Russian army selling towns

If you are presently on the market for a town, you might want to buy a ticket to Moscow right about now.

The Russian army is auctioning off property ranging from mansions to barracks, and even whole towns, to raise cash to build modern housing for its officers, writes The Guardian. Izvestia, the Russian daily, said that more than 20 army properties near Moscow, St Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Vladivostok would be offered to the highest bidders in the first auction on April 8.

Among the properties for sale are “fabulous mansions and guest houses, dilapidated garrison towns, unused shooting ranges and vast tracts of neglected land on which no human has set foot for years”. Izvestia claims that the army occupied more land than the territories of Greece or Austria.

Well, what do you think? I could be a great dinner party conversation. “Buying a house in Provence is so bourgeois, Herold. I just bought a town in Russia last week.”