MOSCOW -- Denis Svidorov takes a drag on his cigarette, looks at the scene around him, and wonders whether it will soon be a thing of the past.
It’s lunchtime at a dingy cafe near Moscow’s Belarussky train station and there are smokers at nearly every table. Even the no-smoking room is cloaked in thick tobacco haze as weary waitresses load up trays of beer and “chebureki,” the meat-and-cheese pastries popular in Russia.
Svidorov, a 35-year-old salesman, has smoked a pack a day for the last two decades and has no intention of quitting. But he may soon have to forget about lighting up indoors, thanks to a stringent antismoking bill expected to pass its final parliamentary reading in parliament’s lower house this month.
