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Russia’s Museum Union has sent an appeal to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov asking for the organization’s representatives to be included in the presidential commission slated to revise and audit the collections of Russia’s museums.
The Museums’ Union held an emergency session this week to discuss security in the context of the recent scandal at the Hermitage. The massive theft of 221 items from the museum’s Russian art fund was branded a “museum Chernobyl” during the forum’s discussions.
Following the theft at the Hermitage, arguably Russia’s most internationally acclaimed museum, President Vladimir Putin ordered that a commission be created and that it include representatives of the Interior Ministry, the Culture Ministry, the security services, the Culture Ministry and other state organizations. |
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/ Reuters
President Nazarbayev (from L-R), Prime Minister Fradkov, President Putin, President Lukashenko and Prime Minister Yanukovych walk at a meeting in Sochi on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signaled Wednesday that Ukraine would not have to pay more for Russian natural gas until at least the end of the year.
An agreement — even for a stopgap measure — would be an important first victory for new Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who met with Fradkov on the sidelines of an economic meeting in Sochi.
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MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court is due to hear the verdict Thursday in the politically charged trial of former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, who stands accused of a series of contract killings, including the 1998 murder of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov. |
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Forest fires raging in Karelia last week, sending smoke billowing into neighboring Finland as far as Helsinki, are now largely under control according to officials on both sides. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The little-known Party of Life, touting a senior Kremlin official’s support, is portraying itself as the future counterbalance to United Russia.
Vladislav Surkov, the deputy chief of presidential staff, says the Party of Life, with United Russia, should serve as the foundation for the nation’s emerging two-party system. |
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Soldier’s Killer Convicted
MOSCOW (AP) — An army officer has been convicted by a military court of killing a soldier and sentenced to a 6-year jail term, ITAR-Tass reported Wednesday. |
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The results of a State Duma investigation into real estate fraud has revealed serious violations related to the double selling of new apartments and delays in flat construction. A counsel for the city’s ‘Affordable Housing’ project announced its findings at a press conference Thursday. |
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TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power, Japan’s largest utility, said on Thursday it had signed an agreement with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom for the trading of liquefied natural gas (LNG). |
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Brewing Profit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Baltika brewery increased net profit by 27.6 percent up to 4.2 billion rubles ($155.5 million) during the first half of the year, according to Russian accounting standards, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Revenue increased by 11. |
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MOSCOW — Russian Aluminum, owned by metals mogul Oleg Deripaska, is considering investing in West Indies alumina assets.
A 35-member team from RusAl visited the Jamaican plants of West Indies Alumina Company, or Windalco, and Alumina Partners, or Alpart, this week, Jamaican media reported Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s biggest mobile operator, Mobile TeleSystems, is to cut nearly 800 jobs in Moscow as part of a wide-ranging corporate restructuring program, the company announced late Tuesday.
The new structure, approved by the MTS board in a unanimous vote Monday, will have one corporate center and three regional operational units — covering Russia, Ukraine and the CIS countries of Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, respectively. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court has unfrozen the preferred shares of state pipeline monopoly Transneft, allowing market players to resume all operations with the stock, newspapers reported Wednesday. |
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Meaty Threat
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russia will scrap preferences for U.S. poultry and red meat imports if Washington does not endorse Moscow’s accession bid for the World Trade Organization within three months, the Economy ministry said on Thursday.
“If talks (on Russia’s WTO entry)... set for the end of October in Geneva fail, Russia will have to return to its original stance prior to agreements on (bilateral) meat trade that had been reached,” a ministry statement quoted a letter by Minister German Gref. |
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Despite President Vladimir Putin’s blessing last Friday for an $18 billion deal between Russian titanium producer VSMPO-Avismo and U.S. aircraft producer Boeing, the announcement by the U.S. State Department on Aug. 4 that it was slapping sanctions on Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport and leading aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi could still cause serious problems for U. |
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Life in Russia is becoming increasingly inconvenient. This inconvenience is once again becoming a topic of conversation. Whenever this happens, a friend of mine says, “Russia is getting up off its knees. |
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 St. Petersburg music luminary Valery Gergiev takes the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra to the Baltic Sea Festival that he helped to establish.
The world premiere of an exciting new work by Russian-Swedish composer Viktoria Borasova-Ollas opens this year’s Baltic Sea Festival on Sunday in Stockholm’s Berwald Concert Hall. |
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The Molodyozhny Theater’s new season promises something new — a rare thing in St. Petersburg
After a dearth of theatrical activity during the summer, the new season is always a treat for theatergoers. |
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On a visit to the city earlier this month, Peter Gabriel’s recording engineer Richard Chappell complained that there were much fewer live concerts taking place in St. Petersburg than he expected. But that’s just typical for this time of year.
Tequilajazzz, one of the leading local bands that has been on holiday for the past couple of weeks, will perform at Griboyedov on Friday. There is a difference of opinion between the club and the band about when it last played there (the club says eight years ago) or whether it played there at all (the band has some doubts.)
The Griboyedov gig was put together mainly because Moloko, the underground club that where Tequilajazzz liked to perform its “traditional summer concerts” closed at its original location and has yet to reopen at a new one, the band’s frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov said this week. |
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 The former lyricist for perestroika rockers Nautilus Pompilius lashes out at the band’s frontman for cozying up to the Kremlin.
Russian rock, which helped change the face of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, seems to be adrift in the Putin era. |
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If you saw the recent Hollywood hit “The Break-Up,” you’ll remember that the brother of Jennifer Aniston’s heroine was an aficionado of acappella music.
“Words fail me in describing the magic of singing voices joining in complete harmony — this is something unreal!” he exclaims. |
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The St. Petersburg Times was not the first English-language newspaper in St. Petersburg. Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the city was a flourishing Imperial capital, a range of publications were printed in English. |
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi security forces and British troops fought Shiite militias and tribesmen in two major cities south of Baghdad on Wednesday in sustained battles that left two policemen and a dozen militiamen dead and underscored the tenuous grip the Iraqi government maintains even in regions not under the sway of Sunni Arab insurgents. |
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BRASILIA, Brazil — Former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, a strongly anti-communist general who epitomized an era of authoritarian rule in Latin America, died on Wednesday in exile in the Brazilian capital Brasilia. |
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LONDON — Salman Rushdie sprang to the defence of Guenter Grass on Thursday after Germany’s Nobel prize-winning author confessed he was once a teenage member of Hitler’s Waffen SS.
Grass, world famous for his first novel “The Tin Drum” and an icon of the German left for his outspoken pacifism, made the shock admission in a newspaper interview last Saturday before the release of his autobiography “Peeling Onions. |
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MOSCOW — Dutchman Guus Hiddink proved again that he can get results as he enjoyed a winning start at the helm of Russia’s national team in a Euro 2008 warm up match Wednesday against Latvia.
An injury-time goal by Tomsk striker Pavel Pogrebnyak, who also made his debut performance for the national side on Wednesday, sealed Russia’s 1-0 win and boosted morale three weeks ahead of the opening Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia. |
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Japanese Referee
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Japanese Toru Kamikawa will become the first referee from Asia to take charge of a Russian Premier League match, league officials said on Wednesday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive