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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced Friday that the state-owned Development Bank would start pumping 175 billion rubles ($6.7 billion) this week into Russian stock markets, which have plummeted more than 60 percent since their highs in May. The move came after the Federal Service for Financial Markets halted trading in a pre-emptive move Friday morning after Asian markets took a battering overnight. The markets’ closure rounded off another frustrating week of stop-start trading that left both indexes down by more than 20 percent amid growing fears that the global financial system is teetering on the brink of a systemic collapse and predictions of a deep economic recession. |
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WONDERWALL
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The shadows of visitors to the Fontanny Dom Museum are seen as they look at a picture of the St. Petersburg poet Anna Akhmatova drawn by Amedeo Modigliani. The portrait was recently acquired by a Swedish businessman and presented to the future Arts Center of the Russian President. |
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MOSCOW — A magnitude 5.6 earthquake killed 13 people and injured 100 others Saturday afternoon in Chechnya, one day before parliamentary elections in the republic. A state of emergency was declared in the region, but the election went ahead, with the republic’s elections commission reporting a very high turnout. Two tremors hit the region in quick succession Saturday, the first with a magnitude of 5.
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A group of local investors in off-plan residential property developments who have been cheated out of their apartments are holding a hunger-strike in Moscow, after organizing several similar events in town and failing to win the support of St. Petersburg officials who have been adamant that the disputes should be settled in court. |
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City Cuts Budget ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) – In the wake of the economic crisis, City Hall has developed a series of proposals to amend the 2009 city budget in order to cut expenses, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
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Dozens of policemen, commanded by high-ranking officers, dispersed a handful of protesters, arresting three activists on Sunday. The Stop Prizyv (Stop Conscription) movement, which includes members of the Republican Party of Russia, the Yabloko Democratic Party, the United Civil Front, and the youth movements Oborona and DA!, had planned to hold a March for an All-Volunteer Army in Park Pobedy. The authorities, however, denied them permission. According to a letter signed by Vladimir Korovin, the head of the Moskovsky District Administration, the march could not be held there because Moskovsky Prospect is a “federal” highway, Park Pobedy itself is a federal historical and cultural site, and the European Table Tennis Championships were underway at the nearby Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex. |
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NEW TRICKS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A pensioner learns to use a comuter as part of a new program created by the Veterans and Invalids Association at its center to teach the elderly new skills. |
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MOSCOW — Two policemen in Perm have been apprehended on suspicion of stealing valuables from the victims of the Aeroflot Nord airliner that went down in the Urals city last month, killing all 88 people on board, the Investigative Committee said Friday. The two officers at Perm’s Dzerzhinsky district precinct were detained Wednesday after internal affairs officers discovered Tuesday that jewelry had gone missing from the thousands of valuables impounded from the crash site, the committee said in a statement.
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 PLESETSK COSMODROME, Arkhangelsk Region — President Dmitry Medvedev was on hand for the test firing of two different strategic missiles over the weekend in the Northwest Federal District, where he vowed to commission a new generation of weapons for the armed forces. Medvedev watched the firing of a truck-mounted intercontinental Topol missile Sunday morning from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank on Friday withdrew the operating license of Eurasia-Center Bank, citing the lender’s liquidity problems and violations of banking regulations. “As a result of the loss of liquidity, Eurasia-Center could not settle with its clients in a timely manner,” the Central Bank said in a statement posted on its web site Friday. |
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Miner Halts Projects YEKATERINBURG (Reuters) — Russian Copper said Friday that it temporarily shelved separate projects to expand into nickel and build a zinc plant with a rival miner because of the financial crisis. |
 MOSCOW — Midsized lender RosEvroBank has asked clients to pay back their mortgages right away rather than risk the prospect of real estate prices falling 30 percent, the bank said on Friday. “We are warning clients that they are in a crisis situation, that we are in this situation with them, and that both of us need to create a certain pillow of support,” said Yelena Safyanova, the bank’s head of communications. |
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MOSCOW — The government plans to invest some money from the Pension Fund in the Russian stock market, amidst a major outflow of foreign capital, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Sunday. |
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LONDON — Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday cut the outlook for 13 Russian financial institutions, including Troika Dialog and Alfa Bank, from “stable” to “negative,” citing increasingly tough trading conditions as global market turmoil worsens. |
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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The Commonwealth of Independent States decided Friday to join forces in handling the impact of the financial crisis, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said. |
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Billionaire Oleg Deripaska has sold his 9.99 percent stake in German construction giant Hochtief, his company said, as the credit crunch batters Russia’s richest man. The sale marks the second major blow this month to Deripaska, who already handed a $1.4 billion stake in Canadian auto parts maker Magna to creditors as his indebted empire struggles to find money amid the liquidity squeeze. |
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 As a global economic recession looms, the medium-term development prospects for the world’s energy sector will change substantially. Fifteen years of rapid growth, and the assumption that it would continue, led us to expect a corresponding increase in the demand for energy. |
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I have been trying to understand the nature of Russia’s economic crisis, but honestly, I don’t see any crisis. Instead, I see a number of surprising moves by the government. |
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Issues Archive