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A controversial media report on the shutting down of one the city’s hospitals led officials on Wednesday to address the issue of healthcare for the elderly, which critics have referred to as “horrifying.” “On May 24 the Sofia Perovskaya Hospital (Hospital No. 5) was emptied. The personnel were fired. The patients, helpless and unprotected, had been hurriedly moved out and ‘spread’ among the city’s other hospitals… two elderly people died after the impetuous move,” Chas Pik weekly reported Wednesday in an article titled “The old men in the valley of death.” Stas Demin, president of the Old City charity foundation which worked closely with the hospital in question, confirmed the validity of the report at a news conference on Wednesday. |
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PUSHKIN PARTY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Two young women attending celebrations of the 207th anniversary of the birth of Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin by the monument to the literary figure on Ploshchad Iskusstv. Floral tributes, fancy dress and poetry readings marked the celebration. |
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MOSCOW — Two decades after ushering in glasnost, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday that he was trying to do his part to preserve it by acquiring a stake in Novaya Gazeta.
Gorbachev, who made the announcement at the end of a lunchtime speech, during which he offered a ringing endorsement of President Vladimir Putin’s policies, said he had purchased 49 percent of the newspaper with Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire and State Duma deputy.
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Twenty-two regional ombudsmen from various parts of Russia held a conference in St. Petersburg this week amid criticism that the job has become an empty formality in the country.
The event was attended by Thomas Hammarberg, who was making his first visit to Russia as the Council of Europe’s new Commissioner for Human Rights. |
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MOSCOW — The Public Chamber is calling on the State Duma to bar “extremist” candidates from running for office in what appears to be a broader campaign against nationalists. |
All photos from issue.
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St. Petersburg lags three years behind Moscow in accessibility and affordability of Internet facilities, a press release from the Russia-wide Internet Marathon said last week.
St. Petersburg was the fifth city to be visited by the event, which aims to “make Internet technologies popular in Russia’s regions. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service will soon have the power to fight terrorists in foreign countries.
A State Duma bill, set to be passed in a second reading this month, gives the security service, known as the FSB, the authority to go beyond information-sharing with its foreign counterparts and dispatch commandos to strike terrorist groups and bases. |
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MOSCOW — State Duma deputies agreed in a key second reading Wednesday to cancel nine deferments from military service starting in 2008, when the length of conscription will be reduced from the current two years to one.
Doctors and teachers working in rural areas, law enforcement officials and men employed in the defense industry will be called up by the military, according to the bill that the government submitted to the Duma in April. |
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By the end of the year, City Hall plans to auction off 3 million square meters of land for the construction of residential buildings. The next offering is scheduled for June 20, St. Petersburg vice governor Alexander Vakhmistrov was quoted by Interfax as saying Monday at a meeting of Smolny’s Committee for Development and Town Planning. |
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Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov’s Rosbank has called off its planned London shares listing and opted instead to sell a 10 percent stake to France’s Societe Generale for $317 million, a move that has cast doubt on plans for initial public offerings by other Russian banks. |
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Deconstructing Profit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Unified Industrial Construction Plants earned $6.2 million last year, decreasing consolidated net profit tenfold compared to the previous year, the company said Tuesday in a statement.
Operational profit decreased from $125. |
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The Cabinet on Wednesday agreed to liberalize the electricity market and approved a $90 billion investment plan for the sector.
The decisions are a major economic and political victory for Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais, and they mark the end of his seven-year struggle to win government approval for the overhaul of the industry. |
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Holding the World Association of Newspapers conference in the capital of Vladimir Putin’s Russia this year was a bold move, rather like holding a pork producers’ convention in a Muslim country. Thus it’s all the more important that those covering Russia in the world media not be duped by official Kremlin propaganda about the flourishing of a free press in this country, the absence of censorship and so on. |
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What do the arrests of Alexei Barinov, the governor of the Nenets autonomous district, and Volgograd Mayor Yevgeny Ishchenko have in common? They were both surgical strikes against LUKoil. |
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 Playwright Ivan Vyrypayev is branching out into film and TV — while trying to remain true to his principles.
There was a hectic atmosphere last week in the cluttered fifth-floor office at Moscow film studio Mosfilm where writer-director Ivan Vyrypayev was supervising the final stages of postproduction on his debut film, “Euphoria. |
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They met at St. Petersburg State University, formed a band and conquered Britain. Now, Yolochniye Igrushki / EU perform at Platforma.
The electronic musicians of Yolochniye Igrushki, or EU as the duo is known in English, have an international reputation that has come full circle. |
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The fallout continues. The Rolling Stones confirmed that its St. Petersburg concert on their “A Bigger Bang” European tour, originally due to take place on Tuesday, is “postponed,” not canceled, in its statement last Friday, but did not announce a new date and a venue. |
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Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” the Mariinsky Theater’s artistic director Valery Gergiev’s most ambitious project, is showing in full this week. |
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On a tour of Russia, Gerhard Richter, one of the few internationally acknowledged, living figures of post-war German art, was on hand to open an exhibition of his work in the City Sculpture Museum last week.
Despite the fact that this is the first retrospective the artist has held in Russia, the format of the show looks more like a travel guide than a serious monograph on the artist’s career, although the artist himself selected the 27 works on display. |
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Alexei Yurchak’s book reveals the modest charms of late-Soviet life, which might have been enjoyable enough, if only it hadn’t seemed like things would never change. |
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BAGHDAD — U.S. aircraft killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq blamed for bombings, beheadings and assassinations, and President George W. Bush said on Thursday that American forces had “delivered justice.”
In one of the most significant developments in Iraq since the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Jordanian Zarqawi was killed on Wednesday in a U-S. |
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Residents of soccer crazy Rio de Janeiro are “taxing” motorists to raise funds to decorate their streets in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag for the World Cup.
Cars have been stopped by rope barriers in side streets and drivers asked to make contributions. |
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Cisse Replaced
PARIS (Reuters) — France coach Raymond Domenech called up Sidney Govou of Olympique Lyon on Thursday to replace injured striker Djibril Cisse in his World Cup squad, the French Football Federation said. |
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Issues Archive