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MOSCOW — A Chechen refugee killed in Vienna last month was the key witness in an Austrian criminal investigation into Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov that could have led to Kadyrov’s arrest last year, prosecutors and lawyers said Wednesday. The revelation fuels speculation that the killing of Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard of Kadyrov, was aimed at silencing a vocal critic of the Chechen leadership. Israilov was gunned down on Jan. 13, just four days after The New York Times informed the Russian government that it was planning to publish a report based on interviews with him implicating Kadyrov of murder and torture. The case raises new questions about Kadyrov, whom human rights groups have accused of gross human rights violations for years, and threatens to create a headache for the Kremlin, which installed Kadyrov as president after his father, former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in 2004. |
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 The police have the right to check people’s IDs, search and detain them, and take their photographs and fingerprints, claimed city ombudsman Igor Mikhailov on Thursday at a briefing with journalists devoted to a Feb. |
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A judge at the Moskovsky District Court on Wednesday refused to accept testimony from twenty local residents whose signatures backing liberal candidates in the municipal elections scheduled for March 1 had been rejected as being forged or unverifiable. The judge said that the citizens had no grounds to question the qualifications or judgment of the expert who had declared the signatures unverifiable or forged. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Mirax Group, one of Russia’s top five property developers, said Wednesday that it would approach Mayor Yury Luzhkov with an offer to take the construction of the 612-meter skyscraper Russia Tower off the hands of its cash-strapped developer, Shalva Chigirinksy. |
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth. |
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NAZRAN — Four policemen and at least two suspected rebels were killed on Thursday when a residential building exploded during a police raid in the violence-plagued region of Ingushetia, officials said. The two-storey building in Nazran, around 1,500 kilometers south of Moscow, exploded when special forces officers forced entry to detain a group of suspected rebels, a police officer at the scene said. “Three special forces officers died at the scene and another died later in hospital,” the officer said. The bodies of three suspected rebels were later pulled from the rubble, an investigator said on condition of anonymity. “They were suicide bombers who the police were looking for,” he said. |
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 MOSCOW — Migrant construction workers are routinely exploited by employers and harassed by the police, and the economic crisis will probably make their lives worse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he is in talks with senior Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev about Zakayev’s possible return to the restive republic following years living in exile in London. Zakayev, a former foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the Chechen separatist government, has received political asylum in Britain, which refuses to extradite him to Russia, where prosecutors have charged him with terrorism. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev may be the most powerful man in the country, but it appears to be a different story in the Russian blogosphere — at least for now. |
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 The regional division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has named the hotels facing fines for increasing their prices during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The FAS has ruled that the law which forbids companies to conspire or act to limit competition was violated in June by 11 local hotels: the Grand Hotel Europe, Taleon Imperial Hotel, Topaz Hotel, Hotel Kempinski Moika 22, Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel, Radisson SAS, Novotel St. |
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St. Petersburg’s Overland Express project has been delayed as a result of the global economic crisis and impossibility of securing loans, City Hall announced this week. |
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Ilim Eyes Gatchina MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ilim Group, Russia’s biggest pulp and paper producer, plans to build an $805 million (28 billion-ruble) commercial and residential development near St. Petersburg, Vedomosti said, citing government officials. Ilim Chairman Zakhar Smushkin Smushkin has 435 hectares of land in the Gatchina region on which he plans to build warehouses, offices and residential housing, Vedomosti said. |
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 The Cold War ended nearly two decades ago, yet U.S. and Russian nuclear doctrines and capabilities remain largely unchanged. Washington and Moscow are no longer enemies, yet today each country still deploys at least 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons, many of which are primed for a quick launch to deter a surprise attack by the other. |
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The Russia-Ukraine gas war officially ended in Moscow on Jan. 19, when Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a 10-year agreement. |
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 Depictions of Vladimir Lenin have ranged from a red giant pointing the way for Lilliputian proles to a fake Sprite poster with the slogan, “Don’t let yourself dry up” printed above the Bolshevik leader’s mummified body. Now visitors can find these examples and a host of other images spanning the spectrum between propaganda and parody under one roof. |
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The Kremlin reacted unusually nervously this week to interviews given by the ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again to the British press about playing a private concert for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. |
 The sixth International Hermitage Music Festival organized by the State Hermitage Museum and the Hermitage Music Academy opens on Sunday, during which the Hermitage Theater and St. Petersburg Cappella Hall will host world famous musicians performing everything from classical music to jazz, from ethnic experimental music to opera. |
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Now we know that the crisis really has hit: Ginza Project, the people behind the wallet-challenging Ginza, Jelsomino and the recently opened Tsar — all favorites with St. |
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PARIS — Serena Williams began her third stint as world number one with a straightforward 6-1, 6-4 victory over Czech left-hander Iveta Benesova in the first round of the WTA Paris Open on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Jelena Jankovic, the woman Williams replaced at the top of the world rankings, bounced back from her fourth-round exit at the Australian Open with a hard-fought 7-5, 7-6 (7/2) win against feisty Italian Francesca Schiavone. |
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