With cameras on nearly every corner and a police presence everywhere you turn, I have probably felt the safest in Moscow of all cities.
“Russia and Moscow have bad PR,” said a media colleague as we walked the streets of Moscow. These words were sparked by his pleasant surprise at the Russian capital city’s beauty and rich history.
Similarly, I was taken aback by a recent study I came across in The Indian Express highlighting the most and least walkable cities worldwide. In it, my beloved Joburg ranked lowest due to poor safety and planning, while European cities like Germany’s Munich, Milan in Italy and Poland’s Warsaw were among the top ranked walkable cities in 2025.
My shock was not seeing Moscow on the list. With cameras on nearly every corner and a police presence everywhere you turn, I have probably felt the safest in Moscow of all cities.
Fashion brings the world to Moscow
Media from around the world came to attend the Brics+ Fashion Summit and the Moscow Fashion Week.
Now in its third year, the Brics+ Fashion Summit took place from 28 to 30 August. The summit was a gathering of industry leaders, heads of fashion associations, manufacturers, designers and experts from around the world who came together to discuss the future of the fashion industry.
The delegates were mainly from Brics countries and other nations were invited. Alongside the Brics+ Fashion Summit, the Moscow Fashion Week took centre stage from 28 August to 2 September.
Just a few days before leaving Mzansi, a story about young female South African content creators allegedly being scammed into lucrative job offers in Russia was the hot topic in South Africa. So there were warnings from family, friends and colleagues amid these disturbing reports.
However, despite the air of caution around Russia mainly due to its ongoing war with Ukraine, we got to explore the cosmopolitan city in the six days that we spent there.
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A city steeped in history
Moscow was declared the capital city of Russia just six years after the birth of the ANC. Russian revolutionary giant and then head of government Vladimir Lenin moved the capital from Saint Petersburg in 1918. Cosmopolitan as the city is, its political history and identity is palpable and sets it apart from other Russian cities.
We stayed at the St Regis hotel in the heart of Moscow and within walking distance of some of the city’s biggest attractions.
Our hotel was located three minutes away from what was known as the KGB, now referred to as the Federal Security Service, which focuses on domestic security, counter-intelligence and anti-terrorism. Because of this, there were some issues for security reasons.
Social media platforms like X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn are blocked in the country. Locals use VPN connections – an encrypted “tunnel” for internet traffic – routing it through a remote server to mask the IP address and protect data from hackers, internet service providers and censorship.
A 10-minute walk from our hotel is Moscow’s most popular landmark, the Kremlin, a complex that’s home to the president and tsarist treasures. The Russians’ pride in their history is something I have not seen in South Africa.
We were taken on a tour inside the Kremlin, where, on the high ceilings of the first rooms, are fine chronological paintings of Russian emperors who are also known as Tsars – from the first tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) to Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor before the revolution.
Outside the walls of the Kremlin is Red Square; Russia’s symbolic centre with picturesque architecture in the background.
One of the most impressive buildings in the city is the historic opera house, the Bolshoi Theatre, which was officially opened in 1825. Although we couldn’t visit it due to a tight schedule, it has been maintained for 200 years and still hosts shows.
The buildings in Moscow are grand and formal in the neoclassical architecture style. While red is an ever-present colour around the Kremlin, the rest of Moscow doesn’t have pronounced vivid colours. There is a sense of conservatism with many buildings being light shades of yellow, grey or other colours that don’t outshine the architecture itself.
It’s not all classics in Moscow. The Zaryadye Concert Hall, which hosted the Brics+ Fashion Summit and the fashion show, is one of the most modern buildings in the city. Designed by architect Vladimir Plotkin, Zaryadye Concert Hall was opened in 2018 and has a translucent glass-crust roof that forms an artificial hill.
Curiosity and encounters
Unlike most European countries that participated in the colonisation of Africa or the Atlantic slave trade, Russia has a very small population of black people. Although there are people from Asian countries, such as India and China, most Russians have never seen a black person in real life.
So being stared at as a black person was commonplace. But being stared at is one thing, I had a handful of encounters with locals, young and old, who requested to take photos with me because they were amazed to see a person of African descent.
Speaking to locals who have a grasp of English, one gets a sense that their fellow countrymen’s requests for photos don’t stem from evil intent or racial discrimination, but that it’s just genuine curiosity.
Although a media colleague from Uganda said she’s experienced unsavoury interactions with Russians who touched her skin to see if her black colour would remain on their Caucasian hands.
Food and everyday life
One of the first similarities to home in foreign countries is often the presence of Western food outlets such as McDonald’s and KFC. However, neither are present in Russia and the fast-food chains are mostly Russian.
Rostic’s, a Russian fried chicken fast-food chain, replaced KFC in the country. Most Western brands have left because of the war in Ukraine. Burger King is one of the few international food chains that remains in Russia. Subway, the world’s largest submarine sandwich chain, is also still present although it is being rebranded as Subjoy.
In the eateries we visited, the common thread in Russians’ diet was anti-inflammatory dishes. This is expressed in their love for soups. One of the soups I enjoyed was Borscht, which is made of potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, garlic and beetroot. Kvass, a fermented, cereal-based beverage, stood out for me in some of our daily meals.
Like any country, Russia has its issues, but their militant manner of protecting and preserving what is there is something South Africa could take heed of.
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