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MOSCOW — The much discussed “reset” of troubled U.S.-Russia relations will kick off this week when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet for the first time. Lavrov and Clinton saw each other Monday at a donors’ conference for Gaza recovery hosted by Egypt at the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The two diplomats will meet again Friday in Geneva for the first official talks between Moscow and Washington since the administration of President Barack Obama took office in January. The meetings are the second high-level personal contacts between the governments following talks by Vice President Joe Biden and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov at the Munich Security Conference in February. |
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RITE OF SPRING
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A man claps and sings as an effigy of winter burns in the village of Shuvalovka to the south of the city on Sunday. The effigy was being burnt as part of the Maslennitsa festivities, a traditional Russian celebration of the end of winter at the beginning of the new season. |
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Russians voted in regional elections Sunday that promised to serve as a key test of the government’s anti-crisis measures, especially after the ruling United Russia party won new support from its chairman, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Putin, speaking at a meeting with United Russia on the eve of the elections, also warned against illegal riots, which economic hardships could provoke, saying the state won’t be “shy or afraid” of stamping them out.
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SEVEROURALSK, Sverdlovsk Region — Voters in this sleepy Urals mining town of 33,500 people didn’t seem to care Sunday who would win the mayoral election. The incumbent mayor, United Russia candidate Vasily Brezhatenko, 60, hasn’t been seen for the last week of the campaign after his office said he was rushed to a hospital in Yekaterinburg, 500 kilometers away, to be treated for high blood pressure. |
All photos from issue.
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 Grigory (Grisha) Sologub, one of the most influential and best-loved local rock musicians, died of heart failure in St. Petersburg on Friday. He was 47. Born in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, on July 19, 1961, Sologub began his music career as a principal member of the city’s pioneering ska band Stranniye Igry, or Strange Games, in which Sologub played guitar and sang, alongside his older brother, bass guitarist and vocalist Viktor Sologub. |
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MOSCOW — The government launched a web site Sunday aimed at educating people about the law, recognizing counterfeit rubles and finding the address of the nearest police station. |
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GROZNY — The bull-necked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. |
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The deadline for the reconstruction of the DLT (Dom Leningradskoi Torgovly) department store by luxury merchandiser Mercury in downtown St. Petersburg has been extended by over a year. Mercury, which obtained the building at 21-23 Bolshaya Konushennaya Ulitsa in April 2005, was supposed to reconstruct it as a luxury retail center by March this year, but a decision taken by the city’s construction committee on Feb. |
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KIEV — President Viktor Yushchenko has promised Ukraine’s biggest creditors, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that the country’s authorities will cooperate to protect loan deals, including cutting the budget deficit. |
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Businessman Alexander Lebedev, who bought London’s Evening Standard newspaper in January, is planning on expanding his media holdings yet again — this time with a Moscow-based, English-language radio station. The station will target the “over one million potential listeners in Moscow who speak English” and give him an additional platform for criticizing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the billionaire said Friday in comments to The St. |
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To improve what the global economic crisis has exposed as the Russian financial system’s Achilles heel — a dearth of long-term domestic funding sources — the government needs to demonopolize and modernize the Russian economy, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said Friday. |
 MOSCOW — Vyacheslav Shtyrov, president of Sakha, approached Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday with a plea for help. The sparsely populated republic, home to companies including Transneft, Surgutneftegaz and Mechel, is suffering from the drop in prices for gas and coal. |
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Rezeda Rafinkova, a 32-year-old doctor, took out a bank loan of 200,000 rubles in 2006 to invest in what appeared to be a legitimate financial company promising annual returns of up to 50 percent on the booming real estate market. |
 MOSCOW — Rosinter Restaurant Holding is starting to serve smaller, lower-priced portions in its restaurants and offer its customers a choice between imported foods and locally produced menu items in an effort to fight off declining sales at its leading restaurant chains, company founder Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanayevsky Blanco said in an interview Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — The economy will contract throughout 2009 but may show the first signs of growth in the fourth quarter because of the ruble devaluation, a poll of 14 economists showed Friday. |
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 For most countries in the world, the global crisis is strictly economic. But Russia is experiencing two crises simultaneously — economic and political. Economic downturns, including the current one, come and go, but Russia’s political crisis will never go away. |
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In the mid-1960s, there were pundits on both sides of the Iron Curtain who predicted that the Soviet and U.S. systems would eventually become identical. |
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 British metal band DragonForce will return to St. Petersburg this week as part of the band’s European tour in support of their fourth release, “Ultra Beatdown.” Typically labeled “extreme power metal,” DragonForce’s sound encompasses everything from the bracing charge of Machine Head to the battle-cry choruses of Helloween. |
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MOSCOW — People ring up Pyotr to hire a secretary, male or female, but these are no ordinary 140-words-per-minute assistants. His secretaries all offer an extra service: “intim. |
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LONDON — Aston Villa blew a chance to go eight points clear of Arsenal in the race for England’s fourth Champions League berth on Sunday after conceding two late goals against relegation-threatened Stoke City. The 2-2 draw, with Stoke cancelling out their hosts’ 2-0 lead in the final three minutes, left fourth-placed Villa six points ahead of Arsenal and three adrift of second-placed Chelsea and Liverpool in the Premier League. |
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