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MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service said Friday that its agents had caught a Georgian spy and accused Tbilisi of aiding rebels in the North Caucasus in an episode likely to heighten tensions between the countries. On Sunday, the two sides continued to snipe at each other as Georgia accused Russia of deploying heavy weaponry alongside its peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia and briefly detained a group of Russian soldiers in the breakaway region. |
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QUEBEC CITY — Russia rallied to its first world championship gold medal since 1993 when Ilya Kovalchuk’s overtime powerplay goal gave it a 5-4 win over defending champions Canada on Sunday. |
 Members of the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) launched a verbal attack on the pro-Kremlin United Russia party last weekend for introducing a series of reforms to the process of obtaining Russian citizenship. Activists from the radical youth movement staged a protest outside the party’s local headquarters calling for an end to the reforms. |
All photos from issue.
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The third Russkoye Slovo (“Russian Word”) festival opens Tuesday and runs through Friday, the society of Russian language and literature teachers and St. Petersburg State University have announced. “The main goal of the festival is to attract the attention of society to the condition of the modern Russian language, to unite people interested in preserving and developing the language, to demonstrate the best examples of speech, and to promote language and literature,” said Leonid Moskovkin, director of the Russian Society of Russian Language and Literature Teachers. |
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MOSCOW — Glistening skyscrapers and fancy office buildings aren’t the only things rising across Moscow these days. Amid the oil-fueled boom that shows no signs of waning, the splurge in consumer spending has spread beyond iPhones and trips to Paris, to whips and vibrators. |
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Human rights activists and members of ethnic minorities have condemned official statistics depicting a drastic fall in the number of hate crimes committed in St. Petersburg as exaggerated and say the decline if anything is cause by the police’s inefficiency in dealing with such attacks. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry said Friday that it hoped the six nations negotiating with Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program could meet in Tehran soon to offer the Islamic Republic new proposals for talks. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev made his first gubernatorial appointment Friday, replacing the long-serving governor of the Stavropol region. In a decree posted on the Kremlin web site, Medvedev accepted the resignation of Alexander Chernogorov, who fell out with Moscow last year after failing to lead United Russia to victory in regional legislative elections. |
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MINSK — Belarus accused the United States on Friday of harming the interests of ordinary citizens by imposing new sanctions on the country’s industry in a dispute over human rights. |
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Dunes, the open-air summertime extension of popular student-oriented bar Datscha, called it quits on Sunday citing the changed policy of the owner of the territory on which the bar was located. According to the manager of Datscha and Dunes, Anna-Christin Albers, a new gate will be installed and pass system will be introduced to prevent passers-by from getting into the courtyards of the former Soviet taxi park where Dunes was located, making it impossible for the “beach bar” to operate. |
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Hewlett-Packard announced Friday that it was teaming up with Foxconn International to build the country’s first foreign-owned computer factory in an effort to capitalize on spiraling demand for high-tech products. The $50 million plant on the outskirts of St. |
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MOSCOW — Georgia said Friday that it would block negotiations on Russian entry to the World Trade Organization until Moscow reverses a decision last month to step up ties with two breakaway Georgian provinces. |
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YEKATERINBURG — The world’s biggest emerging market economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — agreed Friday to formalize their “BRIC” club for the first time to affirm their global economic clout. The four countries, which account for more than one-tenth of the world’s gross domestic product, said they would boost cooperation on a range of fronts and work on ways to ease the burden of soaring global food prices. |
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SZLK Goes Bankrupt ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Northwest Timber Company (SZLK) has applied to the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court to start bankruptcy proceedings, Interfax reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen on Saturday said he was confident that talks on a new EU-Russia treaty would begin before a key summit next month, despite opposition from Lithuania. Verheugen was speaking after holding extended talks with Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko during a trip to a Sukhoi aircraft plant in the far eastern town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where state-owned United Aircraft Corporation and leading Western manufacturers are working on Russia’s Superjet-100 project. |
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SEOUL — State-run Korea Gas Corp said on Monday it has agreed to extend a cooperation agreement with Russia’s Gazprom for easier access to Russia’s natural gas. |
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MOSCOW — German engineering giant Siemens on Friday sealed a 100 million euro ($155 million) contract to build three power turbines for OGK-1, one of the country’s leading power generating firms. The deal will see Siemens, already a major player in the country’s machine-building industry through its blocking stake in turbine maker Power Machines, build two gas turbines and a steam turbine for a new unit at OGK-1’s Perm power station by 2010, with a combined capacity of 850 megawatts. |
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MOSCOW — Europe’s third-largest helicopter maker, AgustaWestland, signed a deal with state-run Oboronprom on Friday for the Russian helicopter giant to distribute up to 450 million euros ($700 million) worth of Italian-made equipment over the next four years. |
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KIEV — Russia criticised the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on Sunday, saying it preferred to spend its profits bolstering reserves instead of making much needed investments in the region’s infrastructure. Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin also said Russia was upset that out of the bank’s 33 billion euros ($51. |
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At least once a week I receive a text message to my cell phone from a luxury boutique. More than a year ago I bought a bag there, and filled out a form that included my cell phone number. Now I’m regularly informed of the arrival of new collections, as well as discounts and special offers. This information is not very useful, but it is tolerable. But when the owners of the boutique opened a nightclub, the flow of promotional text messages announcing performances by visiting DJs became a nightmare. It stopped when I called back several times to complain. But then one of the employees left the company and opened their own boutique. Along with their experience and connections in the industry, he or she apparently took the list of clients’ cell phone numbers with them. |
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 A dash of openness can be a dangerous thing in an autocratic state. Mikhail Gorbachev discovered this two decades ago when his campaign to inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a heat-seeking missile. |
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Getting a Canadian to swallow his or her pride after a monumental world hockey championship loss on home soil and to look at the bigger picture is a tough task indeed. Let this Canadian living in St. Petersburg then not wallow in misery after a game fairly played to write on the broader theme of sports and society. |
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There is a broad consensus in Brussels on the need for an external energy policy to diversify suppliers and routes and loosen Russia’s grip on the European natural gas market. |
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May 8, the date Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister, might go down in history as the end of Russia’s latest attempt at democracy. That date might stand alongside other similar milestones in Russia’s history — for example, Oct. 25, 1917, when the Bolsheviks overturned the temporary government that was to rule until elections; or Jan. |
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Two decisions stand out in the recent government reshuffle: the appointment of former Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev as secretary of the Security Council and the creation of a special government agency in charge of CIS affairs. |
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The three U.S. presidential candidates rarely mention Russia. When they do, their remarks are critical — possibly because they are hoping to attract a few more votes from the numerous and well-organized ethnic communities from Ukraine, the Baltics and East Europe. Still, Senator John McCain stands alone. |
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Goodyear Plans Factory ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. may build a $250-million plant in Russia, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified government officials with knowledge of the matter. The company plans to make as many as 5 million tires a year at a factory in the Yaroslavl region between Moscow and St. |
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DUJIANGYAN, China — The hairdryers, brushes and shampoo Lang Guanghong unloads from the back of his van each morning aren’t standard disaster relief tools. The 22-year-old hair stylist wanted to help when his hometown was hit by China’s deadliest earthquake in decades, which officials say may have killed 50,000 people. |
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YANGON — Southeast Asian nations will take the lead in an international aid effort for cyclone-hit Myanmar, but the ruling military junta will not allow unfettered access for relief teams, Singapore said on Monday. “We will establish a mechanism so that aid from all over the world can flow into Myanmar,” Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters after an emergency meeting of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). |
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LONDON — La La La. Boom Bang-A-Bang. Ding-A-Dong. It’s that time again. The Eurovision song contest is a shameless celebration of pure kitsch with its tacky songs, camp singers and outrageous outfits that will culminate with a glitzy finale in the Serbian capital of Belgrade this year on May 24. |
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DUBAI — Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has urged Muslims to break the Israeli-led blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and fight Arab governments that deal with the Jewish state, according to an audio recording. “The duty to break this blockade falls upon our brothers in (Egypt) as they are the only ones that are on the border,” bin Laden said in the recording posted on Islamist websites on Sunday. |
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Stuck in Airline Toilet NEW YORK (Reuters) — A New York man who says he was told to “hang out” in the bathroom on a five-hour JetBlue flight has sued the airline for $2 million over “extreme humiliation. |
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LONDON — Gordon Brown launched a YouTube version of Prime Minister’s Questions on Monday in an attempt to connect with younger voters and dispel opposition jibes that he is not in tune with the digital age. Video questions can be submitted on any subject in an “Ask the PM” section on Downing Street’s YouTube website. |
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LONDON — Portsmouth won the FA Cup for the first time in 69 years on Saturday when striker Nwankwo Kanu’s first-half goal secured a 1-0 win to overcome the spirited challenge of Championship side (second division) Cardiff City. The first final not to feature one of the current ‘big four’ teams since 1991 was initially open and adventurous, given a magnificent backdrop on an overcast day at Wembley by both sets of noisy fans making the most of a rare moment in the limelight. |
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MOSCOW — Zenit St Petersburg midfielder Igor Denisov has turned down an invitation to join Russia’s provisional squad for Euro 2008, coach Guus Hiddink said on Sunday. |
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Sharapova Injured ROME (Reuters) — Title holder Jelena Jankovic will meet French qualifier Alize Cornet in the final of the Italian Open after the withdrawal of Maria Sharapova with a calf strain. The 18-year-old Cornet staged a splendid comeback to upset Russian sixth seed Anna Chakvetadze 3-6 6-4 6-3 and earn herself a meeting with Serb fourth seed Jankovic. |
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In early May, the writer Yury Rytkheu died in St. Petersburg. While all major news agencies reported his death, it has been a very long time since his name made any stir in Russian literary circles. Rytkheu was born in Uelen, a small Chukchi settlement in the Far East of Russia, the son of a hunter and grandson of the local shaman. |
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History is written by the winners, and so, according to the dominant narrative in Russia, the 1990s were a period of chaos and corruption that nearly destroyed a great nation before President Vladimir Putin came along to set things right. |
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Issues Archive