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MOSCOW — The specter of Andrei Chikatilo, Russia’s most notorious serial killer, hovers luridly over the case of Alexander Pichushkin, whom prosecutors say killed 52 people over 14 years, many in the sprawling Bittsevsky Park in southwest Moscow. Compared with Chikatilo’s bizarrely savage crimes — he was convicted in 1992 of murdering 52 women and children, dismembering victims and eating some of their remains — Pichushkin’s purported style was methodical and workmanlike. Typically he would invite elderly people to drink alcohol in a secluded part of the park and then bash in their skulls with a hammer or another blunt object after they were drunk, police and prosecutors say. |
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POND LIFE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Boaters enjoying the summer sun on the pond in Park Pobedy on Monday, as temperatures reached record highs. Sunday saw highs of 29.6 deg. Celsius, surpassing the previous record of 27.5 deg. Celsius set on Aug. 12, 1972. |
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Weather Fans Fires LENINGRAD OBLAST (SPT) — Twenty five fires destroyed 63.14 hectares of forest in the Leningrad Oblast during the weekend, Regnum.ru reported. Most of the fires were rated at grade three according to their severity out of a possible five grades, but fires in the Gatchinsky, Luzhsky, Volosovsky, Kingisepsky and Lomonosovsky districts were rated at grade four.
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All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The United Russia leadership has floated the idea of removing unpopular governors from the top of its regional party lists ahead of State Duma elections in December, while the Kremlin is reportedly considering removing some governors from office ahead of the vote. Andrei Vorobyov, head of United Russia’s central committee, said Friday that the body would closely examine the results of recent regional elections, held March 11, when deciding whether to put governors at the top of the pro-Kremlin party’s lists in their regions for the December poll. “We are proceeding from the fact that our regional lists should be headed by respected and worthy people,” Vorobyov said. |
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KILLER SPILLER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A sewage outlet flowing into the Izhora River. On Monday, Ekho-Moskvy radio station reported that 100 kilograms of dead fish were found in the river. Experts believe the cause was pollution. |
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Governor Valentina Matviyenko briefed President Vladimir Putin on key matters facing St. Petersburg on Sunday during a presidential visit to the city that included a pilgrimage to the grave of Putin’s political mentor. At the meeting in Strelna, Matviyenko summarized for Putin the city’s main socio-economic developments, saying that “real income has increased by 8 percent, 7 percent of which was made up of industrial growth,” Regnum.
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MOSCOW — Alexander Rysyev, a penitentiary system official in Krasnodar, was shocked when a former prisoner released two months prior came to him and asked to be imprisoned again. Though his request was a rarity, ex-convicts returning to prison are not. |
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MOSCOW — Trying to beat the traffic by taking a sidewalk shortcut became a lot more expensive for drivers who get caught, as new traffic violations establishing higher fines came into force at midnight last Friday. |
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LOMO industrial enterprise has started its funding of commercial real estate projects by handing out a loan of 500 million rubles ($19.63 million) to RGS Nedvizhimost construction company. The loan will be used to finance the construction of the Clover Plaza center at Ushakovskaya embankment, Interfax reported Friday. |
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A new state giant has been born that will shape the future of the economy by its ability to parcel out the country’s massive energy wealth. But insiders fear that the Development Bank is already showing signs that it will not be able to tread the fine line between serving state interests and remaining economically viable. |
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Rubber Sales ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Nokian Tires net sales accounted for 432.5 million euros in the first half of 2007 — a 23.8 percent increase compared to the same period last year, the company said last week in a statement. Sales in Russia and the CIS grew by 52. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow arbitration court on Friday upheld a 17 billion ruble ($666.7 million) lawsuit against oil firm Russneft over tax evasion, increasing the firm’s debt before its planned sale to a Kremlin-friendly owner. |
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MOSCOW — Baltika Breweries, the country’s largest beer company, completed improvements that will enable its brewery in the city of Samara to triple output as beer consumption rises, the St. Petersburg-based firm said Friday in a statement. The plant can now brew 6. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s ambitious plans to turn the country’s IT industry into an economic powerhouse are being derailed by labyrinthine bureaucracy and endless jousting by government officials, industry players say. |
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Last week’s raids at the offices and warehouses of the country’s leading mobile phone retailers may end up hurting more than just the executives under investigation. On Friday, for the third day running, investigators carried out searches in connection with a contraband case dating back to 2005 that was opened after Interior Ministry officials impounded around 200,000 handsets at Sheremetyevo Airport, Interfax reported. |
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 Workers at the AvtoVAZ factory staged a strike last week demanding higher salaries of 25,000 rubles ($980) per month. That is a very nice sum for the average resident of Tolyatti, where the plant is based — a city of about 700,000 people located almost 1,000 kilometers southeast of Moscow. |
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“Sorry, but I was not made for journalism,” read the email I got last Sunday from a girl answering the job vacancy at our newspaper. I had my suspicions therefore about her ability to become part of our team but everyone has to be given a chance, so the 22- year-old with a degree in management was told to compile the comments of financial analysts and bankers into a business story. |
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For a brief moment, it seemed that Dr. Frederick Cook and U.S. Admiral Robert Peary, credited with reaching the North Pole in 1908 and 1909, respectively, had risen from the mists to renew their race to the North Pole. On Aug. 2, a couple of Moscow legislators in a small submersible vessel deposited their nation’s flag on the seabed 4.2 kilometers under the polar ice cap — backing up Russia’s claim to nearly half of the Arctic Ocean floor. For its part, Canada announced that it plans to build two military bases to reinforce the country’s territorial claims. At stake is control of the Northwest Passage and, with it, what could be huge deposits of oil and natural gas in the seabed below. |
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 The government of President Vladimir Putin claims that the seabed under the North Pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is an extension of its continental shelf and therefore Russian territory that will be open for oil exploration. |
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President Vladimir Putin’s presidential career began with a submarine disaster in August 2000, and is winding up with a submarine triumph in August 2007. The sinking of the Kursk resulted in the loss of the entire crew of 118 sailors and the vessel itself, a nuclear cruise missile submarine, the largest attack submarine ever built. |
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It was the campest thing I’d seen on television in quite a while. Four young hunks in camouflage uniforms, members of a Georgian boy band, were preening and strutting their way through a cheesy disco dance. |
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My Russian godson, Zhenya, recently announced that he is ready to go to college. No surprise there. He is 18 years old and has been taking what many Americans call a “gap year” between secondary and higher education. The idea is to gain a bit more maturity and experience before returning to things academic and then heading off to the big world. |
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With free reign over one floor of the family mansion, tummies swollen with treats and scores of Barbies, two Rublyovka children have everything but the attention of their parents — who leave even the bedtime stories to the nannies. They are among those who have never learned to take “no” for an answer in any language. That was until their parents hired a British governess to give them a flawless accent and a smattering of etiquette. Alexander Pushkin had one, as did Vladimir Nabokov and Nicholas II. An English nanny or governess was once the norm for wealthy Russian families, teaching children manners and a cut-glass English accent. Now the trend has returned among Moscow’s new rich, although today’s governesses are just as likely to come from the United States. |
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 From inside the Kremlin’s walls to everyday lives with endless paperwork, bureaucracy rules. Like the nation’s economy, bureaucracy seems to be booming. |
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PARIS — Capricious, mercurial or just unlucky? The failure of France’s first lady to show up to lunch with U.S. President George W. Bush has once again raised questions about Cecilia Sarkozy’s character. President Nicolas Sarkozy unexpectedly arrived alone for the informal gathering at a Bush family compound in Maine on Saturday, near the luxury lakeside residence where the French leader and his wife are spending their holidays. |
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 LONDON — Champions Manchester United were held to a 0-0 home draw by 10-man Reading and lost England striker Wayne Rooney to a hairline fracture of his left foot in a wretched start to their title defence on Sunday. Chelsea opened their new Premier League season with a record-breaking 3-2 home win over Birmingham City while Arsenal snatched a late 2-1 victory at home to Fulham. The injury to Rooney, who suffered a broken bone in his foot in 2004 and 2006, will cast a shadow over United’s opening weeks of the season. |
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 SHUNYI, China — If organizing an Olympic event was just about getting the venue right, the Beijing 2008 rowing competition could be counted a success already. |
 MONTREAL — Roger Federer described his defeat by Novak Djokovic in the Montreal Masters final on Sunday as “insignificant” overall, but admitted the Serb had deserved to win his second Masters Series title. The world number one was left to rue six missed set points in the opening set as Djokovic, who will rise to third in the world rankings on Monday, became the first man to beat the Swiss and Rafael Nadal in the same tournament. |
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LONDON — India captain Rahul Dravid inflicted slow torture on England on Sunday with a laboured innings which made it almost impossible for the home side to claim the victory they need to square the series. |
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HOWEVER — President Vladimir Putin met with high-placed government officials in the Kremlin on Friday in connection with preparations for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. “The president is continuing to pay a lot of attention to the issue of Olympic preparations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. |
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Issues Archive