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MOSCOW — A German-sponsored peace plan for Abkhazia has raised fresh hopes that the worsening crisis over the breakaway Caucasus republic can be defused, despite its immediate rejection by the Abkhaz leadership and a critical reception in Moscow. Speaking in an interview Sunday, Georgia’s Reintegration Minister Temur Iakobashvili said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s tour of the region late last week represented “a very successful start.” Berlin is well suited to be an “honest broker” in the conflict, Iakobashvili said by telephone from Tbilisi. “Germany is in a unique position to have very friendly relations both with Georgia and the Russian Federation. |
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SUMMERSAULT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Youths taking part in the Marathon for Human Rights 2008 event organized by the international Youth for Human Rights movement at the 300th Anniversary Park on the coast of the Finnish Gulf. The event featured DJs, musicians, artists and the above parkour enthusiasts. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s migration service said it would not give a visa to TNK-BP Chief Executive Robert Dudley without a valid contract, a move that may help the Russian-connected co-owners oust the BP-backed executive. The move is the latest in a long-running battle at TNK-BP, a 50-50 joint venture between BP and four oligarchs, over the firm’s management and strategy.
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Twelve environmentalists from Russia and Norway are getting on their bikes on Tuesday to ride across the southern coast of the Finnish Gulf. The rally is meant to help create a map of pollution black spots and campaign against environmental pollution resulting from industrial projects. |
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Backed by dozens of policemen and hired guards, a construction company invaded Submariners Garden (Skver Podvodnikov) on Monday to fell trees and install a concrete fence around the perimeter. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry said Friday that it was concerned by joint NATO-Ukraine naval exercises in the Black Sea, saying the leaders of Ukraine were trying to force their people into NATO membership against their wishes. Russia, sensitive to NATO expansion toward it borders, has warned of serious consequences if Ukraine and fellow former Soviet state Georgia join the military alliance. |
All photos from issue.
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A communist lawmaker has drawn up a draft law targeting corrupt senior bureaucrats in St Petersburg in what he says is a response to President Dmitry Medvedev’s declaration of an all-out war on corruption. “The Russian president has declared war on corruption, but no one seems to care about the extent to which corruption in the higher echelons of power has gone totally out of control,” said St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Deputy Yury Karpenko on Wednesday, referring to his draft amendment to a law on the State Civil Service and a law regulating state officials and their duties in St. Petersburg. Both are scheduled for debate in September as the legislators return from their summer vacation. If passed into law, about 50 top officials in St. Petersburg technically enjoying a degree of legal immunity may find themselves subject to legal scrutiny in line with ordinary state employees and other state officials. |
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PIGGING OUT
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Filya, a minipig, eats a birthday cake as it celebrates its fifth birthday and the opening ceremony of the First All-Union Minipig Festival in St. Petersburg on Friday. |
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BEIJING — China and Russia signed an agreement Monday that ended a decades-long territorial dispute and finally determined their borders, in the latest sign of warming ties between the former Cold War foes. The protocol, signed by the two countries’ foreign ministers in Beijing, added to an existing agreement on their 4,300-kilometre (2,700-mile) boundary, meaning all of the frontier is now set.
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MOSCOW — Torrential rains, heavy winds and lightning wreaked havoc throughout Moscow and the region over the weekend, knocking down trees, interrupting travel plans and even destroying a monument to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. Dozens of travelers missed their flights from Sheremetyevo Airport after lightning struck an electrical station and caused delays on the Aeroexpress commuter line from Savyolovsky Station to the airport, Interfax reported Friday. |
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 Raven Group Russia has purchased a warehouse complex in Shushary, near St. Petersburg, for $216 million — a record sum for the real estate business in the northwest region according to Colliers International, which is acting as Raven Group’s exclusive consultant and broker. |
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The construction of a Russian World Studios (RWS) movie-making center in St. Petersburg is complete and the complex is due to open in September 2008, Andrei Smirnov, general director of Sistema Mass Media which is in charge of the $250-million project, announced during a press conference at Interfax last week. |
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Power Profits Rocket ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — TGK-1, the Russian power generator based in St. Petersburg, said profit in 2007 more than doubled as heating and electricity tariffs increased in northwestern Russia. Net income advanced to 2.4 billion rubles ($103 million) from 1.15 billion rubles ($49 million) a year earlier, the utility said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Revenue at TGK-1, part-owned by Russia’s gas-export monopoly Gazprom, increased 22 percent to 28 billion rubles ($1.2 billion), according to the statement. Jobs, Wages Increase MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s unemployment rate fell more than economists expected to 6. |
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 Olga Ostanina was a St. Petersburg household name associated with the 50-strong Ulita Fashion House, a design studio that supplied local and international businesses and the tourism, art and high fashion industries with women’s clothing and accessories for 15 years from 1990 when she founded it. |
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MOSCOW — Internet search giant Google on Friday announced that it was buying Begun, Russia’s leading online context advertising service, from Rambler for $140 million, a deal that boosts the U.S. firm’s challenge to Yandex. Rambler, which currently owns 50. |
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MOSCOW — Unauthorized sales of unlocked iPhones in Russia and China are flourishing, but Apple seems in no hurry to make deals with operators to sell the device in these huge markets officially. |
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MOSCOW — Gazprom said Friday that it was working to cut staff just weeks after reporting that its salary expenses grew by one-quarter last year. Chief executive Alexei Miller ordered measures to “optimize” staff numbers and cut expenses on administration, Gazprom said in an e-mailed comment. |
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GENEVA — Ministers from 35 key nations began critical talks here on Monday to clinch a global trade deal after seven years of confrontation, crisis and caustic comment. |
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NEW YORK — The German company sued by Facebook for running a “knockoff” of the social networking web site said on Sunday it asked a German court to declare that Facebook’s claims are without merit. Facebook’s complaint, filed on Friday in a California federal court, accuses studiVZ of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook and seeks “to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity” lest Facebook’s own reputation be harmed by association. |
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 Official Russian strategic policy papers have long been dismissed as bland statements of little practical value. The latest foreign policy blueprint, which was unveiled by President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday at the Foreign Ministry’s meeting with the country’s ambassadors, has received more than the usual amount of attention. |
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done the impossible. He’s made U.S. President George W. Bush look intelligent. Just as the United States was closing the deal with the Czech Republic to station an early warning radar there to help shoot down Iranian rockets, Iran fired off a test series of missiles, including the Shahab-3, capable of hitting targets 2,000 kilometers away. |
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 JERUSALEM — Gordon Brown on Monday became the first British premier to address Israel’s parliament in a speech expected to warn Iran it must heed demands to stop enriching uranium or face further sanctions. Brown was also set to attack Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “abhorrent” threats against Israel and to underline that Britain stands alongside the Jewish state, according to excerpts issued before he spoke. |
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Issues Archive