Russia on the rise

Moscow is barely a three-hour flight from London yet it can feel like years away. Spring is already here in the UK but Russia is still deep in winter.

On the way from Domodedovo airport, as the snow flutters down, I pass forests of trees bent double by the snow and grim, grey tower blocks lining the way. Then I catch a sudden flash of a white Russian Orthodox church with a gleaming gold onion dome — a defining feature of Russian ecclesiastical architecture.

The traffic is terrible and all the cars are filthy from splashes from the melting snow. But the weather can also be a great leveller, as glamorous white Audis look as scruffy as the odd beaten-up green Lada. I can’t imagine Russia any way other than covered in snow.

When you first touch down on new soil you find yourself scrutinising everything — buildings, billboards, people. It’s something of a stereotype but women here do seem to be either haughtily glamorous — unashamedly wearing fur coats — with high heels in the snow, or else short and stout with faces barely visible from behind deep hoods. For men, the rule seems to be hoods for youth and fur hats for the older. A contrast to multi-racial, multi-styled London.

Collecting me is my guide, sturdy, dark-haired Olga, who is frustratingly tight-lipped when asked about the elections taking place that very day but redeems herself with self-deprecating humour when describing the ethnicity of the Russian people — “Just look at me,” she smiles. She drops me at the Ritz-Carlton, on Tverskaya, adjacent to Red Square (the Russian word for red also means beautiful — not a reference to communism or bloodshed as is commonly believed). No hotel could wish to find a better site, which is the only thing they kept from the former Intourist hotel, a sleazy, budget Soviet-era operation which was rebuilt and re-opened in 2007.

Now it is opulent by any standards, in keeping with Russia’s new excess. The Ritz-Carlton has a marble-floored lobby with black columns and dark cherry wood-furnished rooms with silk-trimmed, cushion-piled bedspreads. The Presidential Suite — graced by Barack Obama and Tom Cruise — has a bullet-proof dining room. The overall style is too heavy for my taste but who’s complaining about such luxury when it’s minus nine outside? Money talks in Moscow — that might explain why BA has introduced First and Club World service to what is essentially a short-haul, no-frills flight from London.

The top-floor 02 bar, accessed via its own bubble lift, is the hotel’s nod to the future, with its angular glass roof and seats designed like futuristic Fabergé eggs. It serves sushi, of all things — and good sushi at that. It also provides the best views of people crowding the streets on election night (and demonstrating the day after).

The next day, I open my curtains to take in the panoramic view of Red Square and the Kremlin, unfortunately blocked off by trucks and uniformed men stood with legs wide apart.

Although I can’t get up close, my 10th-floor room lets me admire the 16th century fairytale cluster of towers of St Basil’s Cathedral — as if painted by a genius with a child’s taste in mixing colour — built by Ivan the Terrible.

Flicking through the international television channels, I learn of Vladimir Putin’s victory followed by the story of the icy tear — reminding me of Margaret Thatcher and the onion-induced sob story.