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GENEVA — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed as wonderful his relationship with Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Secretary of State praised a new start in U.S.-Russian ties after their first one-on-one meeting. They also saw the funny side over a language error when Clinton presented Lavrov with a box containing a red “reset button” as a symbol of better relations, which had sunk to their worst since the Cold War under George W. Bush’s presidency. The button was marked “Peregruzka” and Clinton joked to Lavrov: “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” “You got it wrong,” said Lavrov, smiling as they pushed the reset button together before dinner at a Geneva hotel on Friday. |
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WALK THIS WAY
David Tsogoyev / The St. Petersburg Times
Elderly women help each other across the ice on the Neva River between the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island at the weekend. Despite the recent sunny weather, snow is predicted for later in the week, with temperatures just under 0 deg. Celsius. |
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Russia’s High Court last week rejected the civil case of St. Petersburg student Anna Klevets who demanded the right for women to work as metro locomotive drivers or assistants for the drivers. The reasons for the decision were not announced, but a government representative in court insisted on the wisdom of such restrictions and their adherence to the International Labor Organization Convention.
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New Metro Station ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A new metro station opened in St. Petersburg and two lines were reorganized on Saturday, Interfax reported. The fourth “orange” line, which formerly ran from Ulitsa Dybenko in the southeast to Komandantsky Prospekt in the northwest, now runs from Ulitsa Dybenko to the new Spasskaya station at the junction between Sennaya Ploshchad and Sadovaya stations. |
All photos from issue.
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Local oppositional leaders were vague or out of reach when approached on Monday about whether the Dissenters’ Day, a nationwide protest organized by the pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia, would take place in St. Petersburg. Scheduled for Thursday, the Dissenters’ Day was announced as being held in 20 to 30 Russian cities, including Moscow. Olga Kurnosova, the local leader of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF), said that protests are “possible” without going into detail and asked to be telephoned “in two days,” when called on Monday, while Andrei Dmitriyev, the leader of the St. |
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A HOLY HOLIDAY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Rabbi Menachemm Mendel Pewzner and a young girl in fancy dress at the Great Choral Synagogue in central St. Petersburg at the Purim celebrations on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest met with fresh controversy on Monday amid criticism that a Ukrainian singing partly in her native tongue is to represent Russia. There was outrage from a rival act and criticism on the Internet from Russian Eurovision fans after the weekend selection by a jury in Moscow of Russia’s choice, Anastasia Prikhodko and her love song “Mamo.
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 MOSCOW — Self-exiled businessman and fervent Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky has been vilified in almost ever corner of Russian officialdom. But there is at least one venerable state-backed organization that has yet to sever ties with Berezovsky, who has accused Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of everything from money laundering to murder — the Russian Academy of Sciences. |
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MOSCOW — A court in Mordovia last week sent the parole request of jailed Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina to a Moscow court for consideration. The Zubovo-Polyansky District court in Mordovia’s capital, Saransk, had been expected to rule Wednesday on whether to release Bakhmina on parole or keep her behind bars to serve out her 6 1/2-year sentence on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev warned against creating a new Soviet nomenklatura at a meeting last week with top managers who are being fast-tracked to senior government positions. Medvedev met 30 of the people in a Kremlin-backed “Golden” list of 100 potential recruits for top official posts, including New Economic School rector Sergei Guriyev, Russian Railways senior vice president Fyodor Andreyev, and Transaero general director Olga Pleshakova. |
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MOSCOW — Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has offered amnesty to all officials who voluntarily return money they have embezzled to the Ingush treasury, a regional newspaper reported. |
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MOSCOW — Electricity consumption fell 4.8 percent in February, much less than in the previous month, official data showed Thursday, signaling that January’s industrial collapse may have begun to ease. Electricity use is a forward indicator of economic activity, and January’s 7.7 percent drop in power consumption augured the worst fall in industrial output ever recorded. But analysts have said factories, steel mills and other engines of industry appeared to have regained momentum in February, as electricity use in some regions did not see a significant fall year on year. Last month, power consumption in the Far East and the regions around St. Petersburg were in line with February 2008, when the global financial crisis had not yet impacted Russia, data from the central dispatcher of the power system showed. |
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 St. Petersburg’s hotels saw a 10 to 30 percent decrease in occupancy in January, causing some of them to close entire floors to save money. Yulia Pashkovskaya, a manager at the Grand Hotel Europe, said that occupancy at the hotel had fallen by 10 to 15 percent and that one floor had been closed for renovation during the low season. |
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A Trillion for Investment ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The Russian government plans to spend 1.1 trillion rubles ($30 billion) on investment projects this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said. The government will spend 136 billion rubles on shipbuilding to 2016 and 800 billion rubles on the technology industry, he said at a government meeting in St. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s second-biggest lender, VTB, wants the government to pay three times the current market price for the bank’s shares during a planned capital injection this year, chief financial officer Nikolai Tsekhomsky said Thursday. |
 MOSCOW — The government will build at least 54 million square meters of living space this year as part of a state-run affordable housing program, a drop-off of 10 million square meters from last year. “This is somewhat lower than last year, but the task before us this year will still take an immense amount of effort to achieve,” said Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin on Thursday at a conference on low-rise construction, Itar-Tass reported. |
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The second trial of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky has reignited the debate over whether prominent business scandals — such as the destruction of Yukos, the pressure applied to force a restructuring of Sakhalin-2 or more recently the actions against fertilizer producer Uralkali — cause serious damage to the country’s investment climate or whether the fallout is only temporary. |
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Too strictly interpreted, the Maastricht convergence criteria — the rules for euro-zone membership — can begin to look like a suicide pact. The European Union’s newest members are nevertheless required to satisfy them, since they promised that they would eventually join the euro. |
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 The authorities initiated new legal actions against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky last Tuesday. Khodorkovsky — once the richest man in Russia, the former owner of the country’s largest and most successful oil company, patron of the arts, philanthropist and dedicated advocate of a liberal path for Russia’s development — became a tragic symbol of the lack of freedoms, the abuses and corruption that has defined Russia under Vladimir Putin’s rule as president and prime minister. |
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Like many ills, the ruble devaluation was to be expected, but nevertheless took people unawares. Last spring and summer, the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar to the ruble was extremely low, and everyone from bankers to the deputy prime minister advised people to keep their savings in rubles. |
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 KRASNOTURYINSK, Sverdlovsk Region — With eight unemployed workers sparring over every job opening in the Sverdlovsk region, laid-off workers are emerging from state-backed retraining programs with dreams of opening their own confectionaries, cell phone repair shops and even McDonald’s restaurants. The Sverdlovsk government is offering more than 250 “Start Your Business” seminars across the Urals region for the next two months in the hope of reviving the local economy by convincing people to create their own jobs instead of looking for work. |
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ANTRIM, Northern Ireland — Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited troops in Northern Ireland on Monday after a republican splinter group killed two British soldiers in the worst attack in the province in a decade. Police ramped up the hunt for the killers of the two soldiers who were shot dead late on Saturday as they collected pizzas at the gates of an army base near Antrim, a commuter town outside Belfast. |
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SEOUL — North Korea put its military on combat alert Monday as U.S. and South Korean forces started a major joint exercise which the communist nation has branded as a prelude to invasion. |
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HARARE — Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday ruled out foul play as the cause of a car crash that injured him and killed his wife, easing concerns it may increase tensions in the new government. The tragedy comes at a difficult time for Tsvangirai, who is under pressure to rescue the shattered economy in a new unity government with President Robert Mugabe, his old rival. |
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LONDON — David Beckham has revealed his dream of playing for England in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was the motivation behind his desire to stay with AC Milan. After weeks of negotiations, Beckham has extended his loan with Milan from Major League Soccer side LA Galaxy until the end of the Italian season in an attempt to prove to England coach Fabio Capello that he can still perform at the highest level. |
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Issues Archive