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 MOSCOW — Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin on Wednesday submitted a long-awaited plan to tackle corruption, a problem that President Dmitry Medvedev has declared a top priority. Naryshkin told Medvedev in televised comments that the draft strategy consisted of four stages, starting with new anti-corruption legislation being submitted to the State Duma by Nov. 1. Measures then would be adopted to improve state management, followed by measures to enhance the effectiveness of professional training for lawyers. In the final stage, measures would be taken to put the plan into effect, said Naryshkin, who heads the new Anti-Corruption Council, which Medvedev founded and chairs. |
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A WINNER!
German Pavlov / For The St. Petersburg Times
AmCham St. Petersburg Executive Director Maria Chernobrovkina presents the captain of the Knauf Gips Kolpino team with first prize in the AmCham St. Pete Soccer Tournament on Tuesday. |
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KHANTY-MANSIISK — For the next few days, this small town deep in a Siberian forest will bask in the spotlight as European and Russian officials try to move their stalled partnership forward. Regional leaders hope the Russia-EU summit, which opened Thursday evening, will lead to more foreign investment. Beaming local residents, meanwhile, insist that the choice of their town, some 2,700 kilometers east of Moscow, to host the event is no surprise.
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Violinist Sergei Stadler lasted less than a day as acting rector of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Hours after Stadler was officially introduced to the conservatory’s academic council on Wedesday, the staff held an emergency meeting and unanimously voted against the appointment. |
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MOSCOW — An American pastor walked free Tuesday after spending nearly five months in a Russian jail for bringing hunting-rifle ammunition into the country. |
All photos from issue.
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Gasoline prices in Russia continue to gallop skywards at a record rate, with St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast leading the way. According to Rosstat, the Russian Federal Statistics Service, in early June gasoline prices rose by 1.5 percent to gain almost two rubles (80 cents), giving rise to fears that they will reach 30 rubles ($1.27) per liter by the beginning of the fall. Oleg Ashikhmin, president of the St. Petersburg oil club that includes 23 companies involved in the oil business, forecasts that prices will leap again. “The increase in wholesale supply prices has not yet been responded to by retailers, who have stuck to May prices so far but are about to change them. |
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 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview that he wanted to reduce the state’s role in the economy and curb government spending to combat rising inflation. |
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Finns May Tax Truckers HELSINKI (Bloomberg) — The Finnish state may tax trucks carrying goods through the country to Russia to help papermakers pay new Russian wood tariffs, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Vaeyrynen said. Finland could start charging truckers and subsidizing papermakers as soon as this fall, Vaeyrynen said Thursday at a press conference. |
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 While Washington continues to fixate on Iraq, a resurgent Russia is steadily expanding its influence in Eurasia. If the next U.S. president ignores Moscow’s inroads, democratic development in Asia will come under threat, and the United States may soon be faced with a strategic challenge in one of the world’s most resource-rich regions. |
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Two weeks before our vigilant Federal Security Service agents arrested TNK-BP employee Ilya Zaslavsky and charged him with industrial espionage, one of the owners of Alfa Group complained to then-President Vladimir Putin that “the foreigners are getting in our way. |
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 The 400 works that make up the Yury Zlotnikov restropective at the Marble Palace of the Russian Museum reflect the long and creative life of the Moscow painter. Although it took him decades to win acceptance into the Soviet-era Union of Artists, Zlotnikov is today one of the country’s best appreciated living artists. |
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The Sex Pistols, the reformed legendary punk band that came to the city recently, snubbed Russian authorities a little by announcing “God Save the Queen” as a “little song for your president” at a local stadium concert on Monday. |
 Andrei Arshavin, the St. Petersburg-born soccer player who has been the star of the Euro 2008 football tournament which concludes Sunday in Vienna, is rapidly becoming the darling of the Western media and one of the most famous Russians in the world. A BBC correspondent has dubbed Arshavin the “Russian Ronaldinho” as fans and journalists around Europe seem to be throwing their support behind Russia. |
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 Governor Valentina Matviyenko is personally responsible for the destruction of St. Petersburg’s historical center. That’s what preservationist Alexander Makarov said on television, famously suppressed and censored in president-turned-premier Vladimir Putin’s Russia. |
 The Soviet thaw is normally said to have begun with the denunciation of Josef Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, and ended in 1966 with the sentencing of dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel to seven and five years of hard labor for slandering the system. In “The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow’s Arbat,” historian Stephen V. Bittner broadly accepts those dates but shows that nothing was as simple as we have been tempted to assume. |
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 KOSTROVO — Today they would learn about drawing, Russian Orthodox saints and God. The 7-year-olds sat straight at their desks, sun pouring through lace curtains and cherry trees blooming in the fields beyond. |
 KOSTROVO — Today they would learn about drawing, Russian Orthodox saints and God. The 7-year-olds sat straight at their desks, sun pouring through lace curtains and cherry trees blooming in the fields beyond. The teacher set a birch branch before the children and told them it was fragile and unique, just like their souls. “If you think you can’t draw properly, who will help you?” she asked. “God will help us,” a boy called out. |
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 With soccer mania sweeping Russia, even the army has made an exception to its strict regime and will allow recruits to watch Sunday’s Euro 2008 final in Vienna, Austria, while prisons in time zones across the country will record the match for inmates to watch the next day. |
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Fresh FM // 11 Gorokhovaya Unlitsa // Tel: 314 7417 // Open from 9 a.m. through 9 p.m. // Lunch for two 820 roubles ($34) // Menu in Russian only, English version in progress. Fresh FM, a high-concept salad bar on Gorokhovaya, between Bolshaya and Malaya Morskaya streets near the Admiralty, is something new for St. Petersburg. In a clinical, Japanese-style setting, guests build their own “designer” salads from a choice of ingredients or choose from a set menu. Fresh FM aims to provide an upscale, healthy dining experience quite unlike anything else available in the city. Perhaps a revolution is stirring: director Alexander Zatulivetov told Time Out that he plans to open as many as 14 Fresh FM outlets in St. |
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 Let me be blunt: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” is the finest post-Zionist action-hairdressing sex comedy I have ever seen. That it is the only one I have ever seen — and why is that? what cultural deficiency or ideological conspiracy has prevented this genre from flourishing? — does not much detract from my judgment. |
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CHICAGO — A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of former press baron Conrad Black and three ex-colleagues found guilty last year of defrauding shareholders of one-time newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International Inc. The unanimous 16-page decision from a three-judge panel of the U. |
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NEW DELHI — An Air India flight headed for Mumbai overshot its destination and was halfway to Goa before its dozing pilots were woken out of a deep slumber by air traffic control, a report said. |
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 BASEL, Switzerland — Defender Philipp Lahm’s late strike put three-times European champions Germany in Sunday’s Euro 2008 final and sealed a 3-2 win to knock out injury-ravaged Turkey. Lahm’s 90th minute goal made sure Vienna will be Germany’s final destination after Turkey’s Semih Senturk had forced an equaliser just four minutes from time to make it 2-2 to set up another dramatic finish. |
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LONDON — Former world number one Marat Safin sent third seed Novak Djokovic crashing out of Wimbledon on Wednesday while Serbian compatriot Ana Ivanovic narrowly escaped the same All England Club black hole. |
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On May 19, 2008, the 15th anniversary of the GSM standard in Russia and the anniversary of the mobile phone operator MegaFon were celebrated in Russia. In a meeting with journalists, the company’s top managers reported on the results of its development and plans for the future. |
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The midday shot from the Naryshkin Bulwark of the Peter and Paul Fortress on June 19, 2008, by the General Director of Megafon Sergei Soldatenkov, marked not only a technological turning point in the history of mobile communications in Russia. |
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North-West 3G The 3G network of the MegaFon operator in St. Petersburg and the northwest region comprises 300 base stations. It provides umbrella coverage for the territories of the central cities and major populated areas in the region. The 3G coverage zone includes the cities: Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Gryazovets, Veliky Ustyug, Cherepovets, Sheksna, Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Kola, Veliky Novgorod, Pskov, Petrozavodsk, Olonets and Sortavala. |
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