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MOSCOW/BRUSSELS — Russia and Ukraine signed a deal Monday for a second time to help secure the resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe, cut off for nearly a week in freezing temperatures. Earlier Monday Ukraine removed additions it had made to the deal struck over the weekend to resolve the latest row holding up the deployment of monitors to check Russian gas flowing across Ukraine to Europe. Russia has accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas to make up for losses it has suffered since Moscow turned off the tap on January 1 in a dispute over gas prices. Ukraine denies the charge. “The document has been finally signed,” Alexander Medvedev, the deputy chief executive of Russia’s state gas export monopoly Gazprom, said. |
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ROLL UP, ROLL UP!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children make snowballs and snowmen at the Peter and Paul Fortress over the weekend. After heavy snowfalls and temperatures close to minus 30 deg. Celsius during the holiday period, forecasters are predicting warmer temperatures for the rest of the week. |
 Two local political activists were detained on Thursday as car-tariff protests continued into 2009. The latest demonstrations featured opposition groups and an increased amount of political criticism compared to similar protests held late last year. Thursday’s event was organized by TIGR, a newly formed movement whose name is the Russian acronym for the Association of Active Citizens of Russia but also refers to the Amur tiger, a symbol of Russia’s Far East where a mass car-tariff protest was brutally thwarted in December.
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SOFIA — Bulgaria was due to ask the European Union on Monday to provide some 400 million euros ($535.7 million) in aid to help the Balkan country ease its dependence on its sole gas supplier, Russia, the economy ministry said. Bulgaria wants to expand its sole gas storage facility and build pipeline links to neighboring Greece and Romania quickly after a cut-off in Russian gas supplies left tens of thousands of homes without heating and forced some factories to shut down. |
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Politkovskaya Trial MOSCOW (SPT) — The Moscow District Military Court on Sunday postponed the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial after one of the defendant’s lawyers failed to appear, RIA-Novosti reported. |
All photos from issue.
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The New Year’s holiday in St. Petersburg was blighted by injuries and illness, news media have reported. About 200 people made emergency calls for ambulances to deal with injuries resulting from slipping on ice while 155 people were hospitalized with cold-weather related problems. Nineteen of these cases involved frostbite, Interfax reported. On New Year’s Eve, 22 St. Petersburgers were injured by fireworks, with 11 adults and two children being hospitalized. On Jan. 8 a 41-year-old woman was hospitalized with burns to the head, neck and face caused by a firework. On Saturday an 11-year-old boy was burnt on his face, ears, neck and fingers by fireworks. |
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KUPCHINO BLUES
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Yuzhny Thermal Power Plant in Kupchino, where a breakdown led to the inhabitants of the Kupchino suburb being left without heating or electricity for days during the holidays. |
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A city court on Monday convicted a man on terrorism charges for bombing a McDonald’s restaurant on Nevksy Prospekt in central St. Petersburg in February 2007, and also found him guilty of detonating a similar device in a flower kiosk earlier in the same month. Fyodor Kovalchuk was sentenced to 15 years in a high security prison. A second man, Yevgeny Skvortsov, was found guilty in the flower kiosk attack and of storing explosives.
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin’s envoy to the State Duma, Alexander Kosopkin, and six other people died when their helicopter crashed during a hunting trip in the Altai region, officials said Sunday. Rescuers located the Mi-171 helicopter on Sunday afternoon, two days after it crashed. |
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MOSCOW — Billionaire businessman Alexander Lebedev made an unsuccessful bid to buy the London newspaper Evening Standard, media reported. Lebedev, a former intelligence officer who dabbles in liberal politics, offered to purchase the newspaper from Daily Mail & General Trust for an undisclosed sum, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing an unidentified banker who has worked with the company. |
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WASHINGTON — NATO’s top operational commander said he is optimistic that military relations with Moscow will soon begin to thaw after being frozen for months over Russia’s brief war with Georgia. NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe John Craddock said Friday that he wants to resume exercises, exchanges and other cooperation that ceased in the international rift between Russia and the West that followed Moscow’s war with Georgia in August. |
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MOSCOW — The top UN human rights official called for independent investigations into possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip during a special session held Friday at the request of Russia and several other countries. |
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Suspected Militants Hit MOSCOW (AP) — Four suspected militants were killed in a clash with security forces in Ingushetia, Interior Ministry officials said Sunday. The fighters were hiding in a house in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, the officials said. One civilian and three policemen were wounded in the fighting Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s reputation as a reliable gas supplier has been dealt a blow after 11 days of disruptions to European deliveries through Ukraine, but the dispute is giving new life to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s pet project to build an alternative pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Russia’s worst gas conflict with Ukraine yet has halted all supplies to the European Union through Ukraine since Jan. 7. The dispute comes as Russia waits for some Baltic Sea countries to finally grant environmental permits to its Nord Stream pipeline. Now that deliveries traveling via Ukraine have been stopped for at least five full days, cutting power to industry and homes in southeastern Europe, there promises to be new enthusiasm for Nord Stream, which will take gas directly from Russia to Germany, analysts said Sunday. |
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 Another 153 objects of cultural importance have been transferred to the ownership of St. Petersburg, while the ownership of a further 114 has yet to be decided. |
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Russia’s gas giant Gazprom will complete the construction of its Okhta Center skyscraper in St. Petersburg, and City Hall will fund the construction of the new stadium for local soccer team Zenit. The news of these financial changes was announced at the end of December, when Gazprom head Alexei Miller said that Gazprom would buy all the shares in Okhta Center from the city of St. |
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Ruble Could Fall 16% MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The ruble may weaken as much as 16 percent against the dollar this month as the central bank increases the pace of its devaluation to deter speculators, according to Renaissance Capital analyst Alexei Moiseev. |
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BRUSSELS — The European Commission will listen to the arguments of Slovakia on the need to restart the country’s Bohunice nuclear power plant and then assess the situation, the European Union executive said on Monday. Slovakia is seeking alternative energy sources after a dispute between Russia and Ukraine has cut the amount of gas supplies to Europe. |
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MINSK — Last week’s sharp devaluation of the Belarussian currency was a condition of a $2.5 billion IMF loan, President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday. |
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KIEV — Ukraine’s gas dispute with Russia is unlikely to have won any popular support for Kiev’s political elite ahead of the first presidential election since the 2004 Orange Revolution. The feud with Russia has left Ukraine with no gas supplies for 11 days, accelerating the economy’s fall into what is expected to be the worst recession in a decade. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday issued a veiled criticism of his predecessor and mentor, Vladimir Putin, saying the Cabinet has dragged its feet in implementing anti-crisis measures. |
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MOSCOW — Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has registered a legal entity in Russia and joined a local retailers’ organization, the latest in a series of moves indicating its interest in expanding into the country. The company registered a subsidiary under the name WM Eastern Europe Holdings and joined the Russian Association of Retail Trade Companies, or AKORT, which includes the 28 largest commercial organizations in the country. |
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LONDON — BP made a new concession to its oligarch partners in TNK-BP as it sealed an agreement aimed at settling a battle for control of the joint venture. |
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MOSCOW — Billionaire Len Blavatnik’s international empire faces its biggest test with last week’s bankruptcy filing by a key component, the U.S. operations of LyondellBasell, the world’s No. 3 petrochemicals maker. In two decades of impressive but highly leveraged growth fueled by Soviet-era links, Blavatnik, a U. |
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LONDON/NEW YORK — The break-up of U.S. banking powerhouse Citigroup moved a step closer, and Britain took control of a big stake in another top lender on Monday as the reshaping of the global financial landscape gathered pace. |
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 European relations with Russia, the European Union’s major source of natural gas for the foreseeable future, can only worsen following the latest Gazprom-Ukraine fight. The extraordinary mistrust between Europe and the bear will diminish Western companies’ appetite for risky investments to help develop new Russian gas fields. |
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On Dec. 19, while the United States was preparing for the last shopping weekend before Christmas, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership with her Ukrainian counterpart. |
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BEVERLY HILLS — Low-budget movies blew by their major studio rivals at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday as romance “Slumdog Millionaire” won a leading four honors, including best drama to give it a push in the race for Oscars. “Slumdog,” which tells of a young Indian man looking for love and competing for money on a television game show, also earned awards for director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and composer A. |
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 GAZA — Israeli troops fought fierce gun battles with Hamas fighters Monday, keeping military pressure on the Islamist group while avoiding urban warfare that would complicate ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the Gaza war. An Israeli military spokesman said army reservists had been thrown into the offensive that Israel launched 17 days ago with the declared aim of ending Hamas cross-border rocket attacks. |
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LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday that the British public would give Prince Harry the “benefit of the doubt” over his home movie showing him calling army colleagues “Paki” and “raghead. |
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SYDNEY — Australia’s grueling summer conditions claimed three more victims on Monday when Vera Zvonareva, Victoria Azarenka and Marion Bartoli all pulled out of the Sydney International because of injury and illness. Zvonareva, the world number seven from Russia, pulled out of her first round-match against Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues after suffering a bout of gastroenteritis. |
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LONDON — Manchester United thrashed Chelsea 3-0 at Old Trafford on Sunday as the Premier League champions moved an ominous step closer to leaders Liverpool. |
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LONDON — Arsenal appeared Friday to be close to finalizing a deal to bring Russian playmaker Andrei Arshavin to the Premier League. Gunners boss Arsene Wenger has been pursuing the much-admired Zenit St. Petersburg forward and he was coy when asked if a transfer, which is expected to cost Arsenal around $30 million, was close to being finalized. |
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Issues Archive