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MOSCOW — Russian stocks fell to the lowest in three years, led by Rosneft and Lukoil, as sinking oil prices hurt the outlook for Russia’s economy and equities dropped around the world. The market value of Gazprom, Russia’s biggest company, fell below $100 billion for the first time in three years. The Micex Index fell 11 percent to 616.72 at 4:12 p.m. in Moscow, the lowest since June 2005. The Micex Stock Exchange halted trading for an hour because of the slump. The dollar-denominated RTS Index sank 10 percent to 708.31. Crude futures fell 1.9 percent to $73.12 a barrel Thursday after dropping 5.2 percent Wednesday in New York. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U. |
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 Both critics and supporters of Valentina Matviyenko, who celebrates five years in office as St. Petersburg governor this week, often compare her to a battleship: dynamic, forceful, and hard to stop or turn around. |
All photos from issue.
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GENEVA — Talks over Georgia’s breakaway regions were suspended until next month as soon as they started Wednesday, with both Russia and Georgia blaming each other for the breakdown. The European Union’s special envoy to Georgia said the talks hit an impasse because of “procedural difficulties. |
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Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of the country’s environmental watchdog, is in negotiations to become a leader of the liberal Yabloko party. Mitvol said Wednesday he had presented Yabloko with a plan to reform the party’s structure and change its program, Interfax reported. |
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GENEVA — Talks over Georgia’s breakaway regions were suspended until next month as soon as they started Wednesday, with both Russia and Georgia blaming each other for the breakdown. The European Union’s special envoy to Georgia said the talks hit an impasse because of “procedural difficulties. |
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MOSCOW — Yelena Baturina, the billionaire wife of Mayor Yury Luzhkov, has lost a bid to buy a luxury chalet in Austria, where she and her husband have vacationed in the past. |
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 Rosinter Restaurants Holding said Wednesday that it saw a 75 percent decline in first-half profit on higher expansion costs. Net income totaled $1.3 million under international financial reporting standards, the company said in a statement without giving a year-earlier figure. |
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Nine airlines will be grounded by the end of the week due to overdue debts, aviation authorities announced Wednesday. Three of the airlines — Interavia, Dalavia and Omskavia — had all but suspended flights already, stranding hundreds of passengers. |
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MOSCOW — A partnership of electricity producers said Wednesday that its members were planning to ask the government for tens of billions of dollars of cheap loans to finance their efforts to build up capacity amid the global liquidity crunch. The request would be the latest addition to a growing choir of pleas for government help from a number industries, including carmakers and oil and gas producers. The electricity companies looking for government loans include OGK-5, controlled by Italy’s Enel, Viktor Vekselberg’s power holding Integrated Energy Systems, Oleg Deripaska-controlled EuroSibEnergo and seven other members of the nonprofit partnership Council of Electricity Producers. |
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 MOSCOW — The State Nanotechnology Corporation, engine builder Saturn and Gazprombank signed a contract Wednesday to create a joint venture that will build equipment for the aviation and engineering industries. |
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 The rich world’s financial system is headed toward a meltdown. Stock markets have been falling most days, money markets and credit markets have shut down as their interest-rate spreads skyrocket, and it is still too early to tell whether the raft of measures adopted by the United States and Europe will stem the bleeding on a sustained basis. |
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Vasily Koltashov was relatively unknown among Moscow’s economic analysts. That is, until the young journalist moved to Athens and began publishing his economic forecasts there — each prediction was more dire than the last. |
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 Nowadays high-heels and patent-leather loafers tread the streets of St. Petersburg, but, just a couple of generations back, the same cobblestones were trodden by the marching boots of revolution — not only in politics, but in the arts. “The streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes,” declared revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1917. |
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When visited this week, the popular arty indie bar Fidel boasted a sign on its door saying “No Entrance for George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Mikhail Saakashvili,” the name of the U. |
 Directors Lounge began in 2005 as a meeting point for filmmakers and video artists interested in experimental forms of cinema at the Berlin International Film Festival. It presented rare, experimental or unknown works which don’t fit into any category of the Berlinale. Since then the festival has become an annual event that takes place every February in Berlin. Directors Lounge has, within a very short space of time, gained recognition for its unique character. |
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 Local channel 100TV opened its evening newscast on Wednesday last week with a report that Moscow director Yury Grymov’s film “Strangers” (Chuzhiye) had been banned in the U. |
 Watching drama in Russian theaters often leaves one wondering how most companies in the country manage to fuse almost any play with a humane and somewhat melancholic Chekhovian twist. Whichever dramatist is brought on the Russian stage — Beckett, Shakespeare, Brecht or Eugene O’Neal, any you care to name — gets a distinct Chekhovian flavor that lingers long after you leave the auditorium. |
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Cabinet Portrait prides itself on being the first “Photo-Restaurant” in St. Petersburg. As far as I know, it’s the first photo-restaurant to open anywhere. |
 On Saturday, TNT started its latest reality show, “Who Doesn’t Want to Be a Millionaire.” The nine participants are locked in a bunker underground and have to agree on which of them wins a $1 million prize. The catch is that every time one of them walks out, the prize money is cut in half. The idea comes from the United States, where the show aired on Fox as “Unan1mous. |
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MOSCOW — Alexei Cherepanov was buried in Omsk on Wednesday, after the 19-year-old hockey player collapsed while playing for Avangard Omsk in a Monday night game in Chekhov, in the Moscow region. Thousands of people filed past Cherepanov’s coffin to pay their respects in the city’s hockey arena prior to the burial service, Interfax reported. |
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