The Russians are annoyed. They are obviously embattled on many fronts: in Ukraine, in Russia itself with rebellious mercenaries - and in Canberra where the government has blocked the move of its embassy.
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The existing site on Canberra Avenue has long been a place of intrigue. In the Cold War, KGB agents abducted the wife of defector Vladimir Petrov, only to be thwarted at Darwin airport.
Australian spies are rumoured to have a monitoring station above the funeral parlour opposite (the funeral parlour says it has no knowledge of this).
But the Russian diplomats inside the fence are adamant that their every move is clocked - and the move of every visitor.
"You'll be on their data base now", one says as he unlocks the gate.
The Russian diplomats are keen to assert that some claims just aren't true. It might seem odd but they get irritated that the embassy was called a "fortress" for spies in this paper. Nor, they say with some vehemence, does the swimming pool and tennis court make the embassy a "resort".
An air of spookiness pervades the embassy.
I am taken to the roof of an accommodation block in the complex and one of the diplomats points to an even bigger private apartment block overlooking the embassy.
He holds out the flat palm of his hand as an illustration of how everything at the embassy is on show to those outside looking from above. Nothing can be hidden, he implies.
Which, of course, is not true. Secrets these days are hidden away in cyberspace. The days of spies following spies to dead letter drops in nearby Telopea Park are not the whole story.
Inside the Russian embassy, there are classrooms with rows of books and posters in the Cyrillic script. The Russian flag is on the window sill alongside those Russian dolls within dolls. Children of diplomats in Sydney and New Zealand join by video link. There's a picture of the great Russian poet Pushkin on the wall.
There are messages which the Russian diplomats want to convey, particularly that Australia and Russia were once allies.
They are intensely proud of the defeat of Nazism by the Russian - Soviet - Red Army allied with Australian forces.
There is a garden of remembrance. Trees have been planted there as part of a global planting of 27 million trees in memory of the 27 million Russians who died in what they called the Great Patriotic War.
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One of the diplomats has lived in London and he keeps mentioning the close ties there once seemed to be with Western countries. He produces a picture of his mother meeting Princess Diana.
His mother and the princess are wearing absolutely identical black and white dresses. We laugh at the awkward coincidence.
The diplomats also want to emphasise that the compound is not a "resort". One of the papers said it was, and that irritated them.
So the outdoor unheated swimming pool which looks sumptuous is actually, they assert, too icy to swim in. The gym in the basement is make-shift (which it clearly is).
They also want to thank the Australian police!
The AFP usually has a red police car parked outside, and the diplomats say they are grateful that the police prevent the Ukraine protesters hurling beer bottles at the embassy.
When the police left, the ambassador said that protesters did throw a dead possum over the fence.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
