During the CIS Summit in 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin used a luxury German travel bus, complete with air conditioning, to take the heads of state from each of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on a sightseeing tour of Moscow. Putin did his best to downplay (if not deny) the prevalence of crime in the capital city.

Ironically, Putin later learned that his "luxury German travel bus" had in fact been stolen (from the Belarusian city of Brest) and sold using false documents before being rented by the Kremlin!

[In December 2003, a Russian man parked his Jeep outside a church in Nakhodka (in eastern Russia), went in to ask a priest for a special blessing to keep him safe on the way home, and came out to find that the vehicle had been stolen.]