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KIEV — Ukraine’s antagonistic leaders said on Thursday they favored a compromise to resolve a standoff prompted by the president’s dissolution of parliament, but neither appeared to make immediate concessions. President Viktor Yushchenko, swept to power by the mass protests of the 2004 “Orange Revolution,” dissolved the chamber and called a new parliamentary election for May 27 after months of sniping with his arch-rival, Ukraine’s prime minister. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and the majority backing him in parliament have asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of the president’s decree. Ukraine watchers agree that any court ruling would only widen a rift between the conflicting parties. |
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IT’S A TOSS UP!
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Russian soldiers throw their rifles in the air during training for a World War Two victory parade on Palace Square on Thursday. Russia has started preparations to marke the 62nd anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. |
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The St. Petersburg branch of the liberal party Yabloko found itself under fire Wednesday when its regional leader Maxim Reznik received a written warning from the city prosecutor’s office ahead of an opposition event known as the Dissenters’ March scheduled for Sunday. The prosecutor’s office threatened to suspend the local branch the party for up to six months if Yabloko fails to “correct violations of the Russian legislation it made during [a previous] Dissenters’ March on March 3.
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MOSCOW — Nongovernmental organizations are scrambling to file their accounting paperwork to authorities by a deadline Sunday, exactly one year after a controversial law on NGOs came into effect. All NGOs must file their annual reports to the Federal Registration Service by Sunday or risk facing closure, and NGO representatives said Wednesday that they are suffocating from the additional paperwork required under the revamped law. |
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MOSCOW — A senior U.S. trade official said Russia was making only slow progress toward entering the World Trade Organization and that Congress was not close to dropping a key trade restriction. |
All photos from issue.
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 Three St. Petersburgers, including a man who has never sailed further than the nearby town of Kronshtadt, are to set off on Sunday to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a handmade yacht. The journey taken by Sergei Tikhonov, Boris Kupriyanov and Artyom Drokanov to New York and back covers more than 13,000 nautical miles (about 25,000 kilometers). |
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MOSCOW — Cult leader Grigory Grabovoi warned a judge on Tuesday that she had better free him or risk a catastrophic explosion at the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant. |
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MOSCOW — Russia wants compensation to send a collection of trophy art back to Germany, Culture and Press Minister Alexander Sokolov told the State Duma on Wednesday. Brought from Germany soon after the end of World War II by Soviet Army Captain Viktor Baldin, the valuable collection — 362 drawings by masters such as Titian, Rembrandt, Delacroix and Van Gogh — ended up at the State Hermitage Museum in St. |
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Fosborn Home mortgage brokerage opened a St. Petersburg branch this week in a move that signals the start of an ambitious program of regional expansion. By supplementing the standard range of brokerage services with a number of innovations, the managers hope to seize a considerable share of the local market. |
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New Brew ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltika has started supplying a new sort of beer, “Baltika N 1 Light,” to the Finnish market, Interfax reported Tuesday. |
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 MOSCOW — The country’s largest drug maker, Pharmstandard, plans to float a stake of up to 40 percent in London and Moscow, making it the first Russian pharmaceuticals firm to list abroad. |
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 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s recent decision to dissolve Ukraine’s parliament is a step so risky that it could threaten the integrity of his political legacy. Contrary to the nature of heated discussions about the constitutionality of Yushchenko’s decree, the main question about his decision is not a legal but political one. |
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“They did exactly as they should have done from start to finish,” said Jock Stirrup, Britain’s chief of defense staff. He was referring to the release of 15 British sailors who had been taken hostage by Iranian forces. |
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A neoclassical ballet set to rap, a soothing dose of classical hits and a reconstruction of an 18th century work originally presented by the Mariinsky Theater to Princess Ksenia Alexandrovna, the sister of Russia’s last tsar Nicholas II, on the occasion of her wedding, are in store for ballet fans at the Seventh International Mariinsky Ballet Festival, which opened Thursday and runs through April 22. |
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This weekend’s central outdoor event is the Dissenters’ March (Marsh nesoglasnykh) — the second such march since a March 3 breakthrough anti-Putin rally, one of the biggest opposition demonstrations in recent years. |
 In April, the Vladimir Nabokov Apartment Museum located in the former Nabokov family mansion on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa in St. Petersburg celebrates Vladimir Nabokov’s birthday and the 10th anniversary of the founding of the museum. The latter commemoration is simpler to observe than the former. |
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Leos Janacek’s dark expressionist drama arrived in St. Petersburg on April 4 with the premiere of “Jenufa,” the composer’s best-known opera, at the Mariinsky Theater. |
 Do Russian women shave their legs? What’s the deal with homosexuality in Russia? These are among the questions tackled in a new glossy magazine whose debut issue appeared last month in U.S., Canadian and British bookstores. Russia!, an English-language quarterly with an initial print run of 20,000, aims to serve as a reality check to Western conceptions of Russia as a place populated with spies, vodka-guzzling chess players and mail-order brides. |
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German Days in St. Petersburg, an annual program of events designed to highlight many aspects of German life, takes place this year from Monday through Sunday, April 22. |
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Roundtables Monday IN GERMAN “How consulting works? Is Russia a service desert?” Among the participants are the General Consulate of Germany in St. Petersburg, Russia Consulting, Beiten Burkhardt, Ernst&Young, Roedl& Partner, Dagmar Lorenz. Cafe D, 4 p. |
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When you find yourself trying to decipher Mongolian song lyrics and cooing over a Danish drag queen’s chihuahuas, it can only mean one thing: The Eurovision Song Contest is on its way. |
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Gosti 109 Fontanka. Tel: 517-2469 Open from 1 p.m. to 6 a.m. Menu in English and Russian Big dinner for two (without alcohol): 1,180 rubles Many still mourn the demise of Platforma, a progressive music club that closed in October last year. Not only did Platforma host great concerts that attracted an alternative but mature audience, it also served great food all night long. Gosti, a recently opened cafe located near Sennaya Ploshchad, comes close to filling the vacuum left by Platforma, not least because it is managed by several former Platforma stalwarts, such as local promoter Denis Rubin and kitchen wizard Alexei Dronin, creator of the most delicious borshch in town. |
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 “Waiting for a Miracle” (V Ozhidanii Chuda) throws you into a surreal world from the start, probably unintentionally. It is quite bizarre to see the 20th Century Fox fanfare followed by visuals of St. |
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MANAMA — Kimi Raikkonen can go flat out for victory in Bahrain on Sunday after being powerless to prevent McLaren’s Fernando Alonso seizing the lead in the Formula One championship last weekend. The Finn was dominant on his Ferrari debut in the Australian season-opener last month, winning from pole position and with the fastest lap, but engine worries slowed his efforts in Malaysia. |
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DUBLIN — A European tournament featuring clubs from all six current participating nations will go ahead next season even if top French and English sides stick to their boycott, the European Rugby Cup (ERC) said on Wednesday. |
 BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — England overcame another nervy batting display to defeat Bangladesh by four wickets in their World Cup Super Eights match on Wednesday to keep their semi-final hopes alive. England pacemen led by man-of-the-match Sajid Mahmood skittled out Bangladesh for 143 in the 38th over on a bouncy Kensington Oval pitch. |
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Agence France Press LONDON — England will take on Brazil in their first match at the new Wembley Stadium on June 1, the Football Association (FA) confirmed Wednesday. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — The 2007 Russian Hockey League champion will be determined in game five of play-off finals Friday night in Kazan. Ak Bars Kazan edged Metallurg Magnitogorsk 4-3 in game four to tie the series at 2 games a piece. Metallurg crushed the defending champion in game three 4-1. If Ak Bars wins they will be the first team to win back-to-back championships since Lokomotiv Yaroslavl won in 2002 and 2003. |
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