We’re going to rehash some celebrity gossip and we’re going to enjoy it. Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who’s been dating Russian property tycoon Vladislav Doronin for almost a year now, has been spending an increasing amount of time in Doronin’s Moscow penthouse and his vacation mansion in the über-expensive oligarch suburb of Rublyovka. Not because Campbell’s under house arrest for assault, but because she’s becoming a “Moscow housewife,” according to British tabloid Daily Mail and various Russian papers. What backs this allegation? The love-struck supermodel has been spotted at banyas (steam bath houses) across town. She gets her hair cut “locally” for about $50. And she’s reportedly adopting the Russian Orthodox faith. Sounds like somebody’s angling for a reality TV show.

It was an insider operation never intended for public eyes, or ears for that matter. On January 22, 2009, Vladimir Putin’s people flew in ABBA tribute band Björn Again from London, drove the bewildered musicians 200 miles north of Moscow, and detained them in military barracks until further notice. Only as the band took stage the next evening did reality sink in: Sitting on a sofa shrouded by lace curtain was none other than Russia’s Prime Minister and a lady companion (possibly his wife). What followed was a 15-song set of ABBA’s hits punctuated by Putin’s shouts of “Bravo!” Let the record show, this blogger would have killed (or spied for Nashi, or whatever) to be there.

Here’s fodder for you paranoids out there: Popular online social network Odnoklassniki.ru, a Classmates.com clone that reunites school friends from Russia and the former Soviet Union, recently served as an accomplice in two separate cases of identity fraud and really creepy mass murder. What happened to the good old days, when married people just used Odnoklassniki for the innocent pursuit of their first loves and subsequent home wreckers?

Russia's first lady-oligarchs—today's business owners, designers, editors of big-name mags and tabloids, and Dima Bilan producers—sprang up in the beginning of 2000. While the idea that "a man stands behind every big thing in Russia" continues to sit snug in the Russian psyche, the estrogen level among oligarchs is changing. Yes, Russia's rich female still parties, and she still uses her connections, but she now leads a more "European" style of life, dresses according to "Hollywood" fashions as opposed to head-to-toe Versace, and has capitalist ambitions of her own! How did she come so far so fast? Well, it helps being the granddaughter of Mikhail Gorbachev.