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After a draining three-hour session Monday, the Dzerzhinsky District Court failed to deliver a much-awaited verdict on a complaint from the St. Petersburg Memorial human rights group about a raid on their offices carried out as part of an investigation of a criminal case on Dec. 4 last year. The group insists the raid was both illegitimate and unnecessarily crude. In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times on Monday, human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov who represents Memorial said most of the session was consumed by watching videos of the raid. “It was reminiscent of a spy movie come to life,” Pavlov said. “Our video showed me hopelessly trying to get in and talk to my clients, banging the door and ringing the bell. |
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 A painting by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was sold for 37 million rubles ($1.1 million) at a charity auction in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Natalya Kurnikova, owner of Moscow’s Our Artists art gallery, who bought the picture, said she was determined to buy it because “it’s a unique picture. |
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Pessimistic experts predict that Russians will remember 2009 as a year of massive layoffs and soaring unemployment. The Health and Social Development Ministry has forecast that the number of unemployed people in Russia will top 2.2 million this year. Yelena Brusilovskaya, a St. |
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Sergei Lipov, 26, administrator: I noticed the obvious tendency for people losing jobs at the end of last year. It was mainly among my friends working at construction companies. |
All photos from issue.
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 St. Petersburg anarchists and left-wing activists protested against rising transport fares by stenciling logos, placing leaflets and throwing coins near the entrance to the Transport Committee at 83 Moskovsky Prospekt on Sunday. Ironically entitled “Hares in Support of Starving Bureaucrats,” the protest’s name referred to the slang use of the word “hare” (zayats in Russian) to describe someone who uses public transport without paying by fare-dodging. |
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MOSCOW — Did your bag go missing en route to Russsia? Don’t expect the airline to deliver it to your doorstep. Passengers are being told that they have to make the trip back to the airport to claim their baggage after authorities abruptly decided to start enforcing a five-year-old regulation that requires passengers to escort their own bags through customs. |
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will review plans to deploy elements of a U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama’s nominee for a top Pentagon post said. The plan to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic has strained relations between Washington and Moscow, which says the system is a threat to Russian security despite U. |
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 Last year could go down in history as the most successful year for St. Petersburg construction industry. Local developers completed a record 3.2 million square meters of housing in the city in 2008, the construction committee’s press service announced. That is 500,000 square meters more than City Hall planned for 2008 and 600,000 square meters more than in 2007. The trend is not expected to last, however. New buildings accounted for 2.9 million square meters, 56,456 square meters were reconstructed, and a further 202,336 square meters were built by individuals, according to the construction committee’s report. |
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CLOSING DOWN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Policemen oversee the final closing of the inner-city market Apraksin Dvor on Sadovaya Ulitsa on Friday. The outdoor stalls were ordered to close because the historic site is set to be redeveloped. |
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A conflicting picture is emerging at St. Petersburg’s Izhorskye Zavody (Izhorsky Works), as local media report possible mass staff cuts and other problems at one of Russia’s largest factories, while the plant’s management is putting on a brave face. The reports that have appeared in the local news wires and printed media, including Rosbalt news agency and Delovoi Peterburg business daily newspaper, claimed that some of the factory’s employees have been forced to take unpaid leave, while others have been assigned to work on a four-day week basis.
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Jan. Inflation Forecasts ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Economy Ministry is expecting a January inflation rate of between 2.1 percent and 2.4 percent, Interfax reported. Food prices will increase between 1.4 percent and 1.7 percent this month, the Moscow-based news service said. |
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Businessman and former State Duma Deputy Alexander Lebedev is expected to purchase London tabloid Evening Standard for one pound in what could be the first step in an effort to build up his European media assets. |
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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accused the government on Friday of bailing out billionaires at taxpayers’ expense in a letter co-signed by four businessmen and economists. Gorbachev has until now been supportive of the Kremlin, and by speaking out he has joined a small but growing chorus of influential Russians who say the government’s tight control of the economy and politics is making the slowdown worse. |
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MOSCOW — Consumer confidence plunged to an eight-year low in the final quarter of 2008, data showed Friday, as the Health and Social Development Ministry said the number of people claiming jobless benefits rose 15 percent in December. |
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MOSCOW — Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev on Friday called for “special conditions” for food and agriculture products within the World Trade Organization, saying they would help Russia modernize. Protecting the world’s food supply is as important as energy security, and agriculture should not be considered just a “traded good,” Gordeyev said in Berlin. |
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 Dear President-elect Obama, Even though most of your foreign policy will be devoted to issues not directly related to Russia — namely, the global economic crisis, the wars and insurgencies in the Greater Middle East from the Gaza Strip to Pakistan, terrorism and climate change — relations with Moscow need to be high on your agenda from Day One. |
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It’s an ironic parallel. For eight years, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush have moved in tandem. Russia enjoyed two terms of Putin, whereas the United States had the pleasure of two terms of Bush. |
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 The last time a commercial airliner was successfully ditched and everyone on board survived was in 1963, when a Tupolev 124 ditched into the River Neva in St. Petersburg, the Associated Press reported Friday. Picking up the story, Russia Today, an English-language television channel aimed at burnishing Russia’s image abroad, reported that, like Chelsey B. Sullenberger III, the Tupolev pilot Victor Mostovoi was “hailed as a hero” and later given a state award. |
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 WASHINGTON — Barack Obama approached his inauguration as the 44th U.S. president with a mix of solemnity and celebration on Sunday, laying a wreath at a military grave and then swaying along at a concert featuring Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce. |
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BANGKOK — A Thai court on Monday jailed an Australian writer for three years for insulting the royal family in a novel, the latest case to highlight the strict laws protecting the country’s revered monarchy. Harry Nicolaides, 41, arrived in a Bangkok court wearing a dark orange prison jumpsuit with his feet shackled and pleaded guilty to the charges related to a passage in a book he self-published in 2005. |
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BRUSSELS — The EU economy will shrink nearly 2.0 percent this year as a severe recession drives unemployment and government deficits to levels not seen for years, the European Commission forecast Monday. |
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Club officials from English Premier League side Arsenal have been invited to St. Petersburg to discuss the possibility of Andrei Arshavin signing for the team, Russia’s Sport Express said on Friday according to RIA Novosti news agency. British media reports on Monday said that Arsenal and Zenit would like to conclude the transfer deal this week. |
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