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St. Petersburg’s budget will be cut by about one quarter to just under 100 billion rubles ($2.7 billion) in 2009, it was announced on Tuesday, with education and investment, capital repair and housebuilding programs receiving less money. It will be the first time in the history of the city that the annual budget will be smaller than the year before. Income will shrink by 109 billion rubles to 268.2 billion rubles, while expenditure will be cut by 90.5 billion rubles to 306.7 billion rubles, said Eduard Batanov, chairman of the city’s Finance Committee, Interfax reported. Revenue has fallen because of shortfalls in income tax, excises, lease income and sales of city property in November and December compared to the first ten months of the year. |
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TREE TAILORS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Workmen trimming trees in the grounds of the Catherine Palace in Pushkin, just outside St. Petersburg, as snow falls earlier this week. Despite lows of minus 10 deg. Celsius on Friday, temperatures are set to rise over the weekend, though snowfall is predicted. |
 LONDON — Russia forward Andrei Arshavin completed his transfer to Arsenal from Zenit St. Petersburg on Tuesday, the English Premier League club said. The move had been awaiting confirmation from the Premier League after the clubs failed to announce an agreement before Monday’s 5 p.m. transfer window deadline. “We are delighted to have signed Andrei Arshavin, he is a player I have admired for a long time,” manager Arsene Wenger told the club’s web site (www.
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Aeroflot said Wednesday that it mishandled an incident where a pilot was removed from a plane after passengers accused him of drunkenness, and the airline offered an apology. The company said tests after the incident showed that Alexander Cheplevsky was not intoxicated. |
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GENEVA — Russia must do more to stop violence against minorities, torture by the police and army, and the murders of journalists, delegates to a UN rights body said Wednesday. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and a team of key commissioners will hold difficult talks in Moscow this week over old and new trade disputes and a new visa feud, diplomats said Tuesday. Ties with Brussels have worsened considerably after the Ukraine gas war last month, and European lawmakers said they expected some plain talk about Russia’s reliability as an energy provider, especially since Moscow’s position has weakened because of the deepening economic crisis. |
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 The crisis has presented new opportunities for chains of restaurants and cafes, which can now afford to rent premises that were previously too expensive. In the middle of January, SPB Bar, a chain of beer halls, opened a branch at 8 Nevsky Prospekt — premises which were previously leased out as an office. |
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The financing of the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater will be cut by 1 billion rubles ($27.5 million) this year. Of the 5.6 billion rubles ($154 million) earmarked for the federal project for 2009, only 4. |
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MOSCOW — Fitch downgraded Russia’s sovereign rating on Wednesday, prompting scorn from Russian investors over whether international agencies could offer credible ratings in view of their apparent miscalculations before the global crisis. Fitch lowered Russia’s foreign and local currency ratings by a notch to BBB — two rankings above junk — over concerns about dwindling foreign exchange reserves, falling oil prices and corporate debt refinancing. |
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Ruble Could Lose 18% MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The ruble may slide as much as 18 percent against the dollar by the middle of this year as falling oil prices and declining reserves force the central bank to widen the currency’s trading band, Morgan Stanley said. |
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 Since the ruble began its dramatic slide in value in August, I have been bombarded with the same question from nervous investors, confused journalists and even my mother: What is happening to the ruble? As an economist (and a good son), I told them that the devaluation of the ruble is the natural result of the new realities of the world economy and the sharply lower price of oil. |
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In 1975, Soviet Navy officer Valery Sablin led a mutiny onboard the Soviet destroyer Storozhevoi and came close to diverting it to Sweden. A year later, Soviet Air Force pilot Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan and then defected to the United States. |
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Kirill was enthroned on Sunday as patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Although most Russians consider themselves Orthodox, only about 13 percent of them regularly attend church. Nonetheless, the election of a new patriarch is truly an historical event, no less significant than the election of a new president. |
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 Russian promoters have used dubious tricks to lure fans into buying tickets for a newly formed band of Western hard-rock veterans, altering the band’s official logo and printing misleading statements on the posters. The band’s management company claims the logo it sent to the Russian promoter was correct and denies any involvement with the advertising campaign. |
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Hey, all you translators out there — ever notice that the people writing about translation are mostly people who have never translated a word in their lives? I can’t figure it out. |
 Local composer Sergei Yevtushenko was in the recording studio this week recording the soundtrack for a new feature film starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer that will focus on the relationship between writer Lev Tolstoy, played by Plummer, and his wife Sofiya, played by Mirren. |
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Rumors abound about the origins of Kukhnya — whose name can mean both kitchen and cuisine in English — an elegant French restaurant that opened on the corner of the Fontanka and Gorokhovaya Ulitsa at the end of last year. |
 There are films that are cornerstones of modern Russian mainstream culture and, to a degree, mentality. One such film, the made-for-television romantic gem “The Irony of Fate” (1975) is relentlessly watched by half the population every New Year. Last year a big-screen sequel was released and while a usual blockbuster makes about $15-20 million, “The Irony of Fate 2” reaped around $50 million at the box-office. |
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NORTH KILLINGHOLME, England — British workers voted on Thursday to end a week-long unofficial strike over the use of foreign labor at a French-owned oil refinery that sparked sympathy protests across Britain. Maintenance and construction workers at the Total-owned Lindsey plant in eastern England will return to work on Monday after accepting a union-backed deal that will give British skilled workers 102 new jobs at the site. |
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LONDON — Adjusting to the wintery conditions in Moscow will be Russia’s main concern as they begin the defense of their Fed Cup title against China this weekend. Captain Shamil Tarpishchev has the luxury of relying on two top 10 players — Olympic champion Elena Dementieva and world No. |
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LONDON — A rejuvenated David Beckham, who has made a big impact in Serie A on loan with AC Milan, sees a permanent move to Italy as giving him every chance of playing one more World Cup with England in South Africa next year. |
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Issues Archive