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First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev may be getting blanket coverage from state-controlled television. But it appears that his official media presence in the run-up to the March 2 presidential election will be a lot more modest. Medvedev, all but guaranteed to win the election, is planning to run an “ascetic” presidential campaign, which officially kicked off Saturday, a United Russia official close to Medvedev’s campaign said. “This is not only because the other candidates are not serious competitors, it was also the wish of Medvedev himself,” the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Medvedev is not merely being humble, analysts say: His campaign handlers have made a pragmatic choice to ensure that his popularity does not eclipse that of President Vladimir Putin and to prevent voters from feeling manipulated. |
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Gone Fishing / Reuters
A man fishing on melting ice on the River Neva in central St. Petersburg on Saturday. With temperatures hovering above zero, the mild winter so far in 2008 has made traditional winter hobbies, such as ice fishing, skating, and skiing, difficult — if not dangerous. |
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Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday. Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually.
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Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky compared the emerging “power vertical” to a phallic symbol in October 2003, saying in a speech that no one should expect it to grow too big. President Vladimir Putin was the main motor behind this consolidation of Kremlin power, often at the expense of state and public institutions. |
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MOSCOW — The only outspoken Kremlin critic in Russia’s presidential election next month said on Monday the vote could not be fair because the country was run by “thieves. |
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Russia has granted asylum to the widow and son of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom are on Interpol’s wanted list, the Federal Migration Service said Friday. Mirjana Markovic, 65, and Marko Milosevic, 33, entered a Moscow police station in March 2005 and made a formal request for political asylum, an agency spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing agency policy. |
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February 2000: Putin, then acting president, declares that big businesses should avoid politics. May 2000: Putin says in his first state-of the-nation address that the weakness of the state has stalled economic and other reforms. |
All photos from issue.
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The local leaders of Eduard Limonov's banned NBP party and the Narod movement were arrested, with other activists, as they attempted to hold a rally in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Narod's Sergei Gulyayev and NBP's Andrei Dmitriyev, as well as 20 other activists, were seized by the OMON police and thrown into police buses within a few minutes after picketers unfolded banners and started to chant slogans. Between 30 and 40 protesters were to picket the North-West Interior Ministry Troops Headquarters at 33 Millionnaya Ulitsa to protest the verdict of the North Caucasus District Military Court that sentenced Interior Troops lieutenants Yevgeny Khudyakov and Sergei Arakcheyev to 17 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for murdering three Chechen civilians in 2003. |
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 Presidential front-runner Dmitry Medvedev hit the campaign trail over the weekend with a promise to continue subsidies for farmers amid Russia’s drive to join the World Trade Organization. |
 The police are looking for two boys, aged 7 and 8, who went missing in the town of Tosno, Leningrad Oblast, on Friday, as friends of their families turn to the internet to aid them in the search. Classmates Maxim Linkov, 8, and Sasha Pronin, 7, came home from school on Friday and asked Linkov’s mother for permission to go for a walk at about 2:30 p. |
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In contrast to a massive loss reported by French banck Societe Generale, its Russian subsidiary Bank Societe Generale Vostok (BSGV) increased profit by over 50 percent last year, according to a statement released Friday. BSGV said it had made a profit of $196 million in 2007. |
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Workers at the Vsevolozhsk Ford plant in the Leningrad Oblast on Monday agreed in a secret ballot to accept the offer of the plant’s administration of a new employement agreement. |
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View of Okhta Sold ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — AFT Development is acquiring 2.6 hectares of land at the junction of Smolnaya embankment and Tulskaya Ulitsa, opposite the future Okhta Center office complex, RBC reported Monday. AFT Development plans to construct an elite residential complex. |
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MOSCOW — Russian stock markets bowed out of January with one of their worst months of trading in years, the benchmark RTS suffering its biggest losses since 2000. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank took markets by surprise Friday by using a wide range of measures to curb inflationary pressures and sacrificing banking-sector liquidity to defeat price growth. The bank said it would raise the floor for its key one-day repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25 percent, reserve requirements on ruble retail deposits by 50 basis points and on foreign currency liabilities by 1 percentage point. “This is really a serious action — the Central Bank raised its untouchable repo rate, which had been constant for several years,” said Mikhail Galkin, an analyst at MDM Bank. The move may hit the banking sector hard, as it is still licking its wounds after the global liquidity crunch had shut the window to international capital markets. |
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 MOSCOW — Prosecutors have asked Britain to extradite five suspects in a fraud case at state-owned shipping giant Sovkomflot, adding another twist to the already fraught relationship between London and Moscow. |
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MOSCOW — United Company RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminum producer, said on Monday it will partner China Power Investment Corp (CPI) in building a 500,000-tonne smelter in western China and a bauxite and alumina complex in Guinea. The deal gives UC RUSAL, majority owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a foothold in China’s fast-growing aluminum market, already the world’s top consumer and producer of the light metal used in drinks cans, cars and construction. |
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WASHINGTON — U.S. nuclear power reactors will be able to obtain more supplies of Russian enriched uranium for fuel, under a trade deal signed by the two countries Friday. |
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SAN FRANCISCO — When campaigning for president in a country as large as the United States, it helps to have famous friends to share the campaigning. With exhausted candidates hopscotching between 24 states as far apart as New York, California and Alaska, which are voting in primaries and caucuses on Tuesday, the help is all the more valuable. |
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Mentioning Senator Hillary Clinton’s name in an e-mail to a Moscow friend evoked a fury in the reply that caught me off guard. Though counting herself no great follower of President Vladimir Putin, my friend was still put out by Clinton’s comment that he had no soul. She was offended both as a patriot and as an Orthodox believer. It is never pleasant to hear your country’s leader compared to the walking dead — especially by a foreigner. This also would seem to be a perfect example of the “politics of personal destruction” that Bill Clinton wished to put aside during his own run for president. My friend and her family are beneficiaries of the success of the Putin years. |
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 President Vladimir Putin’s decision to serve as prime minister should First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev become the next president has made the duo’s electoral success in March a virtual certainty. |
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Reputed crime boss Semyon Mogilevich has been living comfortably in his villa in Moscow for the last seven or eight years. When he was suddenly arrested on Jan. 23, the logical question many asked was, “Why now?” One of the reasons might be tied to Gazprom’s recent push to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. |
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As the race for Armenia’s presidency heats up, with candidates hurling abuse at each other and gunshots fired outside campaign offices, pop music has emerged as a propaganda tool in this increasingly fierce struggle for power. |
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February is National Reading Month in the United States — and not a moment too soon. Last November, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts issued “To Read or Not to Read,” a sobering report detailing how American youth have been reading progressively less and worse, with both frequency and proficiency declining at “troubling rates. |
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 CHENZHOU, China — Millions remained stranded in China on Monday ahead of the biggest holiday of the year as parts of the country suffered their coldest winter in a century. Freezing weather has killed scores of people and left travelers stranded before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival — the only opportunity many people have to take a holiday all year. |
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COLOMBO — A defiant Sri Lankan military paraded tanks and troops as fighter jets flew overhead on Monday to mark the country’s 60th anniversary of independence amid fears Tamil Tiger rebels would attack the celebrations. |
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N’DJAMENA, Chad — Thousands of civilians fled Chad’s capital on Monday after rebel forces pulled back from the city following two days of street fighting in an attempt to overthrow President Idriss Deby. The central African country’s government said it had forced back the rebels, who had stormed into N’Djamena aboard armed pickup trucks. |
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KIGALI, Rwanda — Earthquakes struck Rwanda and neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, killing at least 30 people and seriously injuring 350 more, officials said. |
 PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy married supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni at the Elysee Palace on Saturday, just three months after they started dating. “Ms. Carla Bruni Tedeschi and Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy would like to announce that they got married this morning in the presence of their families and in the utmost privacy,” a statement from Sarkozy’s Elysee office said. |
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan brought Kenya’s rival sides together again on Monday after a weekend of clashes cast a pall over a skeleton deal meant to stop a month of post-election bloodshed. |
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A suicide bomber attacked a Pakistani military bus taking medical corps staff to work in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Monday, killing himself and four military personnel, security officials said. Violence has intensified in Pakistan in recent months, with the army battling militants in the northwest and suicide bomb attacks in towns and cities, raising concern about prospects for the nuclear-armed country in the run-up to February 18 elections. |
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MADRID — Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton suffered racist abuse from Spanish fans during testing at the Montmelo circuit in Barcelona, Spanish media reported on Sunday. Reports in a number of papers said the McLaren driver was booed and insulted whenever he made his way from the team motorhome and into the pits on Saturday. |
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LONDON — Michael Owen scored Newcastle United’s first goal since the return of Kevin Keegan as manager on Sunday but they could still only draw 1-1 at home with north-east rivals Middlesbrough. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive