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MOSCOW — The man wanted by Britain for the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko says British secret services are trying to destabilize Russia. Former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, speaking exactly a year after meeting Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, said he had been caught in a web of intrigue that senior figures in Britain were using to damage Russia. “For the past 15 years in particular, they have been doing everything they can to abase Russia and discredit her on the world stage,” Lugovoi told reporters on Thursday. Lugovoi met Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1 last year with another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun. Later that day, Litvinenko complained of feeling ill. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian detectives investigating a bus bomb blast which killed eight people said on Thursday they had identified a suspect, amid fears of fresh terror attacks in the run-up to parliamentary elections next month. |
 In what human rights advocates see as the use of the government machine in the interests of United Russia, the Kremlin-backed ruling party, representatives of a number of both state-run and private organizations have complained that local district authorities are putting pressure on them to organize their staff’s vote in Duma elections on Sunday, Dec. |
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TEHRAN — Iran warned the United States on Wednesday it would find itself in a “quagmire deeper than Iraq” if it attacked the Islamic state, and Russia stepped up efforts for a diplomatic solution to Tehran’s nuclear row with the West. |
All photos from issue.
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Local media have reported that chief suspect in the murder of an employee of the Presidential Administration and his ex-wife is the couple’s son after discrepancies emerged between his account of killings and that of other witnesses. The bodies of Igor Vasilevsky, 46, and his former wife Yulia, 45, were found near their dacha in the exclusive St. Petersburg suburb of Komarovo on Sunday. Both had been shot in the head, the ANN news agency said. Their son, Leonid Vasilevsky, 19, a student at St. Petersburg State University, had reported to police that his parents had gone for a walk but didn’t come back, Fontanka.ru reported. The police found the bodies of the Vasilevskys in a forest park half a kilometer away from the dacha on Monday night. |
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 The Defense Ministry is planning to move the Navy headquarters to St. Petersburg in the latest instance of a federal institution being shifted to the former capital — and President Vladimir Putin’s hometown. |
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MOSCOW — A group of retired senior KGB officials have called on the country’s security services to end a turf war between competing agencies that has turned into a bitter public conflict. In an open letter published Wednesday in the ultranationalist newspaper Zavtra, the retired officials — including General Vladimir Kryuchkov, the last KGB chief — warned security services of the consequences of infighting “Trust us from our experience,” they wrote. |
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Alcohol Price Rise ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The price of alcoholic drinks in Russia may rise up to 10 percent by the end of the year, Interfax reported on Thursday. |
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A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled that Yukos receiver Eduard Rebgun did not have the right to sell off the firm’s foreign assets in a bankruptcy auction in August, handing back control of Yukos’ Dutch subsidiary to its former managers. The ruling threatened to nullify the results of the controversial auction, which saw a group of U. |
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Following public protests and new instructions from the federal authorities the Karelian government has been forced to revoke 153 licenses for mining. The licenses allowed permitted quarrying dangerously close to Ladoga and Yastrebinoye lakes and were issued in contradiction to the federal legislation. |
 MOSCOW — Mobile phone firm VimpelCom aims to close syndication of a $4.5 billion loan in early December and may refinance the debt in 2008 via a eurobond issue, a banking source said Tuesday. VimpelCom, in which private equity group Alfa and Norway’s Telenor own strategic stakes, is the target of intensifying media speculation that it is raising the cash to acquire fixed-line operator Golden Telecom. |
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MOSCOW — Interior Ministry investigators on Wednesday raided Promsvyazbank, which is controlled by the Ananyev brothers, in the latest of a series of high-profile raids on banks. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has improved in competitiveness over the last year but still trails its West European peers by a long margin, the World Economic Forum showed in a report to be released Thursday. The Geneva-based foundation’s Global Competitiveness Report placed Russia at 58th place out of the 131 countries surveyed in terms of competitiveness, four places up from its 62nd position from 125 nations last year. |
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MOSCOW — A low-profile United Russia senator who graduated from Moscow’s Marxism-Leninism University will manage billions of dollars as head of the state corporation created to improve housing conditions. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ and Canada’s Magna have dropped plans to build a plant to manufacture cars for the country’s largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ said Wednesday. AvtoVAZ said in a statement that a preliminary agreement to build a $2 billion plant, signed in May in the presence of President Vladimir Putin and Magna chairman Frank Stronach, had expired. |
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 Combustion happens when fuel combined with oxygen, usually at high temperature, releases heat. While U.S. foreign policy has focused on so-called failed states, it should be concentrating on those countries with the right combination of high-temperature ingredients not just to implode, but to combust. |
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On Oct. 13, there was a natural gas explosion in Dnipropetrovsk, located in eastern Ukraine. About 30 people died. Ever since the explosion, almost every Ukrainian politician has attacked Viktor Vekselberg, the owner of DnipropetrovskGorGaz, which is the local gas company that may be responsible for the blast. |
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U.S. President George W. Bush gave a speech Oct. 23 in which he observed that “the need for missile defense in Europe is real and I believe it’s urgent.” Perhaps U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates should reread it. We say this after Gates appeared in Prague the same day to announce that the Bush administration would press ahead with plans to build a limited ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, but would “delay activating them until there was concrete proof of the threat from Iran. |
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 Seven years after his first performance in St. Petersburg, Bryan Ferry is back - but this time he will be backed by a rock and roll band featuring guitarist Chris Spedding and will introduce some songs from “Dylanesque,” his new album that pays homage to Bob Dylan, the 20th century’s greatest songwriter. |
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An attempted bombing at a rock concert at the ROKS music club last month is still in the media spotlight as the police confirmed that three detained suspects belong to a neo-Nazi youth group on Wednesday, when top local police officers held a press briefing on the case. |
 In recent years the Hermitage has, rather sadly, mounted no blockbusters and presented quite a few one-painting exhibitions coming from the West, a novelty among major world museums that would be best forgotten. It is pleasing then to visit a newly opened exhibition of the work of Max Beckmann (1884-1950) that presents about 100 works and marks the first Russian show by this very important German artist of the first half of the 20th century. |
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 In April, Mstislav Rostropovich’s body was laid to rest in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery with scarcely less public attention than that accorded his friend Boris Yeltsin, who was buried there just four days before. |
 Channel One’s new game show, “Wall on Wall,” has a brilliantly simple concept: Players stand on the edge of a swimming pool as a Styrofoam wall advances toward them. Their task is to fit themselves through an interestingly shaped hole in the wall. If they have curves in the wrong places, then the wall gently pushes them into a heated swimming pool. |
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Tara Brooch // 18, 2nd Sovietskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 336 6666 // Open 24 hours, food served from 11a.m.-2.a.m. // Menu in Russian // Dinner for two 1,878 rubles ($76) Since it opened this summer, the city’s newest Irish pub, the Tara Brooch, has quickly become a hit with locals who may have failed to make it past the nearby XXXX II bar’s stringent face control, or who may simply prefer its relaxed atmosphere and cheaper prices. |
 What good is geopolitical turmoil if you can’t have some fun with it? Hollywood has been posing that rhetorical question for a long time now — from “Ninotchka” to “Rambo” by way of a battalion of World War II combat pictures — but it has so far been a bit squeamish about turning the various post-9/11 conflicts into grist for escapist entertainment. |
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SINGAPORE — Australia’s Kane Webber birdied the final hole in fading light to join a three-way tie for the lead on five-under-par 66 after the first round of the $4 million Singapore Open on Thursday. Webber matched early pacesetter and compatriot Gavin Flint’s bogey-free effort, with America’s Jin Park joining the Australian pair at the top of the leaderboard as a number of big names lurked a few shots behind. Playing his first tournament in Asia, American world number two Phil Mickelson adapted quickly to the demanding par-71 Serapong Course to shoot a three-under 68, level with South Korea’s K.J. Choi in a tie for fifth place. Angelo Que of the Philippines is alone in fourth place on four-under. |
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 LONDON — A Frank Lampard hat-trick, including a scrambled effort in injury time, helped holders Chelsea overturn a 3-2 deficit and beat Leicester City 4-3 in the fourth round of the League Cup on Wednesday. |
 PARIS — British number one Andy Murray moved closer to a Masters Cup spot by crushing Frenchman Fabrice Santoro 6-4 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals of the Paris Masters Series on Thursday. The 20-year-old Murray, one of several players fighting for the two remaining tickets to the Nov. 11-18 season-finale in Shanghai featuring the world’s top eight, needed just 69 minutes to brush aside the 34-year-old Santoro. |
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