russian Sukhoi jet and the slogan: "Happy holiday, warriors of Russia."
A spokesman for the Moscow government's advertising committee said the mistake was a "simple technical error" and officials were telephoning veterans' groups to apologize.
She said the picture of the Missouri, with its distinctive "63" marking, had been mixed up with the Russian artillery cruiser Slava.
A spokesman for the ministry of defense told Interfax it had no connection with the advertising.
Eduard Baltin, former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, blamed the designers, saying, "Once they get their money, they don't care who or what they put on these things."
But, he added: "It's not such a big deal to confuse two great heroic ships. It's much worse when [US Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld mixes up Iraq and Iran."
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
RSS