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Lawyers for Soldiers’ Mothers, a Russian human rights group that campaigns against brutality and abuse in the Russian army, has given The St. Petersburg Times special access to evidence it claims shows forced prostitution in the ranks. Soldiers’ Mothers say testimonies by former recruits point to a system in which new recruits were sent to sell sex on the streets of St. Petersburg by older recruits who then extorted the money. “Those who did not have money and failed to give it to the senior recruits on demand were sent to sell themselves on the street at the Catherine Garden,” reads one testimony obtained by Soldiers’ Mothers. |
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POLE POSITION
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Spectators watch from the shore of the Neva River as Swedish driver Jonas Andersson speeds past to victory on Saturday in the Sixth Grand Prix of Russia, a stage in the 2008 U.I.M. Formula One Power Boating World Championship. |
 MOSCOW — The boardroom battle at TNK-BP descended into outright mudslinging over the long holiday break, with the Russian shareholders threatening to have BP-nominated directors disbarred by a Moscow court this week and BP’s chairman accusing them of using illegal “corporate raiding” tactics. The chief executive of AAR, the consortium representing the Russian shareholders, insisted in an interview Saturday that the dispute centered only around mismanagement by BP officials.
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MOSCOW — The eXile, Moscow’s notorious English-language alternative biweekly, is shutting down after its investors became frightened by a government inspection and withdrew their funding, the newspaper’s editors said. “The paper is dead, unless a miracle happens,” Mark Ames, The eXile’s founder and editor, said by telephone. |
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The rate of HIV infection in St. Petersburg is 2.5 times higher than the Russian average, the acting head doctor at the city’s AIDS Prevention and Treatment Center said, Interfax reported on Monday. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Ukraine would lose defense industry ties with Russia and suffer reduced trade cooperation if it joined NATO, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Saturday, news agencies reported. Ivanov said visa regulations would also be tightened should Ukraine pursue its ambition to join NATO. The comments, at a ceremony to mark the 225th anniversary of Sevastopol port on the Crimean Peninsula — the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — came on the heels of a string of pronouncements by Russian officials on issues regarding the peninsula and relations with Kiev. “I couldn’t say for whom such a breakup would be more painful — Russia or Ukraine. |
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 MOSCOW — Spanish police said they had broken up the local operations of the Tambov and Malyshev organized crime groups, arresting 20 people and seizing millions of dollars in cash and assets. |
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VIENNA — Illegal state interference means elections standards are in crisis in areas of Europe, the director of a European election watchdog said. Christian Strohal, head of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, did not criticize any countries by name. Diplomats said he was alluding mainly to Russia and several other former Soviet republics regarded by the West to be backsliding from post-communist commitments to democracy and human rights. “What we have is a crisis of compliance with election standards in some countries,” Strohal said in a speech to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 56-nation parliamentary assembly at the end of five years as head of ODIHR. |
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 A group of St. Petersburg scientists have returned from the Himalayan Mountains after learning the secrets of an almost-extinct form of Tibetan yoga that they hope can be used to cure diseases in the West. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev stressed the importance of democracy and freedom in a speech for Russia Day on Thursday. Medvedev presided over an awards ceremony honoring scientists, scholars and artists held annually in the Kremlin on June 12, as part of nationwide celebrations including fireworks and a concert on Red Square. |
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The board of directors of St. Petersburg Technopark, headed by deputy-governor Mikhail Oseyevsky, has approved, resized and refinanced the IT-Technopark project, which is due to be completed by 2015. Designed by HOK International architecture bureau in London, the IT-Technopark will be located on the premises of the Bonch-Bruevich St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications in the Nevsky District near Dybenko metro station. It will be comprised of three buildings of 75,000 square meters each, as well as educational centers, dormitories, offices and parking lots. The park will accommodate about 15,000 programmers and provide some of them with cheap housing. The apartments will belong to the city, along with all of the technopark’s assets. Non-commercial real estate construction and further expenses will be covered by the federal and state budgets, while private investors and developers will be responsible for the commercial objects. |
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OPEN DOORS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg Stock Exchange Director Viktor Nikolaev pictured outside the exchange, which began operating Monday, despite a ruling by the city planning council that the building broke regulations. |
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MOSCOW — As Russia’s business and political elite wound up their weekend gathering in St. Petersburg, the local markets received a short-term lift, but wider concerns over global inflation lingered through the week. Russian bourses shrugged off global worries last Monday, with investors chewing on the prospect of Svyazinvest’s privatization and positive noises from the government on the protection of property rights and an improved legal system.
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NOVY URENGOI, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District — Unified Energy System has begun the construction of a new, 450-megawatt production unit at the Novy Urengoi power station to provide much needed electricity for the country’s largest oil- and gas-producing region, although financing for the project remains in doubt. |
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Construction Boom ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The arrival of foreign carmakers including Volkswagen AG and PSA Peugeot Citroen in Russia’s Kaluga region has spurred a construction boom there, Vedomosti reported. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev called for the country to be assigned an Internet domain name in the Cyrillic script on Wednesday as part of a Kremlin drive to promote Russian as a global language. The Kremlin is concerned that Russian, once the main language throughout the Soviet Union, is losing ground to local languages and English. He said 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would be a key part of raising the importance of the language, a task he said was his personal priority as president. “We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name — it is a pretty serious thing,” Medvedev told the International Congress of Russian Press in Moscow. |
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 As Russia’s economy continues to grow, more Western companies are entering the country in search of investment opportunities, including IT firm Hewlett-Packard, which with Foxconn last month broke ground on a $50 millionnew computer plant in St. |
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MOSCOW — The economy and state coffers may be bulging from sky-high oil prices, but the soaring cost of aviation fuel could soon drive some of the country’s smaller airlines to the wall. Over the last 12 months, the price of airplane kerosene in the country has shot up some 125 percent — driving up ticket prices, devouring airline profits and putting dozens of smaller airlines at risk of bankruptcy. |
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MOSCOW — When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced last week that the company would begin selling its high-speed iPhone 3G in 70 countries this summer, Russian fans were enraged that their country was conspicuously absent from the list. |
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The 12th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that was held from June 6 - 8 attracted about 2,500 guests to the city, including high-ranking officials and businesspeople. Each VIP participant was accompanied by a retinue of associates, press people and bodyguards, bringing the total number of people who came to St. |
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When I became BP chief executive just over a year ago, I warned that the supply and demand balance for energy was very tight. But, like most people, I never expected to see the oil price go quite as high quite as rapidly as it has in the past few months. |
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 Oil is so central to the existence and development of modern economic life that it has inevitably become the focus of global concerns as prices have doubled since 2006. Oil complicates economic decisions, macroeconomic policy, domestic politics and the foreign policy of virtually every country. |
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On June 5, a Moscow City Court jury acquitted Vladimir Kvachkov, a retired military intelligence colonel, of charges that he attempted to kill Anatoly Chubais, the architect of privatizations in the 1990s and head of Unified Energy System. |
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 LUXEMBOURG — European Union foreign ministers insisted on Monday that the EU reform treaty was alive despite Ireland’s “No” vote but conceded they had no quick fixes for rescuing it. Their monthly meeting in Luxembourg was a first opportunity for EU officials to start picking up the pieces after Thursday’s Irish referendum cast doubt over the survival of a pact meant to bolster the EU’s economic and political weight in the world. |
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BEIJING — Thousands of victims of China’s earthquake are moving to escape a new threat from rain-triggered landslides, officials said on Monday, while floods battered the nation’s southern trade powerhouse. |
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10 Die in Japan Quake TOKYO (Reuters) — The death toll in a powerful earthquake that hit northern Japan at the weekend rose to 10 on Monday as troops and rescue workers searched for survivors in the remote, mountainous area worst hit by the tremor. A fourth body was pulled from the ruins of an inn in the northern prefecture of Miyagi, a local official said. |
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 LONDON — Just in case he had not rattled Roger Federer enough, Rafael Nadal showed on Sunday that he would continue to stalk the five-times Wimbledon champion for the next three weeks. Seven days after handing Federer a brutal 6-1 6-3 6-0 mauling in the French Open final, the four-times Roland Garros champion effortlessly adapted his claycourt skills to win his first title on grass. |
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SAN DIEGO, California — Tiger Woods drained a birdie putt at the final hole Sunday to set up a David and Goliath 18-hole playoff with unheralded American Rocco Mediate at the 108th US Open golf championship. |
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INNSBRUCK — Czech Republic leave Euro 2008 feeling shell-shocked and bemused at how they let a quarter-final place slip through their fingers in a final few minutes of madness. Leading 2-0 with 15 minutes to go, they had a last-eight place firmly within their grasp on Sunday before Turkey stunned them with three quick goals that left their dreams in tatters and their coach lost for an explanation. |
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BEIJING — Broadcasters still do not know if they will be allowed to transmit live from outside venues or iconic sites like Tiananmen Square during the August Olympics, according to a satellite service provider in Beijing. |
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SALZBURG — Russia coach Guus Hiddink has told his players they will need to step up another gear when they face Sweden for a place in the Euro 2008 quarterfinals. By beating Greece 1-0 in their Group D match on Saturday, Russia both eliminated the holders and put themselves firmly in the mix for a place in the last eight alongside Spain who have already qualified from the group. |
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