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 President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia won the Duma election in St. Petersburg with 50.3 percent of vote, followed by Just Russia with 15.1 percent, the Communist Party with 12.4 percent, and Liberal Democratic Party or LDPR with 7.8 percent, the city’s election committee said on Monday. Other parties did not overcome a seven percent barrier needed to get seats in the lower house of Russia’s parliament. |
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 A protest meeting against electoral violations during the campaign for the State Duma and Sunday’s election was suppressed by police at around 4:30 p.m. |
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MOSCOW — At polling station No. 2074 at the Russian Academy of Sciences, President Vladimir Putin looked relaxed and content as he arrived with his wife, Lyudmila, to vote. Most of the people at the station just froze, some clapped and, after he cast his ballot, one elderly woman even came up to him to thank him for taking care of the people. |
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BELGRADE — Russia insisted on Monday the U.N. Security Council have the final word on Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province, putting it on a collision course with the West days before mediators report to the United Nations. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Federal Security Service agent, was freed from a Urals prison on Friday after serving four years for divulging state secrets. Trepashkin, who maintains that the FSB set him up after he uncovered evidence of its involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, expressed relief when speaking to reporters after his release. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Monday said Russia might one day return to a key post-Cold War arms treaty, but only if NATO members ratify an updated version of the pact. |
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The largest open-air skating rink in Europe opened with a festive ceremony on St. Petersburg’s Palace Square on Saturday, at the same time as a similar attraction opened on Moscow’s Red Square. Dozens of guests, including Russian Olympic and world ice skating champions, attended the ceremony on the square next to the Winter Palace. |
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BERLIN — Russia’s foreign intelligence services are accelerating efforts to recruit young lawmakers and academics in Germany, a German newspaper reported Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — The exit poll results from Nashi Vybory, a spinoff from the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, lay among hamburger wrappers Sunday on a table at the McDonald’s on the Arbat, a central thoroughfare in Moscow. Sheet after sheet — of exit polls, not burger wrappers — showed checkmarks next to United Russia. |
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KIEV — An explosion injured 44 miners on Saturday as a colliery in eastern Ukraine was struck by the country’s worst mining accident two weeks earlier. |
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MADRID — Kazakhstan won approval Friday to take over the chairmanship of Europe’s main human rights and security watchdog in 2010 after accepting U.S. demands to pledge to protect the OSCE’s election monitoring body. “These are very important commitments by the government of Kazakhstan. |
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TBILISI, Georgia — Georgian opposition leader Irakly Okruashvili applied for asylum in Germany days before police arrested him in a Berlin hotel on a request from Georgia’s government. |
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DONETSK, Ukraine — A crocodile that escaped from a traveling circus in Ukraine and evaded capture for six months died Friday after two days back in captivity, officials said. “The crocodile was lying in the water and suddenly he just floated to the surface,” Oleksander Soldatov, an official with Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Ministry, said in the eastern city of Donetsk. |
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ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — An extravagant gold and diamond medal was unveiled Friday to honor late Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died a year ago after two decades of eccentric rule. |
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MOSCOW — Altimo, the telecoms investment vehicle of billionaire Mikhail Fridman, said Friday that it had resolved a long-running dispute over its stake in the country’s third-largest mobile operator, MegaFon. The stake has been disputed by IPOC, a Bermuda-based fund, since August 2003, when Altimo bought a 25. |
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin and an Israeli investment fund on Sunday sought to distance themselves from Oleg Shvartsman, an unknown Russian fund manager who claimed in an interview that he was a key money manager for the siloviki clan. |
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While the international community’s attention was fixed on the State Duma elections this weekend, investors were eagerly awaiting the clarity they are expected to bring on President Vladimir Putin’s plans for the next administration. But Sunday’s elections are important insofar as a high voter turnout will provide an air of legitimacy to Putin’s efforts to carve out a role in the future administration, analysts said. |
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Kovytka Deal Delayed MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom delayed its acquisition of the Kovykta gas field because it needs more information from TNK-BP, Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said Friday in New York. |
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MOSCOW — The board of state utility Unified Energy System on Friday approved the sale of 21.2 percent of Moscow utility Mosenergo to the city government for 6.5 rubles per share, valuing the stake at $2.25 billion. The city, which already owns 5.4 percent of Mosenergo, will have until Jan. 30, 2009, to pay for the stake in full, UES said in a statement after the board meeting. Mosenergo is majority controlled by Gazprom. The board also sought to make progress on the utility’s various spinoff sales, which have so far had mixed results. Integrated Energy Systems, the investment vehicle of billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, said Friday that it wanted more talks on the price of power firm TGK-9 despite UES dropping the price by 6. |
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 MOSCOW — Sergei Bebchuk no longer remembers the exact circumstances when he claimed to know how to make a perfect school. “I think it was at the annual computer science conference in Abrau-Durso,” he said. |
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 Vladimir Churov, head of the Central Elections Commission, gave a small group of foreign reporters a personal guarantee five days before the State Duma elections took place. “They will be the most free, most transparent and most suitable elections for citizens,” Churov said. |
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Writing in the Nov. 22 issue of The New York Review of Books, former Soviet dissident Sergei Kovalyov analyzed the reasons for President Vladimir Putin’s remarkable popularity. |
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Most political leaders are mediocre, a few are heroes and some are just plain lucky. In Russia, many see President Vladimir Putin as a hero — an authoritarian reformer who has brought economic growth and stability to Russia. But let’s scrutinize his record a little closer. Russia’s outstanding achievement is that its gross domestic product has increased six fold from $200 billion in 1999 to $1. |
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 KHARTOUM — The British teacher jailed in Sudan for letting her students name a teddy bear Mohammad won a pardon on Monday and was released into British care. Gillian Gibbons, sentenced on Thursday to 15 days in jail followed by deportation for insulting Islam, was pardoned after an appeal by two prominent British Muslims to Sudan’s president for her early release. |
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LONDON — It has been nine years coming, but some early reviews of the Spice Girls’ comeback concert in Vancouver late on Sunday said it was worth the wait. |
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LONDON — Enjoy dark chocolate, have plenty of sex, eat cold meats and fish for breakfast and you could boost your brain power, say the authors of a new book. Cognitive psychologist Terry Horne and biochemist Simon Wootton — who co-authored “Teach Yourself: Training Your Brain” — argue that lifestyle choices are crucial for keeping you in tip-top mental condition. “Lifestyle can boost your brain power,” Horne said. “What your lifestyle does is help to create the chemical conditions in your brain.” Horne told Reuters in an interview to mark the book’s publication that the brain is more like a chemical factory than a computer. “You can create the optimum conditions in your brain,” he said. |
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 CARACAS — President Hugo Chavez crashed to an unprecedented vote defeat on Monday as Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election indefinitely and accelerate his socialist revolution in the OPEC nation. |
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SANTIAGO, Cuba — Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was nominated on Sunday for a seat in the National Assembly, leaving the door open for him to resume governing as he struggles to recover from a long illness. Castro, 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother Raul 16 months ago after life-threatening stomach surgery and he has not been seen since in public since. |
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LUCERNE, Switzerland — World champion Italy faces a tough task if it is to add the European title to its world crown after being grouped with the Netherlands, France and Romania in the finals of Euro 2008. Sunday’s draw was also unkind to the co-hosts with Switzerland facing the Czech Republic, Portugal and Turkey in its group while Austria meets Croatia, Germany and Poland. Holder Greece kick off the defense of its title against Sweden and also faces Spain and Russia. Switzerland opens the tournament against the Czechs in Basel on June 7 with the final taking place in Vienna on June 29. Italy, which beat France on penalties to win the World Cup final in Berlin last year and also faced France in the qualifying competition, will meet the team again in its last Group C match in Zurich on June 17. |
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 PARIS — AC Milan and Brazil playmaker Kaka was awarded the 2007 Ballon d’Or by French magazine France Football on Sunday. Kaka, who won the Champions League with Milan last season, beat Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi of Argentina, who were second and third respectively. |
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LUCERNE, Switzerland — It looks like 2004 all over again for Spain, who will hope to avoid past mistakes when they come up against old sparring partners in Euro 2008. Group D is almost a replica of Spain’s group last time round, when they beat Russia and drew with eventual and unlikely champions Greece but still left the tournament early after a 1-0 loss to neighbors Portugal. |
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TOKYO — Troubled sumo champion Asashoryu returned to Japan on Friday with bows and apologies for secretly playing soccer when he said he was too ill to wrestle. |
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