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A recruit serving in the Russian Interior Ministry’s signals corps in central St. Petersburg has sent a letter to the Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group claiming that he and dozens of his fellow soldiers are being forced into prostitution by older recruits. “Instead of having a well-earned rest, young recruits are ordered up by phone and delivered nightly to their top-ranking clients — including army generals,” said Ella Polyakova, head of the St. Petersburg arm of Soldiers’ Mothers. “The facts described by the soldier are horrifying, and we will not, at least for the time being, disclose the identity of the recruit, who is still in his detachment,” Polyakova said. |
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REACH FOR THE SKY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Skiers pulled by kites at the Eighth St. Petersburg Winter Kiting Championships on the frozen surface of the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg on Saturday. More than 60 professional sportsmen and women took part in the two-day event. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladmir Putin accused the United States of carrying out a reckless and dangerous foreign policy, in a blistering speech that some U.S. politicians likened to Cold War rhetoric. Senior Russian officials, however, insisted that honesty and openness — not hostility — were behind Putin’s address to an international security conference in Munich on Saturday.
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Human remains advertised on the Russian internet as relics for sale went missing from the Kunstkamera museum but are not valuable, it emerged on Monday. The remains went missing because of “managerial blunders” when the museum’s collection was moved in the 1970s and 1990s to make room for additional storage space, the museum’s director Yury Chistov said. |
All photos from issue.
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Information rights monitors have voiced concern over what they regard as the Russian government’s culture of secrecy and say they have suspicions of high level corruption in the corridors of power. A survey of the websites of 85 federal agencies using 300 assessment criteria to measure timeliness, significance, nature of the contents and their accessibility revealed that an average of more than 75 percent of public information was not disclosed. “I think it has something to do with corruption when less than 25 percent of the information about the state spending [which is supposed to be publicly available] is disclosed, “ said Yelena Bogdanova, a sociologist at the St. |
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SNOW PARADE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children walking in the snow on Palace Square at the weekend. Weather forecasters are predicting more snow later in the week with temperature lows of up to minus 17 deg. C. |
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MOSCOW — Roman Abramovich wanted a transfer away from Chukotka, but President Vladimir Putin isn’t letting him go. Billionaire oil tycoon and Chelsea football club owner Abramovich will stay on as governor of the Chukotka region, the Kremlin said Friday, suggesting that Putin has rejected the resignation that Abramovich tendered late last year or persuaded him to withdraw it.
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The Central Election Commission in Moscow has agreed with the earlier decision of the St. Petersburg Election Commission to exclude the liberal opposition party Yabloko from the elections to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. The party was expelled from the race on the grounds that a percentage of signatures presented to the commission as a requirement to register in the election failed to meet the required standards. |
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MOSCOW — Anatoly Chubais’ long-held dream of free-market electricity reform looks to be in disarray after two giant business groups, Gazprom and Interros, emerged as the favorites to carve up the country’s power production and form regional monopolies. |
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 Russian private companies, state bodies, associations and individual PC users are getting increasingly dependent on software provided by American IT giant Microsoft — a dangerous and expensive luxury for a country that is to join the WTO, experts said at a meeting at the Rosbalt new agency on Friday. |
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MOSCOW — U.S. oil major Chevron is interested in bidding for several Yukos assets when the remains of the dismantled oil company go up for auction this year, a spokesman for Yukos’ court-appointed bankruptcy manager said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Russian Aluminum owner Oleg Deripaska has overtaken Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich as the country’s richest man, according to a new survey. Deripaska has taken the top spot with his $21.2 billion fortune, surpassing Abramovich with his reported $21 billion, Ekho Moskvy said on its web site, citing an advance copy of Finans magazine’s Monday issue. Deripaska’s fortune has nearly doubled from $12.7 billion since last year. Over the same period, Abramovich has increased his holdings from $18.7 billion. Although the aluminum trade is not very transparent, it is possible that last year’s strong commodity prices helped Deripaska increase his riches, MDM Bank analyst Michael Kavanagh said. |
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 Don’t be afraid to ask questions, carefully observe the culture before making any decisions, and, most importantly, have fun. For Patrick Naughter, the new general manager of Renaissance Baltic Hotel, these are the major ingredients for success. |
 St. Petersburg is preparing itself for the simultaneous release of several projects in a revolutionary new format — Web 2.0. Over the last two years the latter has become increasingly popular, both in Russia and abroad as it begins to attract the interest of key investors and funds. |
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In conditions where use of mobile phones has become extremely widespread and competition for every subscriber, whether it be a new potential user or existing client, has become incredibly intense, players on the market have begun to take more individualistic approaches. |
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From Feb. 13 to Feb. 17, Petersburg will be playing host to the Norvecom-2007 international telecommunications exhibition. This is the fourteenth time the exhibition, aimed at specialists in the communications field and humbler consumers, has been held in the city. The exhibition traditionally attracts mobile phone and landline operators, internet providers, equipment suppliers and other players from the telecommunications market. Norvecom-2007, organized by Restek-IKT, the Restek Exhibition Association and North-West Telecom, will be hosted at the 6,000-square-meter Pavilion 7 of the Lenexpo exhibition complex. The event has the support of the Information Technologies and Communications Ministry, the Electrocable Association, the St. |
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 After a year of active consolidation, St. Petersburg’s mobile phone retail market is now the property of just a few large players. We asked some of the companies concerned to assess last year’s business and reveal their plans for 2007. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s first high-tech initial public offering fell short of expectations Wednesday, as the firm, Sitronics, priced shares at the bottom of the expected range, giving it a market value of about $2.3 billion. Sitronics, owned by services conglomerate Sistema, said it was selling shares at 24 cents each and Global Depositary Receipts at $12, at the bottom end of an indicative range announced last week. |
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Microsoft Rebuffs Plea PARIS (NYT) — Microsoft rebuffed a public appeal by Mikhail Gorbachev last week for its chairman, Bill Gates, to intervene on behalf of a Russian school principal charged with software piracy. |
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MOSCOW — The long-awaited entry of a global retail giant into the Russian market appeared to inch closer as a senior executive for Wal-Mart hinted of an expansion into Russia and reports surfaced that the U.S. firm was planning talks with X5, Russia’s biggest food retailer. |
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Urals Loan MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Urals Energy, a London-based trading company with oil assets in Russia, has received the first portion of a $130 million loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. |
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 The EU’s liberalization of its energy market “may disrupt the entire system of gas security in the region,” Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev told the World Gas Conference in Amsterdam last year. His warning echoed long-standing complaints from Moscow that the introduction of competition into Europe’s gas markets is undermining long-term supply contracts and encouraging new players whose only goal is to make a fast buck. |
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Many Russian observers are looking ahead to a win by Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. For some this is a cause for worry. |
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Interest in next year’s presidential election is gradually eclipsing all other current events in Russia. The main pursuit of analysts and commentators has become peering across this political Rubicon into the dense fog that enshrouds the opposite bank. The supercharged intrigue in this instance is peculiar to the Russian political system. |
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 AMES, Iowa —Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama drew a contrast with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Iraq war on Sunday and said it was unclear how she planned to end the conflict. On the day after he formally launched his 2008 White House bid, Obama said on a campaign swing through Iowa that even before the war began it was possible to see the dangerous consequences of a U. |
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LONDON — Unemployed people who cannot speak English face losing their benefits as part of a far-reaching review into the U.K’s labor market and welfare system, announced by the government on Monday. |
 LONDON — Royalty reigned at the British film awards on Sunday, with “The Queen” clinching best film and Helen Mirren best actress for her portrayal of the monarch, while “The Last King of Scotland” scooped three awards. In contrast, the latest James Bond movie failed to shake or stir, picking up just one of the nine BAFTA nominations it received — winning the sound quality category. |
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 LONDON — Perennial Davis Cup protagonists Australia were upset 3-2 by Belgium while holders Russia clung to their crown in the first round on Sunday. Belgium beat the Australians for the first time to reach the April quarter-finals along with Russia, 3-2 winners in Chile, the U. |
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LONDON — No love will be lost between Bolton Wanderers and Arsenal when they meet for a Valentine’s Day FA Cup replay at the Reebok Stadium on Wednesday. |
 DONETSK, Ukraine — Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva broke the world indoor pole vault record by clearing 4.93 meters at the Sergei Bubka invitational meet on Saturday. The Russian improved her own mark of 4.91 set at the same competition organised by the great Ukrainian men’s pole vaulter in his home town a year ago. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive