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 Protests were held in St. Petersburg this weekend against multiple violations in the course of municipal election campaigns, dismissals and attacks on left-wing and trade union activists and the abrupt introduction of a compulsory Unified State Exam (EGE) for school students. |
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MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin offered assurances over the weekend that the plummeting ruble would stay around its current level for now and that no steep devaluation of the currency should be expected. |
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15 Killed in Hostel Fire MOSCOW (Reuters) — At least 15 people died and seven were injured when a three-storey wooden hostel erupted in flames in southern Russia, local emergency officials said on Sunday. “The house burned out fast, like a box of matches,” an official with the emergencies committee of Astrakhan region said by telephone. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Russia to pay several thousand euros to a U.S. missionary expelled on national security grounds in 2002. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found that Russia had violated its obligations to protect religious freedom when it expelled Patrick Nolan, a missionary with Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, as a threat to national security on June 22, 2002, Nolan’s lawyers said Saturday. |
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KIEV — Twenty joyful but exhausted sailors stepped off a plane and into the arms of their loved ones — a happy ending to an emotionally searing, four-month hijack drama off the coast of Somalia. |
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MOSCOW — Twenty years after Red Army troops pulled out of Afghanistan, the last general to command them says the Soviets’ devastating experience is a dismal omen for U.S. plans to build up troops there. On Friday, the anniversary of the Soviet departure from the Afghan capital, the State Duma adopted a resolution honoring the soldiers who “were faithful to the warrior’s duty, who displayed heroism, bravery and patriotism.” In retired General Boris Gromov’s view, the valor was shown in an unwinnable battle. “Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson. ... It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force,” said Gromov, the last soldier to leave Afghanistan two days after the Kabul pullout. |
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 MOSCOW — Maria Sergeyeva stretched out a slim leg to show off her boots and pulled on her gray ribbed sweater. “I’m dressed completely in Russian clothes,” she said, giggling. |
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TNK-BP plans to raise about $1 billion in medium-term debt in a “difficult” market to fund projects and refinance borrowing this year, chief operating officer Tim Summers said Friday. The company, Russia’s third-largest oil producer, will also cut 2009 capital expenditure by about 10 percent from a planned $3. |
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ISTANBUL — LUKoil is interested in bidding for at least two of the fields Iraq is offering in an oil and gas bidding round, two company sources said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Russian and Japanese leaders will jet to the Pacific island of Sakhalin this week for the debut of Russia’s first LNG plant, a project the Japanese hope will advance their energy security despite its controversial history. President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, with a delegation of senior energy officials and executives, will watch one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas plants come on stream Wednesday. |
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Industrial Output Sinks MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian industrial production slumped more than economists expected in January as demand eroded for cars, trucks and construction materials. |
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev debuted Sunday in what he said would be a series of regular television addresses aimed at discussing the government’s work to fight the economic crisis. In an interview aired on state channel Rossia, Medvedev said he felt it was “important to speak the truth” and explain the economic woes “that the entire world is living through, and that our country is living through. |
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Chelsea made a 65.7 million pound ($95 million) loss as owner Roman Abramovich converted half his interest-free loans to the London team into equity, the Premier League football club said in a statement Friday. |
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The Federal Fisheries Agency said Friday that it would open a chain of seafood stores throughout the country to cut out middlemen and that it was considering consolidating state assets in the sector into a giant holding. The first Okean, a seafood chain popular in Soviet times, will open in Russia by the end of spring, said Andrei Krainy, the agency’s head. |
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Expectations and prognoses for the major Russian telecommunication companies take into consideration concerns that the global financial crisis will impact on the industry this year. Analysts debate how the industry will develop with the mergers and acquisitions of smaller players by bigger ones, which began last year, what consequences telecoms should expect during the ongoing financial turmoil and whether they may be limited in making investments abroad. |
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Telecommunications is one of the most rapidly developed industries in Russia, and of the few spheres that has not been severely affected by the economic crisis. |
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In times of economic crisis, telecommunications is one industry in which people won’t try to save money, say telecom market players. The difficult economic situation is reflected in consumer purchasing power, but the percentage spent by people on telecommunications is one to two percent of what they spend altogether, according to data from the St. |
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Among the Group of 20 countries, which represent 80 percent of global output, Russia stands out as an anomaly in at least one way: It continues to have a problem with high inflation. It was announced on Thursday that Russia’s inflation rate rose in January for the first time in five months as a result of increases in utility rates and higher costs of imports fueled by negative real interest rates and a rise in government spending. The annual inflation rate rose to 13.4 percent, and consumer prices rose 2.4 percent from December. Food prices gained 15.9 percent in the year through January, while the cost of services, such as electricity and heat, rose 16. |
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 About 10 years ago, as I was tuning in to various Russian radio stations, I first started hearing the name of a mysterious Vladimir Vladimirovich. Initially I thought the broadcasters must be referring to the poet Mayakovsky, who committed suicide in 1930, but I quickly realized that they were talking unctuously about Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was appointed pretty much out of nowhere in August 1999 by President Boris Yeltsin to be the prime minister. |
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Finally, Arshavin is leaving,” one of my co-workers said. He was commenting on the drama surrounding the decision by Andrei Arshavin, one of Russia’s best football players, to leave Zenit St. Petersburg to play for London’s Arsenal team. My friend sounded both resigned and relieved, like a person who has learned that a favorite soap opera character has finally died after teetering on the brink of death for the last 38 episodes. |
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PARACHINAR, Pakistan — At least a dozen people were killed in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region on the Afghan border on Monday when a suspected U.S. drone fired missiles at a building used by militants, witnesses and officials said. “Afghan Taliban were holding an important meeting there when the missiles were fired,” an intelligence official in the area said of the attack in a mountainous region called Sarpul, on the outskirts of Baggan village. |
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LONDON — Two nuclear-armed submarines, one British and one French, have collided while on separate exercises in the Atlantic Ocean, British newspaper reports said on Monday. |
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 DONETSK, Ukraine — Russia’s athletics icon Yelena Isinbayeva set a new indoor world pole vault record of five meters at the annual Bubka memorial tournament here on Sunday. The 26-year-old beat her previous record of 4.95m, which she achieved here last year, and it was the sixth time in as many years that she has set a new world record indoors in Donetsk. |
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MILAN, Italy — David Beckham has admitted that he would find it hard to go back to Los Angeles if the Galaxy and AC Milan failed to come to an agreement over his proposed transfer. |
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