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 MOSCOW — Barely a week after Moscow and Kiev were accusing each other of theft and blackmail, President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, hailed the controversial deal that ended their tense standoff over gas supplies as fair and in line with “market economy principles. |
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Pulkovo II, the city’s international airport, has imposed heightened security measures and introduced round-the-clock monitoring of its premises by experts from the Federal Service for the Protection of Consumer Rights and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) in light of the recent outbreak of bird flu in Turkey. |
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MOSCOW — Ukraine denounced the Russian gas price hike as political vengeance, but Russia’s friendlier neighbors, including Armenia, are also being asked to pay more for natural gas. The reason appears to be that the Kremlin has largely scuttled its strategy of currying favor with cheap gas in the hopes of collecting greater political dividends by repackaging Gazprom as a profit-oriented, transparent global energy player. |
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Festive Fire Hazards MOSCOW (AFP) — More than 1,000 Russians died in fires during New Year’s celebrations, an emergency ministry official said Wednesday. |
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The Leningrad Nuclear Power Station, or LAES, located in the town of Sosnovy Bor, 80 kilometers west of the city, produced 22 billion 143 million kilowatt-hours in 2005, according to the plant’s annual news report, released on Thursday. LAES supplies approximately 40 percent of St. |
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A man wielding a hunting knife went on the rampage at a Moscow synagogue on Wednesday evening, stabbing eight men, including an Israeli and a U.S. citizen. |
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MOSCOW — Soldiers’ salaries were increased 15 percent this month and will grow by 25 percent next year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday. But Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov complained that “the social status of servicemen was still unsatisfactory,” hurting morale and the military’s prestige. |
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GlobeTel Wireless is to start building wireless networks in the city as part of a $600 million pan-Russian project providing “highly affordable” and high-speed internet access, the company said December 30. GlobeTel, a subsidiary of American telecoms firm GlobeTel Communications, plans its first installation in April of this year. |
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Inflation may have been limited to 10.9 percent in 2005, but a report published by the Federal State Statistics Service on Wednesday has revealed that prices for communal and housing services increased three times as much. |
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One of St. Petersburg’s most influential financiers, Vladimir Kogan, has been appointed to the Russian government, two days after the sale of his stake in PSB. Kogan has taken on the post of Deputy Director of Rosstroi, which comprises the Federal Construction Agency and the Communal and Housing Services (CHS), in what experts perceive as the first step in what will be a glittering career in the state sector. |
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January 1 saw Gazprom-controlled ‘Sibur,’ the country’s largest petrochemical holding, begin work with a new judicial address in the northern capital. Local authorities anticipate Sibur to contribute around 2. |
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MOSCOW — The latest home-grown blockbuster to reach the country’s cinemas, “Dnevnoi Dozor,” or “Day Watch,” reaped more than $20 million in its first nine days, setting a new record for the Russian film industry, its distributor, Gemini Film International, said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — State-controlled battleship maker Yantar has won a government tender worth around $1 billion to build three frigates for India, sweeping the deal away from Kremlin-connected financier Sergei Pugachyov. |
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Pyaterochka Sales MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Pyaterochka Holding NV, Russia’s largest supermarket chain, said sales rose 23 percent last year after it opened new stores in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country’s two biggest cities. Net revenue rose to $1.36 billion, the company said Thursday in a Regulatory News Service statement, from about $1. |
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Everybody in Russia long ago got used to the fact that the consequences of decisions often turn out to be far from those intended by the people who made the decisions in the first place. But even with that as a given, it is still true that certain consequences of certain decisions here are difficult to perceive in any context other than utter phantasmagoria. |
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 During the Soviet-era, Russian bells rarely tolled. Now factories making bombs and ships have revived the skills needed to make new bells. A decade ago, Andrei Sushko, a nuclear physicist from one of Russia’s top-secret cities, added another line to his resume: bellmaker. |
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Although it is sometimes said there are enough oil dollars in Russia to tempt international acts, both big and small, to perform here, the tentative schedule of concerts in 2006 shows that few exciting new performers are planning the trip. |
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Soviet porcelain of the post-Revolutionary era marries art and commerce. As part of its annual “Christmas Gift” cycle of eyecatching exhibitions, the State Hermitage Museum is displaying until March a unique collection of porcelain created in St. Petersburg after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. |
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Although the musical part of the International Arts Square Winter Festival has now drawn to a close, the State Russian Museum will continue to attact visitors with its contribution to the event — an enormous and quite involved exhibition called “Collage in Russia: The 20th Century. |
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Garcon 25 Canal Griboyedov. Tel: 570 0348 Open from midday until 1.00 a.m. Menu in Russian, English and French. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two without alcohol 2,480 rubles ($87) When you enter the French restaurant Garcon, you touch ornate wrought-iron banisters, inspired by the classic art nouveau metro entrances in Paris designed by Hector Guimard. |
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ISTANBUL — Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot and gravely wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from a Turkish jail on Thursday after serving more than a quarter of a century behind bars. “Agca is now a free man. After 26 years Agca is now getting wet in the rain,” his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag told Reuters. |
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LONDON — Former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam has accused President Bashar al-Assad of ordering the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. |
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WASHINGTON — Senators critical of the Bush administration aggressively questioned Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on Wednesday. His wife briefly left the confirmation hearing in tears. In the third day of hearings, Democratic senators accused Alito of being evasive on issues ranging from abortion to presidential powers to past membership in a conservative alumni group at Princeton University. |
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova says she will battle through the pain of a long-standing shoulder injury when the Australian Open begins Monday. The former Wimbledon champion, who withdrew from last week’s Australian hardcourt championships on the Gold Coast because of the injury, said her doctors had advised her it would not get any worse by playing the year’s first grand slam. |
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MANCHESTER — Patrice Evra hopes his move to Manchester United will help him secure a place in France’s squad for the World Cup finals later this year, the defender said on Thursday. |
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