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MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underlined Russia’s increasingly muscular foreign policy Monday, laying out a series of non-negotiable “red line” issues, including Kosovo and U.S. missile defence. “There are so-called ‘red line’ issues for Russia,” Lavrov said in a speech to students at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. “There we cannot fail to react and we must stick to our position to the end.” Lavrov specified Kosovo — where Russia opposes Western proposals to grant the province independence from Serbia — and opposition to US missile defense plans for Central Europe as areas where Moscow would not “horse-trade.” His comments were the latest sign of hawkish Russian opposition to key areas of U. |
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BACK TO SCHOOL!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Students at the St. Petersburg State University celebrating the beginning of a new semester on Saturday. Students and school children across the country celebrated what is known as the Day of Knowledge, when teachers and learners alike are honored. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma election campaign went into full swing Sunday with President Vladimir Putin signing a decree for the vote to take place Dec. 2. But the campaign promises to be the blandest in post-Soviet history, analysts said. A landslide victory for United Russia is a foregone conclusion, and polls indicate that only three other parties will secure seats: the Communists, Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party.
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Blatant use of government instruments in favor of Kremlin-backed parties, voter apathy and exercises in political cloning are some of the features expected in the Russian parliamentary election campaign that kicked off on Monday. The elections to the State Duma are scheduled for Dec. |
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Russia may be relatively new to the world stage of outdoor volleyball, but from all indications it is quickly catching up on the competition. The Russian duo of Igor “Bazooka” Kolodinsky and Dmitry “Bars” Barsuk not only became the first Russian team to reach the quarter-final of the Fourth Annual Swatch FIVB St. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court has awarded former hockey player Pavel Bure more than 67,000 rubles ($2,600) in damages after British Airways prevented him from boarding a flight from Moscow to London. The Tverskoi District Court ruled that the airline violated Bure’s consumer rights and awarded him 67,000 rubles in compensation and the cost of an air ticket from Moscow to London. |
All photos from issue.
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The St. Petersburg Election Commission announced the completion of preparations for the pre-election campaigning for the Russian federal parliament on Monday, a day after President Vladimir Putin signed the election decree signaling the go-ahead for the race. |
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MOSCOW — All governors were to deliver a report outlining the effectiveness of their work to President Vladimir Putin by Saturday in the first evaluation of their governance since the abolishment of direct gubernatorial elections in 2005. |
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The likelihood that a second airport will be used for passenger services in St. Petersburg has greatly increased now that the government has published a new list of air bases where civil aviation and military air-crafts are allowed to be located together. According to a Russian government website, St. Petersburg’s Levashovo aerodrome — currently used for industrial, commercial and military air traffic — was added to the list which was published on August 15. The news is already attracting investors, who want to turn the military base into a general airport focusing on business aviation. Gazpromavia, an aviation unit of energy giant Gazprom, confirmed its interest in developing the airport Monday and said it has already prepared a business plan and a development plan. |
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 MOSCOW — Having paid 600 euros ($815) for a room in a five-star hotel, few guests would have guessed that the young woman cleaning their room was no ordinary housekeeper, but a journalist for the country’s most famous tabloid. |
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 MOSCOW — A prominent Russian businessman-turned-politician is in line to become the next space tourist in 2009, Federal Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov said Friday. Details about the person who might be the first Russian space tourist were few. “He has personally asked me not to identify him. All I can say so far is that he is a serious, respectable person who is a businessman and politician,” Perminov told reporters, adding that the candidate was a young man, Interfax reported. A former Federal Space Agency official familiar with the issue said the candidate was probably a State Duma deputy. The former official, who was involved in negotiations with previous space tourists, said the candidate had not yet made a down payment or completed medical tests. |
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ON THE RUN
Oksana Yushko / Reuters
Russian police officers sprint during a police relay race during Moscow City Day celebrations on Saturday. The celebrations marked the 860th anniversary of the founding of the Russian capital. |
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City Hall expects small and medium sized Japanese companies to follow the automotive giants Toyota and Nissan and establish their presence in the city. The authorities hope to attract high-tech companies and not only automotive enterprises. This week a delegation of Japanese entrepreneurs from Kakamigahara City are visiting St. Petersburg to explore the city’s business opportunities.
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Global financial jitters will not hamper Russian economic growth as companies continue to invest, while a liquidity squeeze may help the Cabinet fight inflation, a poll of 11 economists showed Friday. Economists saw full-year 2007 economic growth at a median of 7. |
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Volatility on world financial markets stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis will not hurt foreign direct investment into Russia, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Friday. |
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Grain Working Group MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia, the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter, formed a group that will consider measures to curb grain prices, which may include sales from state inventories and export duties and quotas. The “working group’’ is made up of officials from the agriculture ministry, the Grain Union and the Flour and Cereal Producers’ Union, a ministry spokeswoman said by phone Monday, declining to be identified by name because of ministerial rules. |
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MOSCOW — First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Friday that $100 billion of investment would be needed to develop oil and gas fields in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea, Interfax reported. |
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RBK Daily launched its St. Petersburg edition Monday. In addition to the world news and national news provided by the newspaper’s Moscow office, RBK Daily St. Petersburg will offer a large section of local news. The newspaper will be published daily Monday to Friday, and initial circulation will vary between 8,000 and 10,000 copies. |
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MOSCOW — The owners of AllofMP3.com have announced plans to reopen the web site, barely two months after they were forced to close amid allegations they were running an illegal online music store. |
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State-controlled oil giant Rosneft plans to issue ruble-denominated bonds worth 45 billion rubles ($1.76 billion) in 2007 and 2008, a banking source said Friday. “They will be issued in three tranches,” he said. The source said the oil firm mandated Troika Dialog, VTB and Gazprombank to organize the issue. |
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MOSCOW — Billionaire Alisher Usmanov said Friday that he wanted to increase his stake in Arsenal Football Club to 25 percent and that although he was eager to play an active role in the London club, he was not seeking to buy it outright. |
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 MOSCOW — Don’t hold your breath in the hope that you will be able to join videoconferences or quickly browse the Internet with your cell phone any time soon. Despite promises that the bells and whistles of third-generation technology will be available next year, the three leading mobile phone providers are mired in a web of technical and bureaucratic problems that threaten to delay their plans by at least a year. |
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 NEW YORK — Specialized blogs were all abuzz last week with rumors that Internet giant Google will soon launch the “Google Phone” or “GPhone,” a cheap mobile phone equipped with a Google operating system. |
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 With Russia just having trumpeted its claim to a piece of the Arctic the size of Western Europe, the military has now announced ambitious plans to establish a permanent presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The guiding hand behind this resurgence is undeniably the country’s enigmatic president, Vladimir Putin. |
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As politicians return from their summer recess, they are preparing for the latest battle — the campaign season for State Duma elections. According to changes in election laws, all of the Duma seats will be allocated according to a proportional representation system in the December elections. |
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Officials from the Natural Resources Ministry, including the deputy head of the federal environmental watchdog, Oleg Mitvol, are in the United States meeting with investors. The aim of the visit is to explain the rules of the game in the energy sector to U. |
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Three months after its third consecutive defeat and the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French left is in disarray. The new president is highly popular and hyperactive. |
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 PARIS — Executives at Suez and Gaz de France are holding weekend talks to try to seek a deal on a 90 billion euro ($123 billion) merger, with both utilities expected to hold board meetings Sunday. Trade unions, who are opposed to the deal, say they have had indications that the final details are being discussed — the FO union has said state-controlled GDF’s board was due to meet in the evening and that Suez’s board would also meet Sunday. |
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 BRUSSELS — Polish workers protested outside the European Union’s headquarters Friday over the bloc’s demands that the struggling Gdansk shipyard, birthplace of the anti-communist Solidarity movement, slash its output. |
 WASHINGTON — Former French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the front-runner to take over the top job at the International Monetary Fund as a deadline passed on Friday for nominating successors to Rodrigo Rato. Strauss-Kahn and former Czech central banker Josef Tosovsky — who is backed by Russia but not by the Czech Republic — were the only two nominees as successors to Rato as managing director of the fund. |
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LONDON — Chinese demand has already fueled booms in markets from copper to shipping, but the rise of the world’s fastest growing economy is also driving up prices for another hot commodity: bilingual bankers. |
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DHAKA — Bangladesh arrested and refused bail for former leader Begum Khaleda Zia on Monday, witnesses and officials said. Her younger son Arafat Rahman was also detained at the same time. A Dhaka magistrate’s court remanded him to police custody for a week for interrogation. |
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BELGRADE, Serbia — At least 17,000 people are still missing from the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday. |
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GENEVA — The top American negotiator with North Korea said yesterday that the country had agreed to disable its main nuclear fuel production plant by the end of the year and to account to international monitors for all of its nuclear programs, including what American intelligence agencies say they believe was a second, secret program purchased from Pakistan. |
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BEIJING — China has launched a campaign to improve police etiquette in Beijing and other Olympic co-host cities, including bans on smoking, eating and chatting for on-duty officers, state media reported on Monday. |
 BAGHDAD — The British Army began withdrawing from its last base in Basra’s city center early Monday, a move that will leave Iraq’s second-largest city without foreign forces for the first time since the American-led invasion in 2003. Basra residents reported overnight that they saw British military trucks accompanied by armored vehicles and helicopters leaving the base, Basra Palace, beside the Shatt al Arab waterway, heading for their airport headquarters miles outside the city, the oil-industry hub of southern Iraq. |
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KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaicans were due to head to the polls on Monday in what is expected to be a close election as their Caribbean island heals from a brush with a monster hurricane, warily eyes another and frets over recent political violence. |
 BOISE, Idaho — Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, caught in a sex scandal that quickly lost him the support of his party after his arrest in a men’s toilet, has said he will resign from the U.S. Senate. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct last month after he was arrested in an undercover investigation of lewd behaviour in an airport men’s room. |
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 LONDON — Chelsea missed a chance to return to the top of the Premier League on Sunday when they crashed to their first defeat of the season, going down 2-0 at Aston Villa. Missing England midfielder Frank Lampard, who suffered a thigh strain in training on Friday, Chelsea struggled for any attacking rhythm and were beaten by second half goals from debutant central defender Zat Knight and striker Gabriel Agbonlahor. |
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NEW YORK — Venus and Serena Williams served their way into the U.S. Open quarterfinals with impressive straight-sets victories Sunday, setting up a possible clash between the American sisters in the final four. |
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Konstantin Zyryanov scored 12 minutes from time to send Zenit St. Petersburg back to the top of the Russian premier league on Sunday at Petrovsky Stadium in a 1-0 victory over Kuban Krasnodar. In a match as dire as the weather, Zenit looked nervous in front of vociferous support and struggled to get a passing game together, often resorting to long balls and hopeful crosses to break the deadlock. |
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Four Russian women have brought home gold medals from the World Athletics Championships in Osaka, Japan in running and jumping events, leading Russia to an overall third-place finish. |
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From Wednesday to Sept. 10, the All-Russia Exhibition Center, formerly known as VDNKh and one of the last islands of genuine Soviet archictecture in the capital, will host the 20th Moscow International Book Fair. Though still not as significant as fairs in Frankfurt, London or Bologna, the Moscow event is steadily gaining momentum and has transformed from a meeting of local publishers and distributors into an international affair with a rich cultural program. This year, the fair will be coupled with a festival called Chitai-Gorod, roughly translated as Reading City, and various presentations, recitals and performances will take place all over Moscow. |
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 Without a hint of moral scruple or sense of national loyalty, Lenin desperately hoped for Russia’s defeat in the First World War.” It’s the “without a hint” that is the giveaway in this introductory statement: This is going to be one of those books about Lenin. |
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