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MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court on Friday convicted former Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin on several counts of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced him to life in prison, though the businessman was absent from the trial. Judge Valery Novikov found Nevzlin guilty of organizing five murders, including the 1998 killings of Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, and Valentina Korneyeva, the director of trading firm Feniks. |
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The case against local businessman Vladimir Barsukov (a.k.a Kumarin), reportedly one of the former leaders of the Tambov criminal group, who is facing charges of orchestrating and carrying out a series of raids on large St. |
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More than 50 sportsmen and women from St. Petersburg and 12 athletes from the Leningrad Oblast will take part in the Summer Olympic Games beginning in Beijing on Friday, representing more than 10 percent of the Russian Olympic team. St. Petersburg’s contenders will fight for medals in 20 sports, including rowing, basketball, Greco-Roman wrestling, cycling, volleyball, kayaking and canoeing, judo, athletics, sailing, swimming, gymnastics, shooting, tennis and fencing. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has appointed one of its most senior generals as new chief military envoy to NATO, the Defense Ministry said on Monday, stressing the importance of Moscow’s ties with the Atlantic military alliance. |
All photos from issue.
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 An enormous swath of western Siberia was submerged in darkness Friday afternoon as the moon completely blocked the sun, enrapturing huge crowds of Russians and foreign tourists. The peak of the eclipse occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city. |
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The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Federal Migration Department collected 120 million rubles ($5.2 million) in the first six months of this year from raids it carried out on more than 17,000 employers of illegal immigrants, including trading and construction sites, matching the amount of fines it collected in the whole of last year from slightly more raids. |
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Local pro-Tibet activists will join Candle for Tibet, a Dalai Lama-blessed global protest to be held around the world on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games on Thursday, at 9 p.m. local time. Global organizers are expecting millions to take part in what they describe as the “world’s greatest light protest” to raise their voices for Tibetan freedom. |
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 City Hall has announced the nine companies who are participating in the tender for the reconstruction of Pulkovo Airport and have submitted volumes of technical and background documentation to boost their chances of winning the tender, which requires $1 billion in investment and will offer multi-billion returns. None of the bidders is currently regarded as the unanimous favorite, but experts say that the real battle will be unfolding between behind-the-scenes financial corporations. The tender for the reconstruction of Pulkovo was announced by the St. Petersburg authorities in April, during a presentation in London that attracted more than 100 interested companies, of which just nine have become preliminary bidders. |
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GOLDEN HANDSHAKE
RIA Novosti / AP
President Dmitry Medvedev greeting residents in Uglich, one of the historic Golden Ring towns around Moscow, on Friday. He urged Golden Ring town mayors to develop tourism. |
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MOSCOW — Power producers voiced alarm Friday after a government regulator clamped down on pricing by Mosenergo, the Moscow power generator controlled by Gazprom, in the country’s first-ever competitive tender for electricity capacity. Major players in the electricity industry, grouped in the Council of Power Producers and Strategic Investors in the Power Industry, joined forces to protest after the Market Council, a government watchdog, forced Mosenergo to cut its asking price by more than 10 percent, for 875 megawatts of capacity, Market Council head Dmitry Ponomaryov said.
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 Finland’s Stella Lines recommenced the passenger ferry connection between St. Petersburg and Helsinki on Saturday, after a gap of three years. The Julia, with a capacity of 1,860 passengers and cargo deck for 400 cars, will set sail from St. Petersburg on odd dates and from Helsinki on even dates, making a total of three cruises a week. |
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MOSCOW — The Economic Development Ministry is proposing cutting value-added tax by one-third, from 18 percent to 12 percent, in a step that is likely to bring the ministry into conflict with the Finance Ministry, which opposes a reduction. |
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MOSCOW — The Russian government’s $22.5 billion lawsuit against the Bank of New York Mellon has been adjourned until October 6 after a key witness for the Russian side was unable to attend the Monday hearing, the bank said. Since last May Russia has been seeking compensation after a former vice president at the bank, Lucy Edwards, helped launder more than $7 billion from Russia in the late 1990s through Bank of New York accounts and shell companies. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank, on the warpath against inflation, said Friday that it would raise mandatory bank reserve requirements from Sept. 1 in a bid to soak up the liquidity pool from foreign borrowings. |
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Russian Yahoo! Office MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Yahoo! plans to open a representative office in Russia, Vedomosti reported on Friday. Yahoo is seeking a manager for the Russian office, according to information placed on job-search web site Monster.com and professional network LinkedIn, the Russian daily said. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called on Monday for new anti-monopoly legislation to be drafted in September and put Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin in charge of drafting it. |
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MOSCOW — A Russian court has set Aug. 21 for an early-release appeal hearing for jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a spokeswoman for the local court in the Siberian city of Chita said on Monday. Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison for tax evasion and fraud. |
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MOSCOW — Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs said Friday that it had bought Pokrovsky Hills, an elite townhouse neighborhood in northwest Moscow, from U. |
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In 1990, the English football writer Simon Inglis called Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was still then known, the most unsuccessful footballing city in Europe. During several decades, a single league title in the Soviet era together with a single triumph in the Soviet Cup represented a meagre return for the only top level team in the Soviet Union’s second city. |
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 The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Over three decades ago Richard Nixon pioneered “triangular diplomacy” by forming two separate alliances with China and the Soviet Union, which had adversarial relations with each other in the early 1970s. Nixon’s diplomacy allowed the United States to drive a wedge through the heart of the Second World, making each of the two communist countries cautious of the other’s alliance, which in the end significantly enhanced U. |
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On Thursday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin heaped criticism on a company for activities that he said were harmful to the country’s economy. The company turned out to be Mechel, which Putin accused of selling raw materials to overseas customers at half the price it charges on the domestic market. |
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SHIMLA, India — Close to 150 Hindu worshippers, including scores of children, are confirmed to have died at a temple in northern India in the worst stampede in the country in three years, police said Monday. Tens of thousands of people had thronged the Naina Devi shrine in Himachal Pradesh state to attend weeklong religious festivities when the rumor of a landslide triggered panic among devotees on Sunday. |
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Zenit Get Win At Last ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — FC Zenit St. Petersburg recorded a 2-1 win Saturday in a Premier League match against FC Moscow. Playing at home in Petrovsky Stadium, Zenit secured the victory with goals from Igor Denisov and Fatih Tekke. Having fallen behind to a goal from Alexei Rebko in the first half, the hosts fought back to secure their first win in four matches. |
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Issues Archive