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A group of residents in the Kalininsky district is protesting against City Hall’s plans to widen Piskaryovsky Prospekt in the northeast St. Petersburg, a project that threatens hundreds of trees in the area that will need to be chopped down. Residents say that if the project goes ahead, 435 lime trees and 20,374 bushes will disappear from the prospekt. “Reconstruction of the road complex has reached Kalininsky district,” Vladimir Soloveichik, co-head of the Citizens’ Initiative movement, said Wednesday in a statement. “The next plans are to widen by 50 percent Piskoryovsky Prospekt, one of the biggest and most polluted roads in the city,” he added. “They are going to clear to the ground the green strips that stand for 3 kilometers on both sides of the prospekt from Sverdlovskaya Naberezhnaya to Prospekt Mechnikova. |
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VIVE LA FRANCE
ALEXANDER BELENKY / The St. Petersburg Times
Michel and Marguerite, the children of Pascal Maubert, the French consul general to St. Petersburg, run toward a French tricolor before a Bast ille Day reception at Tsarskoye Seolo on Thursday. Bastille Day, the French national day, recalls the storming of a Paris prison on July 14, 1789. |
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MOSCOW — Tax authorities can press ahead with investigations after the three-year statute of limitations has passed if they can prove that the taxpayer obstructed the original inspection, the Constitutional Court ruled Thursday. Moreover, authorities only have to open an investigation within three years of the period they are examining in order to proceed with it indefinitely, according to the court decision, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, sister paper of The St.
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In a rare case of soldiers being punished for bullying, the military court of the Kronshtadt garrison on Wednesday found two navy conscripts guilty of beating other recruits and sentenced them to jail. Ivan Arsakov, 20, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail while Viktor Fyodorov, 21, received a one-year suspended sentence. |
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The Proletarskaya metro station will close for repairs for up to 18 months by Aug. 25, Konstantin Kocherov, head of City Hall’s transport committee’s transport network department, said Wednesday. |
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Russia on Thursday signed a state contract with French architect Dominique Perrault to supervise the planning and construction of the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater, Interfax reported. It was the third agreement signed with Perrault. The first contract on pre-project developments was signed with Perrault, as winner of an architectural contest. |
All photos from issue.
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Russia’s royal family is said to have enjoyed Russisch Brot, or Russian bread, German cookies made of egg white, sugar, flour and caramel syrup, and shaped like the letters of the alphabet. But the bukvy, or “letters,” as they are called in the country where they were invented, are totally unknown in Russia today. |
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Russian citizens visiting Latvia would have to have at least 10 lats ($17.20) a day at hand for every day they want to spend in the Baltic republic, according to a new regulation approved by the Latvian government this week, the Baltic News Service reported Tuesday. |
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While the hot weather is making it hard for some St. Petersburgers to breathe in stuffy offices, city meteorologists predict the thermometer will stay high through to the end of July. “Day temperatures won’t drop lower than 20 degrees Celsius,” Alexander Kolesov, head of the forecast department at the St. |
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After dating for the past five years St. Petersburg skater Denis Petrov, who won a pairs silver medal at the 1992 Olympic Games, married Lu Chen, a Chinese 1995 figure skating world champion, in Shenzhen, China last Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Sumitomo, a Japanese industrial and financial conglomerate, has bought a blocking stake in SPN Digital, a Russian provider of downloads for mobile phones, the companies said Wednesday. Sumitomo said it had acquired a more than 25 percent stake, which SPN Digital said it had sold for “less than $10 million. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s entertainment and media market is the fastest-growing in Europe, surging 27.4 percent last year, according to a new report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The market, which includes film, video, Internet products, print media, sporting events and theme parks, hit $12. |
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Private American firm Indigo Partners and TPG Aurora, an eastern European division of Texas Pacific Group, are planning to launch a new budget airline in Russia by September, Interfax reported this week, citing a newspaper source. |
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MOSCOW — A new airline alliance is forming that will be second only to Aeroflot in its passenger numbers and could eventually replace Sibir as the country’s No. 2 carrier. The alliance, dubbed AiRUnion, will bring together regional carriers KrasAir, Domodedovo, Samara, Omskavia and Sibaviatrans, according to a statement put out by state-controlled KrasAir, Russia’s No. |
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Starbucks Wins Name MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee-shop chain, won the rights to its trademark in Russia, ending a three-year legal dispute that kept the U. |
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The city has issued a call to private investors to help save the city’s crumbling historical property. With ownership of property listed as an object of historical heritage not available, however, analysts question the return on investments the city can offer private business. |
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The ownership of one of the city’s two Mercedes dealerships is set to change. Vekho, a subsidiary of the Finnish firm VEHO, will pass on its business to Moscow-based Major Auto in a move that may be worth up to $8 million, business daily Delovoi Petersburg reported Wednesday. |
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Industrial Investors, the main shareholder in Russian Alcohol, is expanding into the low-alcohol market through the acquisition of St. Petersburg’s Bravo Premium distillery, one of the main players in the field, Industrial Investors said Thursday in a statement. |
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Russia and Estonia signed a protocol on mutual cooperation this week to solve the crisis surrounding the Leningrad Oblast’s beleaguered shale mine, Leningrad- slanets, Interfax reported. |
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City Rating Confirmed ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — International rating agency Fitch confirmed St. Petersburg’s long-term “B+” rating in foreign and national currency liabilities, Interfax reported Wednesday. Fitch also confirmed a short-term “B” rating. The forecast is positive in the long run, Fitch said in a press release. |
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The changes to Russia’s election laws passed by the State Duma before the summer recess have led many observers to wonder about the future of so-called “political technology,” the techniques used to influence election outcomes across the former Soviet Union. |
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Numbers are always the best way of studying tendencies and changes in a country, whether they are in the economic, political or moral sphere. Numbers do not lie if the person who assembles them can count and sticks to the rules of mathematics. |
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If Nevsky Prospekt is the spine of St. Petersburg, the Peter and Paul Fortress (Petropavloskaya krepost) is its beating heart. That will be more evident than ever this week when the fortress plays host to the Third International Peter and Paul Jazz Festival, a Bastille Day concert and even a sand sculpture competition. |
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The summer’s last big festival weekend begins Friday. The busiest location will be the Peter and Paul Fortress, where two major events are taking place. |
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The business of winning film festival prizes often falls to the more palatable avant-garde works that provoke shock as much as thought and recast what is known as virginal. Alexei Uchitel’s tame “Kosmos Kak Predchustviye” (which translates as “Space as Anticipation” although the film is known as “Dreaming of Space” in English), lauded with the top prize at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival last week, does not fit into that category. |
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“Every country has the government it deserves,” a Frenchman named Joseph de Maistre said two centuries ago. In Soviet-era Russia, complicity between the rulers and the ruled was standard fare, most vividly captured in satire by the novelist Vladimir Voinovich. |
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