Julia Ioffe writes:
When your country, simmering for days in record-breaking heat, suddenly bursts into flame in 831 places, destroying half a million acres of land, killing 52 people, blanketing your capital in toxic smoke, and threatening to release old Chernobyl radiation into the atmosphere, someone has to take charge. If you're the Russian president, however, you will not be that person. You will sit in your office while your prime minister, his sleeves rolled up the way men of action tend to roll them up when they mean business, goes and tours the devastation, talks to grieving villagers, and shows the country that, hey, he's on it. Read the story here.
