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BRUSSELS — The European Union is keeping any doubts over the fairness of Russia’s March 2 election to itself to avoid needlessly antagonizing its large neighbor at a delicate time in their ties, analysts and diplomats say. Usually swift to chide democratic failings around the world, the 27-member bloc does not want to exacerbate relations with its biggest energy supplier, and believes Moscow would in any case shrug off any criticism about its staging of the poll. “There is a sense that whatever we say it will not make any difference,” said Katinka Barysch of the London-based Centre for European Reform (CER) think tank. “We need to have a functioning relationship with the leadership, old or new. |
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 Just a few years ago Yana Politova, 18, who works as a pastry cook at the Grand Hotel Europe, spent most of her time at a day-center where neglected children go to play games, take a shower and have dinner. |
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The police detained three environmentalists and a local photographer Wednesday as the ecologists tried to measure radiation levels outside wagons carrying radioactive material. The activists and the journalist were released without charge. Tatyana Kulbakina of the Murmansk-based non-governmental organization Nature and Youth, and Rashid Alimov and Alexei Snigiryov of the environmental pressure group Bellona, were monitoring Kapitolovo train station (next to Isotope, a state-owned enterprise responsible for the transportation of radioactive substances) which is normally used by trains carrying such shipments, when they received a phone call from Sergei Yermokhin, a photographer with the local weekly Moi Rayon. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will win 71 percent of the votes in March’s Russian presidential election, state-owned pollster VTsIOM predicted on Thursday. |
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Petersburg Oil Terminal, the largest refinery product outlet in St. Petersburg, plans a $150-200 million upgrade by 2010 that will allow it to launch gasoline exports, a port official said on Thursday. Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT) currently loads fuel oil and diesel while Russia’s fast-growing gasoline output is shipped via the northern ports of Murmansk and Vitino or via the Baltic states. |
All photos from issue.
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Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov is most likely to replace First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as board chairman of state-controlled Gazprom in a reshuffle prompted by the upcoming presidential elections, a top Kremlin adviser said Wednesday. The announcement brings clarity as to who will oversee the world’s largest natural gas producer if Medvedev, the front-runner in the race, wins the vote in March. “I think that there’s no other choice,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, an economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, referring to Zubkov in an interview with Bloomberg Television. It is important for the state to oversee the country’s largest company, he added. |
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GRAND OPENING
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
An art lover examines a masterpiece in a new show of French drawings from the 15th to 18th Centuries that opened at the Hermitage Museum on Wednesday. The show features 92 works. |
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Two new human rights reports released this week argue that the numbers of hate crimes in Russia seem set to increase in the near future, with St. Petersburg keeping its notorious status as one of the hot-beds of xenophobia in the country. “We see the situation exacerbating in the recent months: since early January 2008 there has been more than 25 apparent ethnically motivated attacks [in Russia],” said Alexander Brod, director of the Moscow Bureau For Human Rigths, a member of the Public Chamber.
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The regional office of a federal heritage body has backed the plaintiffs in a legal dispute over a huge ice-rink that has been operating for the last two months on Palace Square, central St. Petersburg. The plaintiffs, including the St. Petersburg Association of Middle and Small Business Entrepreneurs and Living City, a pressure group, have been seeking a court ruling in favor of halting the operation of the rink and its removal since it allegedly infringes access to objects of cultural value. |
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 The Intourfest 2008 tourism conference was due to open in St. Petersburg on Friday, making it the 17th tourism conference to be held in the city. The event will continue through Saturday at the Ambassador hotel. “During the two days of Intourfest, industry professionals will be able to establish business contacts with corporate clients and new partners from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Dubai, present new services and programs, negotiate with top executives from tourism companies and take part in seminars and master-classes run by market leaders,” St. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s tax authorities are seeking 100 million rubles ($4 million) in back taxes from Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding, a claim some analysts fear may carry political overtones. |
 MOSCOW — The country’s metals billionaires are moving into gold, attracted by record prices and the prospect of carving a share of production that is forecast to rise 40 percent by 2015. Six of the 10 richest Russians ranked by Forbes own gold assets in a country with reserves second only to South Africa’s. |
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MOSCOW — Former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Wednesday that the double-digit inflation rate was hurting Russia’s economy, Interfax reported. |
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Korean Investment ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A group of Korean industrial enterprises could invest $217 million into production facilities in the Leningrad Oblast. The new plants will supply components to the car assembly plants located in the region, Interfax reported Tuesday. The Leningrad Oblast government is negotiating with 12 Korean companies. |
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 Bobby Fischer, who died two weeks ago, may have been the greatest chess player in history. The 1972 match in which he won the world championship from his Soviet counterpart Boris Spassky is certainly the best-known chess match in history. That game has often been treated as a metaphor for the Cold War — not just a contest between an American and a Soviet, but a contest between freedom and totalitarianism, between individualism and order. |
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First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev polled at 80 percent in a recent survey, compared with 1 percent for the only opposition candidate then in the running, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. |
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As a presidential candidate, what values and ideas does First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stand for? According to the latest VTsIOM survey, with only five weeks remaining until the March 8 presidential election, 65 percent of the people still have no idea. And considering that Medvedev’s victory was a foregone conclusion from the moment President Vladimir Putin chose him as his successor, I think the word vybory, which means “elections” and, in the singular, “choice,” has little relevance to what will take place on March 8. |
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 Heavy on social and existential themes, PTVP’s new album, is the band’s manifesto, according to frontman Alexei Nikonov. Having mixed psychedelic rock and punk, the band, one of Russia’s best, came up with what Nikonov describes as “Jimi Hendrix playing in Joy Division. |
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This week brought good news and bad news. The branch of the British Council, which said it suspended its activities under the pressure from the Kremlin, has called it quits and was reported to be giving away its possessions such as textbooks and DVDs on Monday. |
 Electricity is a mundane, everyday thing, but there is also magic to it, according to Alexander Hacke, the bassist with Germany’s seminal industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, and his artist wife Danielle de Picciotto, who bring their electronic performance called “The History of Electricity” to the city this weekend. “For me, electricity is magic,” said de Picciotto, speaking, with Hacke on the same telephone line from the couple’s home in Berlin. |
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 Modernity, new technologies, new standards of cultural responsibility and civic engagement. These are not a set of ideas that are normally associated with a traditional institution such as the State Hermitage Museum in St. |
 When Olga Freer moved to London at the age of 18, she simply wanted to perfect her English accent. Now at 23, she is a British citizen with a son and an ex-husband, and she has written a Russian-language book, “The UK for Beginners,” describing some of her experiences. Despite its title, “The UK for Beginners” is not a guidebook. “If you want a guide to London, you should get a travel guide. I list some of the places I like, but that’s about the extent of it,” Freer said in a telephone interview this week, her English accent almost cemented. |
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 An exhibition that takes the life of Swedish World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg as a starting point to examine themes of tolerance and humanitarianism opens at the Museum of the Political History of Russia on Friday. |
 The hosts of Channel One game shows come in all shapes and sizes. Leonid Yakubovich, the host of the long-running word game “Field of Fortune,” is a jolly mustachioed figure who gets showered with gifts of homemade pickles by the folksy contestants. Then there’s Maxim Galkin, the aloof, perfectly blow-dried presenter of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” He rarely seems to take much interest in the sweating guests, only becoming animated when he urges them to drink a glass of the sponsor’s apple juice. |
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Dolce Amaro Trattoria // 10 Ulitsa Barochnaya. Tel: 380 8040 // www.dolceamaro.ru // Open 12 p.m. until the last guest leaves // Menu in Italian and Russian // Dinner for two with a bottle of wine: 2,700 rubles ($108) It’s difficult to say for sure what Dolce Amaro’s greatest asset is. |
 A stellar line-up of local musicians will perform a charity concert to help provide warmth to St. Petersburg’s homeless people on Friday - hurry to get a ticket. Conceived by Boris Grebenshchikov, the founder of the seminal Russian rock band Akvarium, the concert also features Splean, Markscheider Kunst and Billy’s Band. “It is winter now,” wrote Grebenshchikov in a statement. “Eight thousand spend the night on the streets of St. |
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 “No Country for Old Men,” adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, is bleak, scary and relentlessly violent. At its center is a figure of evil so calm, so extreme, so implacable that to hear his voice is to feel the temperature in the theater drop. |
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 HERZLIYA, Israel — Australian Open champion Maria Sharapova will make her long-awaited Fed Cup debut for champions Russia when they face World Group newcomers Israel in the first-round tie this weekend. Fresh from her victory at Melbourne Park, the Florida-based Russian was keen to forget her strained relationship with some of her teammates and finally step on court to represent the country of her birth. |
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LIVERPOOL, England — A group of Liverpool supporters is trying to succeed where the financial might of Dubai International Capital has so far failed and buy their beloved club from its American owners. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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