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MOSCOW — After more than three months of silence, the Energy Ministry laid out anti-crisis plans for the electricity sector Friday that include $5.3 billion in loans and bonds for state companies but no permission for private firms to delay investment programs. |
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The treatment of tourists from St. Petersburg who survived a deadly bus crash in Israel on Dec. 16 is at the center of a rapidly escalating dispute over who will meet the medical bills. |
 A wave of protests against used-car import tariffs being raised by the government as part of anti-crisis measures rolled across Russia on Sunday. Starting out as single-issue, peaceful protests, the demonstrations took on an increasingly political character, incorporating anti-Kremlin slogans, after the authorities violently thwarted a protest in Vladivostok and showed reluctance to engage with the nation over the issue. |
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WASHINGTON — Preparing to leave office, President George W. Bush has advised his successor to try to stay friends with Russia despite disagreements. “There’s common interest and there’s going to be a lot of tensions,” Bush said Thursday at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The government will toughen regulations for Americans wishing to adopt Russian children after a U.S. court acquitted a Virginia man of felony charges in the death of his newly adopted Russian son earlier this year, officials said Thursday. A Virginia court on Wednesday acquitted Miles Harrison, 49, of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his 21-month-old son, who died in July after being left for nine hours in a sweltering car. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow said it would insist on determining the cause of the August war in Georgia as NATO and Russia restarted diplomatic contacts that have been suspended since then. |
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 MOSCOW — Azim Abdullu sent $150 home to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in April. Since then, the 34-year-old day laborer has not been able to provide money to his wife and four children. Remittances from foreign workers in Russia, a major source of cash for poor Central Asian countries, showed signs of considerable growth through the third quarter of this year. |
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Around 400,000 Russians lost their jobs in November, official data showed on Friday, as evidence grew that the economy was plunging toward a recession expected to last until at least mid-2009. |
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MOSCOW — Norilsk Nickel independent directors Heinz Schimmelbusch and Guy de Sellier have withdrawn their candidacies for re-election to the board, Norilsk said Friday in an e-mailed statement, as sentiment appears to be growing around other names. A Norilsk spokeswoman said the candidates did not give a reason for their decisions. |
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Repsol Stake Funded MOSCOW (Reuters) — LUKoil has agreed with banks on raising a major loan that will allow it to purchase a significant stake in Spanish energy major Repsol, government and industry sources said on Sunday. |
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 According to experts, the rapid slowdown in the Russian economy will hit the banking sector hard in the first half of next year. The credit crunch, coupled with the economic slowdown, means that the quality of bank assets has already started to deteriorate. |
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Iranian Revolution The Iranian economy is already under pressure as it is. However, its single most important export good is oil and since we expect oil to trade as low as $40 or even $35, the purchasing power of the Iranian society in dollars will diminish. |
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Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called on Thursday for the resignation of Central Bank Chairman Volodymyr Stelmakh, blaming the bank for the hryvna currency’s fall to historic lows against the dollar. The demand came as 1,000 angry Ukrainians rallied in Kiev, protesting price increases, wage delays, utility cutoffs and other effects of the economic crisis. |
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The banking sector was the first in the Russian economy to start firing people as a result of its descent into crisis, experts said. But with the right approach, they added, there is no reason why staff reductions should be irrevocable or harmful to the sector in the long term. |
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It seems as if the modernization of personal finances to utilize loans and credit, long promoted as a necessary reform in Russia, will hit early-adopters hardest now that the economy is tanking and unemployment is rising. The St. Petersburg Times has obtained the account of a recently unemployed middle-aged professional, whose identity we agreed not to reveal, who says she is facing unbearable pressure from a bank — whose side of the story we were unable to verify and have chosen not to name — over credit card payments. |
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Modern technologies in both business and retail banking have developed along two lines. The first is the remote control of accounts and the second is additional services for clients. |
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Depositors with a small bank took to the streets in central Moscow on Friday to demand the return of their funds, the first publicized bank protest the capital has seen during the credit crisis. On Friday, around 15 protesters lined up across the street from Capital Credit bank’s offices, some holding posters that read “2008 = 1998. |
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 Russia today faces two great challenges: an aging and inadequate infrastructure and an acute economic crisis. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country’s infrastructure has been crumbling. The number of airports has fallen from 1,342 in 1991 to fewer than 350 today. |
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We have eight good, prosperous years behind us, said one of the speakers at a conference organized last week by the Vedomosti newspaper and focusing on the opportunities that the crisis has brought. |
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 MUMBAI — People of Muslim and Hindu faiths held roses and chanted religious verses to mark the reopening of Mumbai’s Trident hotel on Sunday, three weeks after it was damaged in a militant attack. Police with sniffer dogs patrolled outside the hotel, which welcomed guests for the first time since Islamist gunmen attacked the Trident and nine other sites in Mumbai last month killing at least 179 people. |
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Arsenal is leading the race against its north London rival Tottenham to sign Zenit St. Petersburg star Andrei Arshavin next month, according to U.K. media reports. The Russian forward was in London with his agent last week, reported www.telegraph.co.uk on Sunday. The web site said Arshavin visited Spurs’ training ground last Tuesday and Arsenal’s base last Wednesday. |
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Issues Archive