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MOSCOW — Russia and Belarus appeared to put an end to their acrimonious energy dispute on Friday, as Russian officials acknowledged that Moscow’s reputation as a dependable energy supplier had been damaged. Moscow would cut its oil export duty from $180 to $53 per ton, after Belarus rescinded a transit fee that Russia had refused to pay, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said after meeting his Belarussian counterpart, Sergei Sidorsky. Russia would have the right to revise the export duty every two months starting next year, Interfax reported. Russia will also start receiving most of the profits from the duty on Russian oil that Belarus re-exports to Europe, Fradkov said. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko indicated Sunday that the deal might be temporary. |
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Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Alexei Morozov of Russia’s AK Bars lifts the trophy after his team’s victory over Finland’s HPK in the European Champions cup in St. Petersburg on Sunday. |
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A twenty-one-year-old antifascist campaigner was stabbed twenty times on Sunday night in south-western St. Petersburg in an apparent attack by extremists. Ivan Yelin was taken to the intensive care unit of St. Petersburg Hospital No. 26 on Ulitsa Kostyushko, where his condition is described as severe. Yelin underwent an operation for wounds sustained to his liver, kidney, solar plexus and other areas, suffering massive blood loss.
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MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said Sunday that a team of investigators would soon be sent to Britain to investigate the poisoning death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Chaika said investigators had submitted a lengthy request for assistance in the case to British authorities, totaling more than 100 pages, and were expecting full cooperation, RIA-Novosti quoted him as saying in an interview with Rossia television. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Prosecutors said Friday that they had detained a boxing promoter suspected of helping banker Alexei Frenkel find triggermen for the contract killing of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov. The suspect, Liana Askerova, was taken into custody Wednesday, and the Basmanny District Court officially approved her arrest Friday afternoon on charges of abetting the September killing of Kozlov in the parking lot outside the Spartak sports center. Ekho Moskvy reported Friday that Askerova had served as an intermediary who found the men who shot Kozlov. Three Ukrainian men surrendered last year to Moscow authorities, confessing to the murder. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A visitor talks on his mobile next to an exhibit at a new permanent exhibition devoted to African culture which opened at the Kunstkamera Museum in central St. Petersburg on Monday. |
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 Alex Prior, a 13-year old singer and composer from the U.K. of Russian descent and a great-great-grandson of Konstantin Stanislavsky, will perform his own vocal cycle based on “Pokayannye” penitential verses on Wednesday. |
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LONDON — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said it had decided not to invest in the Shell-operated Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project after state-owned Gazprom agreed to become majority owner. Environmental campaign groups welcomed the bank’s pullout Friday, and said they would now focus their pressure on commercial banks and government lenders considering loans to the project. |
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Russians are increasingly losing confidence in the U.S. dollar, experts from the Public Opinion Foundation said last week as it published its report, “The Dollar in Russia. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — Leningradslanets, a crisis-hit company based in the Leningrad Oblast, resumed operating Monday with planned production volume of 50,000 tons of shale oil a month, RBC reported Monday. After six months of operating the company expects to increase production to 100,000 tons a month — the output it provided before it closed due to bad debts. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — To increase its share of the Russian car market, the leading international car distributor, Inchcape group, acquired 75.1 percent of shares of Axel Car, a local Toyota dealer, Prime-TASS reported Monday. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — The net profit of CIT Finance investment bank totaled 4.9 billion rubles ($184.56 million) in 2006 as opposed to 887.7 million rubles ($33.4 million) in 2005, Prime-TASS reported Monday. In the fourth quarter of 2006 CIT Finance earned 1. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — The St. Petersburg Social and Commercial Bank increased its assets by 22.8 percent last year up to 4.76 billion rubles ($180 million), Interfax reported Monday. |
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MOSCOW — New regulations that took effect on Monday tighten immigration requirements and quotas for CIS citizens and increase the penalties for illegally employing foreigners. The new legislation puts a cap of 6 million work permits in 2007 for migrants from countries that have visa-free travel agreements with Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Complaints from the Chinese Embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap an Orbit chewing gum commercial playing on Russian television that featured China’s national anthem as backing music. |
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MOSCOW — Oil revenues, the bedrock of the country’s economy for more than a decade, went soft this month beneath the nation’s feet. Warm weather cut into U.S. demand for heating oil, while the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries fell short on its promised supply cuts. |
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MOSCOW — The government has scrapped export quotas on precious metals and diamonds, the Kremlin’s press service said Saturday. President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing unlimited exports of most uncut diamonds, platinum group metals and other precious metals and ores. |
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MOSCOW — Japanese automaker Suzuki increased its car sales by 64.4 percent in 2006, Interfax reported Saturday. Authorized Suzuki dealerships sold 16,118 cars last year, an increase on the 9,804 sold in 2005, Interfax reported, citing a statement from the Moscow office of Itochu, which represents the automaker in Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Vyksa Metallurgical Plant, part of Russian steel-pipe maker United Metallurgical, raised steel pipe output 53 percent in 2006 on booming demand from the country’s oil and gas sector, the company said in a statement Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Clearstream, a leading European supplier of post-trading services, said Friday that it would accept the ruble as a full settlement currency from Jan. 15, following a similar announcement by its rival Euroclear. “The ruble will be accepted as a full settlement currency in Clearstream Banking as from 15 January, 2007,” the company said on its web site. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank can cut its key refinancing rate, currently at 11 percent, in January or February, Interfax quoted Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev as saying Friday. |
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The Pew Global Attitudes Project reported late last month that favorable views of the United States were on the decline among Russians in 2005-06, while unfavorable views rose, overtaking the positives by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent. The administration of U. |
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The shooting war for control of South Ossetia may have ended more than a decade ago, but the propaganda war has intensified in recent months. Georgia has been stepping up its efforts to win back the tiny region in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains that wants to break away and join Russia. |
 What strikes any foreigner who visits Moscow regularly is the sheer size of the city and the speed at which it’s changing and developing. What isn’t changing, unfortunately, are the complaints from prominent Muscovites about the notoriously negative attitudes toward the city reflected in much of the media coverage both in Russia and abroad. |
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The new Russia is in some ways more opaque than its Soviet predecessor. The new Russia is too young to have rituals. Apart from providing a sense of order and continuity for society, Soviet rituals also afforded outsiders clues as to the country’s internal politics. |
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SAN FRANCISCO — Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it obtained the crucial chapter in the scrapped O.J. Simpson book in which he told how he might have killed his ex-wife if he were the murderer, including arguing with her and finding himself holding a bloody knife. Newsweek said it obtained from a source who asked not to be identified the chapter in “If I Did It,” in which the former football star makes “a seeming confession” about the murder of his ex-wife and a friend. |
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 Led by MVP Alexei Morozov, AK Bars Kazan defeated HPK Hämeenlinna of Finland 6-0 in the Gold Medal Match of the 2007 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) European Champions Cup at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace on Sunday night. For the third consecutive year a Russian team won the right to be called European Champions, while a Finnish team had to settle for the silver medal. But unlike the last two finals that went into overtime to determine a winner, this year’s Gold Medal game was a lopsided and dominated by the Russian side from Tartarstan. |
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 LOS ANGELES — It is far from clear whether the soccer star David Beckham will put bodies in seats here at Home Depot Center, home to the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team. |
 MELBOURNE — After playing the waiting game for almost three hours, St. Petersburg’s Svetlana Kuznetsova sprinted past Australian wildcard Jessica Moore 6-2 6-0 on Monday to book her place in the second round of the Australian Open. The third seed led a sextet of Russian women through. She was joined by fifth seed Nadia Petrova, seventh seed Yelena Dementyeva, Maria Kirilenko and Yelena Vesnina. |
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