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MOSCOW — The government is tightening the screws on foreigners who want to work here full time without a work visa — and itinerant English teachers look likely to be the first to feel the squeeze. Multiple-entry business visas, which used to let foreigners stay in Russia for up to one year, will now only allow stays of up to 90 days at a time, according to a decree signed by Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Oct. 4. Under the new rules, such visas will still last one year. But they will only let people stay in Russia for up to 180 days of that year, and for no longer than 90 days at a time. Moreover, if a foreigner stays in Russia for 90 days straight, he or she is then required to leave and not come back until another 90 days have passed. |
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A HELPING HAND
ALEXANDER BELENKY / The St. Petersburg Times
A child being led into the new Peter Ustinov Rehabilitation and Development Center for Orphans Infected with HIV at the Ust-Izhora Hospital. The center was opened on Sunday and named after the late British actor and founder of the charity that financed the project. |
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President Vladimir Putin waded into a turf war among the security agencies over the weekend, creating a new state committee to fight illegal drugs and naming Viktor Cherkesov as its chief. The move, announced on the Kremlin’s web site Saturday, came a day after Putin publicly scolded Cherkesov on the pages of Kommersant, leading commentators to speculate that the president was trying to play a balancing act amid the infighting.
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Liberal politicians and human rights groups are preparing to take to the streets on Sunday to protest against hatred, discrimination and what they call plummeting levels of tolerance in Russian society. The Fourth March Against Hatred, which is due to start at 1 p. |
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MOSCOW — Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has been elected head of a new political movement founded, he said, to fight corruption and help bring democratic principles to Russia. |
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MOSCOW — United Russia wants to turn the State Duma elections into a political coup to prolong President Vladimir Putin’s rule, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said. He warned that any attempt by Putin to hang on to power when he steps down as president in May could result in turmoil. In an article published Friday on the party’s web site, Kprf. |
All photos from issue.
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As campaigning for the Dec. 2 elections to the Duma enter a costly media phase early next month, St. Petersburg Election Commission figures indicate the city’s branch of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) has already spent about half of its registered campaign budget of 15 million rubles ($604,000). According to the May 2005 election laws, regional parties with candidates on the federal list, have the right to spend up to 30 million rubles ($1.2 million), including personal contributions not exceeding 1.5 million rubles ($60,400) and not more than 15 million rubles from a single corporate contributor for the election campaign. According to the figures, the nationalist minority LDPR was richer by five million rubles than the majority party, United Russia. |
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 MOSCOW — The Foreign Intelligence Service must work harder to protect the interests of Russian companies abroad, President Vladimir Putin said Friday, introducing former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov as head of the spy agency. |
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MOSCOW — Voters will be able to report campaign violations and voting irregularities in upcoming State Duma and presidential elections to call centers nationwide, Public Chamber members said Friday. Voter hotlines will open in all 86 regions as of Nov. |
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MOSCOW — Prosecutors have charged a student with inciting ethnic hatred after he posted an execution video on the Internet. The three-minute video, which appeared in August on several ultranationalist web sites, shows two men kneeling in the woods in front of a Nazi flag with their arms and legs bound and identified by a subtitle as “colonists from Tajikistan and Dagestan. |
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MOSCOW — An uprising at a prison for minors that left three people dead last week was sparked by a group of inmates protesting the transfer of a fellow prisoner, Federal Prison Service chief Yury Kalinin said. Protesting the transfer of the prisoner to a pretrial detention center Tuesday — and emboldened by false rumors that the guards had blank shells in their guns — the group of inmates began tearing down a perimeter fence at the Kirovgrad prison in the Sverdlovsk region, Kalinin told reporters Friday in Yekaterinburg. |
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 MOSCOW — When Svetlana Gubareva woke up in the intensive care ward of a Moscow hospital, one of the first things she heard was President Vladimir Putin offering condolences to the families of the 129 hostages who died in the Dubrovka theater. Gubareva wondered what had happened to her fiance, a U.S. citizen, and 13-year-old daughter, who, like herself, was from Kazakhstan. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank considers ruble appreciation “not effective” in terms of fighting inflation and is unlikely to use the measure for the rest of 2007, First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said Friday. The ruble exchange rate was the Central Bank’s only weapon against inflation while investment flows and oil revenues generated excess liquidity. The global credit crunch that began in August has made liquidity much tighter and this may give the bank more leverage over inflation via the money markets. “The appreciation of the ruble would not be an effective measure to curb inflation. |
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Vadim Zhernov / Itar-Tass
The second span of the city’s eight-lane suspension bridge over the Neva opened this weekend. The bridge is the only one in the city which does not rise nightly in the summer. |
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By November 2007, the Regional Venture Fund for Investment into Small High-Tech Enterprises will have finished raising capital and will start accepting applications from innovative companies, the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade (CEDIPT) said Friday in a statement. “This venture fund will provide financing for the development of 40 to 50 start-ups operating in the high-tech industry,” said Dmitry Bykov, deputy chairman of CEDIPT.
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New Districts Planned ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — 1.1 billion rubles ($44.3 million) from the St. Petersburg budget will be spent in 2007-2009 on preparing two land plots in the south-west of the city for new residential construction, RBC reported Monday. |
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City Hall plans to freeze prices for milk containing 2.5 percent fat, kefir and sour cream containing 15 percent fat, Fontanka.ru news portal announced. |
 MINSK — Belarus said Friday that it would hold a tender next year for the construction of the country’s first nuclear power plant, which could cost up to $3.5 billion, and Russia signaled its interest. Belarus has virtually no energy resources and has quarreled with Moscow over the prices it pays for Russian gas, on which it relies heavily. |
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MOSCOW — Talks between Kazakhstan and oil companies developing the giant Kashagan field have stalled as U.S. Exxon Mobil is blocking the expansion of the state’s share in the project, Interfax said Saturday. |
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AMSTERDAM — A Dutch investment group has agreed to invest more than $100 million in the Irkutsk region to exploit coal and potassium salt as well as to convert coal to liquid fuel. The group plans to invest $50 million in the first 18 months for geological research and project development, with the investment rising to over $100 million for exploitation, processing and setting up a sales network. The aim is also to bring leading-edge coal-to-liquid technology to Russia. Dutch entrepreneur Roel Pieper, who manages investment company ETIRC, said Friday that the group hoped to avoid problems such as those faced by Shell with its Sakhalin-2 project. |
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 MOSCOW — Going out on a limb means a very different thing to French chess grandmaster Joel Lautier. Lautier, 34, quit 22 years on the professional chess circuit and his Paris home in November to suit up as an analyst with Russian consultancy Strategy Partners. |
 MOSCOW — Tax risks and fear of political uncertainty are acting as a drag on the country’s oil- and gas-dominated stock market, which was a star performer in 2006 but has underachieved this year. Although the RTS index has rallied to all-time highs, its 12 percent gain in the year to date falls short of other emerging markets and pales by comparison with last year’s 70 percent rise. |
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MOSCOW — Timan Oil and Gas, a British-registered company working in northern Siberia, won a rare court victory on Friday that will allow the small oil and gas firm to retain its main license. |
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MOSCOW — The government plans to slap a prohibitive tariff on wheat exports in a move analysts say could cause an abrupt rise in world prices. A source in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Friday that the ministry was considering recommending a tariff of 30 percent, or no less than 70 euros ($100) per ton of wheat. |
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CHICAGO — Russia plans to ban products from dozens of U.S. meat plants and cold-storage facilities, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — As global oil prices reached the dizzy heights of $90 per barrel, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday that Russia would not accept restrictions from some Group of Seven countries on how it invested its oil wealth abroad. “Sovereign wealth funds should be subject to the general rules of the free movement of capital,” Kudrin said at a meeting with G7 finance ministers in Washington. |
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Emerging-market investors got a sharp sense of deja vu last week as India’s financial regulators took measures to restrict foreign investment, prompting speculation that markets in Moscow could make up lost ground as investors take another look at the Russian story. |
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MOSCOW — Oil firm TNK-BP on Friday confirmed problems at its largest refinery in Ryazan after traders said Moscow and regions in the Central Federal District are facing a big gasoline shortage. TNK-BP, in which oil major BP holds 50 percent, said it had on Thursday halted several units for repairs until Nov. |
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BRUSSELS — European Union plans to prevent investment in its energy sector by companies from countries that do not open up their own power markets could dent bilateral ties, Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said Friday. |
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 MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s decision to head the federal list of United Russia in the State Duma elections may one day be seen as the worst bungle in his biography as a statesman. The foreseeable result of the outgoing president’s unexpected foray into parliamentary affairs will be a crushing victory for United Russia in the December election. |
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It was once Colonel Oleg Gordievsky of the KGB. Today it is Sir Oleg Gordievsky KGB after the queen honored the former Soviet intelligence officer by appointing him Knight Governor of the Most Distinguished Order of the Bath. |
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If football has any role in Russian politics — and recent history suggests that it does — then Russia’s 2-1 victory over England on Wednesday night provided perhaps the clearest signal yet that Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov is a serious contender to succeed President Vladimir Putin. |
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I was standing on a pile of rubble halfway down Pushkin Ulitsa, looking for somewhere to buy some credit for my cell phone and feeling somewhat confused. |
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In a telling demonstration of how today’s interactive technology really does make the world a global village, an obscure Ukrainian politician has emerged this month as an international entertainment phenomenon. Or the global village idiot. Or both. Somewhere Marshall McLuhan is surely laughing when he isn’t gnashing his teeth. |
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BEIJING — China’s ruling Communist Party unveiled a new leadership line-up on Monday, including two men positioned to eventually succeed President Hu Jintao and government head Premier Wen Jiabao. Xi Jinping, who has been chief of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, who has headed the northeast province of Liaoning, were lifted into the new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee — the innermost ring of power in this top-down state. |
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WARSAW — Poland’s center-right election victors said Monday they would seek a broad alliance in parliament to push through economic reforms and redirect Poland into the EU mainstream. |
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BISHKEK — Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev dissolved parliament on Monday to tighten his grip on the chamber after a constitutional referendum extended his authority in the impoverished Central Asian state. Kyrgyz voters approved a set of amendments on Sunday giving Bakiyev leeway in picking key cabinet officials and paving the way for his political party to gain a footing in parliament. |
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HOUSTON — Republican Representative Bobby Jindal was elected governor of Louisiana on Saturday to become the first Indian-American to lead a U.S. state. |
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LOS ANGELES — A dozen wildfires stoked by gusting winds burned out of control in southern California on Sunday, killing one person in San Diego and forcing thousands to evacuate homes from the celebrity enclave of Malibu down to the Mexican border. Weather forecasts indicated that firefighters and residents faced two more days of high winds, hot temperatures and low humidity in the drought-stricken region. |
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LONDON — Mozambique’s former President Joaquim Chissano won the first Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African leadership on Monday. The $5-million prize — the world’s largest individual award — was presented by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a ceremony in London’s city hall. |
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 PARIS — The Springboks basked in World Cup glory on Sunday with coach Jake White hoping South Africa will build on his team’s achievement. “This is a massive opportunity for the future,” White told a news conference the day after South Africa beat 2003 champions England 15-6 in the final at the Stade de France to win the William Webb Ellis trophy for the second time. |
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LONDON — English sports fans were reaching for the anti-depressants on Sunday after another gut-wrenching day in front of the television. Less than 24 hours after the rugby team’s World Cup dream was slowly strangled by South Africa, they watched in disbelief as a Finnish spanner was thrown into the cogs of Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One world title aspirations. |
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MADRID — Unseeded Argentine David Nalbandian claimed a shock victory over world number one Roger Federer when he came from a set down to clinch his first Masters Series title with a 1-6 6-3 6-3 win in Madrid on Sunday. Nalbandian, who beat world numbers two and three, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, on his way to the final, became only the second player since Boris Becker in 1994 to beat the top three at the same event. |
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BRIDGEVIEW, Illinois — David Beckham’s first season with the Galaxy has come to an end. His Major League Soccer stat line for the season reads: five games played, two games started, 252 minutes played, no goals, two assists, eight shots and zero shots on goal. |
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MOSCOW — Hundreds of Russian and Dutch fans gathered on Saturday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Luzhniki stadium disaster. Officials from the Soviet Union failed for years to disclose the tragedy that occurred at a UEFA Cup match between Spartak Moscow and Dutch club HFC Haarlem on Oct. |
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Zenit St. Petersburg came from behind to crush Khimki 4-1 at Petrovsky Stadium on Sunday to keep on track for their first Russian league title in nearly a quarter of a century. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive