LOCAL NEWS

SOLDIERS' MOTHERS SUSPECT 'ROUNDUPS'

The Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group is crying foul at what the organization’s head Ella Polyakova describes as “massive roundups” carried out by the city’s military commissions with the aim of catching potential conscripts trying to avoid from compulsory service in the army.

KREMLIN TAKES SMALL STEP TO EASE NGO LAW

MOSCOW — Russia’s stifling NGO law has been labeled a hallmark of former President Vladimir Putin’s heavy-handed approach to civil liberties. Likewise, President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent promise to review the law has been praised as a sign of his liberalism.

PRESIDENT ATTENDS OPENING OF NEW BORIS YELTSIN LIBRARY

President Dmitry Medvedev opened the new Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.

“This library will become not only a unique repository, but also the connecting hub for the country’s whole library system,” Medvedev said at the official opening ceremony in the city’s historical Senate and Synod building.

SIBERIAN POLICE RESCUE GIRL, 5, RAISED BY DOGS

MOSCOW — Police in the Siberian city of Chita said Wednesday that they have rescued a 5-year-old feral girl whose father kept her locked in a filthy apartment and who was essentially “raised” by the animals she lived with.

NATIONAL NEWS

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF AT CITY'S TRAFFIC BLACK SPOT

Six people, including two children, were hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing near a bus stop on St.Petersburg’s Tallinskoye Shosse on Tuesday.

The accident took place on the very same spot where, half a year ago, a marshrutka (a minibus that follows fixed public transport routes) ran over 12 people, killing six of them.

RUSSIA ASKS SPAIN FOR YUKOS SUSPECT

MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors have asked Spain to extradite Antonio Valdes Garcia, a former associate of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky who fled from house arrest in the midst of a money-laundering trial involving the bankrupt oil company two years ago.

POLICE ALSO TO DECLARE INCOME IN DRIVE TOWARDS TRANSPARENCY

MOSCOW — Taking a cue from President Dmitry Medvedev’s transparency drive, a senior Interior Ministry official said Wednesday that rank-and-file police officers — widely seen as the country’s most corrupt public servants — will be required to show their tax declarations to their bosses.

CITIZENS SEIZE POWER STATIONS IN DAGESTAN

MOSCOW — For the second time this week, a group of angry citizens seized a power station Wednesday in Dagestan after their electricity was shut off because of unpaid municipal debts.

LOCAL BUSINESS

FRIDMAN TAKES OVER TNK-BP

Billionaire shareholder Mikhail Fridman unexpectedly emerged Wednesday as the man who will temporarily run TNK-BP while BP and its Russian partners consider the candidacies of two independent CEOs until the end of the year.

In announcing the deal, BP and the Russian partners, collectively known as AAR, also said they had agreed to appoint the prospective CEOs, Pavel Skitovich and Maxim Barsky, to senior positions at TNK-BP.

RUSSIA PREPARED TO INVEST $10BLN IN IMF BONDS

MOSCOW — Russia is prepared to invest up to $10 billion from its reserves into the International Monetary Fund’s first-ever bond issue, a move that some say could signal a bid to gain greater influence in IMF decisions.

OPINION

A BACKWARD TRADITION OF MANIPULATING HISTORY

The Kremlin opened a new front against its “internal and external enemies” on May 19, when President Dmitry Medvedev created a presidential commission “for counteracting attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia’s interests.” The 28-member commission includes Kremlin-friendly conservatives such as State Duma deputies and United Russia members Konstantin Zatulin and Sergei Markov as well as representatives from the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry.

CRIME AND NO PUNISHMENT

On May 13, Interior Ministry employee Roman Zhirov, driving his powerful SUV, hit and killed a 34-year-old pregnant woman on a Moscow crosswalk. Pregnant woman are not particularly known for sprinting across pedestrian crossings out of nowhere and catching an approaching driver by surprise.

CULTURE

HIGH STAKES

With 2009 having been declared the year of Nikolai Gogol to commemorate the bicentenary of his birth, plenty of events have been devoted to the great Ukrainian-born Russian writer this year. A performance based on Gogol’s play “The Gamblers” and produced by the wildly popular actor and theater director Oleg Menshikov is consequently as topical as ever, despite its seven-year history, and is showing at the weekend in St.

CHERNOV’S CHOICE

GEZ-21, or the Experimental Sound Gallery, part of the Pushkinskaya 10 alternative arts center, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a major music event headlined by Chris Cutler this week.

FREEDOM ON DISPLAY

A new exhibition of radical art has opened at Pushkinskaya 10’s Museum of Non-Conformist Art, but one of the exhibits is missing. Dr. Kurt Fleckenstein’s work “Chess,” a critique of the Iraq war, fell foul of Russian customs.

Fleckenstein, a political activist and former landscape architect from Germany, told the St.

IDENTITY CRISIS

French onion and Korean kimchi soups. Greek, Italian and Russian salads. Shashlik and blini, pasta and Chicken Kiev. Amid the multiethnic fog of Bari Galust’s extensive menu, one might be forgiven for wondering where on earth Armenia has disappeared to — if, indeed, the restaurant owes anything besides its name (which means “welcome” in Armenian) to the country.

Animal print, tantrums and nose jobs

This week, Yana Rudkovskaya, the producer of Eurovision winner Dima Bilan, presented her tell-all memoir “The Confessions of a Concubine.” She poses on the cover lying on a leather couch with a tiger, in what I can only assume is a tribute to her love affair with the animal-print dresses of Roberto Cavalli.

WORLD

Scores Hurt As Riots Mar Win For Barcelona

BARCELONA — Police arrested 134 people and more than 150 were injured as Barcelona’s Champions League victory celebrations descended into riots.

Around 100,000 people spilled onto the streets of the Catalan capital after Barcelona’s 2-0 triumph over Manchester United in Rome.

But the carnival atmosphere turned ugly after midnight when youths began clashing with police around Las Ramblas, the city’s most famous street.