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The crusade by opposition party Yabloko against the construction of the controversial Okhta Center — formerly known as the Gazprom Tower — suffered another setback Wednesday when the St. Petersburg City Court threw out a suit claiming that the project’s funding scheme is illegitimate. Yabloko argued that City Hall, which has agreed to cover 49 percent of the project’s costs, is investing in the project illegitimately, and asked for the funding to be excluded from the city budget for this year. The rest of the project’s costs are to be met by the energy giant Gazprom which intends to use part of the massive development for its new headquarters. |
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CAMERA! ACTION!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Lenfilm director Stanislav Mitin (l) and director of photography Sergei Lando (c) working on “Back Entrance,” a television film set in 1949, in central St. Petersburg on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to establish closer ties with the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, prompting sharp criticism from Georgia and the West. Putin’s order calls for increased economic cooperation but stops short of formally recognizing the republics, which have enjoyed de facto independence since a series of separatist wars rocked the region in the early 1990s.
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 St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said she will again propose the administrative unification of the city and the Leningrad Oblast that surrounds it in coming weeks. Matviyenko said she would raise the matter when a new federal government is formed after the installation of Dmitry Medvedev as president in May. |
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MOSCOW — A German man charged with selling sensitive technology information to Russia is a key figure in a mysterious spy case involving a former Federal Space Agency official that jarred Russian-Austrian relations last year. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The Central Elections Committee handed out awards Wednesday to the polling agencies that made the most accurate forecasts of the March presidential election. But one victorious pollster said the science of political forecasting in Russia involves guessing the degree of manipulation by authorities. In a statement on its web site, the elections committee called the March 2 presidential vote a triumph for the science of polling in Russia. “On the whole, forecasting of the results of the 2008 Russian presidential elections can be called highly accurate,” the statement said. “Most of the research centers participating in the survey successfully fulfilled the task.” One winner, the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, took the prize for predicting voter turnout. |
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NANO NEWS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Scientists working with an electronic microscope at a new nano research center at the Prometheus Scientific Institute which opened on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — The standoff between Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and an influential Chechen clan entered its third day Wednesday as both sides traded accusations of murder and abuse of power. There were conflicting reports regarding the number of casualties suffered by the two sides since a collision Monday near the Chechen town of Argun between Kadyrov’s motorcade and vehicles transporting serviceman from the Defense Ministry’s elite Vostok battalion.
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The Hungarian property developer TriGranit Development will invest $2-3 billion into new premises in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Tuesday, citing Sandor Demjan, chairman of the company's board of directors. TriGranit will begin several development projects in the city, including the construction of a new shopping and exhibition complex. The complex will be built on the site of the former Badaevskie warehouses — wooden buildings dating from the beginning of the 20th century located on Kievskaya Ulitsa in the Moskovsky district. In recent years the Badaevskie warehouses have caught fire several times and have been largely destroyed. TriGranit Development plans to complete construction within four years of obtaining the required permits from the city authorities, Demjan told Interfax. |
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 Two new international hotel operators, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts and Domina Hotel Group, plan to open hotels in St. Petersburg during the next two years, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing Maxim Sokolov, chairman of City Hall's Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian Railways, the operator of the world’s longest train network, will restrict train service through St. Petersburg this month as it upgrades the rail link between Moscow and Russia's second-largest city. A total of 77 trains will be canceled from Friday April 18 until April 25 and the schedules of 47 other trains running from April 21 to 25 will be changed, the rail operator’s Oktyabrskaya division said Monday in an e-mailed statement. Canceled connections include trains from St. Petersburg to Moscow and other Russian cities, the Azeri capital Baku and cities in Ukraine. ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Metso Oyj’s Valmet Automotive unit, which assembles Boxster sports cars for Porsche AG, may build a Russian assembly plant near St. |
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 TRIPOLI — Russia agreed on Thursday to write off $4.5 billion worth of Libya's Cold War-era debt in return for military and civilian contracts between the north African country and Russian companies, officials said. |
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 In Winston Churchill’s memoirs, he records a meeting with Josef Stalin in October 1944: “The moment was apt for business, so I said ‘Let us settle our affairs in the Balkans. ... So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have 90 percent predominance in Romania, for us to have 90 percent of the say in Greece and go 50-50 about Yugoslavia?’ While this was being translated, I wrote out the percentages on a half sheet of paper. |
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We liberals have been wrongfully slandering the state for its attacks on various businesses. Last week, Moscow stepped in to protect the rights of an upstanding Russian businessman who was arrested overseas. |
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 There are some voices that are suited to their foreign roles. “National Lampoon’s Pledge This!” a movie starring Paris Hilton, is dubbed by Russia’s own socialite bimbo, Ksenia Sobchak. And Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards in “Blonde and Blonder” are dubbed, most appropriately, by blonde Ukrainian pop star Olya Polyakova and by the blonder and more surgically enhanced television presenter Masha Malinovskaya. |
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It isn’t bad news that Ali Campbell is due to perform in town but it is a shame how the concert has been advertized. Posters (especially the early versions of them) for the ex-singer with British band UB40 were designed in such a way that the public could be easily fooled into thinking that it is not just Campbell, but his internationally famous former band that is coming to St. |
 Twenty-eight years since the pioneering German industrial/noise band Einsturzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings) was formed, the band returns to St. Petersburg with yet another album, “Alles Wieder Offen,” (Everything Open Again) self-described as “possibly [its] most fully and perfectly realized album yet. |
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LONDON — Russian publishers, critics and award-winning writers joined forces to promote contemporary Russian literature at the London Book Fair this week. |
 When I first arrived in the Soviet Union in 1987, I suffered from that sinking feeling brought on by the dismal clutter of the Soviet landscape. I walked beaches littered with washed-up machine parts, rode tattered trams past shabby housing blocks, and tripped over rebar in concrete-clad playgrounds. |
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With St. Petersburg’s leading soccer club Zenit winning the Russian Premier League last season and currently defending its title — and now having booked its place in the semifinals of the European-wide UEFA Cup competition — there’s no better time to catch a match at Petrovsky Stadium. |
 No composer of classical music was ever more attuned to the power of publicity, or courted it more ardently, than Igor Stravinsky. A celebrity by the age of 30, he learned the art of reclame from his early mentor Sergei Diaghilev, the master press manipulator of his day. |
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Nevsky 106 // 106 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel: 273 2966 // www.nevsky106.spb.ru // Open 24 hours // Menu in Russian // Dinner for two without alcohol 2,200 rubles, $95 Nevsky 106 is, putting it very mildly, a mixed bag. |
 In 1973, when we first encounter him, Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is a lanky schoolboy in Macclesfield, a red-brick English town outside of Manchester, with intense but not unusual interests. Apart from cigarettes and his best friend’s girlfriend (whom he will shortly marry), these are mainly musical and literary. |
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HARARE — South Africa’s government, in a major change of stance, called on Thursday for the rapid release of results from Zimbabwe’s presidential election, saying it was concerned by a delay that has increased fears of violence. “The situation is dire,” said government spokesman Themba Maseko in Cape Town. |
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Martial artists from across the globe are to arrive in St Petersburg this week to take part in the three-day Second East-West Open Martial Arts Olympiad, held at the SKK arena starting Friday. More than 7,000 participants from Russia, the CIS and about 30 countries from the six continents are due to take part in individual events and stage shows, individual battles and team contests to be held on 27 stages in the city’s largest sports complex. |
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LONDON — Former captain Martin Johnson is to become England team manager and Brian Ashton will step down as head coach, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) said on Wednesday. |
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LONDON (AP) — Chelsea, which is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, will play in a preseason tournament in Moscow this summer along with AC Milan, Sevilla and Lokomotiv Russia. Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon said Wednesday the Blues would play in the Russian Railways Cup on Aug. 1-3. |
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Issues Archive