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MOSCOW - U.S. officials might be granted unprecedented access to Russian military nuclear facilities by the end of the year for inspections that Moscow previously fiercely opposed, according to a document that was briefly posted on the Kremlin web site after last week's U. |
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Ten years after a city newspaper photographer and his reporter colleague disappeared without trace in Chechnya, an exhibition celebrating the men's work will open Wednesday in the Yelagin Palace. |
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High prices faced by visitors to St. Petersburg are the main obstacle to development of the city's tourism sector, German tour operators say. St. Petersburg is more expensive than Europe's most touristy Meccas, including Paris, said a group of major German tour operators in town last week for a fact-finding trip sponsored by the city branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, or RST. |
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Vasily Solovyov, grandson of Soviet composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, is suing the Oktyabrskaya branch of Russian Railways for the illegal use of the composer's famed music. |
All photos from issue.
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An opinion poll conducted last week supported the idea of electing half the members of the Legislative Assembly from party lists and half from electorates, city media reported. However, the poll, commissioned from the Sociology Department of the Academy of Science by lawmakers, found a total of 22. |
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BRATISLAVA -Russia is interested in having friendly relationships with the Baltic States and expects a constructive dialogue with them, Interfax reported President Vladimir Putin as saying Friday. |
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WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department, citing credible reports, said Monday that Russian law enforcement personnel engaged in torture, violence and other brutal or humiliating treatment. Despite widespread criticism of its own human rights record worsened last year due to scandals of torture of detainees in Iraq, the U. |
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Heroin and Bananas ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg customs found about 70 kilograms of heroin on a Maltese steam ship bringing bananas to the city port, Interfax reported Friday. |
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Incensed by U.S. talk of a lack of press freedom in Russia, two Russian reporters tried to turn the tables on U.S. President George W. Bush during his news conference with President Vladimir Putin. After Bush said he had raised concerns about Russia's democracy in Thursday's talks with Putin and felt reassured, he suddenly found himself on the defensive. |
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MOSCOW - After escaping public criticism over the state of democracy in Russia, Moscow is portraying the meeting between President Vladimir Putin and U. |
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MOSCOW - Members of new pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, or Us, attacked the leader of the liberal Young Yabloko group after he sneaked into a training conference over the weekend, the leader, Ilya Yashin, said Sunday. Yashin, 21, said he and a friend, Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin, 24, went to the meeting Saturday in Solnechnogorsk, north of Moscow, to see firsthand what Nashi was about. |
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BRUSSELS - A senior European Union official predicted Friday the EU will expand rapidly in the next decade, with Turkey and possibly Ukraine joining the bloc around 2015. |
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Governor Dropped MOSCOW (Reuters) - A first governor on Thursday fell foul of a new law that has given the Kremlin the power to appoint regional officials and raised fears in the West that President Vladimir Putin was retreating on democracy. The head of the Saratov region Dmitry Ayatskov, who has ruled the region for nearly nine years but has recently been pursued by prosecutors for abuse of office, will not be put forward as a candidate, said Putin envoy Sergei Kiriyenko. |
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For some, souvenir shopping is a last-minute hassle in an otherwise enjoyable vacation. For others, it is a sport in which the happiness of a low price exceeds the enjoyment of the product itself. |
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MOSCOW - The head of Dresdner Bank in Russia, Matthias Warnig, has built his career on his personal relationship with President Vladimir Putin, whom he first met while the two men served as secret agents in East Germany, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing former colleagues of both men. |
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MOSCOW - Yelena Kashirina says she knows almost everyone from the Moscow chapter of Red Youth Vanguard. But when the leftist group stages demonstrations, dozens of young people she doesn't know mysteriously show up. |
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MOSCOW - Under a decree prepared by presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak, the Federal Security Service would take over responsibility from the Interior Ministry in the Southern Federal District for coordinating regional authorities' response to terrorist attacks. |
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MOSCOW - Breaking a year of silence, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Thursday slammed Russia's leadership for turning away from democracy and indicated he may run for president in 2008 in order to correct the nation's course. |
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MOSCOW - Two liberal youth movements joined forces on Thursday in their fight against President Vladimir Putin's policies and claimed the time was right for a mass pro-democracy movement in Russia similar to those in Ukraine and Serbia. The Yabloko party's youth wing and the fledgling youth movement Idushchiye Bez Putina, or Moving Without Putin, signed a pact to work together to fight against what they saw as Putin's increasingly authoritarian policies. |
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The Oil Club of St. Petersburg issued Thursday an open letter to Governor Valentina Matviyenko protesting against the conditions introduced by City Hall for the land plot auction. The sale of plots, many of which are likely to be developed as new gas stations, looks to have been done in favor of just one major company, the oil traders said. |
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Mobile phone users could soon be using their phone to make online purchases, set high stakes in web casinos and even receive medical or legal advice over the Internet, if major content provider Infon can persuade network operators to join it. |
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Oil terminal construction projects in the Leningrad Oblast are set for a reshuffle, Oblast officials said Monday. TNK-BP, a major international oil company, delayed the construction of an oil terminal which it planned to develop in the Ust Luga port. |
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For the Record ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Reksoft, a St. Petersburg-based software outsourcing company announced turnover growth of 54 percent for 2004. |
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Siloviye Win India Bid MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Siloviye Mashiny, the engineering company that Siemens AG is seeking to buy, said it won a $270 million contract to supply equipment to an Indian power station. Siloviye Mashiny, which is controlled by Interros Holding, one of Russia's largest financial-industrial groups, will design, produce delivery and install equipment including turbines for the Barh thermal power station being built in Bihar in east-central India, the company said in a press statement. Barh's first energy unit will start production within 46 months, according to the contract. Siloviye beat Siemens, which also bid for the contract in a tender organized by National Thermal Power Corporation, Siloviye said in the statement. |
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 MOSCOW - Platon Lebedev, one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's closest business partners, gave testimony for the first time in his eight-month trial Monday, avowing his innocence and slamming the prosecution for sloppy work. |
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MOSCOW - The merits of transparent financial practices may be well known, but for many Russian entrepreneurs, cleaning up the books still makes little business sense. Although investors and banks are more likely to finance a transparent company, the expense involved in switching to more open accounting can be daunting, Natalya Polishchuk, vice president of Delta Private Equity Partners, told a forum of small-business owners on Friday. |
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MOSCOW - A Houston bankruptcy judge has dismissed Yukos' petition for bankruptcy protection in the United States, apparently lifting a major barrier in the Kremlin's drive to create a national energy champion via the merger of Gazprom with state-owned oil firm Rosneft. |
 Shying away from challenges has never been his style. Travel entrepreneur Stanislav Kostyashkin has conquered some of the world's highest peaks and undertaken expeditions to the remotest places on the planet. After seven years of pushing himself to the limit, Kostyashkin is facing quite a different challenge - that of running Continent Express, a Moscow-based corporate travel management company that has recently expanded to St. |
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 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin criticized domestic aircraft producers Tuesday for being uncompetitive and plagued by vested interests, and urged them to depend less on state support. |
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In an attempt to help Russian seaports retain their competitive edge, Rosmorport said it will invest 5.3 billion rubles ($190 million) in port infrastructure development in 2005. Rosmorport, the federal seaports management agency formed in 2002, will establish maintenance service branches in St. |
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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to invest $663 million into the construction of a new train link between Finland and the Leningrad Oblast, business daily Delovoi Peterburg reported last week. |
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The chances of President Vladimir Putin achieving his oft-repeated objective of doubling the size of Russia's economy within a decade might improve if he looked to Ireland as a source of inspiration. But given its state-driven focus on the short term, the Kremlin seems to have missed the Irish lesson that common-sense economics, consistently implemented over a period of decades, is a far better path to economic prosperity. |
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Discussion of democracy - the state of its health in Russia in particular, but also in the United States - dominated the public remarks of the two presidents in Bratislava. |
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When President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush met in Bratislava last Thursday, Bush managed to focus attention on the need for democratic reform in Russia. Prior to the summit, many observers foresaw a possible ideological rift between the two leaders reminiscent of the Cold War. |
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The board of directors of Lenenergo recently experienced a conflict with two governors - St. Petersburg's Valentina Matviyenko and the Leningrad Oblast's Valery Serdyukov - who represents Lenenergo's main shareholder, Unified Energy Systems, or UES. |
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Day in and day out, patriotic American dissidents on both the left and the right keep shoveling through the bloody muck of the Bush Imperium. The filth is endless, Augean; Salon.com recently catalogued 34 ongoing major scandals, equaling or surpassing the depravity of Watergate. Yet still the patriots bend to the task, tossing up steaming piles of ugly truth before the public. |
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Stone The Crows LONDON (AP) - The future of the British monarchy lies in the hands of a sharp-shooting warder at the Tower of London because the six ravens who roam the landmark fortresses are under threat from up to 200 crows who have invaded their royal domain. |
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MOSCOW - Jordan gave Russians a taste of Formula One on Friday with the launch of its 2005 car on Moscow's snow-speckled Red Square. The British-based team, bought by Russian-born Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider last month, will be renamed Midland next year. |
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Bobsled Record CALGARY, Alberta (AP) - Germany's Andre Lange won his third straight world championship in the four-man bobsled Sunday, the first to accomplish the feat. The 2002 Olympic champion was followed by Russia's Alexandr Zoubkov, the 2005 World Cup champion, and Canada's Peter Lueders. |
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Issues Archive