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MOSCOW — There are numerous curiosities to be found in the official returns of the March 2 presidential election. At a polling station in the Dagestani town of Kizilyurt, for example, more than 700 voters cast their ballots, but not a single one voted for President-elect Dmitry Medvedev, who captured more than 90 percent of the vote in the republic and more than 70 percent nationwide. While one could imagine a neighborhood where antipathy toward Medvedev runs aberrantly deep, one blogger has crunched official election results and found strikingly anomalous voter behavior across the country. Analyzing official returns on the Central Elections Commitee web site, blogger Sergei Shpilkin has concluded that a disproportionate number of polling stations nationwide reported round numbers — that is, numbers ending in zero and five — both for voter turnout and for Medvedev’s percentage of the vote. |
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HOLY HIKERS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Participants in the “Under the Star of the Virgin Mary” religious procession setting off on Sunday. Believers are walking from St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Barnaul, Yakutsk, Rostov-na-Donu, Arkhangelsk, Jerusalem and Holy Mount Athos in Greece to meet in Moscow. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest party created a new role of chairman on Monday and said it would ask President Vladimir Putin to take the job, a possible final clue to the riddle of who will really run Russia after he steps down. Putin has said he will serve as prime minister once his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, is sworn in as president on May 7. But for many investors the critical questions of how much power Putin will wield and for how long remain unanswered.
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MOSCOW — Russia will take military and other steps along its borders if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia join NATO, news agencies quoted the armed forces’ chief of staff as saying on Friday. “Russia will take steps aimed at ensuring its interests along its borders,” the agencies quoted General Yury Baluyevsky as saying. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry said Friday that it had summoned Thailand’s ambassador to discuss what it called violations of the rights of Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian arms dealer in prison in Thailand. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, who was granted political asylum in the United States earlier this year, has been formally charged in absentia with divulging state secrets, his lawyer said Friday. Kuznetsov, 64, fled the country in July, shortly after authorities began investigating him for purportedly disclosing state secrets by filing a complaint to the Constitutional Court that the Federal Security Service had illegally wiretapped the telephone of his client, former Senator Levon Chakhmakhchyan. The Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee formally charged Kuznetsov on Thursday, said Viktor Parshutkin, one of Kuznetsov’s lawyers. It was unclear whether Russia would seek Kuznetsov’s extradition, as it has with other high-profile suspects living abroad, such as businessman Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, both of whom have been granted political asylum in Britain. |
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ART ATTACK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children learning to paint at the Sergei Andriyaka Watercolor School at the Manezh Exhibition Center. As well as masterclasses, the artist is holding an exhibition. |
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MOSCOW — Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a senior judge in Ingushetia, a restive province in the North Caucasus. Khasan Yandiyev, deputy chairman of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court, was driving his Mercedes through the town of Karabulak when the assailants fired automatic weapons at his vehicle, a law enforcement official told RIA-Novosti. The gunmen fled immediately and Yandiyev died on the scene from multiple gunshot wounds, the law enforcement source told the news agency.
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A non-political rally was stopped from taking place by the city administration on Friday, and a large contingent of police was sent to the rally’s planned location in the center — only to find that the demonstrators did not show up. The rally’s organizers claim the administration violated the law by banning the rally and are considering suing it. |
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Women’s 10k in St. Petersburg ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — As many as 12,000 local women have signed up to participate in a 10-kilometer run to be held on Sept. |
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Russia’s Police Ministry has said that the number of child sex crimes it has recorded in recent years has risen by more than 25 times as state officials and experts call for stronger punishments for pedophilia, including life imprisonment, execution or the use of chemical castration. |
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MOSCOW — A British-based playwright has accused Russian authorities of Soviet-style censorship after her play, about a real-life hostage siege in Moscow, was canceled on its opening night. |
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 A British Virgin Islands court has ruled that that Sergei Yushchenko was legitimately dismissed and Vladimir Senkin legitimately appointed general manager of Lenta LLC, the local retail enterprise whose shareholders August Meyer and Oleg Zherebtsov are currently involved in a lawsuit. |
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Land for Sale at Auction ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Property Fund plans to auction off a land plot on Sytninskaya Ulitsa in the Petrogradsky district in October or November this year, Interfax reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — State Duma deputies floated radical plans on Friday to cut tobacco use after ratifying a United Nations anti-smoking convention. Potential measures include dramatically increasing the cost of cigarettes and banning their sale in roadside kiosks, Nikolai Gerasimenko, deputy head of the Duma’s Public Health Committee said Friday, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — Inter RAO, Unified Energy System’s import and export arm, said Friday that it would sign a protocol Monday with Serbian state-controlled electricity monopoly EPS that could lead to a number of lucrative contracts, a move experts said had political overtones. |
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MOSCOW — The RTS, the country’s benchmark stock index, breached the 2,100 barrier for the first time this year, as oil and metal stocks pulled away from the field. “It does look much better than last month,” said James Fenkner, managing director at Red Star Asset Management. |
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KIEV — Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine’s state-run energy company, said Friday that it signed a contract with Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo on importing natural gas from Russia, despite efforts by the prime minister to eliminate energy middlemen. |
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MOSCOW — Seventy-five workers at United Company RusAl’s North Ural Bauxite Mine in the Sverdlovsk region began a hunger strike Sunday, a union leader said. Alexander Anisimov, deputy head of the local Independent Miners’ Union, said by telephone late Sunday that the miners were staying in the administrative building of the Little Red Riding Hood mine, which is part of the larger RusAl complex. “We decided to take the step when RusAl said it was ready to increase our salaries 5 percent, or about 800 rubles [$34],” Anisimov said. The miners had previously asked for a 50 percent increase, saying their wages fell dramatically last year without any explanation from RusAl. |
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 KASHIRA, Moscow Region — The jewel in the crown of the Unified Energy System network, OGK-1, will be auctioned off Thursday as part of the culmination of a decade-long sector reform that will see the electricity monopoly officially cease to exist on July 1. |
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 The key economic priority in Russia is to maintain the high economic growth rates that it has achieved over the past eight years, and recent growth performance has certainly been encouraging. There are reasons to believe that this growth will remain high despite further shocks from global financial turbulence. |
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On the surface, it seems Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin each got what they wanted most at the NATO and Sochi summits. Bush is moving forward with the placement of anti-Iranian missiles in Poland, and Putin kept Ukraine out of NATO, at least for the time being. |
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From my balcony in the center of Yerevan, the Armenian capital, I heard a sudden volley of bangs, as flashes of light illuminated the evening sky. A few weeks earlier, I’d been standing in the same place as the crackle of tracer bullet fire resounded in the night. |
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If theIdes of March spelled trouble for Julius Caesar, mid-April makes millions of Americans wary — and without knives or men in togas. The gainfully employed must lock ‘n’ load their No. |
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 NARYAN-MAR, Nenets Autonomous District — When an airplane carrying LUKoil workers crashed in the far north of this Arctic region three years ago, killing 29 of 52 people on board, many blamed the weather. When, one year later, in March 2006, a helicopter carrying victims’ relatives to a commemoration ceremony at the crash site also fell, killing another person, the indigenous people thought something else was at play. |
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ROME — She had no desire to be just another smiling face in Italian politics. So when porn star Milly D’Abbraccio designed her campaign posters, it was obvious she was going to show off her bottom. Targeting her male fan base, the veteran of Italy’s adult entertainment industry has plastered images of her derriere all around the Eternal City in a bid to win a seat in Rome’s city hall. |
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WASHINGTON — The World Bank plans to invest up to $3 billion over the next two to three years in stock and bond indices, to stabilize its income and safeguard against rising inflation and falling interest rates, bank officials said on Sunday. |
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JERUSALEM — Israel’s secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him, U.S. sources close to the matter said on Monday. Carter angered the Israeli government with plans to meet Hamas’s top leader, Khaled Meshaal, in Syria, and for describing Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territories as “a system of apartheid” in a 2006 book. |
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The Czech Republic conceded its Davis Cup quarterfinal to Russia on Sunday after Tomas Berdych injured his ankle against Nikolai Davydenko. World No. 9 Berdych fell when he lunged for a forehand baseline shot on a break point against Davydenko’s serve in the fourth game of the fifth set. |
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AUGUSTA, Georgia — Trevor Immelman survived a double-bogey at the 16th hole to become the first South African to win the U.S. Masters in 30 years with a three-shot victory on Sunday. |
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WASHINGTON — A boycott of Olympic ceremonies by world leaders over China‘s crackdown in Tibet would be an evasion of responsibility and less effective than quiet diplomacy, the U.S. national security adviser said on Sunday. The remarks by White House adviser Stephen Hadley come as a challenge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said she will not attend the opening ceremony of this year’s Beijing Olympics, and to those calling for U. |
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LONDON — Manchester United surged six points clear at the top of the Premier League with a 2-1 comeback victory over Arsenal at Old Trafford on Sunday that also snuffed out the London club’s slim title hopes. |
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Rubin Stays on Top BELGRADE (Reuters) — Surprise leaders Rubin Kazan stretched their perfect start to five matches after a brace by Turkey striker Gokdeniz Karadeniz helped them to a 4-0 away rout of Khimkhi. Dynamo Moscow stayed second, two points behind the leaders, after Bulgarian Tsvetan Genkov and strike partner Dani scored two goals apiece in a 4-3 home win over city rivals Spartak. |
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 Cambridge, U.K.,-based Vladimir Bukovsky is a living link between today’s Russian opposition and the Soviet dissidents of the past. Bukovsky, who spent 12 years in a Soviet prison as a political prisoner before he was released and exiled to the West as the result of a strange exchange with a Chilean communist leader in 1976, returned to Russia last year to run for Russian president — although his candicacy was rejected by the authorities. |
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