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Acetone, mercury, chloroform and high concentrations of copper, iron, aluminum, and lead abound in the waters of the River Neva and other local waterways, according to a new study released by the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Greenpeace. The levels of aluminium exceeded the norm by a staggering 775 times, and levels of iron by 320 times. Oil levels in the city waterways were 164 times above the norm, the research discovered. The samples were processed at the St. Petersburg Center for Water Research and Control, the city’s largest laboratory in the field. “Every single sample showed abnormal results revealing huge amounts of contamination,” said Dmitry Artamonov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Greenpeace. Environmental activists took water samples from six local rivers, including the Neva, the Okhta, the Okkervil, the Izhora, the Murzinka and the Slavyanka throughout May. |
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PALACE RESTORED
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The recently reconstructed lobby of the Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel. About $142 million is being spent on the ongoing renovation which is planned for completion in 2009. |
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KHANTY-MANSIISK — Russia and the European Union on Friday kicked off long-delayed talks on a new partnership pact after the EU appeared to concede to a key demand by President Dmitry Medvedev. The EU seems to be taking a “leap of faith” in Medvedev, who was hosting his first EU-Russia summit, a political analyst said. The visiting EU leaders refused to compare Medvedev with his often blunt-speaking predecessor, Vladimir Putin, but they clearly were impressed with Medvedev and spoke warmly of him.
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 A legally required public hearing into the planned 396-meter tall Okhta Center building, otherwise known as the Gazprom Tower, held by the district administration and the company in charge of the project descended into farce on Friday as public ire over the new building reached new heights. The hearing featured hundreds of supporters who were reportedly hired to voice approval for the project, as well as an hour-long protest, demands to cancel the hearing as “illegitimate,” and the arrival of OMON special forces police. |
All photos from issue.
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SUKHUMI, Georgia — Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region said on Monday it was sealing itself off from Georgian-controlled territory after a series of explosions that it blamed on Tbilisi. An official in the Georgian government denied any involvement in the explosions — the latest of which injured a Russian holidaymaker on Monday — and said Abkhazia’s allegations were “politically motivated”. Abkhazia, a region on the Black Sea coast, has been the scene of mounting tensions between Tbilisi’s Western-leaning government, which wants to restore its control, and the Moscow-backed separatists. |
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FUN RUNNERS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Runners on Palace Square taking part in the 19th International White Nights Marathon in St. Petersburg on Sunday. About 2,000 runners from 25 countries took part in the competition. |
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KHANTY-MANSIISK — The Kremlin left the Estonian president off the guest list for a Finno-Ugric conference last year. It might wish that it had snubbed him again this weekend. Estonian President Toomas Ilves rankled Russian officials on Saturday when he told a three-day conference in Khanty-Mansiisk that some Finno-Ugric people have embraced democracy but that others have yet to taste freedom.
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MOSCOW — “Only Russia and only victory,” a drink-sodden football fan sang without irony as he rode the metro home alone at 1 a.m. Friday. “Ole, ole, ole, ole! Russia is champion!” he chanted hoarsely, unintentionally echoing the jubilation that must have been spreading from Madrid to Mallorca at that very moment. |
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The first stage of one of the largest investment projects in St. Petersburg’s hotel industry was due for completion Tuesday with the reopening of the main entrance on Nevsky Prospekt of the Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel. The main entrance of the five-star hotel has been closed for reconstruction since December last year, during which time a temporary lobby off Stremyannaya Ulitsa was in use. “We wanted to build a new and luxurious living room for the city,” said Gerold Held, general manager of the Nevskij Palace. As a result of the reconstruction work, the lobby has become bigger and lighter, and is now more than twice its original size in both floor area and height, according to the hotel manager. |
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 The first river yacht route, Dvortsovy Kruiz (Palace Cruise), opened Saturday, connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg on a trial basis through July 12 as part of the Annual Yacht Festival. |
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Bitter disappointment about the amount of profit and concern about the future pricing of shares were expressed among minority shareholders of Russia’s largest state-owned banks, VTB and Sberbank, which held their annual meetings in late June and had to account for the distribution of funds raised through initial public offerings (IPOs), one of the most risky investments, according to analysts. |
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MOSCOW — Oil hit another record of just under $143 as global stocks tumbled last week, with the Dow briefly dipping into bear market territory as investors sought safety in gold, government debt and the Swiss franc. |
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MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday said Russia would make few compromises with the European Union in a wood tariffs dispute seen as the final hurdle in the country’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. Lavrov also accused Ukraine of bowing to Western tariff demands to win WTO membership earlier this year. |
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KHANTY-MANSIISK — Finnish President Tarja Halonen failed to win concessions from Russia in a timber-tariffs dispute at her first meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Kremlin official said. |
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MOSCOW — A move for the United States to lift a Cold War-era restriction on trade with Russia when it joins the World Trade Organization (WTO) will face opposition in Congress, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Monday. Russia, which started its bid to join the global trade watchdog in 1995, aims to finish work on a multilateral agreement opening the way for membership later this year. |
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LONDON — Record prices for crops such as wheat and corn this year have sparked a surge of investment interest for farmland in Russia and Ukraine, a region with large untapped potential but also significant risk. |
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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Sunday that a recent decision to boost the minimum wage “shouldn’t have a serious effect” on inflation. Speaking before State Duma deputies from the ruling United Russia party, which he leads, Putin said the recent decision to nearly double the minimum monthly wage from Jan. |
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Kopeikin for Aeroflot ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian government deputy chief of staff Mikhail Kopeikin has been nominated to become chairman of Aeroflot, Vedomosti reported, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday praised Ukraine for making timely payments for its gas supplies this year during new pricing talks and welcomed a pledge to host Russia’s Black Sea Fleet until 2017. “For the first time in many years, there is no debt on ongoing payments between Russian suppliers and Ukrainian energy consumers,” Putin told a news conference after talks with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. |
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MOSCOW — Dubai will invest $100 million in electricity generator OGK-1, marking the last deal in the sell-off of former state power monopoly UES, the Russian company’s chief executive Anatoly Chubais said on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia does not yet have a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) but is working to create one, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday. Paulson, who was in Russia to discuss trade and investment, told Putin the United States welcomes Russian investment and both sides were working together to outline best practices for SWFs, owned by governments of cash-rich countries. |
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MOSCOW — Russia will be able to create its first Internet addresses using the Cyrillic alphabet next year, communications ministry official Vladimir Vassiliev told Interfax news agency on Sunday. |
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 According to a Brussels anecdote, the main revelation of every European Union presidency at the end of its six-month stint is that there is life after death after all. This is a telling comment on the pressures and challenges faced by any country at the helm of the EU, which has to invest a considerable amount of effort and energy in ensuring the smooth running of the union. |
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In Khanty-Mansiisk on Friday, Russia and the European Union finally kicked off negotiations on a new strategic agreement. At the EU-Russia summit, President Dmitry Medvedev described the new agreement as a “brief, legally binding framework document” that would not be “excessively detailed. |
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Economists and investors like talking about the BRIC countries, meaning Brazil, Russia, India and China. Besides making a clever acronym, it would seem that the four don’t have a lot in common as far as history, culture or economic structure is concerned. But the BRIC countries are all vast landmasses occupied by large populations with relatively low per-capita incomes that have enjoyed rapid economic growth over the past decade. |
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WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, looking to bolster his expertise in foreign policy, will travel to Europe and the Middle East to consult on issues like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, his campaign said on Saturday. The trip to France, Germany, Great Britain, Jordan and Israel will take place before the Democratic convention in late August, when Obama will be nominated to face Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election. Obama also plans to visit Iraq and Afghanistan this summer as part of a congressional delegation, but the campaign would not confirm those visits would be part of the same trip and would not give the exact dates of any foreign trips. |
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PRAYING PAIR
/ Reuters
German tourists on holiday in Mallorca react as they watch on a screen the Euro 2008 final soccer match between Germany and Spain on Sunday. Germany lost the match 0-1 (see Sports, page 16) |
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KUALA LUMPUR — Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Malaysia’s revitalized opposition, left the Turkish embassy on Monday where he had taken refuge following sodomy accusations, the latest thunderbolt in Malaysia’s political tempest. Anwar left the embassy around 6:45 a.m. via the ambassador’s residence. “Only after I received assurances of my safety, (did) I leave.
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NEW YORK — A 20-year-old woman identified by local media as Kazakh supermodel Ruslana Korshunova plunged to her death from a Manhattan apartment on Saturday in an apparent suicide. Police said only that the woman was discovered dead in front of an apartment building in downtown Manhattan, near the financial district and the South Street Seaport tourist area. |
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 LONDON — For three days running, a series of seismic shocks ripped through Wimbledon, causing destruction rarely witnessed so early at a grand slam tournament. The exit of Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic rocked the All England Club on Wednesday and 24 hours later 2004 Wimbledon winner Maria Sharapova and twice runner-up Andy Roddick were also ejected. |
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EUGENE, Oregon — World champion Tyson Gay ran the fastest 100 meters of all-time to win the American Olympic trials on Sunday, a wind-assisted 9.68 seconds. |
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VIENNA — Fernando Torres’ goal that gave Spain a 1-0 victory over Germany on Sunday not only decided the Euro 2008 final but was also one of the best in the tournament. His 33rd minute strike, clipped home from an acute angle after he muscled past Philipp Lahm, was the 77th and final goal to join those that were brilliantly volleyed, headed and fired home — or even tapped in after bouncing out of a puddle. |
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Issues Archive