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A bill that would bar foreign cruise ship passengers from coming ashore unless they have visas to enter Russia could cost Russia 200 million euros a year, St. Petersburg tour agencies say. Cruise ship passengers can currently visit Russia for up to 72 hours on visa-waiver scheme. |
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MOSCOW - Voters in six gubernatorial elections Sunday gave somewhat lukewarm backing to United Russia candidates, in an indication that people may be becoming tired of the Kremlin's managed democracy. |
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MOSCOW - Three weeks after announcing it was forming a political party, the respected Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees has become a target of a police investigation in what it fears is an attempt to disrupt its plans to build a viable political opposition force. |
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Extremism 'Rising' ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Extremist groups have become more active in attacking foreign students in the last few years, Interfax quoted students saying at a round table on problems of foreigners studying in the city held at the Legislative Assembly on Friday. |
All photos from issue.
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Federal ombudsman for human rights Vladimir Lukin has taken up the cause of hunger-striking Chernobyl liquidators, who were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while dealing with the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster, promising to satisfy some of their demands. Lukin, who visited the eight liquidators at Sestroretsk on the outskirts of St. Petersburg on Saturday, said he will do everything he can to convince the Supreme Court to appoint a date to hear a case to raise their state compensation payouts. "Unfortunately, this hunger strike is not the first," Lukin said Saturday. "Two weeks ago there was a hunger strike of the same kind in Bryansk and after this I discussed the situation with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. |
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 The Finnish Lutheran church in Toksovo, 30 kilometers north of St. Petersburg, celebrated the 10th anniversary of its rededication Saturday with music, Finnish and Russian guests, and official ceremonies presided over by Rector Eero Kuukauppi. |
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KIEV - Handing a major victory to the opposition, Ukraine's Supreme Court on Friday invalidated the Nov. 21 runoff and ordered a repeat vote for Dec. 26. But political turmoil continued to grip the country Sunday after parliament refused to pass reforms backed by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma that would weaken the presidency and failed to amend election laws to help ensure a fair presidential vote. |
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Airport Security MOSCOW (SPT) - The State Duma gave preliminary backing Friday to a bill aimed at significantly increasing the security presence at Russia's airports, three months after terrorist bombs downed two civilian aircraft, killing 90 people. |
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 St. Petersburg's 'water buses' had a rocky start this summer, but the project will continue next year alongside a number of other tourist initiatives, said City Water Bus project representatives Monday. And vital to its future success will be government cooperation. |
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MOSCOW - The financial wing of the once-mighty Group Menatep is now free and clear of Yukos' main shareholder and is ready to expand, after a name change. |
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Inflot Signs Deal ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Inflot World-Wide, a major provider of financial and infrastructure services to most of the major cruise lines of the world in the ports of the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, North Sea and the seas of Far East, has signed a contract with the Royal Caribbean Cruises, one of the world's largest cruise companies. |
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MOSCOW - Looking to cash in on India's success in creating a rival to Silicon Valley, President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called for a bilateral effort to develop information technology and tap new markets. |
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MOSCOW - State-owned Russian Railways, or RZD, which owns one of the world's biggest railway systems, plans to rebalance its traffic next year by encouraging more cargoes to be exported via land borders and by reducing shipments via major ports. A spokeswoman for RZD said Friday that the company, whose prices are capped by the state, is entitled to boost prices by 8 percent to 8. |
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MOSCOW - India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation joined Gazprom in the controversial race to buy Yukos' core production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, at auction later this month. |
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South Korean car manufacturer SsangYong Motor is planning to start the production of its off-road model Rexton in Russia, the company's Russian partner, Severstal-Auto said Monday. Sales of SsangYong Motor's 2001 model Rexton began in Russia in 2003. |
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A defining feature of modern Russia's political and economic landscape - the Yukos case - has been interpreted very differently inside Russia and in the West. |
 The government needs to flex its political muscles in regard to reforms of Russia's banking industry in order to make the banking deposit insurance system more than a short-term solution and a dragging, costly procedure at that, analysts say. "It will soon come clear whether or not the insurance system will be used as a mechanism to weed out unfit and improper banks, and accelerate reform in the banking sector," said Yekaterina Trofimova, a Standard & Poor's analyst on Russia. |
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A joint stock market for the Nordic region, uniting five stock exchanges in Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Vilnius and Riga has started functioning under the single name OMX Exchanges. |
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Formerly cautious of advertising mutual funds alongside their other financial services, banks are now considering mass-scale campaigns to popularize the service and win a stake in this fast-developing financial sector. Meanwhile a score of new banks look to join this market sector, and are readying plans for launching mutual fund operating companies. |
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An individual or a company places a certain amount of money in a fund, much like money is placed in a bank. First of all, the fund operator takes out a surcharge percentage from the money you have brought (usually around 1 percent, but maximum 1. |
 When Charles Ryan first arrived in Russia, not long after the failed putsch of August 1991, there was "a diminutive fellow," recalls Ryan, waiting to meet him at Pulkovo Airport. The man took him to his car, and together they drove to a meeting downtown. |
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The European bank for reconstruction and development (EBRD) declared its new strategy for Russia in November, urging the government to speed up institutional reforms in order to maintain strong economic growth. |
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INVESTOR CLIMATE Over the past two years the city has been working hard to improve investment laws and set clear-cut rules for investors. The first step taken by the city was to issue local laws and local executive acts establishing the procedure for offering land on investment conditions, in addition to the granting of land mainly on the basis of competitive tenders. |
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Dangerous Gazprom LONDON (Bloomberg) - The ambitions of gas company Gazprom to buy other companies and create a bigger business is bad for Russian consumers because it would reduce competition, the International Energy Agency said Friday. |
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When we were preparing an article about the problems of housing construction in St. Petersburg, we came across a paradoxical situation. Although, it seems that everyone, including the bureaucrats in the city administration, recognize the extreme urgency for the city to normalize the construction market, no one knows how to do that with the necessary degree of detail. |
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The years of George W. Bush's sour misrule have been disastrous for many of his staunchest supporters. The Heartland folk have seen their jobs taken, liberties curtailed, communities withered, states bankrupted, prices hiked, schools neglected, pensions gutted, air poisoned, water tainted, and their children killed and maimed in an unjust war for profit that's made the world more dangerous. |
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Explosives in Luggage PARIS (AP) - French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. |
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St. Petersburg's struggling ice hockey team SKA got a strong start in third round of the Russia's Superleague with a dramatic 3-3 tie with Moscow's Central Army Team, CSKA, Saturday evening at the Ice Palace. |
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Issues Archive