PanThe Wall Street JournalAlthough Putin Country offers a tactile sense of life in Chelyabinsk, it can also feel shallow and impressionistic: Local women, Ms. Garrels writes at one point, are a 'far cry from the babushkas of yore.' More frustrating are the rather sensational allegations that drop in out of nowhere and are left unexplored, such as her claim that prison inmates in Chelyabinsk were released to fight on the side of pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine; if they refused, she writes, they faced further punishment.
