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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a scathing attack on the West on Thursday, accusing Washington of imperialism and of starting a new arms race. Speaking a week before he meets leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrial nations in Germany, Putin said Russia’s tests on Tuesday of two new missiles were a direct response to U.S. moves to create a missile defense system. “We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race,” Putin told a joint Kremlin news conference with visiting Greek President Karolos Papoulias. |
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GREECE IS THE WORD
/ Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin (r) talks to his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias in Moscow on Thursday. Papoulias is in Russia on an official visit. |
 MOSCOW — The man charged by Britain with murdering former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko denied involvement on Thursday, saying British intelligence and a self-exiled Russian multi-millionaire were far more likely suspects. In comments likely to deepen a Russian-British feud reminiscent of Cold War spy scandals, Britain’s chief suspect Andrei Lugovoi rejected Litvinenko’s deathbed charge the Kremlin had ordered his poisoning with highly radioactive Polonium 210.
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MOSCOW — The Federal Customs Service has halted the export of blood samples and other biological materials, a decision experts say will put the lives of hundreds of sick people at risk. The agency has told courier services DHL and TNT Express that they can no longer send medical samples abroad, the companies said Wednesday. |
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Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates warned against preaching to Russia about democracy, and President Vladimir Putin promised not to preach to the European Union about Polish meat at a summit next week. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The State Duma gave tentative approval Friday to legislation aimed at restricting smoking in public places such as restaurants and waiting lounges in train stations and airports. Restaurant owners, who would face fines of up to $3,900 for noncompliance, expressed some unease about the bill. |
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NOVOKUZNETSK, Kemerovo Region — Steel giant Evraz Group announced Friday that it would assume full control of the company that owns the Yubileinaya mine, where a methane gas explosion a day earlier killed at least 39 miners. |
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MOSCOW — Britain’s ambassador on Monday submitted an official request to Russia for the extradition of the man suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko. British prosecutors said last week they wanted to bring Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi before a British court to try him for the murder of Litvinenko, who died on November 23 after being poisoned with polonium 210. |
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Foreign carmakers and components producers unveiled their investment plans for St. Petersburg at the AutoRussia 2007 conference that opened Tuesday at Grand Hotel Europe. American carmaker General Motors will open its plant by November 2008. The plant is being constructed in the Shushary district on the outskirts of St. |
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Baltic Aluminum, a hitherto little-known Russian company, is planning a $1.2 billion smelter near St. Petersburg to break United Company RusAl’s monopoly on output of the metal in the country, a local government official said Tuesday. |
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Constructive Issue ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Federal Service for Financial Markets has registered the second issue of LSR-Invest bonds for a total of three billion rubles ($115.4 million), Interfax reported Wednesday. The bonds will be in circulation for four years. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has given a surprise green light to carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but the government needs to start approving actual projects to unlock a multibillion-dollar market. |
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MOSCOW — Russia may strip Imperial Energy of all its oil production licences on Friday after the state environmental watchdog accused the London-listed firm of not meeting licensing obligations, an industry source said on Thursday. Rosnedra, Russia’s licences regulator, will discuss the issue at its fortnightly meeting on Friday, when the body also may decide to withdraw a licence from a subsidiary of oil firm TNK-BP to develop the huge Kovykta gas field in East Siberia. |
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Refined Kremlin MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The Russian government doesn’t plan to resume oil-pipeline service to a Lithuanian refinery after supplies were halted last year, Russian Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said Thursday. |
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This was Jo Durden-Smith’s last column for The St. Petersburg Times, published in April, 1997. He died of a stroke on May 10. He was 65. I first came to Russia in January 1988. I was living in London at the time, after 15 years in America, and was feeling completely out of place. |
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The people of Volgograd elected a new mayor last week, a Communist named Roman Grebennikov who at 31 was the youngest speaker of a regional legislature in modern Russian history. |
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 The brunette Nelli, the redhead Larisa and the annoying one, Nastya, compete for a chance to join the jet set in Muz-TV’s new reality show “Passport to Rublyovka.” The show’s makers don’t just give the girls an elektrichka ticket to the elite suburb and leave them to climb over the fences. Instead, they lay on a kind of finishing school for gold-diggers in the rough. The show, presented by blonde socialite Ulyana Tseitlina, puts up the three girls in the Sovietskaya hotel on Leningradsky Prospekt — not exactly the Metropole, but this is Muz-TV. |
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 Such was Anna Politkovskaya’s courage and determination in recording killings, torture and abductions in Chechnya that failing to read her articles in Novaya Gazeta — the country’s most progressive newspaper — meant risking ignorance of what Russia’s chattering classes were saying each week about the government’s latest outrage. |
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BANGKOK — Supporters of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra protested on Thursday against the court-ordered dissolution of their party and the political banishment of its leaders which threaten more turmoil. Some 2,000 people rallied peacefully near Government House a day after the ruling, shouting slogans against the coup leaders who ousted Thaksin in a bloodless putsch last year. |
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AUCKLAND — New Zealand and France, the world’s two top-ranked teams, lock horns at Auckland’s Eden Park on Saturday in a match billed as a possible preview of this year’s World Cup final. The All Blacks are ranked number one after winning last year’s southern hemisphere Tri-Nations title while the French confirmed their place as Europe’s best side with victory in the 2007 Six Nations. Both teams are on the long road they hope will lead to the World Cup final in Paris in October and although the French have left out most of their leading players the significance of Saturday’s match is not lost on either side. The game will be played almost 20 years to the day after New Zealand beat France in the inaugural World Cup final at Eden Park in 1987, and the All Blacks are desperate to strike an early psychological blow. |
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 PARIS — On her way to the French Open, Maria Sharapova had to make an important decision: face her fear of needles and receive a painful shot in her injured, inflamed shoulder, or take time off and skip one of the biggest tournaments of the year. |
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NEWPORT, Wales — The Wales Open lost one of its pre-tournament favorites on Thursday when Welshman Stephen Dodd was forced to withdraw due to a migraine. Dodd, a three-times tour winner whose last victory came in the 2006 European Open, is the latest Welsh casualty after Ian Woosnam decided not to play because of a long-term viral infection. |
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LONDON — England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff is to undergo a third operation on his troublesome left ankle. Flintoff, sidelined for the first two tests of the series against West Indies, will have investigative surgery over the weekend and miss the remaining two tests which begin on June 7 and 15. |
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NEW YORK — The San Antonio Spurs advanced to the NBA finals with a crushing 109-84 victory over the Utah Jazz on Wednesday. Tim Duncan and Tony Parker each scored 21 points, helping the Spurs clinch the Western Conference series 4-1 and book a place in the NBA finals for the third time in five seasons. |
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TORONTO —The New York Yankees pounded the Toronto Blue Jays 10-5 in a controversial road win on Wednesday that snapped the Yankees’ five-game losing streak . |
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 Dear Readers, It is a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity to invite you to take part in this year’s celebrations of the Swedish National Day, which will take place on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa, just outside the Consulate General of Sweden, on Saturday, 2 June. |
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On Saturday, June 2, on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa, by the Swedish Consulate General, the Swedish Days in St. Petersburg festivities will get underway. |
 As part of the celebrations on Malaya Konyushennaya on Saturday and at the Mega store in Dybenko on Sunday, two top division floorball players will be giving master classes and organizing games for all those interested in this young but fast-developing Swedish sport. |
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You might imagine, with its noble royal heritage or its cutting-edge approach to sleek design, that Sweden would disavow something as seemingly low-rent and cheesy as ABBA, the chart-topping pop music phenomenon that originated there some 35 years ago. |
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What is commonly known as Lapland is known to its native Sami people as Sapmi, an internationally recognized region that covers northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia (Murmansk oblast). But it is its southern Swedish section that offers the greatest travel and tourism opportunities — not all of them earthbound. The Lapland part of Sweden covers about a quarter of the country, and, straddling the Arctic Circle, is snowbound and frozen from November to April or longer. In these conditions it is little wonder that nearly 20 years ago a company specializing in rafting, walking tours, reindeer corrals and Sami cultural tours during the summer decided to make use of the winter and rent out an igloo they had built to house intrepid guests: the world famous Icehotel was born. |
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 In the run up to the Days of Sweden celebrations on June 2 and 3, we asked St. Petersburgers whether they had been to Sweden and what they thought about the Scandinavian country. |
 In Sweden, the words “invention” and “design” go hand in hand. Both notions are meant to improve people’s everyday life by uniting technology, progressive thinking and beauty. Swedish Inventions, Swedish Design, an exhibition held in an outlet of Ikea, the iconic Swedish furniture and housewares retailer, in Dybenko this Sunday, aims to prove it. The display, featuring about 40 objects — from clothes for nursing mothers, robotic vacuum cleaners, rubber horseshoes and electricity generated from the ocean’s waves — shows how innovation meets functional design in action. |
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 2007 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sweden’s world famous children’s author, Astrid Lindgren, whose works have been translated into 85 languages and published in over 100 countries. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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