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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and two senior state officials reopened the possibility of foreign energy majors taking part in the Shtokman gas project, signaling that Gazprom might soon reverse its decision to bar them from developing the giant Arctic field. “The issue [of Shtokman] is not closed,” Putin said in an interview posted on the Kremlin web site Friday. “It can be looked at again if foreign partners present interesting proposals.” His comments prompted speculation that the selection of foreign partners for Shtokman could, after all, have been linked to negotiations with the United States on Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organization. Spokespeople for the Kremlin have previously denied the existence of a direct link between the two issues. |
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Christian Charistus / Reuters
A police officer examines a car in front of the house of the former mother-in-law of Dmitry Kovtun in Haselau near Hamburg on Monday. Prosecutors have opened an investigattion into Kovtun, an associate of murdered ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko. |
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A female museum custodian fought bravely over a priceless silver ladle with a former security guard who made a reckless attempt to steal it from the State Hermitage Museum, it emerged Monday. The Russian Department of the museum — still reeling from the notorious theft of nearly $5 million-worth of artifacts announced in late July — was once again a target of theft it said in a statement on Friday, but this time the would-be thief was caught red-handed.
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All photos from issue.
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Local political parties are joining forces in an attempt to “combat ‘black PR’ and resist [the misuse of] administrative resources [against them]” ahead of elections to the city parliament to be held in March. But despite the enthusiastic debate, the hopes for a fair campaign are scarce. Although the election campaign is not due to start until mid-January, politicians have expressed concern that it may become one dirtiest in recent years. This month the federal Duma abolished the minimum voter turnout limit, which was seen by many analysts as the last way of controlling misuse of electoral registers and other “black” techniques to manipulate elections, such as negative campaigning. “Until now, the amount of dirty reports and planted stories compromising rival candidates has been kept under some control — mainly because of worries that in especially large quantities it may lead in the voters boycotting elections,” Sergei Andreyev, a lawmaker for the Just Russia faction at the St. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A boy examining a miniature Christmas tree at an exhibition supporting the charities Children in Need and Perspectives hosted by the Astoria Hotel on Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Churchgoers who drop money in the collection plate might want to consider the consequences of their generosity, lest their places of worship be shut down in April amid a blizzard of bureaucracy. Under new rules that Protestants fear will threaten religious freedom, churches must start counting how much of their tithe and offerings come from Russians and foreigners.
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HAMBURG, Germany — German investigators have confirmed that a car used by a contact of fatally poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko before the two men met was contaminated with the rare radioactive substance polonium-210, police said Monday. Still unknown is whether Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun was involved in the poisoning, or a victim of it. |
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TIRASPOL, Moldova — Residents in the self-proclaimed separatist republic of Transdnestr in eastern Moldova voted Sunday in a presidential election expected to be easily won by incumbent Igor Smirnov. |
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On Dec. 6, 2006, the concert hall of the Palkin Restaurant in St. Petersburg played host to the annual “A Celebratory Present” charity evening. The organizers of the event were The St. Petersburg Times, the Musubi Oriental Martial Arts and Healthcare Center and the Palkin Restaurant. This charity event has become a traditional feature of the calendar in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year. |
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The fourth Small Business Forum, organized by the governor’s public committee for small business, will be held at the Lenexpo exhibition complex on Thursday and Friday, with obstructions to the sector already singled-out for attack. Previously the forum, which will combine seminars with an exhibition, was held at the Tavrichesky Palace. |
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Western Competition n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Four international consortiums will compete for the contract for a western high-speed link-road, Interfax reported Friday. |
 MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and his Mongolian counterpart Nambaryn Enkhbayar agreed on Friday to boost bilateral trade to $1 billion and look at scrapping visas between the two countries. Speaking to reporters after two hours of talks in the Kremlin, Putin said, “Russian companies are ready to make a significant investment in the Mongolian economy,” adding that investment could reach $5 billion over the next few years. |
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MOSCOW — The Natural Resources Ministry, which has led criticism of foreign oil firms such as Shell, dissolved into infighting between officials Friday, with the oil giant’s top critic shut out of a meeting and calling for his own boss to be sacked. |
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More than 10 percent of Russia’s oil output, nearly 1 million barrels per day, is being produced illegally, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said Friday. Trutnev made the statement during an official meeting intended to work out measures to tighten official controls over the extraction of mineral riches. |
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MOSCOW — Shareholders of Troika Dialog have no immediate plans to sell the brokerage but are considering strategic alliances and a possible stock market listing, company president Ruben Vardanyan said. |
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This year has seen strong growth in demand for internet advertising on St. Petersburg’s media market. This was mainly the result of new laws limiting TV advertising and making it more expensive, the appearance of new clients, including those previously not interested in this type of promotion, with the largest brands already considering the internet as a worthwhile way of promoting goods and services. |
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 China’s rapid economic development is the most amazing story of the past decade — just as the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s slide into irrelevance was the main historical event of the previous 10 years. Until the mid-1980s, Russia and China vied for the supremacy of their respective brands of communism. |
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In 1999, the McKinsey Global Institute published a report titled “Unlocking Economic Growth in Russia.” Startlingly, the report suggested that the economy could grow by 8 percent per year for the foreseeable future without any changes to current economic policy. |
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Russian markets breathed a sigh of relief at the end of last week after key economic data indicated that the U.S. economy would avoid a downturn, for now. On Friday, the U.S. payroll report announced the creation of 130,000 new jobs in the first three quarters of 2006, realizing analysts’ best-case scenario. |
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Arming Venezuela n CARACAS (Bloomberg) — Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, received the first two of an expected 24 Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter aircraft as the South American country builds up it military arsenal. |
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 It is astonishing how little Americans understand their own nation. Recently, Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a man long on intellect and government experience, opined that the Iraq war had generated so much controversy because it was such an aberration: “The emphasis on promotion of democracy, the emphasis on regime change, the war of choice in Iraq — all of these are departures from the traditional approach. |
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The court-ordered closure of the IKEA Mega mall in Nizhny Novgorod for fire-code violations is bad news for shoppers and investors. The 30-day closure also is as a double whammy for IKEA, coming at the start of the holiday shopping season. |
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The NATO meeting held in Riga, Latvia, in late November attracted very little attention. Nothing of substance emerged from the conference and there was plenty of competition for headlines. Not that long ago, the very idea of a NATO meeting in a Latvia that was itself in NATO would have been a nightmare for Russia, like a Warsaw-Pact Canada for the United States. |
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I met Ashot in a village just outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan, at the house of his father, Vladimir, a writer who fled the Azeri capital, Baku, with his family in the early 1990s, amid the upsurge of violence between Azeris and Armenians. |
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However outsiders view the United States — as the home of jazz, basketball, modern democracy and the American Dream, or less flatteringly as the “Great Satan,” for example — everyone seems convinced that learning more about the U.S. colossus and its peculiar people is either good, advantageous or both. |
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SHCHYOLKOVO, Moscow Region — Once upon a time, Vladimir Krasnykh was a Soviet infantryman defending his nation against fascist invaders. Today, Krasnykh, 82, lies in bed all day long enveloped by cobwebs and the reek of human waste. Fuzzy transmissions from the radio propped on his belly circle through his room. |
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BEIRUT — The Arab League won vital Syrian support on Monday for its efforts to end a standoff between Lebanon’s government and a Hezbollah-led opposition rallying hundreds of thousands in central Beirut, an envoy said. Arab League envoy Mustafa Osman Ismail said he also had backing in principle from rival factions in Lebanon. |
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GAZA — Unidentified gunmen killed three sons of a Palestinian intelligence official loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza on Monday, firing at the car as it dropped them at school, police and hospital officials said. |
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CAIRO — The grainy video purports to show an Egyptian man, naked from the waist down, writhing in agony as he is sodomized with a stick by a police officer. A handful of other officers stand by watching. The video, which circulated on Egyptian blogs last month, has sparked uproar on the Internet in a country where rights groups say torture is commonplace in police stations. |
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LONDON — Any faint hopes Chelsea may have had of another comfortable run to the Premier League title look well and truly scuppered by their 1-1 draw with Arsenal. By Dec. 12 in 2005, a buoyant Chelsea were 12 points clear at the top after a playing a game more and bookmakers had paid out three months earlier on bets they would retain the club’s first title for 50 years. |
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World equestrian champion Zara Phillips, the granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, was named the BBC’s sports personality of the year on Sunday, beating widely-tipped golfer Darren Clarke. |
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