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MOSCOW — Murmansk Governor Yury Yevdokimov resigned abruptly Saturday after enduring a week of harsh criticism from United Russia over the loss of the Murmansk mayoral election to an independent candidate. President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed Yevdokimov’s resignation and appointed Federal Fisheries Agency deputy head Dmitry Dmitriyenko as the acting governor, the Kremlin said. Political analysts said it was the first instance that a regional leader had been forced out of office for supporting a non-United Russia candidate in an election. Independent candidate Sergei Subbotin, a former Murmansk deputy governor, was elected mayor with 61 percent of the vote in a runoff election on March 15, well over the 35 percent collected by the United Russia candidate, incumbent Mayor Mikhail Savchenko. |
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APRIL FOOL
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A restorer carries out repair works on the statue of humorous writer Nikolai Gogol on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa. The 200th anniversary of the writer’s birth is being celebrated on April 1. |
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Major airlines are slashing prices and grounding planes in order to remain profitable in the tough global economy. But a group of investors believes that the time is ripe to launch a new airline offering flights between New York and St. Petersburg. Baltia Air Lines has won approval from the U.S. Transportation Department to provide a nonstop service between New York’s John F.
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An alleged police spy was exposed within an oppositional organization in St. Petersburg, only to claim two days after his confessions had been published that he had been telling lies to make money. In a video published Saturday on oppositional blogs and web sites, a young man who identified himself as Dmitry Dubovoi said that he had been planted into the local branch of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and had recorded meetings on his cell phone to play them later to the police. |
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Gogol Metro Stop ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A new metro station may be renamed in honor of 19th-century writer Nikolai Gogol, St. Petersburg Culture Committee chairman Anton Gubankov announced Thursday, according to an Interfax report. |
All photos from issue.
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MAKHACHKALA — Three days of intense fighting between police and insurgents in a wooded area of Dagestan ended Saturday with five officers and about a dozen militants left dead, officials said. Clashes are frequent in Dagestan, but the fighting in an area near the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan was some of the most intense in recent months. Helicopter gunships fired on the militant positions. Regional Interior Ministry spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said 14 insurgents were killed, but Interfax cited the Federal Security Service as saying 12 died. “The group committed several crimes in two regions in Dagestan,” Dagestani Interior Minister Adilgirei Magomedtagirov told reporters. |
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SPRING CELEBRATION
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Representatives of the peoples of Central Asia take part in a Navruz festival at the Zenit Stadium in St. Petersburg on Sunday. The festival marks the arrival of spring. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a tense meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov on Friday, trading thinly veiled barbs about whose responsibility it was to rebuild the impoverished republic. While the government aims to cut the budget for regional subsidies this year, Kadyrov has been pressing for more federal support. President Dmitry Medvedev said in February that regional leaders who were not meeting expectations on handling the crisis would be called to Moscow for meetings.
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MOSCOW — The State Duma on Friday passed in a crucial second reading a bill that would allow prosecutors to offer reduced punishments to suspects and defendants who cooperate with investigators. While it’s a common practice in the United States, current Russian law does not allow prosecutors to offer formal plea bargains to defendants. |
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MOSCOW — Another name was added Friday to the crowded mayoral election in Sochi, which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, as A Just Russia announced that its local leader will vie for the seat. |
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MOSCOW — Russia is unhappy with NATO’s dominant role in European security and its dealings with neighbors that used to be part of the Soviet Union, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Brussels on Saturday. Lavrov said both the European Union and NATO were involved in unfair dealings with Russia’s neighbors. |
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MOSCOW — A Russian action film inspired by last year’s Georgia war and shot in the same style as the “Bourne” trilogy will be broadcast soon on Channel One television, a spokeswoman for the station said. |
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MOSCOW — The economy shrank eight percent in the first two months of the year, the Economic Development Ministry said Friday, as First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov signaled that growth could return by the year’s end. The Russian economy has been rocked by a collapse in oil prices, vast outflows of capital and waning demand for exports as the global economic crisis intensified. |
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Mariinsky II Costs Soar ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Construction of the second building of Russia’s Mariinsky Theater may cost 18 billion rubles ($540 million), twice as much as planned two years ago and a sixfold increase over a 2002 estimate, Kommersant reported, citing an Audit Chamber’s report. |
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MOSCOW — France’s Renault opposes the idea of issuing new AvtoVAZ shares because the move would dilute its 25 percent stake in the struggling carmaker, Renault’s regional chief said Friday. The head of AvtoVAZ, Boris Alyoshin, said earlier last week that his company needed 26 billion rubles ($775 million) in financing as it battles mounting debt and a sharp drop in demand. |
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One of the chief questions for Russian consumers seeking a silver lining as retailers struggle in the aftermath of the credit crisis is when prices are going to fall. After all, shoppers are aware that turnover is down and that tenants are paying less for the space that they rent. |
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On Monday, the foreign ministers of 27 European Union countries could not agree on the 3.5 billion euro budget for energy projects. This means, among other things, that the fate of the Nabucco project, which was supposed to be allocated 250 million euros, has been essentially put on hold. |
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 Widespread redundancies have given rise to a growing army of job seekers in Russia, which looks set to grow even further in the summer with a new wave of university graduates. It might seem to desperate job seekers that no companies want any new workers during the economic crisis. |
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With salary cuts and redundancies becoming a common occurrence since the onset of the economic crisis in Russia, the latest research by Avanta Personnel recruitment agency shows that the average decrease in salaries in the country stands at about 16 to 19 percent. |
 Since October last year, more than half of all Russian companies have made staff cuts, according to data gathered by Ancor recruitment agency. Although 44 percent of those who have lost their job have no objection to the redundancy procedures, 31 percent feel that the company behaved dishonestly toward them. |
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The government would like to entice the thousands of Russian scientists who have left for better-paying jobs abroad to return to Russia for good. But in a pinch, it appears that officials will settle for a few months a year. |
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 The age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, will probably never be put to rest since most people agree that one cannot exist without the other. The same could be said of the interdependence of politics and economics on the regional, national and global levels. |
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Churchill’s famous line about Russia being “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” is rarely quoted in full. Here’s the rest: “ ... but perhaps there is a key. |
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 ZLATOUST, Chelyabinsk Region — The burly steelworker leading hunger strikers here is furious at huge wage cuts triggered by the global economic crisis but is not ready to man barricades just yet. “We don’t want a revolution,” said Alexander Negrebetskikh, 32, standing near the gates of this sprawling Ural Mountains steel mill. |
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TOKYO — A FedEx Corp cargo plane caught in a gust of wind crashed and burst into flames as it landed at Japan’s Narita airport on Monday, killing the two man crew and closing the main runway at the busy gateway to Tokyo. Airlines canceled more than 30 flights and diverted some to other airports as the longest of two runways was closed. “We have information that strong winds caused the plane to divert from the runway,” a Narita Airport spokeswoman said. The FedEx plane landed hard, tipped onto its left wing and burst into flames, video of the crash on public broadcaster NHK showed. |
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Bargain Bucket / Reuters
A Tata Nano car displayed at the model’s launch in Mumbai on Monday. The Nano, the world’s cheapest car at a cost of $2,000, is set to hit Indian roads in July. |
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LONDON — The son of tragedy-scarred poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has killed himself 46 years after his mother gassed herself, The Times reported on Monday. Nicholas Hughes hanged himself in his home in the U.S. state of Alaska last week after battling depression, his sister told the newspaper, 40 years to the day after Hughes’ next lover also killed herself.
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INDIAN WELLS, California — World number one Rafael Nadal crushed Scotland’s Andy Murray 6-1, 6-2 to win the Indian Wells ATP Masters series title. Nadal, the reigning Australian Open champion, defied difficult, blustery wind conditions to capture the crown in the California desert for the second time, after triumphing here in 2007. |
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LIVERPOOL, England — Steven Gerrard has warned Manchester United that Liverpool will take full advantage of any more slips from Sir Alex Ferguson’s Premier League leaders. |
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Issues Archive