Moscow airport gets Kalashnikov souvenir shop
Russian gun manufacturer Kalashnikov, maker of the AK-47 assault rifles, has opened a souvenir shop at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.
News of the store surfaced last week -- the same week that a false alarm of gunshots set off panic and havoc at New York’s JFK International Airport and the TSA reported yet another record number of firearms found at U.S. airport checkpoints.
Sheremetyevo is Russia’s busiest passenger airport, serving more than 31.6 million domestic and international travelers in 2015.
The new store, decorated in the Kalashnikov company’s red and black corporate colors, is located in the train station connected to the airport by a pedestrian walkway and is selling branded clothing items, such as t-shirts and caps, bags, and -- yes -- souvenir plastic weapons.
BOOKMARK: Add Today in the Sky to your favorites
While the idea of selling even souvenir guns at an airport might alarm many travelers, an airport official said the models of both the automatic pistols and rifles being sold would be easily identified as imitations and were not expected to pose any security problems, Reuters reports.
“’Kalashnikov’ is one of the most popular brands that springs to mind when people all around the world come to think about Russia," the company’s Marketing Director, Vladimir Dmitriev, said in a statement. “That is why we are happy to give everyone who came to visit Russia an opportunity to take home a souvenir with Kalashnikov logo ... . We hope that people would highly evaluate our initiative and buy our company souvenirs as a memory of their trip.”
The store opened Aug. 16 and "at this point there haven't been any confrontations regarding it," said Ilya Vorobyov, an airport spokesperson, adding that in the event of "conflicts and irregularities affecting security" the airport would consider suggesting the shop's "product assortment" be adapted.
Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. She occasionally contributes to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.