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 Battling to get back on the ballot, Yabloko has sent an appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to reverse the decisions of the St. Petersburg Election Commission and the Central Election Commission that led to the opposition party being expelled from the forthcoming elections to the city’s Legislative Assembly. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky said the verdict of the Central Election Commission has turned the March 11 elections into a farce and accused commission’s members of hypocrisy. “We believe the commission was following a political order from Governor Valentina Matviyenko, with the full support of the presidential administration — and perhaps even President Vladimir Putin personally,” Yavlinsky said on Tuesday. “Elections where the strongest opposition party is denied participation, and several political clones are competing for seats, are pseudo-elections — no better than those we had back in the Soviet era. |
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SOME LIKE IT HOT
Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Mariinsky opera star Anna Netrebko performs during a rehearsal for an opera ball in Vienna on Wednesday. The traditional event is the highlight of Vienna’s ball season. |
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The St. Petersburg City Court on Thursday entered the third day of the retrial of the suspected killers of Congolese student Roland Epassak, 29, who was stabbed to death in September 2005, but proceedings were postponed for an unspecified duration, pending fresh evidence as new defense witnesses took the stand. While defendants Andrei Gerasimov, Yury Gromov, Andrei Olenev and Dmitry Orlov, aged between 19 and 26, pleaded not guilty, the court heard testimonies from three defense witnesses including a girl and two other students from Congo, who were friends of Epassak’s.
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All photos from issue.
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 The International Women’s Club will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a gala event to be held at the Yusupov Palace on March 10. Originally conceived as a support and networking group for foreign women living in St. Petersburg, the IWC’s first goal is to help recent arrivals navigate this beautiful, but bewildering city. |
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MOSCOW — Inteko, the construction giant owned by billionaire Yelena Baturina, said Wednesday that it was suing the publisher and editor of Forbes’ Russian edition over a December cover story about the company. |
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MOSCOW — The World Wildlife Fund has written to President Vladimir Putin in what it called a last-ditch attempt to stop the destruction of rare wildlife habitat to make way for Sochi’s 2014 Winter Olympics bid. The International Olympic Committee is due to fly to Sochi next week to evaluate the Russian bid, shortlisted alongside Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea. |
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 Production restarted on Thursday at U.S. car maker Ford’s plant near St Petersburg, one of the biggest in Russia owned by a foreign auto maker, after a one-day strike over pay and conditions. “The employees have gone back to work. The assembly line restarted at midnight,” said Yekaterina Kulinenko, Ford Russia spokeswoman. |
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Three of Russia’s largest real estate consultancies announced, Tuesday, the creation of the St. Petersburg Research Forum, an attempt to unify standards for real estate assessment in the city. |
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MOSCOW — Gazprom, Itera and Norilsk Nickel stepped forward Wednesday as the latest interested buyers in the upcoming Yukos auctions, a spokesman for the company’s bankruptcy receiver said. The three Russian companies join U.S. oil major Chevron and ESN Group, an Italian-Russian consortium, in hoping to bid for Yukos’ assets. Several other large international companies have expressed interest in bidding, spokesman Nikolai Lankevich said, but he declined to name them. The final valuation of the assets is due to be completed by the end of February, after which bidding will formally begin, Lankevich said. State-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom are widely expected to snatch up the bulk of the nearly 200 Yukos assets due to be sold off this year. |
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 NEW DELHI — The foreign ministers of India, China and Russia met Wednesday for talks on economic ties at a time when the Asian giants are seeking more energy supplies and Moscow is sitting on huge oil and gas reserves. |
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MOSCOW — Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Natural Resources Ministry’s environmental agency, is looking into whether the company exploring the Angaro-Lensk natural gas deposit in eastern Siberia improperly boosted its reserves estimate. The owner of the deposit, Moscow-based company Petromir, founded in 1999 by former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, estimated its gas reserves at 1. |
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Fridman Gold MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group is buying up shares in Artel Staratelei Amur, a Russian gold and platinum miner, Vedomosti said, citing Alexei Mikhailovsky, head of Alfa’s gold unit. |
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 The nearest equivalent the Russian language has to the word chutzpah is naglost. In President Vladimir Putin, the Russian nation has found the embodiment of naglost. Naglost: During the question-and-answer session following your speech on Saturday to the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, you were asked about the Oct. |
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On the eve of his visit to Saudi Arabia, President Vladimir Putin told Arab news channel Al-Jazeera that Russia “no longer had any disagreements with Arab countries”; during last Saturday’s security conference in Munich, Putin criticized what he referred to as today’s “unipolar world,” which “bears nothing in common with democracy. |
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 The State Hermitage Museum premiered its major blockbuster of this season, “Alexander the Great: The Road to the Orient,” on Tuesday. About 500 exhibits — paintings, prints, sculpture and applied art objects — from all the museum’s departments, showcases the ancient hero’s legendary campaign to Asia which resulted in an empire that spanned from the Balkans to India. |
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Two local promoters have revealed plans for the next few months. Planeta Plus, which brought Paul McCartney and nearly brought the Rolling Stones to the city last year, will not promote any international music acts in the near future (the biggest name on its list is Russian pop heartthrob Dima Bilan), while NCA (which brought Simple Minds and Deftones last year) offers its usual lineup of veteran acts such as Slade, Europe and Alphaville. |
 During the twenty-year history of the Priyut Komedianta Theater there have been lots of events and achievements, however, now celebrating theater’s anniversary, which takes place on Sunday on the stage of Music Hall Theater, its artistic director Victor Minkov prefers to speak not about the past, but about the future with its premieres, plans and new projects. “Twenty years is not a time to look back: the theater is just beginning to develop both in creative and organizational terms,” said Minkov. |
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 The Washington Post MOSCOW — Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the Soviets’ persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of “Doctor Zhivago,” a Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel. |
 Yevgenia Obraztsova and Vladimir Shklyarov are two rising young dancers in their early 20s whose partnership is now one of the most exciting in the Mariinsky Theater. They are also the best of friends offstage. Last weekend, Shklyarov celebrated his 22nd birthday while on a Mariinsky Ballet tour to Ludwigshafen in Germany. |
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Although Channel One’s celebrity prank show “Practical Joke” (Rozygrysh) was off the air for the whole of last year, it kept quite a high profile in the tabloids due to tales of the episodes that were never shown. |
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Banzai // 17 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel: 315 8787 // Open 11 a.m. through 12 p.m. // Menu in Russian // Credit cards accepted // Lunch for two with no alcohol 1,180 rubles ($44) Opened earlier this week behind swags of black and red balloons, this latest addition to a well-established St. Petersburg chain of sushi restaurants smartens up the corner of Gorokhovaya and Moika by replacing a dodgy bistro that was formerly located there. Banzai follows a tried-and-tested formula of offering a plethora of immaculately presented sushi, shashimi, yakatori, rolls, soups and salads in minimalist surroundings. The interior is completely black and, likewise, the waiters and chefs are dressed in black from head to toe. |
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 BERLIN — The 57th International Berlin Film Festival opened in Berlin last Thursday with “La Mome” (2007), the life story of the legendary French singer Edith Piaf by French director Olivier Dahan. |
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 MADRID — A Spanish trial began on Thursday of 29 people charged with involvement in the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people three years ago in the deadliest al Qaeda-related attack in Europe. Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who is accused of inciting people to carry out the morning rush hour attacks, was first to be led to the stand but he refused to give any evidence. |
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SEOUL — South Korea has agreed to resume high-level talks with North Korea that could restart major aid shipments despite calls for caution over an international deal on Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes. |
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OTTAWA — Goaltender Martin Gerber stood in for the suspended Ray Emery and made 28 saves on his way to a first shutout of the season as the red-hot Ottawa Senators recorded a 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers on Wednesday. Gerber’s seventh shutout was his first in 21 games with Ottawa since leaving the Carolina Hurricanes in the off-season, and the Swiss goalie took full advantage of Emery’s three-game ban for slashing Montreal’s Maxim Lapierre on Saturday. Ottawa’s third straight victory improved the team’s record to 8-1-1 over the last 10 home games. Chris Phillips opened the scoring 8:21 into the first period before Mike Fisher beat Florida goalie Ed Belfour to double the advantage with the only tally of the second. |
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 LONDON — Arsenal won 3-1 after extra time at Bolton Wanderers on Wednesday to reach the FA Cup fifth round, with the cool head of Swede Fredrik Ljungberg finally laying the ghost of their bogey team after three glaring misses. |
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LONDON — Former winners CSKA Moscow were left feeling homesick after failing to break down stubborn Maccabi Haifa in the UEFA Cup first knockout round on Wednesday. The 2005 champions switched the first leg to Vladikavkaz in the volatile Caucasus region near Chechnya, about 1,500-km south of the Russian capital, because of freezing temperatures but the move failed to pay off as they drew 0-0. There were goals aplenty in two other ties, with Bayer Leverkusen edging Blackburn Rovers 3-2 and Fenerbahce drawing 3-3 with AZ Alkmaar. CSKA’s match was played amid tight security, with thousands of riot police employed in and around the Spartak stadium in addition to Russia’s special anti-terrorist units, who were guarding the Israelis during their stay. |
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 NEW YORK — Tennis world number one Maria Sharapova became the latest celebrity appointed goodwill ambassador of the UN Development Program (UNDP), pledging to use her charisma and fame to galvanize support for the fight against world poverty. |
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BOSTON — The Boston Celtics finally snapped their franchise record 18-game losing streak on Wednesday with a 117-97 rout of the Milwaukee Bucks. Paul Pierce scored 32 points to lead the Celtics, who had not won a game since Jan 5 and were closing in on the NBA’s all-time losing streak record of 24 losses. |
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