“What is the address of the site where Slon, Incorporated is registered?”

“Bersenevskaya naberzhnaya.”

“What about you?” he turned to me, and I showed him my passport and all its Russian press visas.

“You were at the Olympics?” he said, giving me a terrifying look.

“Yes.”

“Whom did you root for?”

“Russia and the U.S.,” I lied.

“Good answer,” he said. “Very diplomatic. Okay. We’ll accredit you."

Back down to the press center on the fifth floor.

“No one told me anything,” Sergei said when we told him that the tenth floor had given its blessing.

He called the tenth floor, which proved unhelpful.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He was off to the tenth floor.

We waited.

The round, sweaty man, whose name turned out to be Vasily, sat down next to us.

“You’re from America?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true that, in America, the people who lost their houses in the housing crisis live in tents outside the cities?”

“Um…”

“Have you been to Detroit?”

“No.”

“Is it true that Detroit is totally destroyed?”

“I don’t think it’s doing too well, no…”

“Have you ever been to Las Vegas?”

“No.”

His next question was interrupted by Sergei, who had gotten permission on the tenth floor.

“Okay,” he said, “give me your card.” He began to process my accreditation request.

“I like America,” Vasily said. “It’s the biggest self-proclaimed country in the world. And you know how to raise good patriots. Americans are very patriotic.”

Journalists from the Economist and Le Figaro arrived and deferentially asked about the accreditation process. They too were told to wait. The Frenchman plunked down on the sectional, hung a cigar from his lip and lit it. The Brit bowed out, vowing to return later.

We waited.

“All done,” Sergei said, finally taking out the paper from the grimy printer. He had me sign it and sent me up to the tenth floor, where Max and I waited again with the hoodlums. As we waited for our stamp, the door flung open and a man in a blue suit ran past us, followed by a wave of people, mostly men, weapons drawn and huffing after the long trek up the Republic’s stairs. The hoodlums started to yell at them to leave their weapons at the desk, and the men started to yell something else at the hoodlums. I don’t remember who yelled what; I was totally frozen in the presence of more weaponry than I’d ever seen in my life.

When everyone was patted down, it became clear that the man in the blue suit was Denis Pushilin, the head of the council of the Donetsk People’s Republic and once the local representative of MMM, Russia’s biggest pyramid scheme for the people. Everyone else was his security.

We went back to waiting. Yulia came out, skeptically examined the accreditation paper from the fifth floor, and disappeared with it. The main thug, a red head with a long, naughty face challenged Max when he said we had just flown into Donetsk that morning.

“You just said you had taken the train!”

“What?”

“Yeah, your story doesn’t add up!” another hoodlum yelled.

“We flew, we flew,” I said. “Didn’t you see him showing Alexander Sergeevich his boarding pass stubs?”

“Let me see your accreditation,” the redhead demanded.

Max turned it over. The redhead examined it carefully.

“Aha!” he shouted. “Why isn’t this field filled in? You didn’t fill this out! Your accreditation is invalid!”

Max and I looked at each other, helpless, but Yulia’s return saved us. She had stamped my accreditation and sent us on our way after saying that she too couldn’t really help us with press-related matters. She too was too busy.

It had all taken well over two hours, but we’d gotten to see the sights of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which says it wants to join Russia. By the time we got outside, though, I realized it doesn’t need to. It’s already Russia, through and through.