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Russian lawyers say that the government repressed antiglobalists and opposition activists during the G8 summit, as they tried to reach an alternative event.
But on Monday, Russian human rights advocates received the help of Cherie Blair, a human rights lawyer and the wife of the British prime minister, who offered them the help of her legal chambers.
Activists were detained en route to the city or during the Second Russian Social Forum, a protest gathering of opposition forces intended as a satellite event for the G8 summit on July 15-17, the lawyers said.
Natalya Zvyagina, a resident of Voronezh and an activist with Legal Team, a network of lawyers who provided legal support to the forum, said life was made miserable for ordinary citizens and activists who attempted to take to the streets last weekend to demonstrate their critical attitudes to the policies of the world’s leading states. |
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Sharif Karim / Reuters
A Russian boy grabs the hand of his Lebanese father as he is evacuated with his mother in Beirut on Wednesday. |
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Four months after the ouster of its outspoken leader, Dmitry Rogozin, Rodina has been transformed from a popular nationalist party into what is being described as a toothless “sister” of United Russia.
The replacement of Rogozin with wealthy businessman Alexander Babakov has in effect made it forbidden to criticize the Kremlin or United Russia leaders, said Mikhail Delyagin, a former senior party member.
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MOSCOW — Chechnya’s Moscow-backed President Alu Alkhanov called Wednesday for an extension of a planned amnesty for rebels in the North Caucasus to last until Jan. 1.
The head of the Chechen rebel movement, Doku Umarov, quickly dismissed the offer, however, saying the rebels would respond with attacks beyond the borders of Chechnya. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Despite the near certain rise of Party of the Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych to the prime minister’s post, Ukraine is unlikely to abandon the Western course it embarked on after the 2004 Orange Revolution and return to the Russian fold.
Instead, the country, which remains politically and culturally torn 15 years after the Soviet collapse, is expected to continue forging ahead with plans to join NATO and the European Union. |
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As energy giant Gazprom selects architects for its ambitious Gazprom-City business center in St. Petersburg, local experts weighed in Thursday on the possible construction of the planned 300-meter skyscraper. |
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MOSCOW — Rosneft shares made a lackluster debut on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday, as market players warned the stock price would depend on the firm’s ability to acquire new assets in the next year.
More than 5 million shares changed hands Wednesday, and the price shot up to $7.62 in London before settling back down to $7. |
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Leningrad Oblast governor Valery Serdyukov reported a solid increase in industrial production in the first half of 2006.
“The growth rate of 30.5 percent is rather high, even compared to the steady increases in production during the last six years,” he said at a briefing Thursday. |
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National retailer Svyaznoi announced a broad expansion of its assortment in one of its mobile retail chains claiming the move would considerably improve the company’s performance. |
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MOSCOW — Rosoboronexport could gain control of VSMPO-Avisma, the world’s largest titanium maker, in the next three weeks as the metals company’s two main shareholders are reported to be selling out to the state arms trader.
The deal, which could be worth as much as $1. |
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MOSCOW — For someone who feels she lacks great career ambition, Jennifer Galenkamp’s professional accomplishments prove to the contrary. Her objective of “trying to make the world a better place” has helped protect Russia against consumer-goods counterfeiting, gray-market imports and trademark violations. |
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After more than a decade of negotiations to enter the WTO, Russia is now waiting only for the United States to OK its membership bid. Last week Russia made an important concession on the issue of financial institutions. Although Russia has reserved the right to prevent foreign banks from opening their own branches in the country — an issue considered to be the main factor preventing an agreement with the United States — it has given ground on the question of insurance companies. |
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A journalist friend of mine was in St. Petersburg for the G8 summit over the weekend and told me the following story.
He was walking down the city’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, when a police officer he passed smiled at him. |
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 Can the harsh, unpolished North compete with the warm, sophisticated South?
Can the inhospitable climate and slim cultural pickings of the North attract the art-loving tourist?
“Artscape Nordland” — a huge, unprecedented cultural undertaking in north Norway — has seriously challenged these flippant biases. |
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Looking at Sting these days, it is hard to imagine that there was a time when he was relevant and, actually, good. It has finally occurred to the singer/bass player himself who is trying to recapture the glory days of the late 1970s by performing hits from his former band The Police on his Broken Music Tour 2006, which arrives in the city on Monday. |
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This is the most Soviet summer in the city since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in more ways than one.
A remarkable exhibition of Soviet art is showing at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Museum which follows other such shows that are already running at various venues of the State Russian Museum. “The Soviet Epoch of the 1920s-50s” is drawn from the museum’s holdings and the private collection of the Italian cultural attachÎ in St Petersburg, Francesco Begacci, and many of the exhibits are on display for the first time.
The new show, unlike the Russian Museum’s “Times of Change: Soviet Art 1960-85” the “Essence of Life / Essence of Art” show that was dedicated to the Eastern European underground and post-Soviet art and a newly-opened retrospective of the outstanding Russian-Soviet avant-garde artist Pavel Filonov, offers a comprehensive review of the visual legacy of the Soviet era. |
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 Frank Turner, who recently fronted Million Dead, a London-based hardcore-punk band, has reinvented himself as a folk singer.
Now he plays the guitar and sings witty and caustic songs inspired by Billy Bragg, another punk rocker turned folk singer. |
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One Russian jazz instrumentalist will have the opportunity to become a student at Berklee College of Music, one of America’s finest music institutions with a glittering list of celebrity alumni, as a delegation from the college arrives in St. Petersburg this weekend in a quest to discover a bright new jazz talent. |
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MOSCOW — New Russia coach Guus Hiddink got his first taste of the job by making a whistle-stop tour of the capital this week.
The Dutchman began his 2-1/2-year stint as Russia’s first foreign manager by visiting the Russian Football Union headquarters and meeting fellow coaches, the national team’s staff and officials. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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