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MOSCOW — A suspect in the murder of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov failed to show up in court Wednesday, raising doubts he would ever resurface and derailing the high-profile case. It was the second time that Kazbek Dukuzov, who is 32 or 33, neglected to turn up at the Moscow City Court. Dukuzov missed a February hearing. “This criminal case has been delayed indefinitely, and it won’t proceed until Dukuzov has been found and arrested,” court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova told reporters outside the courtroom in the Preobrazhensky district. Dukuzov’s absence was met with concern and anger by Klebnikov family members who worry whether justice will be served. |
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PARKING PROBLEMS
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
A Hummer is parked on top of another car to draw attention to the lack of parking space and the effect it has on the behavior of drivers in St. Petersburg. The protest took place on Nevsky Prospekt, outside the Gostiny Dvor shopping complex on Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — Long-serving Central Elections Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov, who has criticized Kremlin-backed election laws and political tactics, lost his job Tuesday, after President Vladimir Putin chose not to renominate him for the post. On Tuesday, Putin named five members who will sit on the commission during the December State Duma elections and the March 2008 presidential election.
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A 55-year-old local part-time history teacher was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison for his involvement in thefts at the State Hermitage Museum. Nikolai Zavadsky, who had admitted to taking part in a criminal scheme involving his late wife, Hermitage Museum curator Larisa Zavadskaya, was also ordered to pay 7,388,000 rubles ($283,000) in damages to the Hermitage. |
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Law enforcement authorities have carried out a number of searches in the apartments of St. Petersburg Anarchists’ League members, Fontanka.ru reported Thursday. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — Designs for the reconstruction of New Holland Island have won first prize in the commercial and leisure category at the MIPIM real estate exhibition in Cannes, Interfax reported. It is the first time a Russian project has won a prize at the exhibition. The designs for the island, located between the Moika River and Kryukov and Admiralteisky canals, were presented at the exhibition by the British architect Sir Norman Foster and ST Novaya Gollandiya, the firm selected to carry out the reconstruction works. |
All photos from issue.
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One of St. Petersburg’s leading theater companies has found a way to turn a gift from President Vladimir Putin into a second performance space, it said Wednesday, unveiling a $35.6 million redevelopment plan for a unique 19th-century building on Kamenny Island. The Bolshoi Drama Theater was given the former Letny Kamennoostrovsky Theater by the Russian president in October 2005 soon after the theater’s artistic director Kirill Lavrov celebrated his 80th birthday. Lavrov called the gift “luxurious” but said it was difficult to decide how to put the decayed building, set in parkland to the north of the city center, to use. “A gift is a gift — it is awkward to give it back. |
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 MOSCOW — The ex-wife of Russia’s richest man Roman Abramovich will not be the world’s wealthiest divorcee but former air hostess Irina will still get $300 million from the split, a newspaper reported on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW — The Central District Court in Voronezh has awarded a woman who contracted HIV in a blood transfusion 3.5 million rubles (nearly $134,000) in damages, a court spokesman told Interfax on Wednesday. The woman, whose name has not been made public, filed suit last November against the regional health department and the local blood bank seeking 10 million rubles in damages, said the woman’s lawyer, Valery Koltsov, Itar-Tass reported. |
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Port Exports ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Port Primorsk in the Leningrad Oblast increased oil exports by 23 percent in the first two months of 2007 compared to the same period last year, Interfax reported Tuesday. Spetsmornefteport Primorsk, a subsidiary of AK Transneft, exported over 12 million tons of oil. |
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The Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade has announced an open tender for managing companies to take over asset management in a Regional Venture Fund. |
 ATHENS — Greece, Russia and Bulgaria sealed on Thursday a long-awaited deal to build a trans-Balkan pipeline that will pump cheap crude to the Mediterranean and consolidate Russia’s influence in the European energy market. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev attended the signing of the deal that ended almost 15 years of negotiations on the creation of the 279-km (173-mile) pipeline. |
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MOSCOW — Russian stocks sank Wednesday, led by national electricity holding company Unified Energy Systems, natural gas producer Gazprom and oil producer LUKoil. |
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Tatneft Shares Surge MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Shares in Tatneft, Russia’s sixth-largest oil producer, jumped 8 percent Thursday after UBS AG raised its stock recommendation to “buy’’ from “hold.’’ Tatneft gained 8.47 rubles to 114.24 rubles ($4.37) a share as of 1:44 p.m. on the Micex Stock Exchange in Moscow, giving the company a market value of $11 billion. |
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 As another bout of risk aversion rocks the waters of international capital markets, we may be about to see who has been swimming naked as the tide goes out, to adopt Warren Buffett’s well-known phrase. It is therefore high time to assess the real sources of vulnerability in emerging markets. |
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A group of Germans in the Lower Saxony state legislature are trying to rescind the city of Braunschweig’s 1932 appointment of Adolf Hitler to a minor civil service post, which allowed the Austrian-born Nazi leader to gain German citizenship and ultimately to become Chancellor. |
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The last two months have been marked by a number of high-profile arrests, including those of Vladivostok Mayor Vladimir Nikolayev, former Bashkortostan Senator Igor Izmestyev and millionaire Vasily Boiko. These triumphs of justice evoke mixed emotions. The arrests bring some satisfaction. Even Primorye’s criminal elites considered Nikolayev an unsavory character. |
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 Earlier this year, the world celebrated the 175th anniversary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Virtually anyone who loves books can tell you that Carroll is the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” a masterpiece of children’s literature that has been translated into more than 100 languages, including Russian. |
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Promoter Denis Rubin, the art director of the music club Maina and the promoter of alternative music concerts at Decadance on Thursdays, has recently criticized the local public for not attending the concerts he promotes. |
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As a rule, the Golden Mask theatrical awards festival — which this year runs from March 28 to April 14 — requires a Moscow showing of its nominated productions within the time frame of the festival. But due to problems scheduling performances for those particular weeks, the Bolshoi Theater, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet have received a special dispensation this year to present their nominees ahead of schedule. Earlier this month, the Mariinsky took over the Bolshoi’s New Stage for the Golden Mask performances of its two nominated ballets: the nearly forgotten 19th-century classic “Ondine,” as reconstructed by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, and “‘The Overcoat’ After Gogol,” a dance setting by U. |
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 MOSCOW — Although there were doubts that it would happen at all and there are even more regarding whether it can happen again, the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is open and will continue to be so for the next two weeks. |
 “Rock music in Russia is always penned in, whoever is in power,” says Andrei Burlaka, whose book, “The Rock Encyclopedia: Popular Music in Leningrad-St. Petersburg 1965-2005” was published by Amphora Publishing late last month. The 416-page book is the first volume of a three-volume work that Burlaka, who prefers to be referred to as a “rock historian,” has been writing since the 1980s. Volumes II and III are expected to be published later this year. |
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 Ah, the smell of greasepaint, sawdust and celebrity desperation — it gets me every time. The other Sunday, Channel One unveiled its latest show, “A Circus With Stars,” featuring such luminaries as It Girl Ksenia Sobchak, scantily clad singer Zhanna Friske and buttoned-up anchorwoman Yekaterina Andreyeva. |
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Lenin@Zhiv Restaurant and Internet Cafe 40/68 Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel: 275 3558 Open 24 hours a day, food is served from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol 1,895 rubles ($72.80) What once was Propaganda, a Soviet theme bar popular with both locals and tourists as one of the first dining places in town to serve proper bar sandwiches, is now Lenin@Zhiv, another Soviet-inspired restaurant and Internet cafe. |
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TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday dismissed any new UN sanctions resolution as “a torn piece of paper” that would not stop Tehran’s nuclear work, the official IRNA news agency reported. U.S., British, French, German, Russian and Chinese diplomats at the United Nations have reached a tentative deal on imposing fresh sanctions on Iran and hope to introduce the measure at the Security Council on Thursday, providing their governments agree. “Issuing such torn pieces of paper … will not have an impact on Iranian nation’s will,” IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as telling a rally in central Iran. An earlier sanctions resolution passed by the Security Council in December was derided by Ahmadinejad in similar terms. |
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 HARARE — Zimbabwe on Thursday accused opposition supporters of stepping up violence against the government, amid rising world condemnation of President Robert Mugabe’s latest political crackdown. |
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Chavez ‘Not Personal’ CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Hugo Chavez has called President Bush a devil, a donkey and a drunkard. But on Wednesday the Venezuelan leader said his comments were “nothing personal.” Chavez, who had stepped up his verbal assault during Bush’s Latin American tour this week, suggested that the two adversaries might eventually overcome their differences and even play a game of dominos or baseball together. |
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SYDNEY — The shockwaves of Ian Thorpe’s sudden retirement from swimming last November are only just being felt by Australians. Thorpe had not competed at a major international meet since the 2004 Athens Olympics but his decision to hang up his goggles has cast a pall of gloom over the Australian team’s prospects at this month’s world championships. As the host nation, Australia were expecting to dominate the championships, riding a wave of public support on the back of the 24-year-old Thorpe’s phenomenal pulling power. However, his premature retirement has changed everything. Ticket sales have been slower than expected and the swagger that has become a trademark of the Australian team has suddenly disappeared. |
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 LONDON — Chelsea cut Manchester United’s Premier League lead to six points on Wednesday after a Frank Lampard penalty gave the champions a 1-0 win at struggling Manchester City. |
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Salavat Yulayev from Ufa edged SKA 3-2 in a shoot-out finish of game three of the first round of the Russian Hockey Super League playoffs Wednesday, sweeping the St. Petersburg team 3-0 in the best-of-five series. Yulayev scored two unanswered goals to force overtime, and held on through overtime eventually edging SKA 3-2 in shoot-out victory at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace. “We didn’t start out the way we wanted,” Salavat Yulayev head coach Sergei Mikhalev said. “It wasn’t a particularly active game and we ended up trailing early, but we pulled ourselves together and took it into overtime and were lucky to win the shootout. Even though we swept them in this series, SKA played with a lot of character and held us close in two games. |
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 NEW YORK — Two goals from Jiri Hudler pushed the Detroit Red Wings into the overall NHL lead with a 4-2 home win over the Nashville Predators on Wednesday. |
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FC Zenit St. Petersburg went through to the Russian Cup quarterfinals on Wednesday, after a 1:1 draw in the second leg of its last-16 tie with Saturn gave the St. Petersburg club a 2:1 aggregate victory. “On the evidence of both games, we deserved to go through,” Zenit’s Dutch coach, Dick Advocaat, said in post-match comments posted at www. |
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LONDON — The estimated cost of staging the 2012 London Olympic Games has more than doubled to 9.3 billion pounds ($18 billion), the government said on Thursday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive