LONDON — Among the casualties of the March poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal, is London’s sumptuous Russian Debutante Ball, where, once a year, the daughters of Soviet-born businessmen have been ushered into adult society in an atmosphere of frothy pre-Revolutionary nostalgia. Elisabeth Smagin-Melloni, who has organized similar coming-out balls for wealthy Russians in 12 cities, said she decided to cancel the sixth annual London event because, in the rancorous atmosphere around the spy scandal, Russians planning to travel for the ball had complained of difficulty getting British visas. “Over the summer it became even worse, with all these poisoned spies or not-poisoned spies, and we decided finally at the end of August that we wouldn’t do it,” Ms. Smagin-Melloni said. She said it was the first time she had encountered this problem since she began organizing such events, in 2003.

Source: New York Times September 16, 2018 18:33 UTC