Russian Official Sacked for Making Boys Kiss His Feet
THE GUARDIAN: Difkat Khantimerov claims he was merely repeating a lesson he had learned in the Red army



A regional Russian official sacked for forcing a group of teenagers to kiss his feet has defended his actions, claiming he was merely repeating a lesson he had learned in the Red army.

The official, Difkat Khantimerov, was fired over the weekend after a video posted on YouTube exposed the bizarre incident. The official took charge of a PE lesson and ordered a basketball squad to perform a series of arduous press-ups. He then stuck out his right shoe and ordered the boys to kiss it.

With the teenagers struggling to carry out his request, Khantimerov barked out a series of military-style commands, including "Harder!" "One, two!" and "Kiss!". The clip shows him withdrawing his foot. He then crouches down, and lays his hand flat on the gym floor to be kissed instead.

The extraordinary episode took place in Bashkortostan, a largely Muslim region of southern Russia in the Urals. On Saturday the republic's president, Rustem Khamitov, said he was "relieving the official of his duties" after watching the video on the internet.

"This looks like an outrage, an insult against schoolchildren," the president said, according to Russian news agencies. The president was "indignant to the bottom of his soul," his press secretary, Airat Murzagaleev, said today. >>> Luke Harding in Moscow | Monday, September 13, 2010

Film-Trailer: Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin

TIMESONLINE: German War Film A Woman in Berlin Opens Old Wounds over Red Army Rapes

The gruff phrase “Komm Frau!” – Come, woman! – still sends shivers down the spines of elderly Germans. It was the command given by Russian soldiers as they prowled Berlin and other bombed-out postwar German cities, searching for women to rape.

The hidden horror of those months is about to be revealed in a new German film, A Woman in Berlin, that is likely to shock the nation, stir resentment against the Russians and provoke a debate about morality in war.

The film is based on a diary written by the German journalist Marta Hillers. She began to scribble it in a dusty cellar on Friday April 20, 1945 – Hitler’s birthday, the last before his suicide ten days later.

Within days of the occupation she had been raped several times by Red Army soldiers, one of many hundreds of thousands of German women abused in this way. It was the crime that no one talked about. >>> Roger Boyes in Berlin | October 21, 2008

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