By The New York Times
Russians have been drawn for years to this nation of just 33,000 people, often flying directly from Moscow to the Italian beach town of Rimini only 10 miles away. More than 100,000 Russian tourists visit San Marino in a typical year, so many that most stores started hiring Russian-speaking salespeople.
“Pronto. Da,” the Ukrainian manager at one sunglass store answered the phone in Italian and Russian. She sold 15 pairs of designer sunglasses to a group of glamorous Russian regulars who browsed under Matryoshka dolls sent back from clients in Russia.
“San Marino is extremely convenient for taxes,” said Marina Skirnevskaya, 35, a customer who entered the shop with her pet Chihuahua. Ms. Skirnevskaya, who is from Siberia but lives outside Rimini and has an export company, said the arrival of Sputnik was a positive development, and she wished she could get it, but that it wasn’t needed to improve bilateral relations. “The relationship is good already.