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Sergei Gulyayev, the leader of the Narod movement, said he is preparing a complaint to the prosecutor’s office about the beating by OMON riot police of a man in a police truck holding those detained during a rally against the closing of a market on Saturday. He said he would submit the complaint on Friday. Speaking by phone this week, he said the man, businessman Dmitry Smekalov, was then thrown into the Neva River and was lucky to survive with just a broken rib and severe bruising. Gulyayev was detained alongside Andrei Dmitriyev, the St. Petersburg leader of Eduard Limonov’s banned National-Bolshevik Party and Olga Kurnosova of Gary Kasparov’s United Civil Front. |
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 MOSCOW — The Zamoskvoretsky District Court sentenced former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov to 5 1/2 years in prison Wednesday, one day after it found him guilty of abuse of office and defrauding Russia and the United States out of millions of dollars. |
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MOSCOW — The head of international rights group Human Rights Watch has been denied a Russian visa, scuttling his plans to present a report accusing authorities of shackling nongovernmental organizations with burdensome regulations. Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based group, had planned to present the report Wednesday in Moscow but said his visa application was rejected by consular officials. |
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Red tape is smothering civil rights and common sense in the dramatically escalating conflict between the European University and the city’s Fire Safety Inspectorate, critics say. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A Perm journalist may face criminal charges after he penned an article identifying what he characterized as positive similarities between President Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler. Igor Averkiyev, 47, editor of the newspaper Lichnoye Delo, was summoned to the city’s Leninsky District Prosecutor’s Office on Monday to answer questions about an article called “Putin Is Our Good Hitler,” published in the newspaper Za Cheloveka in December. The story compares the eight years of Putin’s rule to the early years of Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany. Prosecutors opened an investigation after receiving a complaint from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage. |
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 The head of St. Petersburg State University, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, retired early this week and will most probably be replaced by Nikolai Kropachyov, the head of the University’s Law Department. |
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MOSCOW — The leader of an ultranationalist youth group has been sentenced to three years in prison for yelling “Sieg heil” and “Kill the liberals” during a political debate at a local club last year. The Basmanny District Court on Monday convicted Maxim Martsinkevich, 23, of inciting ethnic hatred when he and 15 other ultranationalists interrupted the debate at the Bilingua cafe between political commentator Yulia Latynina and satirist Maxim Konenenko last February, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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Punk rock icon Yegor Letov, who was once committed to a mental hospital by Soviet authorities angered by his profane and fiercely anti-Communist lyrics, has died of heart failure aged 43. |
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Despite the global economic crisis, the Russian economy is likely to keep growing in 2008, according to a report issued this week by the Institute for Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO). After the recent outflow of private capital from the banking industry experts expect a return wave. According to IGSO, investors will be interested primarily in securities, industrial production and retail. Capital inflow will produce a short-term boom in the Russian economy. However in the long run it will increase the debt burden for Russian companies and banks, the report said. “The credit bubble, which burst in January 2008, resulted in three crashes in the stock market and marked the beginning of the global economic crisis. |
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 Intel Corporation expects the use of mobile computers to proliferate during 2008, and the company hopes that computer producers will increasingly use its Centrino technology, which combines a high-speed processor with low power consumption. |
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 As not everybody now remembers, the wars of Yugoslavia began not in Bosnia, not in Croatia, but in Kosovo. The chain of events that led to the Srebrenica massacre and the bombing of Belgrade started there, in the late 1980s, when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic launched a series of repressive measures against this mostly Albanian, semi-independent, autonomous province within Serbia. |
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Last Thursday, Maksharip Aushev was arrested in Ingushetia. His arrest could become a political catastrophe — not only for Ingushetia, but for the Kremlin’s interests in the entire Caucasus region. |
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 It was the exhibition that almost did not happen. The large painting of dynamic, nude bodies holding hands and dancing in a circle against a bright blue and green background was a hair away from staying in the State Hermitage Museum, never to be seen in London. |
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Musician Yegor Letov died this week, agencies reported. Letov emerged as an uncompromising punk rocker as the leader of Grazhdanskaya Oborona, seen as the Soviet Union’s premier punk band. |
 Natalia Bessmertnova, a legendary prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet for more than three decades, has died. She was 66. Bessmertnova died Tuesday at a Moscow hospital after suffering from a long illness, company spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said. Russian media reported that Bessmertnova had kidney trouble. Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov called her death “a huge loss for the Bolshoi Theater and to our whole culture,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. |
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 A protest rock concert scheduled to take place at ROKS club on Wednesday was cancelled earlier this week because routine maintenance at the venue has been planned for the same day. |
 ‘We are keeping the rings in this bucket, here.” A shell-shocked civil defense officer gestures to a hefty metal bucket at his feet, stuffed with what appear to be thousands of wedding rings. The rings have been gathered from the dead in a small British city; their inscriptions are the only hope authorities have of identifying those incinerated by the deployment of a nuclear weapon. “This,” a narrator mournfully concludes, “is nuclear war. |
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 Last week, Rossia channel started its own version of the British dieting show “You Are What You Eat.” In Britain, many people had problems with that show: The qualifications of its presenter, Gillian McKeith, and the validity of her methods — tongue examining and obsession with bowel movements — were all questioned by experts. |
 Not long ago, Stolichnaya was the only Russian vodka Americans seemed to know about. But if you look around the U.S. today, you can find up to 35 brands — and the pace of new arrivals is picking up. “It seems like a new brand is coming on every day,” says John Nigoghosian, vodka buyer at Mission Liquor in Pasadena, California. This could keep going for a while, because there are about 300 vodka distilleries in Russia. |
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 ORLANDO, Florida — The General Motors’ Test Ride lasts just more than five minutes but it makes for an intense and high-adrenaline experience. The quintessential car-testing ride incorporates driving through high temperatures and a refrigerated hall, passing through traffic cones, climbing a hill, hitting a barrier and accelerating to maximum speed. |
 Mekhiko // 1 Nekrasova Ulitsa // Tel: 273 5643 // www.mexico-bar.ru // Open daily from 9 a.m. until 12 a.m. // Menu in Russian (Dish names in Spanish) // Dinner for two with alcohol 2,900 rubles ($118) Entering the warmth of Mekhiko from the snow lined streets of St. Petersburg, the authenticity of a Mexican tavern comes somewhat as a surprise. Hanging my thick coat next to a poncho, with the sound of traditional guitar music in the background, makes me think that there is something surreal about this new restaurant in the middle of Russia’s northern capital. |
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 Dark in color, mood and outraged worldview, “Michael Clayton” is a film that speaks to the way we live now. Or at least, the way certain masters of the universe do, as they prowl the jungle in their sleek rides, armed with killer instincts and the will to power. |
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 BELGRADE — More than 150,000 Serbs massed Thursday evening at a state protest against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, showing their anger at the loss of their religious heartland. “As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade, to cheers and applause. |
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YEREVAN — Thousands protested in Armenia’s capital Wednesday against a presidential election they said was rigged in favor of Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan, but Western observers called it broadly fair. |
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 DOHA — Top-seeded Serb Ana Ivanovic withdrew from the Qatar Open on Thursday after injuring her left ankle beating Olga Govortsova of Belarus the previous day. The $2.5 million tournament then lost second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia, who was beaten 6-3 7-6 by Austrian left-hander Sybille Bammer. |
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LONDON — Arsenal must become the first English club to beat AC Milan in European competition at San Siro or else force a score draw to qualify directly for the quarter-finals of the Champions League. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — St. Petersburg is unlikely to host Russia’s first Grand Prix after high-level talks with Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone were unsuccessful, Delovoi Peterburg reported Wednesday. Ecclestone met with President Vladimir Putin and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Monday to discuss building a track and holding an annual event from 2010, in place of the Australian city of Melbourne, the newspaper said. |
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