|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry will sell 529 billion rubles ($15.7 billion) of treasury bonds this year and issue 50 percent to 100 percent more bonds in 2011 and 2012, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday, as the government looks for ways to finance a growing budget deficit and increase liquidity in its ailing financial system. The government may also change some of its capital rules in efforts to recapitalize the banking sector, while shying away from the U.S. model of a “toxic assets” fund. The bond issue amounts to nearly twice the amount of paper that the Finance Ministry sold last year, and the amount will increase each year to ease pressure on the Reserve Fund, which will cover this year’s forecasted 8 percent budget deficit. “This will happen every year — it is a necessity due to the depletion of the Reserve Fund,” Kudrin said in comments posted on the ministry’s web site. |
|
MONKEY BUSINESS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Liza Layevskaya of the Leningrad Zoo plays with Reda, a 3-month old monkey which has been rejected by its mother. The zoo's young zoologists are feeding the institution's new arrival. |
|
The staff of the Lomonosov orphanage in the St. Petersburg suburb of Lomonosov are calling for help to save it from closure. “If we meet the demands of the fire inspectorate by June 1 of this year we’ll be able to save our children’s home,” said Antonina Petrova, head doctor of the orphanage. “In order to do that we need to raise about 2.5 million rubles ($75,000) or for someone to donate the necessary construction materials to us,” Petrova told The St.
|
|
MOSCOW — Gazprom warned Ukraine against implementing plans to modernize its pipelines without consulting Moscow, saying any such action would immediately affect gas supplies to Europe. Ukraine has called on the European Union, which gets most of its imported Russian gas via Ukraine, to help fund modernization of its pipeline system. |
|
MOSCOW — Russian banks facing a rise in nonperforming loans can count on further state help such as subordinated loans or more flexible accounting rules, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said at a banking conference Wednesday. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
 Former presidential candidate Andrei Bogdanov on Wednesday became the latest entry into the crowded Sochi mayoral election, saying the Black Sea resort could become “the Nice of Russia.” Bogdanov, 39, is the former head of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Russia, which was widely seen as a Kremlin-controlled project to draw votes away from actual opposition candidates and give voters a tame liberal option. “Sochi should become the Nice of Russia, where the majority can earn a living through small businesses,” Bogdanov told The Moscow Times on Wednesday after submitting his registration papers to the Sochi elections commission. The mayoral election in Sochi, which is slated to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, has become one of the year’s most intriguing political events. |
|
TIME'S A CHANGIN'!
Mikhail Ipatov / For The St. Petersburg Times
An elderly woman rides her bicycle on Nevsky Prospekt on Thursday. At 2 a.m. on Sunday the clocks will be put forward an hour. |
|
As the Week Against Homophobia gets underway in St. Petersburg and several other Russian cities, Wednesday’s debates at Sochi music bar showed that gay rights activists have a long way to go to overcome the superstitions. One of the two participants, Mikhail Potepkin of the Kremlin-backed youth movement Nashi, who described himself as “homonegativist,” compared homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality and said that as a member of a sexual majority, he has the right not to see gay people on Nevsky Prospekt, St.
|
|
TBILISI, Georgia — A Georgian court ruled Wednesday that eight opposition supporters accused of plotting a coup and terrorist acts should remain in custody for two months as they await trial. Police released video recordings this week allegedly showing the men trying to buy weapons with the intent of causing violence during opposition protests next month. |
|
Bank Searched ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local prosecutors searched the central office of VEFK Bank in St. Petersburg Wednesday, Interfax reported. The search was performed as part of a criminal investigation into illegal bank activities in violation of article 172 of the Russian Criminal Code, according to the report. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Russian state banks will help Gazprom raise more than $4 billion to buy back a stake in its oil arm from Italy’s Eni to prevent the asset ending up in foreign hands, industry sources said Wednesday. The deal, expected in early April, the sources said, would help Eni reassure investors that it has enough cash to continue paying its dividend and advance the Kremlin’s strategy of bringing key resources back under state control. “In the eyes of the Kremlin, Gazprom Neft is a ‘strategic asset,’ and therefore foreigners owning such assets should expect to have the thumbscrews put on them to reduce their equity levels,” analysts from Bernstein said in a note. |
|
MY OTHER RIDE...
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A road traffic policeman contemplates an environmentally-friendly form of transport at the VeloExpo bicycle trade fair held at the St. Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex this week. |
|
Rosneft Heeds Putin ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Rosneft became Russia’s first major oil producer to conduct trading in refined oil products on the ruble-denominated St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange as the country seeks more control over oil prices. Russia’s biggest oil company Wednesday sold 6,700 metric tons of oil products for 97 million rubles ($2.
|
|
|
|
|
China’s growing economic and military might is changing the balance of power between Moscow and Beijing. This has caused anxiety among various groups of people in Russia — especially those living in geographic proximity to the Celestial Empire — and some have been raising the alarm of a Chinese threat. But is that threat real? If the main concern is only that China is a very large, rapidly developing country, then Beijing should also be in constant fear of Russia — another huge and powerful country. Similarly, European countries would have cause to fear their largest neighbors, France and Germany, and by the same logic those two should fear each other. |
|
 On Monday, several Russian web sites, including the liberal Newsru.com, posted a sensational report. “The European Commission,” Newsru.com said, “having studied the circumstances and the course of the military conflict with Russia in August of last year, has concluded that it was Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who initiated military action. |
|
|
|
 As far as the eye can see: Stalin. Stalin the son, emerging, ethereal, from Lenin’s shadow. Stalin the father, doting on a young pioneer, accepting flowers from an earnest little girl. Stalin the protector, all medals and fighting zeal. Stalin the God-king. |
|
Russia is rising from its knees, official propaganda says, yet is growing strangely touchy as it does so. Last month the Kremlin attacked Georgia’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, which is scheduled to be held in Moscow in May. |
 In David Burliuk’s “Hudson,” a view of the New York City skyline seems to fly apart into ribbons of image and memory like a fleeting dream. But for Burliuk and the other Russian emigre artists featured in a new exhibition at the Russian Museum, America was a tangible reality that strongly influenced the development of their art, as demonstrated by Burliuk’s departure from his earlier work in “Hudson. |
|
After entering Gosti (Guests) from the cold, it becomes apparent why the owners have decided on its rather unusual moniker. The intention appears to be to make diners feel that they are ‘guests,’ not just paying customers, and to provide the more personable experience that you would have when dining at a friend’s house. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW — Widely seen by the public as corrupt, crude and often violent, the country’s police force has perhaps the most odious reputation of any public servants. But in a drive to turn policemen into gentlemen, the Interior Ministry has implemented a behavior code forbidding its officers from engaging in a range of unseemly deeds, from cursing to smoking to adultery. The new code, distributed to senior Interior Ministry officials at an assembly last month, spells out ethical norms for police officers — prohibiting them from, among other things, drinking at work, gambling, making crude jokes, talking on cell phones on public transportation and smoking in public. |
|
 This year’s Golden Mask Awards festival, which officially opens Friday, has picked seven nominees for the award for best production of opera staged in Russia during the 2007-2008 season. |
|
|
|
|
LONDON — Chelsea have launched an initiative aimed at identifying promising young players from a south Asian background in a bid to address the community’s chronic under-representation in English football. Britain is home to over three million people with family roots in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka but the country’s largest ethnic minority has virtually no presence in the national sport at the professional level. |
|
BREE, Belgium — Former world No.1 Kim Clijsters of Belgium on Thursday announced her return to competitive tennis almost two years after retiring from the sport at just 23 years old. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive