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GROZNY — President Vladimir Putin attended the opening session of Chechnya’s newly elected parliament Monday, pledging to help rebuild the war-shattered Chechen capital and urging authorities to combat rampant abductions. Putin, flown into Grozny by helicopter under tight security, praised members of the new parliament for choosing peace and blamed foreigners for bringing in arms and destabilizing the region with extreme Islamic views. “I thank all those who took part in these elections, and in the whole difficult peace process,” Putin told lawmakers after his helicopter landed in front of the parliament building. |
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/ Reuters
President Vladimir Putin (c) sits next to Chechen President Alu Alkhanov (l) and Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov (r) during a visit to Chechnya on Monday. |
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Dmitry Bobrov, the 25-year-old leader of St. Petersburg extremist youth group Schultz-88, has been sentenced to six years in prison for inciting racial hatred and encouraging juveniles to join an extremist group. Bobrov and six fellow members of the group faced charges including hooliganism, inciting racial hatred and forming an extremist organization.
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A rumor that British singer Elton John and his partner David Furnish are getting married in St. Petersburg, following an appearance by the gay couple at a city charity event last month, provoked a public outcry that revealed homophobia is alive and well in 21st Century Russia. |
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MOSCOW — A computer hacker drove the Kremlin’s new English-language television channel off air on Monday in a major embarrassment for the station just two days after it started broadcasting. |
All photos from issue.
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About 100 St. Petersburgers gathered to consider the Russian Constitution at a meeting organized by local human rights advocates on Saturday afternoon on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa. The meeting was part of a nationwide campaign, “the March of the Dissenting,” organized by the United Civil Front which is chaired by chess champion and democratic politician Garry Kasparov. |
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MOSCOW — While some of the new faces in the Moscow City Duma may be colorful characters likely to mount a vocal opposition to City Hall policies, the United Russia majority — including 20 deputies re-elected to the legislature — will likely ensure that the party gets its way on all important issues. |
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MOSCOW — Alexei Kolunov, a student at a prestigious Moscow technical university, says that the year he and other young National Bolsheviks spent in prison has only strengthened them and their opposition party’s cause. “We are no longer afraid of anything — of prison, of beatings, of threats. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Friday sent State Duma deputies a list of proposals softening a bill that charities and pro-democracy groups had said would make it harder for them to operate in Russia. |
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KURSK — Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov drummed up support for a liberal opposition coalition at a rally on Saturday, which his supporters said the Kremlin had tried to disrupt with dirty tricks. Kasyanov, who served as prime minister for much of President Vladimir Putin’s first term, has become a vocal critic of the administration, saying democracy is under threat in Russia. |
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BABAYEVO, Vologda Region — Former German Chancellor Gerhard SchrÚder on Friday was named to a key post on the $4.75 billion North European Gas Pipeline, the project he and President Vladimir Putin signed off on shortly before he left office. The pipeline will give Gazprom direct access under the Baltic Sea to some of Europe’s richest gas consumers, and has left transit countries Ukraine and Poland fearful of losing access to Russian gas. |
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MOSCOW — The head of the European Space Agency said Friday that he was confident he could win enough support from member states to help develop Russia’s next-generation spaceship. |
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MONTREAL — Russia blocked agreement at a UN climate meeting on Saturday by objecting to details of a proposal to extend the Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012. Moscow’s refusal also blocked approval of a separate Canadian plan to open new talks on a long-term fight against climate change to include Kyoto outsiders such as the United States and developing nations such as India and China. |
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Russia’s second-richest man, Vladimir Lisin, is to add more than half a billion dollars to his fortune this week when part of his metals giant, Novolipetsk, lists on the London Stock Exchange. |
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A steady increase in corruption and the lack of political will to fight it will present major obstacles as Russia assumes the G8 chair in 2006, Transparency International said Friday. The Berlin-based watchdog released its 2005 World Corruption Barometer on Friday, with results showing Russians increasingly pessimistic about the institutions meant to protect them and increasingly certain corruption will get worse. |
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Like advertising, marketing and public relations, commercial graphic design is a relatively new field in post-Soviet Russia. Graphic designers, responsible for providing the look and feel of a certain product or company, create corporate identity materials such as logos, letterheads and websites, as well as packaging. |
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Leadership, an elusive quality which is infinetely valuable in a range of careers, is well within every budding entrepreneur’s reach, participants at the “Leadership is a Key to Success” conference were told this week. AIESEC, the world’s largest student organization, brought the city’s employers and local students together to challenge preconceived notions of leadership through case studies of leading St. |
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A fall in all major areas of industrial production, coupled with a prolonged crisis in vocational education, has led to a shortage in blue-collar workers thatcould soon threaten economic development in Russia. |
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Nobody likes sharing a workspace with a coughing colleague. After all, sick people in the office can infect the rest of the staff. A look at labor laws, however, shows it’s not always fair to treat ailing attendees as selfish workaholics, since taking sick leave can mean seriously risking one’s financial health. |
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One of the acute problems for businesses which choose St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast as their principal location will soon be a severe shortage of qualified blue-collar personnel, regardless of the nature of the business or the principal nationality of the employer. |
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When we visited Moscow earlier this fall, almost everyone we talked to agreed that Russia is becoming steadily less democratic. Yet Russia’s society and economy are in many ways freer than ever. Our visit convinced us of the vitality and potential of Russian civic groups and nongovernmental organizations, much like the ones Western Europeans and Americans know in their own countries. |
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President Vladimir Putin has signed off on a law strengthening administrative responsibility for drinking low alcohol drinks in public places. The law, first and foremost, and quite obviously, is aimed at the drinking of beer, the world’s most popular low alcohol beverage, if you’re prepared to term beer a low alcohol beverage as the Russians do. |
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The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry of a few U.S. elected officials against the widespread use of torture by the Bush administration — following years of silent acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate atrocity — is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years. |
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NALCHIK — Timur Mamayev was repeatedly beaten by police, who insulted his religion and harassed his children, his wife says. He appealed for help to the authorities but got no answer. Mamayev’s patience snapped in mid-October when, as part of a group of 150 young Muslims, he attacked government buildings in Nalchik. |
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BEIRUT — A car bomb killed Lebanese newspaper magnate and anti-Syrian lawmaker Gebran Tueni in Beirut on Monday, a day after he returned from Paris where he had based himself in recent months in fear of assassination. Several Lebanese politicians immediately blamed Syria, which has denied any role and said the killing was timed to smear it. |
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LEIPZIG, Germany — Next summer’s World Cup has finally taken shape for millions of fans around the globe who can begin contemplating their team’s prospects after the draw for the opening round of the 32-team tournament. Host Germany will get the ball rolling in the 64-game tournament when its team plays Costa Rica in Munich on Friday June 9 — exactly six months to the day after the draw in Leipzig last Friday. |
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More Tickets Online FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Another 250,000 tickets for the 2006 World Cup in Germany will be available on the Internet through a lottery system starting Monday. |
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LONDON — Manchester United, eliminated from European competition in midweek, endured Premier League frustration on Sunday when it was held to a 1-1 home draw by Everton. United, knocked out of the Champions League following a 2-1 defeat by Benfica on Wednesday, fell behind to an early goal by James McFadden but earned a point thanks to an equalizer from Ryan Giggs. |
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Loko Taps Serb MOSCOW (Reuters) — Lokomotiv Moscow have appointed Serb Slavoljub Muslin as coach, the Russian premier league club said on Monday. Muslin, who last week quit Belgian first division side Lokeren, replaces Vladimir Eshtrekov, who was sacked after seven months in the job following a disappointing end to the season. |
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Issues Archive