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A St. Petersburg court on Tuesday sentenced a leader of the city’s hate crime underworld to 3 1/2 years imprisonment for organizing a gang of violent racists involved in numerous murders and attacks on non-Russians and anti-fascist activists over the past five years. The Pushkinsky District Court found Ruslan Melnik, 21, guilty of organizing the Mad Crowd extremist group to attack and kill Jews, Caucasians, Asians, Blacks and their Russian sympathizers. However, the sentence provided a rare instance of both human rights advocates and the political authorities reacting negatively to the court ruling, while both the prosecution and the defense appeared content. “It looks like the judges pass such light sentences because they are either scared of vendettas carried out by local extremists or they regard the culprits as victims,” said Dmitry Dubrovsky, head of the department of modern ethnology and inter-ethnic relations at St. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Exhibits currently on display at a new exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum featuring some of the works of art stolen from the museum and recovered in recent months. |
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Governor Valentina Matviyenko appealed to president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday asking him to end her term in office ahead of its official end in October 2007. The president re-appointed Matviyenko as St. Petersburg governor for the next four years. Essentially, the governor was asking the president to reconfirm her status. Matviyenko was elected to the post of governor in October 2003.
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MOSCOW — The Moscow headquarters of IBM and several other computer companies were raided Wednesday by masked law enforcement officials toting automatic rifles. It remained unclear Wednesday evening which branch of law enforcement was conducting the raids on IBM and two other companies, Lanit and R-Style, and what might have been the purpose of the raids. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — British investigators are now treating the poisoning death of former Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko as murder. “It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr. Litvinenko’s death,” Scotland Yard said in a statement. Also on Wednesday, investigators questioned one of the two Russians who met with Litvinenko on the day he fell ill from polonium-210 poisoning. British detectives and Russian prosecutors questioned Dmitry Kovtun, who met with Litvinenko at London’s Millenium Hotel, Kovtun’s lawyer, Andrei Romashov, told Interfax. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Pedestrians on Palace Bridge sheltering from the rain on Thursday. Forecasters are predicting that rain will continue over the weekend, although temperatures are expected to remain mild. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday gave tentative approval to a bill that authorizes the president to impose sanctions on other countries. The measure would enhance Russia’s ability to flex its muscles in the global economic arena and respond quickly to foreign threats, supporters said. But opponents said it granted too much power to the president.
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MOSCOW — Federation Council elections and cracking down on extremism topped the agenda at Wednesday’s Kremlin meeting between President Vladimir Putin and political party leaders. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin party United Russia, is pushing for tougher punishments for anyone dubbed an extremist by authorities. |
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Analysts have dismissed a new Forestry code as creating as many problems as it solves and ultimately being dependent on by-laws that are yet to be developed. The code was signed into law by President Putin on Tuesday and will come into force on Jan.1 next year. |
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MOSCOW — Six Russian retailers on Wednesday said they would boycott Japanese electronics giant Panasonic and accused the firm of smuggling television sets into the country in a bid to undercut prices. |
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MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry proposed Wednesday splitting its $83 billion stabilization fund into reserve and growth funds, winning praise from analysts who said the plan drew on best practice from other resource-rich nations. In a strategy document, the ministry proposed creating a new agency to supervise what would be called the Oil and Gas Fund, which would gather all oil and gas revenues accruing to the budget. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ, the nation’s largest carmaker, hopes to sign an agreement by the end of the month with the Canadian car parts giant Magna to build a $1. |
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Model Focus n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Ford Motors will start producing the new Ford Focus in Vsevolozhsk next year, Prime-TASS reported Thursday. The company is also considering increasing production to 150,000 cars a year, twice the current level, though difficulties in the supply of components have so far prevented Ford from such a move. |
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 In the almost two weeks that have passed since ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning in London, we have learned a lot about his death — haven’t we? Well, we have learned that Litvinenko died after somehow ingesting polonium-210, a relatively rare radioactive substance. |
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Following the death of Alexander Litvinenko from poisoning by polonium-210, the Russian media have published numerous possible versions of events: He was killed by self-exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky; he committed suicide; he didn’t die at all; he was poisoned with tobacco smoke; or he was killed by Chechens. |
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In October, when authorities cut transportation and postal links with Georgia and started a crackdown on Georgian migrants living in the country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promised that every effort would be made to ensure that law-abiding people would not be affected. The death in a Moscow detention center on Saturday of one law-abiding migrant, Manana Dzhabelia, shows that these efforts were tragically insufficient. |
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 When he was a child, Jostein Gaarder promised himself that he would never become an adult. Now an internationally best-selling writer, who turned 54 this year, he feels he has been able to stick to this tricky self-imposed pledge. In Gaarder the child is very much alive and kicking. |
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The ubiquitous Channel One host Andrei Malakhov has published his first book, “My Favorite Blondes.” Showing it off to various people, I noticed that everyone asked the same question: “Did he actually write it himself?” Malakhov currently hosts a scandal-raking chat show called “Let Them Talk” and a Saturday-night light entertainment show called “The Highest League. |
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 BAGHDAD — Baghdad awoke once again to the sound of explosions and sporadic gunfire Thursday as Washington digested a 160-page indictment of President George W. Bush’s failed plan to save a country where an average of more than 100 people are being killed every day. |
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LONDON — Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Thursday France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was among French officials whom he accuses of supporting the 1994 genocide. |
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LONDON — Britain is the Western country most at risk to suffer a terrorist attack at the hands of the Al-Qaeda terror network, a newspaper has reported, citing unnamed government officials. The Financial Times also said Thursday that the terror group was rebuilding its headquarters’ operations in Pakistan, making Britain particularly vulnerable because of the large number of British residents who travel to the South Asian country on a regular basis. |
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A suicide car bomber has struck near a NATO convoy in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing two civilians and injuring several others. |
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BEIRUT — Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has urged opposition parties to return to talks after the Hezbollah-led movement pledged a new push to topple the Western-backed government. “However long it takes, the Lebanese will have to sit back down together,” Siniora said Thursday after a week of street protests on the government’s doorstep in central Beirut with no solution in sight to the political deadlock. |
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 HELSINKI — French star Laure Manaudou is eyeing a quadruple gold medal and record-breaking haul as she warms up for next year’s worlds at the European short course swimming championships starting Thursday in Helsinki. But triple Olympic champion Pieter van den Hoogenband, former arch-rival of now retired Australian superstar Ian Thorpe, has opted to give the continental meet a miss as he prepares for next March’s world championships in Melbourne. |
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DOHA — Tragedy has struck the Asian Games after an experienced South Korean equestrian rider died after his horse threw him from the saddle then crushed him underfoot. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive