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Valery Zhelanov fought back tears as he watched amateur footage of OMON riot police kicking a young man as they dragged him to a police car. The victim is Zhelanov’s son Artyom, a political science student, who went to watch the Dissenters’ March on Sunday because of his academic interest in democratic protest. |
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A group of prominent Russian human rights advocates on Thursday sent an open letter to foreign ministers of the EU countries and the U.S. asking them to close their borders to Russian officials responsible for violations of people’s rights during the recent series of dissenters’ marches. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Moscow City Court on Thursday declared Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party an extremist organization and declared it illegal. Moscow prosecutor Yury Syomin told Interfax News Agency his office — which initiated the case — was satisfied with the outcome. Last month a Moscow prosecutor banned the party on extremism charges, suspending the radical opposition group for the second time since it was outlawed in June 2006. Party members now risk being sent to prison for up to four years if they decide to take to the streets. National Bolsheviks say the legal moves against them will not stop them from fighting for their cause. Limonov called the decision illegitimate and branded the whole trial a farce. |
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 MOSCOW — About 20 police officers locked themselves in the Moscow offices of a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization Wednesday, and they were continuing to confiscate papers from filing cabinets and desks late into the evening. |
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MOSCOW — Journalists at one of the country’s biggest private radio networks said Wednesday that they had been told to keep Kremlin critics off the air by new managers parachuted in from state-run television. Managers at Russian News Service — which provides news to Russkoye Radio, the country’s most listened-to radio station, and its sister stations — denied they were imposing censorship. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the way to wean the economy off oil and gas was to think small. Putin unveiled a $1 billion initiative to develop nanotechnology and turn the Kurchatov nuclear institute into the country’s research hub for the science. |
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 2007 could be the year when Trans-Technologies finally gets permission for the use of stem cell technologies in medical clinics. The St. Petersburg-based company has spent the last five years researching the field and now hopes to commercialize its discoveries. |
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New pharmaceuticals giant Bayer Schering Pharma, a result of the merger between German companies Bayer and Schering, is to take advantage of the new situation with a strategy focusing on more innovative and specialized products, the managers said at a news conference Thursday. |
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TOKYO — Shiseido Co., Japan’s biggest cosmetics maker, said on Thursday it would set up a unit in Russia, moving deeper into the rapidly growing market and fuelling competition with global rivals such as L’Oreal. Shiseido aims to sell luxury products targeting the country’s wealthy consumers, a new group in resource-rich Russia. Russia’s cosmetics and toiletry market has posted double-digit growth in recent years and reached 858 billion yen ($7.3 billion) in 2006, up more than 10 percent for the year, the company said. Shiseido said it would set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Shiseido (RUS) LLC, in Moscow in May and start selling products next January. |
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 MOSCOW — Gazprom and Shell late Wednesday signed a protocol on the state-run gas giant’s entry into Sakhalin-2, closing the final chapter on months of uncertainty surrounding the world’s largest integrated oil and gas project. |
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MOSCOW — Roman Abramovich held on to his top spot on Forbes Russia’s rich list, released Thursday, with his fortune edging up 5 percent to $19.2 billion. But the pack of challengers is closing, with the top 100 Russians increasing their wealth by an average of 36 percent over the last year. The biggest gainer on the list was banking-to-vodka mogul Rustam Tariko, whose fortune more than doubled to $5. |
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 Police detained more than 200 participants of Moscow opposition rallies on Saturday, and almost the same number Sunday in St. Petersburg. These were the government’s official totals for the weekend. Both the preparations on the part of the authorities’ ahead of the protests and their conduct during them were unusual and telling. |
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I am fascinated by the similarities between Russia and Latin America. The latest wave of repression against critics of President Vladimir Putin and the victory obtained by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in last Sunday’s referendum, which provides a green light toward setting up a constituent assembly that will give him authoritarian powers, remind us that despotic populism is alive and kicking. |
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Grief, horror, sorrow and sympathy — after a tragedy like Monday’s shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, these are the appropriate first responses from not only typical Americans but the nation’s political leaders. But in the face of tragedy the responsibility of political leaders is not just to look back in sorrow. |
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 SKIF11, or the 11th Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival, the largest and most notorious fringe music and arts event in St. Petersburg, opened on Thursday, with a film and video-art program, but its three nights of concerts and performances start in earnest on Friday. |
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Last Sunday’s Dissenters’ March, the anti-Kremlin rally in St. Petersburg organized by the Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, demonstrated the authorities’ fast-growing technological sophistication and their absolute ruthlessness. |
 Once a year, the ballet world turns its attention to St. Petersburg as the Mariinsky Theater hosts its annual International Ballet Festival. This year’s festival, which closes Sunday, opened triumphantly with three premieres that attest to the Mariinsky’s usual praiseworthy creativity. The major premiere was the reconstruction of a “lost” 19th-century ballet: Marius Petipa’s “Le Reveil de Flore” (The Awakening of Flora), created in 1894 to celebrate the wedding of Princess Ksenia Alexandrovna, the sister of Tsar Nicholas II. |
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 St. Petersburg designers offer a gloomy view on upcoming ready-to-wear fashions. Fashion, being a form of art, reflects reality. But according to the St. |
 If the surname Marshall rings a bell when one thinks of music and movement, it might be because of Rob Marshall, the director of the sweeping 2005 Hollywood hit “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and the Oscar-winning screen adaptation of the musical “Chicago” (2002), which Marshall also choreographed. But his younger sister, Kathleen, also a choreographer and director, who is currently in St. Petersburg to give a masterclass, is not left in her brother’s shadow. |
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 For four days until last Sunday, the Museum of Anthropology hosted “Architecture in St. Petersburg 2007,” a special exhibit put on by the Union of Architectural Firms or OAM (a self-described “symbol of enterprise, quality of services and security of success”), and the Pro Arte Institute, an organization founded in 1999 to promote contemporary culture in the fields of visual art, music and dance in St Petersburg. |
 It was last December that socialite novelist Oksana Robski and her friend, It Girl Ksenia Sobchak, launched their perfume, To Marry a Millionaire, posing on the packaging in vampy wedding dresses. It was a very reasonably priced dream at 500 rubles. But they promised more: a book of the same title that would initiate readers into the mysterious art of big-wallet hunting. |
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La Presse 69 Nevsky Prospekt Open from 7 a.m to 11 p.m. Menu in English and Russian Credit cards accepted Dinner for two with alcohol: 2,110 rubles ($82) It comes as something of a relief to leave Nevsky Prospekt’s hippoish hordes for the empty second-floor calm of La Presse. |
 There is a Marxist axiom that quantity will sooner or later turn into quality. We all know how well those statements reflect reality and what is happening in Russian cinemas right now is yet more proof. Two of the most widely playing movies, “One Love in a Million” (“Odna Lyubov Na Million”) and “Brave Days” (“Derzkiye Dni”) are both crime themed, both star totally unknown actors and both are complete trash. |
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VALENCIA, Spain — The sailors are trained, the yachts honed, the excitement palpable and yet the America’s Cup is already three days late because one ingredient is conspicuous by its absence — the wind. By its very nature, sailing is one of the hardest sports to plan given its dependence on the gods. At the last America’s Cup in Auckland, races were postponed time and again as the wind flickered back and forth between too light and gale force. When Swiss syndicate Alinghi won the Auld Mug in 2003, one of their top criteria in choosing where to host their defence was precisely the weather. Stable winds not only make for regular racing but also help ensure television channels block out time to show regattas and are not just left with pictures of sailors sunbathing on deck. |
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 CARDIFF — Poland and Ukraine were chosen in a shock vote by European football’s governing body UEFA on Wednesday to jointly host the Euro 2012 championships. |
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LONDON — Two spectacular goals from England winger Shaun Wright-Phillips kept Chelsea firmly on Manchester United’s heels after a 4-1 win over West Ham United at Upton Park on Wednesday. Victory lifted Jose Mourinho’s side, winners of the last two Premier League titles, back to within three points of leaders Manchester United with five matches remaining. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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