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MOSCOW — A major report by leading U.S. policy experts created an uneasy atmosphere for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his talks in Washington this week by urging a tougher line toward Russia, the Foreign Ministry said. Here at home, however, the report provoked little reaction, despite proposing harsh measures such as reviving the Group of Seven within the Group of Eight and shutting down the NATO-Russia Council unless certain conditions are met. The report — produced by a high-profile bipartisan task force for the Council on Foreign Relations and released Sunday — said relations between the two former superpowers no longer qualified as a strategic partnership and the United States should adopt a selective approach to Russia. |
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WALK THIS WAY!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A group of Spanish tourists balancing on the rim of the fountain in the Alexandrovsky Gardens next to the Admiralty on Thursday. Despite the sunny weather, temperatures are set to remain low, with forecasters predicting lows of minus 14 degrees Celsius. |
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MOSCOW — One of the Russian government’s longest-running and most colorful debt disputes, its 14-year-old battle with Swiss trading firm Noga, could be nearing an end after the intervention of a Russian-born U.S. businessman. Alexander Kogan, president of St. Louis, Missouri-based IPD Capital, has negotiated to buy some $70 million worth of Noga’s debt to three European banks.
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All photos from issue.
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 St. Petersburg’s charitable foundation Help For Stray Dogs and a group of local enthusiasts working to build a shelter for stray cats have joined forces after discovering a giant pile of dead dogs and cats at an abandoned house on Obvodny Canal in February of this year. The activists have launched a campaign against “korobochniki” — beggars who use stray animals to ask for money — this month and are preparing an appeal to the city parliament asking for an amendment to the law On the Protection of Animals and the introduction of a sterilization program. |
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St. Petersburg’s Heineken brewery will start producing and distributing Budweiser beer, the company said Tuesday, after signing a licensing agreement with Bud’s brand owner Anheuser-Busch. “Bud will be sold in ‘expensive’ bars and restaurants in major Russian cities and will come in 0. |
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Two giants of the IT industry, U.S. firms Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, are considering registering in the city’s special economic zones, Interfax quoted a statement from the city governor as saying on Monday. |
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The World Bank and Morgan Stanley are to act as consultants for constructing St. Petersburg’s high-speed link road, Interfax cited city vice Governor Yuri Molchanov as saying on Monday. The agreement was reached during City Hall’s U.S. visit at the end of February. |
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MOSCOW — Aeroflot is considering expanding operations by snapping up rival state-controlled airlines, a senior company official said Tuesday, but denied reports that the move was part of a government plan to turn the flagship carrier into a state-run behemoth that would control most of the market. |
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In Minsk, where the buildings are gray, the weather dour and the architecture Stalinist monumental, the lights and colors of dissent are challenging the last dictatorship in Europe. On the 16th of every month, thousands of citizens in the capital and other parts of Belarus turn off their lights at 8 p. |
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Ramzan Kadyrov is the new prime minister of Chechnya. The Kremlin seems to have adopted a hands-off policy, apparently reasoning that since the war in Chechnya is officially over, it has no business appointing the prime minister of a peaceful republic. |
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 John Cale, the co-founder of the seminal New York band The Velvet Underground, returns to the city on Sunday in his first concert appearance here since April 1999. Back then, the gig took the form of a chamber-like solo concert at the St. Petersburg Conservatory’s theater with Cale backing himself on piano and, occasionally, acoustic guitar. |
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LONDON — When the Emerson Quartet performed Dmitry Shostakovich’s bleak last string quartet in Salzburg recently, a young man in the audience said it was so powerful he felt like drowning himself in the nearby river. |
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John Cale of Velvet Underground fame will come to the city to play rock and roll at PORT club on Sunday. The singer, viola, keyboard and guitar player may even perform the Velvets’ all-time classic “Venus in Furs” — if he likes the rented instruments. |
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To open its sixth annual ballet festival on Thursday, the Mariinsky Theater presents a reconstruction of a 150-year old ballet. French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, a restorer of undeservedly forgotten gems of 19th-century choreography, is reviving the original version of Jules Perrot’s romantic ballet “Ondine” at the Mariinsky Theater. |
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John Lewis Gaddis’ concise, readable history of the Cold War takes a skewed view of how the 80-year standoff between the world’s dueling superpowers ended by giving Ronald Reagan more laurels than Mikhail Gorbachev for shattering the status quo. In “The Cold War: A New History,” John Lewis Gaddis, the author of a number of significant books on the Cold War, has distilled his learning into a highly readable, concise volume. |
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HONG KONG — Campaigners have marked International Women’s Day by vowing to fight sexual violence and discrimination in Asia as the United States remains locked in debate about abortion rights. While marches and debates were planned in countries still struggling for gender equality, the event looked set to pass largely unnoticed in nations where women have already made strides in politics, business and the home. |
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TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday the West would suffer more than Iran if it continued to try to stop the Islamic Republic developing nuclear technology, local media reported. |
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FC Zenit St. Petersburg were due to take to the field Thursday to play Olympique Marseille, fans were expected to glued to TV screens to follow their heroes on the quest for further advancement in the UEFA Cup. Because the first leg match in the final 16 round of the cup was shceduled to played in Marseille, Zenit fans were expected to flock to St. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive