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Less than six weeks before the G8 heads of government summit in St. Petersburg, opposition activists have said the police have begun to apply pressure on them to “keep quiet” when it is held on July 15-17.
Members of both left- and right-wing opposition groups have been summoned to police offices en masse for “informal talks” and in at least one case even an elderly relative of an activist was questioned by the police. |
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Resting with a concussion under observation in the hospital, human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov has had time to reflect on who was behind the attack last Wednesday morning near his home. |
All photos from issue.
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St. Petersburg retailers have until the end of this month to close kiosks at metro stations in compliance with a decree signed by Governor Valentina Matviyenko to try to halt the sale of counterfeit goods — including pirated CDs and DVDs that a report released last Thursday says account for 95 percent of all those sold. |
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KIEV — A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in the Kiev Zoo after he crept into an enclosure, a zoo official said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — The firing of Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has considerably weakened the siloviki clan in the Kremlin, which favors extending President Vladimir Putin’s powers beyond 2008, and strengthens the hand of the faction that favors a managed presidential succession. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s close aide Dmitry Kozak has emerged as a likely frontrunner to succeed Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov — six years after being passed over for the job. |
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MOSCOW — Vladimir Ustinov’s rise to the nation’s top law enforcement post, like President Vladimir Putin’s own career trajectory, was hardly inevitable.
When a man resembling Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov was captured on film in April 1999 with two prostitutes and subsequently suspended, Deputy Prosecutor Yury Chaika became chief. |
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin will float a stake of $8 billion-$13 billion in state oil firm Rosneft just days before it hosts a Group of Eight summit, as it wants to present the IPO as its input to global energy security, bankers said on Monday.
“Rosneft will publish its intention to float on June 12-13. |
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With the aid of an amended law on land distribution, experts from the construction industry hope to stimulate the residential market, which faces both a deficit of new projects and surging real estate prices. |
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Oil Fund at $71Bln
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s fund for revenue from oil sales surged 7.2 percent in May, as the world’s largest energy supplier benefited from rising energy prices.
Revenue in the Stabilization Fund grew to 1.9 trillion rubles ($71 billion) at the end of last month, from 1. |
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First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said late Friday that the state was not the best manager of assets but that it must preserve control in key strategic sectors. |
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MOSCOW — Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref could be on his way out, media speculated Friday, in the wake of hints by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov that the ministry could lose its trade portfolio.
Gref’s press service refused to comment on the reports Friday, news agencies reported. |
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MOSCOW — Steel experts Friday urged Russian steelmakers to seek greater consolidation and lift the quality of their produce by upgrading to high-end technology if they are to avoid a head-on battle with China’s red-hot steel industry. |
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MOSCOW — The government on Thursday kicked off a campaign to breathe new life into stalled administrative reforms by pledging to introduce stringent regulations governing the quality of government services.
The proposed measures, which include setting time limits on waiting in lines for state services and restricting the number and nature of documents that can be requested by bureaucrats, are expected to speed up key services, including the issuance of passports, as soon as in the next few months. |
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MOSCOW — When Henrik Winther came to Russia 15 years ago, grabbing a bite to eat was no easy task.
“At the time, there were really only two restaurants in the whole country,” said Winther, Rosinter Restaurants senior vice president and Rostik’s-KFC CEO, in an interview in his bright, spacious Moscow office. |
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Anton Tsailinger, president at ALS group and Stanislav Svarichevsky, the group’s general director, have always planned to build a big corporation. Having started their business from scratch five years ago, now they run one of the leading Russian IT companies that produce 3D graphics for computer games and animation for major foreign companies. |
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MOSCOW — VimpelCom is now looking to focus on Ukrainian Radio Systems, or URS, CEO Alexander Izosimov said Thursday.
The country’s No. 2 mobile operator,VimpelCom, on Thursday withdrew its $5 billion offer to buy Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, Kyivstar. |
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MOSCOW — Stricken oil firm Yukos has, as ordered by a U.S. judge, presented its survival plan to the Russian bankruptcy official who could make a recommendation for the breaking up of the company.
Yukos said it was prepared to sell off non-core assets and shareholdings worth at least $8. |
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In the early summer of 2006, Russia’s political class is in a euphoric state of extreme self-satisfaction.
The keyword most frequently heard in contemporary Western discourse about Russia is “assertiveness,” referring to the immense self-confidence of Russia’s leaders, who are energetically expressing and demonstrating their virtually unconcealed hostility toward the West, and the United States in particular. |
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There are many reasons to express doubts about the move by Arcelor, the Luxembourg-based steel group, to buy Severstal of Russia in order to sidestep the hostile bid by Mittal Steel. One is the way the Arcelor board is presenting the takeover as a done deal, which only an absolute majority of all shareholders will be able to reject. |
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On January 1, 2005, Europeans came to realize just how important to them Gazprom has become.
On that day, a dispute with Ukraine over the price it pays for gas ended up briefly interrupting supplies to Europe, which depends on Russia for a quarter of its gas. |
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The upper echelon of football is a massive moneymaker. German player Michael Ballack recently signed with the British team Chelsea, and will earn more in two weeks than British Prime Minister Tony Blair earns in a year. FIFA, football’s global governing body, will make a mint off this summer’s World Cup in Germany: The proceeds from advertising and sponsors, ticket sales and television broadcasts will total hundreds of millions of dollars. |
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A month ago, at the residence of Austrian Ambassador Martin Vukovich, Gazprom head Alexei Miller gave European Union ambassadors a dressing down over Britain’s reluctance to allow Gazprom to buy into Centrica, the Britain’s largest gas supplier. |
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Many observers have compared the methodical murder of 24 innocent civilians by U.S. Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha — now confirmed by Pentagon and congressional sources — to the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. troops slaughtered hundreds of civilians in a bloody rampage. But this is a false equation, one that gravely distorts the overall reality of the coalition effort in Iraq. |
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MOSCOW — Nadya, her husband and their 2-year-old son share a room big enough for an inflatable mattress and a television set in a nondescript military dormitory in Moscow.
They are one of 20 families on the floor. Outside each door is a trash can and slippers. Everyone shares two bathrooms with walls that are peeling and stained from flooding. |
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BAGHDAD — Gunmen in police uniforms abducted up to 50 employees of Baghdad transport companies in broad daylight on Monday, police and Interior Ministry sources said.
They carried out what appeared to be a coordinated operation along a street that is home to several firms offering transport to Syria and Jordan, police said. |
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Budget Airline Blair
LONDON (AFP) — British Prime Minister Tony Blair, avoiding criticism for using Queen Elizabeth II’s planes, returned with his family from a vacation in Italy on a budget airline’s scheduled flight, newspapers said Monday. |
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Iran Leader to Visit
FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany (Reuters) — Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to Germany if the team reach the World Cup second round, coach Branko Ivankovic said on Monday.
“If we go to the second stage for sure he will come to see the team,” Ivankovic told Reuters before the side’s friendly against a Lake Constance regional squad. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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