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MOSCOW — A firm hand on my shoulder caused me to stop firing questions at young men being frog-marched into a police truck by OMON riot police near Pushkin Square. I turned around and saw it was a policeman. Assuming he just wanted me out of the way, I backed off. But his grip tightened and he spun me around and pushed me toward the truck. “What the hell have I done?” I shouted. I wasn’t looking for a response. I just wanted to register with the police and hundreds of onlookers that I had done nothing wrong. A police officer manning the door asked me my name, which I gave, and without waiting to be shoved into the back of the truck, I clambered inside. |
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 Violence erupted at the end of an opposition rally in central St. Petersburg on Sunday as riot police wielding truncheons beat and chased protesters walking to a nearby metro station. |
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The management team of St. Petersburg’s professional ice hockey team SKA officially named U.S. specialist Barry Smith as head coach and director of operations last week. “This was a very difficult decision,” Smith, who resigned from his position as associate coach with the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes, said last week. |
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MOSCOW — Two army officers have been charged with helping organize target practice for money at an artillery academy in Yekaterinburg. Customers could fire different weapons at the academy’s firing range, Mikhail Yanenko, assistant to the chief military prosecutor, said Friday. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky said in comments published Friday that he was plotting a coup to remove President Vladimir Putin from office by force. “We need to use force to change this regime,” Berezovsky told British newspaper The Guardian. “It isn’t possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure.” Asked by The Guardian whether he was working to bring about a revolution, Berezovsky said: “You are absolutely correct.” Berezovsky also claimed to be in close contact with members of the political leadership who share his views. |
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TRAM TRIP
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children looking out of the window of a vintage tram on Saturday. The tram was taking part in an event marking the 65th anniversary of the reopening of tramlines during the Second World War. |
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MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said Friday that people arrested for minor offenses should no longer be held in the country’s overcrowded pre-trial detention facilities. Chaika told the Federation Council that holding small-time offenders in detention facilities was a burden on the federal budget. He also said detention facilities faced an overcrowding crisis.
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MOSCOW — The State Duma accused the United States on Friday of using non-governmental organizations to meddle in Russia’s domestic affairs and called for a federal inquiry into whether NGOs were spending foreign grants on political activities in an election season. Duma deputies unanimously approved a resolution expressing concern over “growing and unprecedented attempts” by the United States to interfere in internal issues. |
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 MOSCOW — Analysts have valued the country’s No. 2 bank, state-run VTB, in a core range of $30 billion to $35 billion ahead of its international stock market float, a banking source close to the offering said Friday. The valuations, from analysts at the banks organizing the first float by a Russian bank in London, are well above initial estimates of $20 billion to $25 billion that state-owned VTB would attain via the float. VTB, the former-Soviet foreign trade bank, plans to float a stake of 22 percent to 23 percent. At the higher valuations VTB could raise $8 billion, which CEO Andrei Kostin wants to invest in expanding its retail operations and investment banking acquisitions. |
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PICK PICTURE
Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters
Workers harvest asparagus at a farm near Berlin on Monday. The asparagus harvest attracts a seasonal migration aof workers from Eastern Europe to pick the crop, a low-paid job in Germany. |
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London remains the most attractive IPO market in Europe. According to the latest survey “IPO Watch Europe” by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 297 companies raised a total of 29.7 billion euros ($40.25 billion) in London last year. It was another record year for Russian IPO activity with Rosneft, Severstal and Comstar among the five largest international offerings welcomed in London, according to the survey released last week.
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MOSCOW — Surgutneftegaz is the Ren-TV television shareholder that sold its stake to Bank Rossiya. Secretive oil firm Surgut in December sold a 75 percent stake in Media-Invest, which holds 35 percent in Ren-TV, to Bank Rossiya. The bank now has a 70 percent stake in the channel, previously one of the country’s most independent-minded TV stations. |
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Investing with Energy ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Lenenergo power distribution company will invest 15.2 billion rubles ($590 million) into the development of power facilities this year compared to the 5. |
 HANOVER — Gazprom plans to build a power station in Germany, expanding further into the electricity market with one of its first major projects outside Russia. Gazprom said Friday that it planned to supply industrial customers and to trade power on Europe’s largest power market with the 400 million euro ($541. |
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MOSCOW — The $22 billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project, taken over last year by Gazprom, has dropped PricewaterhouseCoopers as its auditor, the Industry and Energy Ministry said in a report obtained Friday. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s oil companies will have to pay mineral extraction tax on the volume of oil in their oil fields, regardless of how much they actually produce, under a plan unveiled Friday to punish under-producers. Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev wants to encourage oil firms to eke out as much as they can from each well by penalizing those who fail to produce the volumes laid out in their license terms, his ministry said in a statement. “This way, companies will pay for non-achievement of the oil extraction figure set out in the project documents as if they had achieved it,” the statement said. “This principle will be much more effective than simple increases in fines. |
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 KRASNOYARSK — It was built by gulag slaves during World War II and soon presented its first platinum and palladium ingots to Josef Stalin. Six decades later, the Krasnoyarsk Nonferrous Metals Plant, known by its Soviet-era acronym Krastsvetmet, works closely with the West and is even considering going public. |
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MOSCOW — The receiver of bankrupt oil firm Yukos will auction its service companies on May 16, the receiver’s office announced in a notice in government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Saturday. The starting price for the lot will be 1.67 billion rubles ($65 million), the notice said. |
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MOSCOW — A boom in public share offerings is fraught with inflationary risks, but poses no threat to the stability of the currency market, a senior Central Bank official said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Food retailer X5 said Friday that its board had approved a $1 billion secondary share offering to finance acquisitions and organic growth. The issue is at the low end of a $1 billion to $2 billion range suggested earlier by CEO Lev Khasis. Analysts had expressed concern that raising too much fresh equity capital might be earnings-dilutive. |
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 Russia is once again standing on the threshold of WTO accession. Officials involved in the negotiations are once again giving rein to unrestrained optimism. As for the dangers liberalized trade poses for Russia’s economy, they say their hope is that Russia will have a greater role in determining the rules of the game once it has achieved membership. |
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Should Paul Wolfowitz leave the World Bank? The answer to that question is yes. Will Wolfowitz leave? The answer to that question is murkier. The United States gave Wolfowitz the job and it will decide whether he will stay. |
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Flying out of Moscow recently, I chatted with the head of a medium-sized technology firm. His Russian client recently placed an order worth $1.5 million to $2 million. As the company was just gearing up to fill the order, the client called to apologize for making a mistake. Their order would be closer to $15 million to $20 million. |
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Since there is very little likelihood of even a moderately competitive presidential election breaking out in Russia anytime soon, it is a lot more interesting to follow these campaigns in other countries. The presidential campaign in the United States has already begun, with open campaigning already well under way for a vote that will only be held in November 2008. |
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Last year, about 2,500 immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union began their conversions to Judaism. The official framework of Orthodox Judaism — the only one recognized by Israeli law — typically takes about 10 months and involves studying Jewish law and thought, navigating an intricate bureaucracy, and adopting an Orthodox lifestyle, including strict adherence to kosher dietary laws and observance of Jewish holidays. |
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Of the epithets regularly applied to President Vladimir Putin and his political practices, “authoritarian” in particular seems to rankle the Kremlin and its supporters. But what other word comes to mind when 9,000 riot police officers are sent out onto the streets to handle several thousand protesters, as they were Saturday? Part of the explanation for the government reaction Saturday is that, with Putin leaving office next year, those in power are determined to make sure nothing like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine happens here. |
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The success of the “Chukotka experiment” has made it tough for other regional leaders. By uniting business and political power in his own person, Roman Abramovich did much for the region: Between 2000 and 2006 the average monthly salary of Chukotka residents grew from 5,687 rubles ($220) to 25,114 rubles ($970) and the portion of the population living under the poverty line fell from 50. |
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A lot has been said lately about how the European Union has staved off war on its continent since the signing of the Treaty of Rome 50 years ago. Really? How about the great Banana War, in which the combined forces of the New World and Third World were routed, and the European Commission boldly proclaimed that nothing with “abnormal curvature” could be called a banana? (Britons who persist in claiming that the European Union mandated straight bananas are just trying to malign it. |
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AMSTERDAM — ABN AMRO reported double-digit earnings gains on Monday, strengthening the hand of the underperforming Dutch lender as it enters the last days of merger talks with Barclays and faces a rival break-up bid. ABN shares — on the first day of trade since a rival consortium of three suitors emerged late on Friday — rose more than 5 percent to a record 35.6 euros in morning trade, taking it above the level Barclays is expected to pay and valuing ABN at 68 billion euros ($92.13 billion). Spain’s Santander, Royal Bank of Scotland and Dutch-Belgian group Fortis approached ABN last week asking for access to its books and management, days before ABN’s 30-day period of exclusive talks with Barclays ends on Wednesday. The banks say they want their bid to be friendly, but sources close to the matter said late on Sunday ABN would not open its books until it had more details on the consortium’s plans — raising the prospect of what another source close to the situation called a “more aggressive approach” from the trio. |
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APPLIED PUBLIC
Paul Yeung / Reuters
An employee distributes an application form for China CITIC Bank during its IPO in Hong Kong on Monday. The offering could raise $5.4 billion. |
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TOKYO — The yen hit a record low against the euro on Monday as Group of Seven finance officials did not single out the Japanese currency’s weakness at a weekend meeting, before trimming its losses as investors took profits on the drop. The G7 repeated its call for exchange rates to reflect economic fundamentals, and cited China again by name in calling for greater currency flexibility, using the exact same wording in its communique as after its February meeting in Germany.
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BRUSSELS — The European Commission raised concerns on Monday over the controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and expressed hopes it would not hit plans to boost cooperation between the two key aid bodies. Wolfowitz has said he will not stand down over a promotion he approved for his girlfriend despite increasing fears among bank member governments that the affair is hurting its image as an agency that is tough on corruption. “We are concerned about the institution, we are concerned about these allegations and of course we are monitoring this,” a spokesman for EU Aid Commission Louis Michel said. “We hope this will be dealt with in the proper way. We hope also it won’t affect a cooperation that is increasing and which is crucial in particular for developing countries and more in particular for Africa,” he told a regular news briefing. |
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ETERNAL FLAME
Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
Hungarians hold candles Sunday at Budapest's synagogue on Holocaust Day. More than 500,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during World War II. |
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WASHINGTON — It has taken a little over 200 years, but Washingtonians finally sense that their quirky status as citizens without voting representation in the U.S. Congress might just be coming to an end. The self-styled “capital of the free world” has been a democratic black spot for the United States — drawing sharp criticism from rights groups and even the United Nations.
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LONDON — British newspapers devoted page after page on Sunday to speculation over why Prince William’s romance with Kate Middleton ended, with one saying Queen Elizabeth had told him “we don’t want another Diana.” An official spokesman for William, eldest son of the late Princess Diana, said: “We will not discuss the prince’s private life. |
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Rabbits Block Road BUDAPEST, Hungary — Five thousand rabbits blocked a Hungarian highway Monday after the truck that was carrying them crashed. The animals came free after the truck collided with another vehicle and overturned, police officials said. |
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STUTTGART, Germany — Uzbekistan’s Ruslan Chagaev upset the odds to outpoint defending champion Nikolai Valuyev of St. Petersburg in their World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight title bout on Saturday. Two of the three judges scored the contest in favour of the challenger by 115-113 and 117-111 margins, while the third called it a 114-114 draw. |
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MANAMA, Bahrain — Lewis Hamilton celebrated a Formula One record and transformed himself into a championship contender just three races into his grand prix career on Sunday. |
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Sweden won its second straight gold medal at the Bolshoi Priz junior ice hockey tournament winning all four of its games held last week at the Yubileiny Sports Palace. Team Sweden cruised to the gold medal without trailing once during the round-robin competition. |
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Metallurg Magnitogorsk became the 2007 Russian Hockey Champions after edging Ak Bars Kazan 2-1 in game five of the RHL finals Friday night in Kazan. Vitaly Atyushov wasted no time capitalizing on an early power play giving Metallurg a early 1-0 lead 5:45. |
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Issues Archive