Their equipment dates back to the Soviet era, and much of it is no longer usable.
Even during the Soviet era, these shadowy cliques manoeuvred for political power in Tashkent.
In Moscow, many of the city's 11.5 million inhabitants own apartments in affordable-housing complexes built during the Soviet era.
Back in the Soviet era, competition with the US pushed Moscow to invest heavily in space flight and new technology.
The paper noted that the Mariynskiy, known in the Soviet era as the Kirov, had always played host to important events.
Given Russia's new pluralism, it is hard to imagine the Kremlin regaining the iron control it had in the Soviet era, even if it wanted to.
His private MI-2 helicopter, a relic of the Soviet era, is perched on a ridge behind him, the pilot ready to whisk him off to the next salmon pool after lunch.
Nonetheless, given the strong attachment of today's Poland to modernity and the western world, I asked one of our hosts why the VIP fleet still used aircraft from the Soviet era.
Another one of Reid's favorite spots in Moscow is the very small Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, which houses old video games from the Soviet era that you can play.
In fact, one of the major deliverables that will take place at the summit is a outstanding effort to deal with nuclear materials that were carried over from the Soviet era.
The festival survived both the terrible three-year Siege of Leningrad during WWII and the restrictions of the Soviet era that ended in 1991, rebounding to include concerts, dances, fireworks, a sailing fleet, jazz performances, street parties and more.
In Russia, there is an ongoing problem with aircraft left over from the Soviet era, though the government has recognised the issue and says it is redoubling its efforts to ensure the safety of passengers going forward.
First, engineers discovered that aerial surveillance radars left over from the Soviet era were better at detecting stealth bombers than they had expected, due to a peculiar match between the dimensions of the planes and the length of the radar waves.
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As Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union move their economies away from the inefficient autarky of the Soviet era towards a more efficient integration with the world economy, considerations of trade and investment will prevail over other forces.
Analysts believe the Shenzhou spacecraft that China is developing is an enlarged copy of the Soviet-era workhorse - the Soyuz.
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It will replace the Soviet-era Ignalina plant, which is due to be shut down in 2009.
The deal assures supplies of crude oil for Mazeikiu through the Soviet-era pipelines which tie it still to Russia.
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Scaramella served with Litvinenko on an Italian parliamentary probe of alleged links between Italian politicians and the Soviet-era KGB.
Since the Soviet-era state was split into constituent parts in 1993, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been successful in canoeing.
Nestled in a crater, the Soviet-era cluster bomb failed to detonate.
Even so, it has seen its cargo volume drop from 225, 000 tonnes per year during the late Soviet era to a barely profitable 60, 000 tonnes per year now.
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Compared with the wordy open letters and principled stands of the Soviet-era dissidents who still dominate Russian civil society, it is all very 21st-century, as is Mr Shvedov's language.
Mr. Robinson notes that despite these dangers, Russian support for the project remains high, especially from Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom) and a holdover from the old Soviet era.
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Under the new rules being pushed by Baisalov, any adoption agency working in Kyrgyzstan will have to secure separate agreements with four government ministries and with the security service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
The person Shamsaddinov fought with was parked by the side of the road in a Soviet-era Zhiguli, the ubiquitous model favored for cheapness rather than quality.
Azerbaijan, their neighbour to the west, has had a different passage into the post-Soviet era.
Russia allowed foreign companies into its energy sector to help it with extraction technology in the post-Soviet era.
The Georgian government, however, is unperturbed by the critics, saying the move makes a clean break from the brutalist Soviet-era architecture that dominates Tbilisi.
For all their attempts at agreement this week, America and Europe are far from uniting in the face of the more nebulous threats of the post-Soviet era.
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