Popular Russian bitcoin exchange BTC-e has been down for almost 3 hours with the official twitter saying they are having a "server maintenance".
It is not a Russian bitcoin exchange. Although the owners are Russians (
they were Russian citizens in 2011, not sure whether they still hold the Russian passport or not), the exchange was originally based in Kiev (Ukraine). But now they are based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
How do you know that the owners were Russian citizens in 2011?
And if the exchange had been first located in Kiev, how does it go with them being Russians? Their servers can be located anywhere in the world but it seems that "ethnicity" of an exchange is still defined by the nationality of their major owners. Apart from that, I've heard rumors that this exchange is in fact controlled by the Russian biggest bank, Sberbank through affiliated companies (or just dummy entities). If true, that would mean that BTC-e is in fact an exchange owned by the Russian government (read Putin himself)
btc-e.com trying to save LTC from panic sell
Panic sell? Litecoin right now seems to be slowly rising against Bitcoin again (to be honest, though, I wouldn't mind a small panic sell-off in Litecoin)