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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has overseen the creation of government-backed national industry champions, surprised participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday by warning against excessive state intervention in the economy. “The state’s role was brought to omnipotence in the Soviet Union in the last century,” Putin said in his opening address to the forum, which aims to debate a post-crisis world. “It finally led to our economy being totally noncompetitive. “We paid dearly for that lesson. I am confident that no one would want to retry that.” Putin, whose government is spending tens of billions of dollars in a rescue package, urged businesses to seek their own solutions to the economic hardships, saying that state aid is exhaustible and not always effective. |
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THE 900 DAYS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Bronze Horseman, a statue of Peter the Great and a key symbol of St. Petersburg, stands against the backdrop of a firework display dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the ending of Nazi Germany's Siege of Leningrad during World War II which was marked on Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — The Russian Orthodox Church elected Metropolitan Kirill, a long-standing church diplomat and skillful orator, as its new patriarch on Tuesday night. Kirill, the interim leader since Patriach Alexy II’s death on Dec. 5, won 508 votes cast by the 702-member Local Council, Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga announced in the main hall of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow at 10 p.
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St. Petersburg police are investigating a series of anonymous threatening phone calls made to the head of the trade union for the city’s General Motors plant Yevgeny Ivanov, the city police press service said on Thursday. “The police are checking the situation and questioning employees of the plant on the matter,” said Vyacheslav Stepchenko, spokesman for the city police. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — A Russian soldier who deserted and is seeking political asylum in Georgia said Wednesday that his decision was not politically motivated and that he does not consider himself a traitor. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, the soldier, Alexander Glukhov, reiterated that he deserted his unit in the rebel republic of South Ossetia of his own accord. “I left myself. No one forced me,” Glukhov said, adding that Georgia had promised to help him find work and an apartment in Tbilisi. Glukhov appeared on Georgian television Tuesday saying he had decided to defect because of what he said were unbearable conditions in the army. |
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STREET SCENE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A woman walks past a model reconstruction titled 'Siege House' and set up on Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa this week to commemorate the ending of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II. |
 MOSCOW — The Basmanny District Court on Wednesday sanctioned the arrest of former Yevroset chairman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who left the country last month and has not returned, in connection with allegations of smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. The ruling was a victory for prosecutors, who filed a request last week to have Chichvarkin arrested on suspicion of involvement in the 2003 kidnapping and extortion of Yevroset’s logistics supervisor, Andrei Vlaskin.
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The democratic movement Solidarity will sue City Hall for its “unlawful ban” of a meeting against rising transport fares and housing tariffs that the recently formed group was planning to hold in St. Petersburg on Saturday, the Yabloko Democratic Party — some of whose members are also members of Solidarity — said in a statement on Thursday. |
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The Finnish electronics producer Elcoteq is to lay off most of its personnel in St. Petersburg. Elcoteq sent an announcement of the forthcoming redundancy of 366 people to the city’s employment committee. Natalya Tanchuk, Elcoteq’s deputy general director in St. |
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The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for St. Petersburg is set to make a decision before the end of February on its investigation into agreed price hiking during last year’s St. |
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Deripaska Seeks $6Bln MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Oleg Deripaska has asked Russia for $6 billion in return for a 15 percent stake in United Company RusAl, the aluminum producer he controls, Kommersant said, citing billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov, who together with Deripaska and other metals company owners met President Dmitry Medvedev this month to discuss how the industry can weather the global economic crisis, said the offer is for preferred shares only, the newspaper said. |
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 Russia is a conundrum. On one hand, it is a profoundly secularized society in which traditional religious practice is sporadic and often superficial. This abandonment of the country’s traditional Orthodox faith is in part due to the period of state atheism from 1918 to 1991 and the subsequent 18 years of nihilism in which idealism is as out of fashion as religious belief. |
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Russia’s business elite are getting all worked up that the country’s largest metals and mining companies might merge, with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin leading the project. |
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 If a member of Leningrad’s Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra didn’t show up at a rehearsal during the first months of 1942, fellow musicians would begin to feel a familiar nauseousness. They knew that nobody would pick up the phone when they rang the absentee — and that a rescue brigade sent to their home would find the musician dead. |
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The best news on the local music scene is that Morrissey has announced he will come to Russia as part of his Tour of Refusal that opens in Boca Raton, Florida on Feb. |
 Andrei Arshavin’s move to Arsenal is in danger of collapse because of the player’s refusal to rein in his financial demands, Zenit St. Petersburg general director Maxim Mitrofanov told Reuters on Tuesday. It was just one salvo in a week of claim and counter claim about the star player’s future that have made Arshavin the most talked-about St. |
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The economic crisis seems to have forced the city’s gourmets to flee more expensive restaurants, sending them in search of refuge to more affordable cafes such as the sushi chains Yevraziya and Dve Palochki. |
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KABUL — Afghanistan on Thursday delayed its second ever presidential election by three months to August 20, expressing hope that extra U.S. troops can ease the worst violence the country has seen in eight years. President Hamid Karzai, who won the first presidential vote in 2004, is expected to lead candidates at the polls, despite weakened support among Afghanistan’s 30 million citizens because of endemic violence and corruption. |
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SYDNEY — An Australian man was charged with murder after allegedly throwing his four-year-old daughter from a city bridge into a river during peak hour traffic on Thursday, police said. |
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ANTANANARIVO — The Madagascan capital was deserted Thursday as citizens heeded a call by the mayor to turn it into a ghost town after anti-government protests that have left at least 68 people dead. Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina urged residents to protest this time by staying at home and making the capital a “dead city” as he issued an ultimatum to the government to punish those behind the killing of a protestor on Monday. Shops and businesses were shut, schools remained closed and the weekly Thursday market was empty with only small stalls in local neighborhoods open, an AFP correspondent reported. Some in the desperately poor Indian Ocean nation expressed disquiet at the protests, especially at the effect the unrest was having on the price of basic goods. |
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 GAZA — Whole streets lie in ruins, many thousands of Palestinians are homeless after weeks of Israeli bombing and foreign aid cash is piling up. As a builder in the Gaza Strip, this should be Anwar al-Sahabani’s big moment. |
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CHICAGO — Ford announced Thursday a quarterly loss of $5.9 billion, capping a nightmarish year, but said it had “sufficient liquidity” to fund its turnaround plan without U.S. government aid. The number two U.S. automaker’s results showed a sharp widening of its losses as auto sales were slammed in the fourth quarter by a deep economic crisis and credit squeeze. |
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LONDON — Chelsea assistant manager Ray Wilkins defended Luiz Felipe Scolari after the Blues boss appeared to encourage referee Lee Probert to send off a Middlesbrough player at Stamford Bridge. Scolari and Boro assistant Malcolm Crosby were involved in heated exchanges moments before half-time when Crosby took exception to the Brazilian waving an imaginary card from the touchline after Mohamed Shawky handled the ball. |
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Issues Archive