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The British Consulate General in St. Petersburg is preparing to process up to 12,000 visa applications from fans of the city’s soccer club Zenit within two weeks if the team wins its second-leg semifinal match of the UEFA Cup and advances to contest the final in the Europe-wide tournament in Manchester, U.K., on May 14. If the team advances, the consulate will not accept visa applications from regular visitors to Britain from May 1 through May 14 to cope with the extra work. “We’re asking visitors who are going to Great Britain from May 1 through May 15 for other reasons than the final match to apply for a British visa before Wednesday, April 30,” Yelena Mishkenyuk, spokeswoman for the British Consulate in St. |
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TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A live tiger and Yury Smekalov go through their paces in a rehearsal of a new production of Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian, choreographed by Georgy Kovtun, to be premiered at the Mikhailovsky Theater on Tuesday. |
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NOVO-OGARYOVO, Moscow Region — Japanese Prime Minister Jasuo Fukuda and President Vladimir Putin agreed on Saturday to expedite talks to resolve a decades-old territorial dispute by issuing “fresh directives” to their respective governments, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said. Fukuda is the first Japanese prime minister to visit Putin’s official residence outside Moscow, a venue seen by some as more prestigious than the Kremlin and a gesture that the Foreign Ministry said Fukuda appreciated.
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MOSCOW — Tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi escalated over the weekend amid reports that Russian military reinforcements were being deployed in Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia and local residents were being forced to swap their ID cards for Russian passports. Russian-led peacekeeping forces in the region denied a report Friday by Georgia’s Rustavi 2 television that it had video evidence that divisions of the Maikop brigade had been sent to the Ochamchira region, which is mostly populated by ethnic Georgians. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The State Duma passed in a first reading Friday a bill that would allow courts to close media outlets for publishing libelous statements, a law critics say would give authorities an additional tool to crack down on dissent. The bill would add “dissemination of deliberately false information damaging individual honor and dignity” to the list of offenses for which a media outlet can be shut down. Under current law, courts can close media outlets for publishing state secrets, extremist statements and statements supporting terrorism. The Duma voted 339-1 in favor of the bill, which will now face two more Duma readings before being sent to the Federation Council for consideration. |
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HORSEPLAY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Anna Shanskaya, an exhibitor at the All-Russian Equestrian Games, with a pony brought from Germany for the event, which will run until Sunday at the SKK (Sports and Concert Complex). |
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The Waterville aqua park will consider applications for compensation from visitors who suffered chlorine poisoning in the park’s swimming pools last month. “Applications for compensation will be considered by a special commission to include both the park’s authorities and representatives of Russia’s Consumers’ Union,” Waterville said in a press release, Interfax reported.
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Pensioner Compensation St. Petersburg’s Kirov district court has ruled that a 62-year-old woman who suffered serious injuries after an automobile accident in August 2006 should be awarded financial compensation, Fontanka.ru reports. The long-term medical treatment the woman has undergone proved too costly, so she appealed to the prosecutor’s office. |
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 While some marketing professionals readily interpret negative political trends as beneficial for business activities, others find unexpected barriers in the seemingly prosperous regions. At the 2nd Marketing Forum which opened Friday in St. Petersburg, managers of Russian and foreign companies shared their experience in assortment management and discussed strategies for regional expansion and the cultural aspects of brand building. |
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Beeline was ranked the number one cellular operator for the number of countries and regions covered by roaming services in the most recent global report by J’son & Partners analysis agency. |
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Stadium Costs Double ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Gazprom may pay for most of the new stadium being built for soccer club Zenit St. Petersburg after the venue’s cost doubled to as much as $593 million, Vedomosti reported, citing Alexander Dyukov, Gazprom Neft chief executive officer and also Zenit president. |
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ROME — Italy’s outgoing prime minister, Romano Prodi, has declined Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s offer of the presidency of South Stream, a pipeline venture by Gazprom and Eni, a cabinet source said on Monday. |
 MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska’s United Company RusAl said Friday it would seek to combine with Norilsk Nickel, the country’s biggest mining company, in the next year and may buy shares on the open market. A merger is “in the interests of all shareholders,” RusAl chief executive Alexander Bulygin said in e-mailed answers to questions. |
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MOSCOW — Jailed Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak has been stripped of his duties as a deputy governor of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Interfax reported Saturday. |
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Perception is important, but we have to count our expenses, the CEO of one of St. Petersburg’s biggest banks said, explaining why his bank is reducing its network of retail offices. The manager was prepared to discuss the international financial crisis as well as the problems of local banks. Even if I hadn’t studied his CV before the interview, I would have known instantly that he is a Muscovite. Many St. Petersburg residents know the word “perception,” along with many other foreign words, but none of them heads a bank. Fifteen years ago St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak and his deputy Vladimir Putin dreamed of transforming the city into an international financial center. |
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 The world economy is being battered by sharply higher energy prices. While Russia and OPEC countries are reaping huge profits, the rest of the world is suffering as the price of oil has topped $110 per barrel and that of coal has doubled. |
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If the European Union needed a new warning of Russia’s efforts to strengthen its grip on the continent’s gas supplies, it has come in the shape of President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Libya. During the visit, Gazprom, the state-run gas monopoly, agreed to a wide-ranging joint venture with Libya’s national oil and gas company. |
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 Three international real estate consultancies — Colliers International, Jones Lang LaSalle and Knight Frank — have presented unified criteria for the classification of existing and planned office centers, recommending that real estate professionals use the new classification in order to make communication with foreign and Russian clients and partners easier. |
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The international community is justly concerned about China’s crackdown in Tibet in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. But perhaps some attention could be spared for the suffering of Russians ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to take place in Sochi. An International Olympic Committee official visited Sochi last week and remarked: “Here you start from nothing.” Jean-Claude Killy went on to say that the complete lack of infrastructure only meant that it was “an incredible chance” to build a resort. The original estimate for the Sochi Games was $12 billion, more than was spent on the last three Winter Olympics combined. |
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 In February, Boris Nemtsov published a white paper on the Vladimir Putin years that he considered so inflammatory that he suspended his membership in Union of Right Forces, the party he co-founded, to spare it the Kremlin’s ire. |
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In 2004, Foreign Affairs published a seminal article by professors Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, arguing that Russia was a “normal country”: “Russia was in 1990, and is today, a middle-income country with GDP per capita ... comparable to Argentina in 1991 and Mexico in 1999. Almost all democracies in this income range are rough around the edges. |
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 Liars, an experimental rock trio whose members are based in Berlin and Los Angeles, delves into the entire history of rock music on its most recent album. Called simply “Liars,” the album encompasses influences from both postpunk bands such as The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees that the band members listened to as teenagers and earlier hard-rock bands from the 1970s, such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and returns to the simplicity of well-crafted pop songs, according to Angus Andrew, Liars’ Australia-born, Berlin-based singer and guitarist. Liars, which also includes Aaron Hemphill who plays percussion, guitar and keyboards, and drummer Julian Gross, who both live in Los Angeles, will be supporting Radiohead on its U. |
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IN CONCERT
/ Reuters
Mariinsky soprano Anna Netrebko will be appearing with Ruxandro Donose in Belcanto Masterpieces, sponsored by Mont Blanc, at the Mariinsky Concert Hall on Thursday. |
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Historians are important people. Often, they create a literary tradition that transcends the boundaries of their trade and assumes universal importance. Thus, Herodotus, “the father of history,” is at the same time essentially the first European prose writer, and every classic from Balzac to Tolstoy is in one way or another in his debt. The same may be said about Russian literature — Nikolai Karamzin’s “The History of the Russian State” was the first universally accepted and widely popular Russian prose text.
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 LOWER ESHERA, Georgia — In this half-abandoned place of rusting ports and skeleton homes, there is a land that is recognized by no one. Fifteen years since its war with Georgia, the breakaway republic of Abkhazia is a surreal spot where Soviet isolation lingers, the Cold War never ended and people cling to facades of statehood. |
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 GENEVA — Tajikistan needs urgent help to combat a locust infestation that threatens the impoverished country’s food supply, the U.N. said on Friday. More than 150,000 hectares of the Central Asian country are covered in locust eggs and larvae at various stages of development, said Elisabeth Byrs of the U. |
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DETROIT — The former pastor of Barack Obama whose words have rallied many but offended others told an audience of 10,000 that his critics get it wrong when they call him divisive and polarizing. |
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AMSTETTEN, Austria — A 73-year-old Austrian man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter in a windowless cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children, police said on Monday. A 42-year-old woman had told police on Sunday that her father, Josef Fritzl, lured her into the basement of the block where they lived in the town of Amstetten in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her. |
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 LONDON — Holders Russia will play Spain in the Fed Cup final after both teams made light work of their semifinal opponents on Sunday. They quickly finished off the job they started on Saturday, with Vera Zvonareva beating U.S. player Vania King to give Russia an unassailable 3-0 lead in the tie and Nuria Llagostera Vives overcoming China’s Peng Shuai to do the same for Spain. |
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BARCELONA — Ferrari’s world champion Kimi Raikkonen stretched his Formula One lead to nine points with a dominant win from pole position in the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday. |
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LONDON — The FA will request CCTV footage of the fracas between several Manchester United players and Chelsea ground staff after the teams’ Stamford Bridge Premier League game on Saturday. United players Patrice Evra, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Gerard Pique, Park Ji-sung and John O’Shea were warming down after Chelsea’s 2-1 victory when ground staff asked them to move to another area of the pitch. |
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