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MOSCOW — These should be happy times for Alessandro Balgera. After all, the 50-year-old Italian is getting married Wednesday. But Balgera can only spend three weeks with his new Russian wife before he has to leave the country for 90 days, thanks to new visa rules that took effect in October. “It’s really sad. Extremely sad,” Balgera, a former hotel restaurant manager, said by telephone this week. Balgera is one of many foreigners scrambling to deal with the new, tougher rules on multiple-entry business visas that were introduced in a decree signed by Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Oct. 4. Under the new rules, such visas permit stays of no more than 180 days out of one year and for no longer than 90 days at a time. |
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I SPY
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
Member of the nationalist LDPR party and former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi (l) looks on during the first parliament session in Moscow on Monday. The new State Duma elected Boris Gryzlov as its speaker. |
 St. Petersburg’s oft-quoted status as the “second capital” of Russia will take a step toward official recognition by May next year, President Vladimir Putin has said, as Russia’s Constitional Court prepares to relocate to the city from Moscow by that date. Putin signed a decree in St. Petersburg on Sunday ordering the relocation of the Court from Moscow to the city’s historic building of Senate and Synod, begining on Feb.
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov told newly elected parliament members on Monday to hike wages for public sector workers to compensate for rising inflation. The Duma lower house of parliament, where the pro-Kremlin United Russia party won an overwhelming majority in a Dec. |
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He is better known for political maneuvers, but soon anyone with a DVD player will be able to check out President Vladimir Putin’s moves in another area of expertise: judo. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Six candidates will run in the presidential election, including three independents, the Central Elections Commission said Sunday, the deadline for submitting the last applications. On Saturday, the commission rejected seven requests from independent candidates, including Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet-era dissident and writer who lives in Britain. Approved to run in the March 2 election are First Deputy Prime Ministry Dmitry Medvedev, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov and Democratic Party leader Andrei Bogdanov, the commission said. |
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COMRADES-IN-ARMS
Denis Sinyakov / Reuters
Communist supporters carry a Soviet flag and a portrait of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as they walk to his tomb in Red Square, Moscow, on Friday. |
 MOSCOW — First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced Thursday that Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin would head his presidential campaign. Medvedev, speaking after submitting documents to run for president with the Central Elections Commission, also promised that the election would be fair and said his candidacy had not been President Vladimir Putin’s idea.
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MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska’s United Company RusAl on Friday won its battle to grab a 25 percent blocking stake in Norilsk Nickel, the first step toward acquiring control of the company. A full takeover by RusAl of Norilsk would create a $100 billion metals giant to rival the world’s biggest, but analysts raised concerns that minority shareholders in Norilsk would emerge as the biggest losers in such a tie-up. Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Group, which owns a 25 percent stake in Norilsk, waived its right to buy the stake Friday from Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group, hours before a deadline expired, claiming that the $15.7 billion asking price was too expensive. |
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 Toyota Motor Corporation launched the assembly line of its plant in the village of Shushary, St. Petersburg, on Friday. “The successful beginning of production is an achievement of the combined team of Japanese and Russian specialists, whose enthusiasm allowed all difficulties and obstacles to be overcome together,” said Katsuaki Watanabe, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, at the launch ceremony. |
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MOSCOW — Every new year starts with a few good resolutions, most of which are soon lying by the wayside. But investors in Russia will be hoping that the government keeps its promises, as they bank on big infrastructure spending to fuel stocks in the year ahead. |
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Pipeline Delay MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom’s Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea delayed the first deliveries of natural gas to Germany until 2011 because of an intensive testing phase, company spokesman Jens Mueller said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — VimpelCom, the country’s second-largest mobile phone operator, announced Friday that it would acquire fixed-line and Internet firm Golden Telecom for $4.3 billion, a deal that could give it a head start over its rivals in providing one-stop services. Under the deal, VimpelCom will pay $105 in cash for each of all the outstanding shares of Golden Telecom, the two operators said in a joint statement. The acquisition, which still has to be formalized by Jan. 18, has been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies and would not require shareholder backing. “We are delighted to offer the advantages and growth potential of this powerful strategic combination to our shareholders,” VimpelCom chief executive Alexander Izosimov said Friday in the statement. |
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 Vacations in Egypt topped the list of holiday destinations among St. Petersburg residents this year, with many clients choosing exotic countries over ski resorts, tourism industry professionals said. |
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MOSCOW — The government hopes to keep 2008 annual inflation within 8.5 percent despite an anticipated leap early next year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Sunday. “We expect inflation to drop down to 8.5 percent next year,” Kudrin, who is also first deputy prime minister in the Russian government, told NTV television. |
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On December 12, in the Aquarel Restaurant, the Celebratory Present charity evening was held. The Organizers of the event were The St. Petersburg Times newspaper, the AFK group of companies, Aquarel Restaurant and the Anna Akhmatova Museum in Fontanny Dom. |
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TRIPOLI — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Libya on Sunday as the longtime pariah state consolidated its return to the international fold. Lavrov had been expected to offer Russian help for Libya’s plans to develop a civil nuclear power programme, barely four years after it renounced efforts to develop a non-conventional arsenal in a move that launched its rapprochement with the West. |
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YEKATERINBURG — Russian Rosspetssplav, which controls top chromium maker Klyuchevsky Ferroalloys Plant and chrome oxide plant Russian Chrome 1915, said on Monday it was building a ferro-alloy holding firm. |
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HELSINKI — Russian trucks have lined up for 100 kilometers at the Finnish border ahead of the holiday season, prompting Helsinki to ask the European Union for help eliminating the record blockage. While trucks are stuck at the border, retailers in Russia and the transportation firms are losing money, and local people are afraid to drive on the roads with one lane blocked by trucks. Finland’s government said Friday that Transportation Minister Anu Vehvilainen had pleaded for the European Commission to influence Russia to reduce the traffic blockage by increasing electronic customs services, reducing border bureaucracy and developing roads on the Russian side. |
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 TOMSK — In a time of fast-encroaching state control over the oil sector, Imperial Energy is a rare bird. Founded in 2004 by a flamboyant English lawyer, the London-listed firm has seen a lot in its short history. |
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MOSCOW — Bank Rossiya co-owner Oleg Rudnov has taken control of Komsomolskaya Pravda, a step seen as concentrating the popular media in the hands of Kremlin loyalists ahead of the presidential election. Rudnov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin’s, bought a majority stake in the mass-circulation tabloid from Grigory Beryozkin’s ESN Group, a holding believed to be allied with Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin. |
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 It is futile to attempt to sell an idea or to prepare the ground for a product that is basically unsound,” wrote Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, in his 1928 book “Propaganda.” Despite these words of caution, a number of Western PR companies have taken on the daunting task of trying to not only sell a new image of Gazprom to policy and opinion makers in the West but, more important, to help Gazprom get listed on the New York Stock Exchange. |
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Whenever a Russian economist says he teaches “the problems of economic security,” other professional economists have treated this in a contemptuous manner. |
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The strike at the Ford factory in Vsevolozhsk, located right outside St. Petersburg, ended on Dec. 14. It was the longest and most intense standoff in post-Soviet times. The strike began on Nov. 20 and continued for three weeks. According to union activists, the plant’s conveyors came to a full stop. |
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 Those watching President Vladimir Putin on television could not fail to see a change in his mood. After he decided on his partnership with First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he started to look like a different person. He is very much at ease — as if a huge burden has been taken off his back. |
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Two questions hung over Russia: Whom would President Vladimir Putin appoint as his successor? What role would Putin play in that successor’s government? We now know the answer to the first, and, to some extent, to the second. |
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The entire issue of who will succeed President Vladimir Putin is a fascinating story, and its possible plot twists will no doubt provide even more entertainment for the remaining months leading up to March. Unfortunately, the political drama has become more important than the serious issues facing the country, which should be a central part of the presidential campaign. |
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 MOSCOW — Valentina Zhigulina sounds less than festive as she displays her stack of Christmas trees at a central Moscow bazaar. “They’re rather prickly,” she warns. And not just prickly: the typical, khaki-colored Russian Christmas tree is spindly, sheds needles in a hurry, and appears to have been battered in a Siberian storm. |
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CHISINAU — The mayor of Moldova’s capital Chisinau, who backs closer ties with neighboring Romania, has scored a symbolic victory over the ex-Soviet state’s communist president in a duel focusing on rival Christmas trees. |
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 MOSCOW — When the guest arrived at a construction company’s corporate party last year at an unfinished skyscraper at the Moskva-City complex, he was greeted by the sight of 25 beautiful women seated in 25 bathtubs. A party organizer sidled up to him: “Four or five hundred euros and you can do anything you want. |
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 BANGKOK — Thailand’s political parties got down to hard bargaining on Monday after voters roundly rejected last year’s military coup but failed to give supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra an outright majority. The deal-making looks likely to be long, tense and dirty after Sunday’s vote showed a country polarized between Thaksin supporters in the People Power Party (PPP) and opponents represented mostly by the Democrat Party. |
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ASADABAD, Afghanistan — A woman carrying a waistcoat filled with explosives under her all-enveloping burqa was arrested on Monday in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said, in the first possible reported case of a female suicide bomber in the country. |
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CHICAGO — Muslims and Jews, a tiny slice of the U.S. population, are looking for new ways to get along that could set a worldwide example for two ancient but often alienated faiths, religious leaders and experts say. “I’ve encountered [among Muslims] a more centrist, a more moderate voice that is looking to the Jewish community to help project that voice . |
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BISHKEK — Seeking a novel remedy to revive its rickety economy, the tiny ex-Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan has declared itself the new home of Santa Claus. |
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BELGRADE, Serbia — As the dispute over Kosovo’s future nears a climax, the Serbian government has enlisted the support of some the world’s best known statesmen — all of them dead. For the past two weeks, billboards carrying the images of Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Churchill and de Gaulle have appeared throughout the country above the mantra “Kosovo is Serbia!” Next to their pictures are extracts of their speeches, each one selected, and adapted in some cases, to support Serbia’s desire to keep the province of Kosovo from declaring independence. |
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LONDON — Catholics have overtaken Anglicans in church attendance in Britain, according to research published on Sunday. England officially split from Rome during the reign of Henry VIII more than 400 years ago, making Anglicanism and the Church of England dominant. |
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 LONDON — Cristiano Ronaldo scored an 88th-minute penalty to give Manchester United a 2-1 victory over Everton at Old Trafford on Sunday that kept them within a point of Premier League leaders Arsenal. Third-placed Chelsea also kept up the chase when a first-half Joe Cole goal gave them a 1-0 win at Blackburn Rovers. |
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Russians like their heroes homegrown, but this New Year’s Eve, football fans will be toasting two middle-aged Dutchmen. Guus Hiddink led Russia to the Euro 2008 finals while fellow Dutchman Dick Advocaat steered Zenit St. |
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The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) suspended Italians Potito Starace and Daniele Bracciali on Saturday for making bets — some as little as $7 — on tennis matches involving other players. The Italian tennis federation denounced the penalties by the governing body as an “injustice,” and the players said they have been made scapegoats. |
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Europe’s top six hockey teams will come to St. Petersburg to fight for the European title in the fourth annual IIHF European Champions Cup, Europe’s premier club competition, held Jan. |
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CHICAGO — Scott Skiles was fired Monday as coach of the Chicago Bulls, who have one of the worst records in the Eastern Conference. The underachieving Bulls (9-16) have lost three of their last four and were booed throughout by the home crowd during Saturday night's 116-98 loss to the Houston Rockets. |
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian striker Adriano, who last week promised to turn over a new leaf and get his career back on the rails, has landed in fresh controversy after being photographed at a pop concert holding a can of beer. |
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