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 MOSCOW — Amid worries that Russia is lagging in its Sochi Olympic preparations, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday ousted the head of the state company responsible for Olympics construction and replaced him with Baltika’s founder. Putin said costs and other construction issues were behind the decision to replace Olimpstroi CEO Viktor Kolodyazhny with Taimuraz Bolloyev. “When high-ranking officials do not assist in lowering prices but, on the contrary, demand price retentions and increases, that is totally unacceptable in today’s circumstances,” Putin said at an Olimpstroi meeting attended by Bolloyev and Kolodyazhny at his Novo-Oga-ryovo residence outside Moscow. |
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 President Dmitry Medvedev cautioned Friday that while the global economic crisis appears to have peaked, “it’s still far too early to open the champagne,” and Russians must be ready to retrain and relocate to help the country recover. |
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Vodokanal, the city’s state-run water treatment monopoly, signed a 17.5 million euro ($24.25 million) deal with the European Investment Bank at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum for completion of a central sewage collection facility and reconstruction of the northern aeration station. |
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Human rights activists and opposition politicians have published an open letter in defense of Artyom Loskutov, the 23-year-old artist and activist arrested in Novosibirsk last month, while the hunger strike led by local artists at City Hall entered its 12th day on Monday. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Dagestan’s top police official, known for conducting a brutal and indiscriminate fight against radical Islamists, was killed at a Makhachkala wedding Friday in a sniper attack that the region’s president blamed on corrupt law enforcement officials. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has hinted that he might fire senior officials deemed as taking insufficient steps to deal with the economic crisis in an interview published Friday in Kommersant. |
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When Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s helicopter touched down in Pikalyovo last week, it was clear that a remedy for the city’s pain was at hand. It is uncertain how long the cure might last, but observers are sure that it might turn out to be poison for the government. |
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The Kremlin is playing down hopes of a breakthrough on reducing nuclear arsenals ahead of a visit to Moscow by the U.S. president, linking arms cuts with U. |
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Bolshoi Director Dies Boris Pokrovsky, the renowned Bolshoi opera director, died Friday at age 97, news reports said. No cause of death was given. President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered their condolences. “Pokrovsky belonged to the galaxy of celebrated masters whose names are rightfully considered the pride of our fatherland’s culture,” Putin said in a statement. Pokrovsky became a director for the Bolshoi Theater in 1943 and staged more than 180 operas, including Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Giuseppe Verdi’s “Otello.” He was named People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1961 and was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1980. |
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 A two-hour flight east of Moscow, the city of Perm strikes you more as an industrial backwater than it does a future capital of the art world. Its most famous museums are in a yellowing church best known for its collections of bizarre wooden sculptures from the area and a former labor camp now detailing the history of the gulag. |
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It was perhaps fitting that the headlining musical act for the St. Petersburg economic forum was Duran Duran, a band whose best-remembered single is the 1982 hit “Hungry Like the Wolf.” While the state splurged on lavish yacht parties and singing metal butterflies at previous forums, this year’s event took place in the middle of the worst recession the world has seen in decades. |
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Kraft Foods will invest $50 million to double the capacity of its coffee factory in the Leningrad Oblast. “We have already invested $100 million in the construction of the coffee plant that opened last year in Goryelovo,” said Sanjay Khosla, president of Kraft Foods International Inc, in an interview with Vedomosti newspaper. |
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It’s tough to play an unpredictable market, even one that most would agree is in need of a correction. And while that correction looked to have arrived last Wednesday when the MICEX Index plummeted over 7 percent and the dollar-denominated RTS Index lost 4. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev invited 45 bankers and international executives for a closed-door meeting to hear their views on doing business in Russia, fielding evergreen questions on excessive bureaucracy and obstacles to commerce. |
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U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk signaled on Friday that he thought Russia’s chances of joining the WTO in the coming year were better than even, despite Washington’s concerns over recent restrictions on pork imports. “We continue to hold out hope that Russia will move as quickly as possible to lift the ban,” Kirk said at a news conference, following talks with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina. |
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Sberbank and Canada’s Magna will buy General Motors’ St. Petersburg plant for 65 million euros after their purchase last week of Opel’s share in GM. The assets will be restructured at the second stage of the deal, when Sberbank will attract Russian carmakers to Opel’s capital. |
 International energy executives raised concerns about high oil taxes and gas supplies to Europe at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday. Medvedev, in his opening speech, promoted his recent energy-security proposals at the event, also attended by chiefs of top Russian energy producers. |
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 Pyongyang’s underground nuclear test on May 25 and its April 5 test-firing of a long-range missile that flew over Japan were condemned almost unanimously across the globe. It is easy to understand why. A small but extremely belligerent and reckless country has effectively undermined the existing system for resolving conflicts and providing collective security. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev has talked about using the economic crisis to wean Russia off its oil dependency and to create a more balanced economy by investing into new technologies. |
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LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown clung to power Monday after his Labour Party suffered a second crushing poll defeat in days, while the far-right made historic gains. Labour was beaten into third place in European elections behind fringe anti-Europeans the UK Independence Party (UKIP), after 11 ministers resigned in recent days. |
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PARIS — Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Dinara Safina 6-4, 6-2 in an all-Russian final of the French Open on Saturday to take away her second Grand Slam title. It was a comprehensive win for the 23-year-old seventh seed who lost in the final here in 2006 to Justine Henin two years after she stunned the world of tennis by winning the U. |
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Issues Archive