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MOSCOW — Sulaiman Yamadayev, a former Moscow-backed strongman and member of a clan that challenged Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s authority, was gunned down in Dubai on Saturday in an apparent assassination, Dubai police said, local media reported. Dubai police chief Dalfan Tamim said in a statement Sunday that a Chechen victim, identified as Sulaiman Madov, 36, was shot dead in the parking lot of the apartment building where he was living. Citing unidentified sources, the English-language Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reported on its web site Monday that the victim’s identity had been confirmed as Sulaiman Yamadayev, a Chechen who had been in Dubai for four months. |
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200 YEARS TOGETHER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Finnish President Tarja Halonen (r) and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko (c) are greeted by local children as they arrive at the opening of the 200 Years of Finland in St. Petersburg program of events celebrating Finland’s joining the Russian Empire. |
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The 15-day Xenophobii.NET (No to Xenophobia) Campaign ended in arrests, when viewers leaving a film screening at Rodina film theater in the center of St. Petersburg were dispersed by the police on Sunday. But while the Russian media, from RTR television to Fontanka.ru news portal, reported a mass fight between Antifa activists and neo-Nazis, both the police and detained film-goers deny any fight took place.
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MOSCOW — Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was registered to run for mayor of Sochi on Saturday, his campaign said, a day after a mysterious campaign contribution from a New York car dealer threatened to derail his bid. “Boris Nemtsov has been registered as a candidate for the post of Sochi mayor,” his spokeswoman Olga Shorina said in an e-mailed statement. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank has been taking flak from all sides lately over its insistence on maintaining what critics call “crippling” and “bankrupting” interest rates, a policy endorsed by the prime minister to keep lenders operating above the level of inflation. But in a reversal that could mollify bankers and borrowers — not to mention VEB chief Vladimir Dmitriyev and Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who both took digs at the Central Bank’s monetary policy last week — First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said Friday that the bank could begin cutting rates as soon as next quarter. The comments, made in an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio, reflect a growing confidence that inflation will begin to subside as production plummets and the devalued ruble starts to regain ground against a falling dollar. |
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TOP NOTCH
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia performing at the World Figure Skating Championships in Los Angeles where they took gold medal on Sunday. |
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Driver Opens Fire ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police arrested a driver outside St. Petersburg on Saturday for opening fire after he was stopped for speeding, said the Central Internal Affairs Directorate. According to the press release, traffic police tried to stop the driver of an Audi A6 for speeding in the village of Kuyvozi in the Vsevolozhsky region of the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported.
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MOSCOW — In another twist to a standoff between senior law enforcement officials, the Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal of Moscow’s top investigator, casting into doubt the criminal cases that he had been conducting. The judges ruled that Prosecutor General Yury Chaika was right to fire Anatoly Bagmet, the head of the Investigative Committee’s Moscow branch, for “oath-breaking and discrediting misconduct of office,” overturning decisions by two lower courts, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — An official with the Defense Ministry’s intelligence branch has been charged with leading an international crime ring trafficking women as sex slaves, a senior investigator said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has assured a BBC reporter that he is in charge of Russia even as his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, continues to wield enormous influence. “I am leading the state, I am the head of state and the division of power is based on this,” Medvedev said in an interview released Sunday in answer to a question about who was the boss. |
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Gazprom won an agreement from Azerbaijan on Friday to begin talks on buying Azeri gas in a deal that looks set to undermine the prospects of supply diversification for Europe. Gazprom and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or Socar, will discuss the terms of deliveries, which are to start next year, Gazprom said in an e-mailed statement after a meeting between Gazprom chief Alexei Miller and Socar chief Rovnag Abdullayev. |
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MOSCOW — Gazprom said Friday that it was likely to cut its dividend payout for 2008 following a fall in its annual net profit, the first decrease in this decade. |
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MOSCOW — United Company RusAl, controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, said Friday that aluminum prices were bottoming out and that a very significant recovery was expected in 2011. Artyom Volynets, director of corporate strategy, said in an interview after a presentation to analysts in London that aluminum prices, currently at about $1,420 per ton, would remain volatile this year before rising $200 to $300 in 2010 ahead of a “big” improvement in 2011. |
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Business Lobby Critical MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a lobby for the country’s biggest companies, said the government’s plan for dealing with the financial crisis is too vague and short-sighted. |
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IKEA, the world’s biggest home-furnishings retailer, said Saturday that it was reconsidering new investment in Russia and that it would have to lay off 245 employees after months of delays kept it from opening a store in Samara. The Swedish company has invested more than $3 billion in the country in the past decade and was planning to add four stores this year to the 11 it already runs. |
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Sakhalin Energy sent Russia’s first cargo of liquefied natural gas to Japan on Sunday from the Sakhalin-2 project that will allow the Kremlin to extend its reach in world energy markets from Europe into Asia and North America. |
 In November last year, St. Petersburg’s five-star Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel appointed Frenchman Thierry Vergnault as its new executive chef. Vergnault has ambitious plans for the Nevskij Palace, which is currently redeveloping the two buildings either side of the existing hotel as part of a multi-million dollar extension project. |
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The new Federal Law of 30 December 2008, No. 312-FZ, “On the amendments to the first part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and other selected legislative acts of the Russian Federation” (hereinafter the “Law”), has introduced a number of fundamental changes in the legislation on limited liability companies. |
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 TOULOUSE, France — Sometime around midnight about once a month, a convoy of airplane parts weighing more than 230 tons makes its way through the small village of Levignac near Toulouse, France. Locals and tourists gather to watch the impressive spectacle of the gigantic metal parts of a cutting-edge flying machine snaking through the center of the 18th-century village, whose two-story town houses and tower seem dwarfed by the tail section of the craft. |
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 Aeroflot’s board fired longtime chief executive Valery Okulov on Thursday and replaced him with Vitaly Savelyev, a Sistema executive with no previous experience in the aviation sector. |
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 In uncertain times for art and the world at large, nothing is safe from speculation and doubt — but doubt is not a word you associate with Francois Pinault. The 73-year-old’s portfolio includes luxury brands from Gucci to Yves Saint Laurent, a 100% stake in Christie’s, the Chateau-Latour vineyard in Bordeaux and a palace in Venice to display his colossal art collection. |
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MOSCOW — Kerchiefed women peddle fake designer handbags in front of the pitted Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney stores, whose signs have been scratched off by hand less than 18 months after their grand openings. |
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MOSCOW — A Russian advertising agency has used an image resembling U.S. President Barack Obama to promote a new vanilla-and-chocolate ice cream, drawing the ire of human rights groups who said the ad was vulgar. Ice Cream Plant No. 3 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg last week launched a new brand named “Duet. |
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 During the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum at the end of February, we participated in two days of brainstorming with more than 200 economists, political scientists and business leaders. The following is a list of the top 20 most important anti-crisis measures that resulted from the Krasnoyarsk conference. |
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At her meeting this month with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented him with a now-notorious gift, a mock reset button symbolizing a new dawn in U. |
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ABIDJAN — Fans stampeded in an Abidjan stadium during a World Cup match featuring top European-based stars on Sunday killing at least 19 people and injuring 132, a minister said. Hundreds of fans with tickets tried to force their way into the Houphouet-Boigny Stadium in Ivory Coast’s biggest city as the match against Malawi started, a medical source told AFP. |
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LONDON — David Beckham insists he is happy to play a bit-part role for England, despite becoming his country’s most capped out-field player. Beckham passed Bobby Moore’s previous record of 108 caps when he came on as a half-time substitute in Saturday’s 4-0 friendly win over Slovakia. |
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Issues Archive