Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
based on what people have been saying here, that is true of most Russian politicians, and if that was grounds for getting sacked, then practically all politicans in Russia should be sacked!
Luzhkov is not a typical Russian politican. The case is really unique. First of all, he is Moscow mayor for more than 18 years. He was the mayor when the tanks were firing at the parlament and he was the mayor just yesterday. It's two completely different Moscows.

Another point is that Moscow is actually is a 'state inside a state'. It's population and budget is bigger than population and budget of most of EU states.

Per Evening Standard (a free paper that I read on my commute) Lushkov was corrupt,
That's for sure. Usually he blamed for corruption because of his wife, Elena Baturina. According to Forbes she is the 3rd richest woman in the world. Her company, INTECO, wins every tender and gains every profitable building contract in Moscow. And when he married her she was a factory worker without a penny. BTW, she is 27 years younger than him (but honestly, if I were Luzhkov, I would never marry her even if she is 27 years younger and very, very talented in buisness and stuff cause she is very ugly-looking).

anti-gay,
Can't blame him for that. Actually I completely support him here.


a supporter of Putin
That's not true. Actually he was the main Putin's opposer at 1999 parlament and 2000 president elections. Putin crushed him and his party (by rather dirty means sometimes) and after that Luzhkov signed some kind of 'honorary capitulation' and his party was absorbed by Putin's one. But even after that he was still considered rather independent politician (althrough he himself became a member of United Russia).

and an admirer of Stalin.
Bullsh!t. Western and Russian liberal media always put an 'admirer of Stalin' label on a peson who ever said something positive about the USSR at the Stalin times. For example it's enough to say something like: "Heroic Soviet people with a cost of great sacrifice freed the world from the nazi plague. And their leader at that time was Stalin." to become a 'Stalin's admirer'.

Has he done any particularly good things for Moscow that you have noticed? Such as improve public transport and improve the housing situation...?
Common opinion that he did many positive tinngs in 90s but turned into complete freak in 00s.

Was it good or bad that he got sacked?
Imho it's good.

PS - the paper "Evening Standard" (biggest tabloid in London) is actually owned by some kind of Russian oligarch, called Alexander Lebedev. There was quite a lot of talk about it when he bought this paper. Do you know anything about him?
Only that he pretended to become a Moscow mayor himself some time ago and even had some Kremlin support in this but something went wrong for him (most probably Luzhkov's position just was stronger than his at that time).