There's a loud, pigeon-scattering buzz coming off Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow, like a nest of angry wasps. The sound draws closer-a shiny red Ferrari marking its turf. Beside it two women in a white Porsche Cayenne pay it no attention. Both turn into the luxury-car-packed parking lot of the Radisson Royal, in former days the iconic Hotel Ukraina. Seeing those cars here is like seeing worlds collide. One of Joseph Stalin's "Seven Sisters" skyscrapers-symbols of a superpower on the rise-the 34-story Ukraina was the tallest hotel in the world for decades after its opening in 1957 and ground zero for inter-Soviet political intrigues. And the hotel still retains a particular throwback beauty, the style of a bygone era that stubbornly permeates Moscow: Baroque meets Gothic meets Russian Imperial. Staring at this monumental structure above the Moscow River, with its own skyline of neon Cyrillic, you can almost hear Sting's antiwar classic "Russians."
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