MOSCOW: In offices across Russia, the countdown to International Women’s Day is a whirl of last-minute meetings and dashes for gifts as men race to prepare festivities for their female colleagues.
“We’ve sent out loads of emails, we’ve analyzed the market, we’ve pooled ideas, and we’ve just got one more meeting ahead of the launch of Operation Women’s Day today,” confided Sergei Krakhmalyev, who works at Rosbank, a major Russian bank.
“This year we’ve decided not to spend money on gifts that are useless, shall we say, but to organize a buffet,” he said.
Krakhmalyev, who is in his 40s, works in a team of eight men and 35 women. He calculates that this year’s celebration will cost about 25,000 rubles ($430).
“It’s expensive,” he says, “but it’s a Soviet tradition that I think it’s important to keep up.”
A public holiday in the Soviet Union since 1965, March 8 is an opportunity for Russian men to “remember the importance of women” in society, he says.
International Women’s Day is also a public holiday, so office celebrations are held the day before.
This year’s events are expected to be relatively low-key in comparison to the oil-boom years, when many companies spared no expense.
“The company used to allocate a big budget for this holiday and took as many as 500 women out to a restaurant,” recalled Irina, who works in human resources at a major Russian company.
“That was before the 2008 economic crisis,” said Irina, 40, who asked not to disclose her surname. “Now the men have a whip-round to buy us flowers and chocolates.”
Nevertheless the holiday “cheers up the atmosphere in the team,” she said.
In Russia, it is also widely seen as a counterpart to the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland, on Feb. 23, which is nominally for those who served in the army but is considered the male equivalent.
In offices, this holiday is often an occasion for celebrations that take an unreconstructed approach to gender roles.
“This year we organized a fake army recruitment drive” for the defender holiday, Irina said. “We gave our colleagues a medical and some of us were dressed up as sexy nurses.”
“Now the men are under pressure. They have to try to do better than us, even if we know that’s impossible,” she added with a smile.
Some men, however, including Vitaly Konyayev, a project manager in the southern Russian city of Saratov, find it hard to get into the holiday spirit.
“This year my colleagues didn’t give me anything for Feb. 23, so they can whistle for a gift on March 8,” he said.
The March 8 holiday “only means something if you give flowers to a woman you love and respect — not those you are forced to rub along with at work,” he said.
He complained that he had to pay almost 1,000 rubles for a bunch of flowers for the holiday, which brings a bonanza for florists.
Flower prices often double ahead of the March 8 holiday — and orders double as well, said Florence Gervais d’Aldin, a French flower grower and importer who has worked in Russia for more than 20 years.
Her business, which specializes in scented roses, sells more than 8,000 roses on March 7 and 8, compared with her usual sales of 600 per day.
“It’s a day for mothers, for sweethearts, for colleagues, all together,” Gervais d’Aldin said, with its popularity “far higher” than that of St Valentine’s Day, on Feb. 14.
The stress of organizing a celebration for female counterparts starts early, with boys in elementary school expected to throw celebrations for the girls in their class.
Sasha Kuznetsov, 11, has put together a program of cakes, balloons, greeting cards and even a concert.
“I think this holiday should exist, but it shouldn’t be celebrated in such a pompous way,” he said.
“In any case, soon it will be pointless because women’s rights will be respected,” he added.
For foreigners working in Russia, the full-on approach is a culture shock, said Samuel, a French national working for Sberbank, the country’s biggest lender.
“Russians get used to this holiday from childhood, but for us, it’s always a bit strange,” he said.
He found himself designated a “volunteer” to organize this year’s celebrations, a role that he said requires “endless meetings and spreadsheets.” Last year, the party ended up costing more than 150,000 rubles.
“For my Russian colleagues, it’s a time to make a gesture,” he said. “Even if it is often corny and some things would make a French woman scream.”
In Russia, Women’s Day piles on the pressure for men
In Russia, Women’s Day piles on the pressure for men
Huge cache of Epstein documents includes emails financier exchanged with wealthy and powerful
- The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said
WASHINGTON: A huge new tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released Friday revealed details of his communications with the wealthy and powerful, some not long before he died by suicide in 2019.
The Justice Department said it was disclosing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos, as required by a law passed by Congress. By Friday evening, more than 600,000 documents had been published online. Millions of files that prosecutors had identified as potentially subject to release under the law remain under wraps, however, drawing criticism from Democrats.
Here's what we know so far about the files now being reviewed by a team of Associated Press reporters:
Epstein talked politics with Steve Bannon and an ex-Obama official
The documents show Epstein exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Steve Bannon, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, some months before Epstein's death.
They discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein's reputation.
In March 2019, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.
A couple of months later, Epstein messaged to Bannon, “Now you can understand why trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
The context is unclear from the documents, which were released with many redactions and little clear organization.
Another 2018 exchange focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he had named to the post just the year prior.
Around the same time, Epstein also communicated with Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official. In a typo-filled email, he warned that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”
Bannon did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment. Ruemmler said through a spokesperson she was associated with Epstein professionally during her time as a lawyer in private practice and now “regrets ever knowing him.”
He also chatted with Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick about island visits
Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk e-mailed Epstein in 2012 and 2013 about visiting his infamous island compound, the scene of many allegations of sexual abuse.
Epstein inquired in an email about how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter, and Musk responded that it would likely be just him and his partner at the time. “What day/night will be the wildest party on =our island?” he wrote, according to the Justice Department records.
It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.
Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures. “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025
Epstein also invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the island in Dec. 2012. Lutnick's wife enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. The two also had drinks on another occasion in 2011, according to a schedule. Six years later, they e-mailed about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.
Lutnick has distanced himself from Epstein, calling him “gross” and saying in 2025 that he cut ties decades ago. He didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment on Friday afternoon.
The records also have new details on Epstein's incarceration and suicide
Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, and found dead in his cell just over a month later.
The latest batch of documents includes emails between investigators about Epstein’s death, including an investigator's observation that his final communication doesn't look like a suicide note. Multiple investigations have determined that Epstein's death was a suicide.
The records also detail a trick that jail staffers used to fool the media gathered outside while Epstein’s body was removed: they used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a body and loaded it into a white van labeled as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The reporters followed the van when it left the jail, not knowing that Epstein’s actual body was loaded into a black vehicle, which departed “unnoticed,” according to the interview notes.
