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LIMA, Peru — President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday held the last meeting of a Russian leader with U.S. President George W. Bush, who is to leave office in January, where Bush told Medvedev that he had worked hard to make it a “cordial relationship” despite difficult disagreements. The meeting took place at an Asia-Pacific Economic Community summit in Peru, part of a Latin American tour by Medvedev expected to lead to the negotiation of a number of business agreements with South American and Caribbean nations. The meeting with Bush came against a backdrop of chilly U.S.-Russian relations following Moscow’s war with Georgia in August and Washington’s agreement to base a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe. “It’s an interesting moment because I’ve had a lot of meetings with Dmitry and Vladimir Putin,” said Bush, who once famously told reporters that he had gotten a sense of Putin’s soul. |
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WONDERLAND
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A woman walks her dog in the courtyard of a building in the center of the city on Sunday. Weather forecasters are predicting more snowfall this week, though temperatures will rise on the weekend. |
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MOSCOW — The announcement that Sochi had won the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympics generated cheers and expressions of greater self-confidence from across the country last year. But you cannot blame people for having some doubts after the economic news of recent months. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, — president at the time — attended the voting last year in Guatemala City to lobby for the bid personally and was positively beaming after the announcement was made.
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MOSCOW — A computer game simulating a new war between Russia and Georgia, in which NATO-member Poland backs a bid by Tbilisi to take back its rebel regions, is about to hit shops. In the computer game “Confrontation — Peace Enforcement,” which will go on sale in Russia next month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gets support from unnamed Western powers and decides to launch another attack to take back South Ossetia and Abkhazia. |
All photos from issue.
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Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Saturday denied any notion that Russia was to blame for Ukraine’s mass famine of the 1930s engineered by Josef Stalin and urged Moscow to join commemorations for the millions of dead. Yushchenko was speaking at the opening of a 26-meter monument to mark the 75th anniversary of the famine at ceremonies boycotted by the Russian president. |
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MOSCOW — The Supreme Court opened an internal probe into the decisions of the judge who had closed to the public the trial of the alleged murderers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the court spokesman Pavel Odintsov said Friday. |
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The lower house of parliament gave its final approval Friday to a bill extending the presidential term from four to six years, a move widely seen as paving the way for Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. The State Duma, dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, voted 392 to 57 Friday to approve the bill at its third and final reading. |
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Between 300 and 400 activists took part in new opposition organization Solidarity’s first major event on Sunday, said Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights advocate who participated in the conference. |
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Tsunami Warning MOSCOW (Reuters) — A 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s Far-East coast on Monday triggering a tsunami warning which was soon lifted, Russian emergency services said. The earthquake struck at a depth of just over 300 km beneath the Sea of Okhotsk at 9:05 p.m. (9:05 a.m. |
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 MOSCOW — The country’s unemployment rate rose to a seven-month high, and retail sales grew at their weakest annual pace in more than two years in October, with analysts saying that Friday’s data was a harbinger of much worse to come. Russian companies have started cutting production, jobs and salaries as the global slowdown crimps demand, falling energy and commodity prices eat into profits in the economy’s dominant sectors and the credit crunch makes it virtually impossible to attract funding from abroad. |
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MOSCOW — The risk that Ukraine might see its gas supplies cut off next year re-emerged Saturday as Gazprom warned that time was running out for a bilateral gas contract to be signed. |
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MOSCOW — Construction of the Russia Tower, a 600-meter-tall steel-and-glass symbol of new Russian wealth and power designed by Norman Foster to be Europe’s tallest building, has been halted due to lack of funding, its developer said Friday. “Say thanks to Alan Greenspan and George Bush,” oil and real estate magnate Shalva Chigirinsky said. |
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Oil Duty Plan MOSCOW (Reuters) — The State Duma approved a new scheme of calculating oil export duties Friday to help producers curtail losses in a period of rapidly falling crude prices. |
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MOSCOW — The U.S. and European automobile industries are screeching to a halt, and they’re leaving behind a string of casualties — not all of which are obvious. Prices for platinum, which 18th-century French monarch Louis XV is said to have called the only metal fit for a king, have fallen 66 percent from their high in March of $2,276 per ounce to as low as $769 last week. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s biggest engineering companies said Friday that power producers were backing out of talks to build new generating capacity through 2010 — even at the relatively modest price of $5 billion. |
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Just a few years ago, the word “collector” in Russian could refer to everything — except debt. Then, in 2006, a new business emerged — debt collection agencies. All banks offer loan programs, complete with interest payable, and more and more people have taken out loans in recent years. |
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As a result of the financial crisis, the volume of outstanding debts is increasing. The outcome of this situation for debt collectors is not however altogether positive. |
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Unlike the U.S. and many European countries, Russia does not have a law on debt collection. Debt collectors are subject to the general norms of the Civil Code, Criminal Code and other fundamental laws along with special laws that regulate collateral, personal data, credit history, information protection and bankruptcy, said Dmitry Alexandrov, a lawyer at Beiten Burkhardt St. |
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Obtaining a loan in contemporary Russia is no longer a difficult process. Everyone, regardless of their income, can make a credit arrangement with a bank or store. |
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As a consequence of the ongoing liquidity crisis, Russian companies are slashing investment plans and cutting jobs, but those with fewer liquidity options are entering a vicious circle of debt and becoming a target for debt collecting agencies. “We are not collectors, we are mediators” is the motto of the Moscow Alpha business anti-crisis center, which appeals directly to debtors or contractors struggling to repay their debts. |
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 Remember when the Dow Jones industrial average touched 14,000 a year ago? When gold reached $1,000 per troy ounce in May, and Moscow’s RTS market index was trading above 2,500? Or when a barrel of oil cost $147 in July? When the bubble in the U.S. housing market deflated in mid-2007, a massive wave of money began sloshing around the world, quickly inflating and then bursting a series of speculative bubbles in various markets. |
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Having previously worked as an anthropologist, the Frenchman Clotaire Rapalle has transformed himself into an American marketing guru. He advises major companies such as Chrysler, Ritz-Carlton and Nestle. |
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MOSCOW — Zenit St Petersburg face the monumental task of beating Juventus on Tuesday and Real Madrid in their final Group H match to reach the Champions League knockout stage. The Russians, third in the group six points behind leaders Juventus and two adrift of Real Madrid, must beat the Italians at home and the Spanish champions in Madrid on Dec. |
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