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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered Royal Dutch Shell a role in the Sakhalin-3 and Sakhalin-4 natural gas projects on Saturday, just 2 1/2 years after Europe’s biggest oil producer was forced to cede control of Sakhalin-2 to Gazprom. Shell welcomed the proposal, which analysts said illustrated Gazprom’s need for technologies and money to develop the difficult offshore fields rather than a government change of heart toward foreign investors. “We consider it possible to continue a partnership with Shell on other fields, namely Sakhalin-3 and Sakhalin-4,” Putin told Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer during a meeting Saturday at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence in the Moscow region. |
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FINAL DESTINATION
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Participants in the Volvo Ocean Race pass under Palace Bridge, which was raised especially for the event, in the final stretch of the regatta on Saturday. Telefonica Black crossed the finish line first, closely followed by Puma and then Telefonica Blue. |
 Tuesday sees the last day of legal operations for all casinos and gambling centers in Russia. The Kremlin has launched a reform that involves setting up four large gambling zones in the Primorye region, Altai region, Kaliningrad Oblast and Azov region (the area connecting the Rostov Oblast and Krasnodar region). According to the federal law aimed at regulating and putting in order Russia’s vast gambling industry, all casinos in the country must close as of July 1, 2009 and reopen in one of the specially designated areas.
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All photos from issue.
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Forget the American dream. If you want to make money in a foreign country, the place to go is Russia, which a new survey found to be home to the “wealthiest expats in the world.” A third of all expats in Russia — the highest proportion in the world — make more than $250,000 per year, with almost half reporting an income of $200,000 per year or more, according to a survey commissioned by HSBC Bank International. The survey, released last week, examined the financial circumstances of 3,100 expats living in 26 different countries. It based its rankings on a series of interrelated factors, such as annual income, disposable income, savings and money spent on luxuries. |
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RITE OF PASSAGE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Cadets from the Suvorov Military School in St. Petersburg cheer during a ceremony Wednesday in which they were awarded diplomas for having completed three years of study at the school. |
 Hundreds of people laid flowers and lit candles at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow over the weekend to commemorate pop star Michael Jackson, who died Thursday at the age of 50. As of Sunday afternoon, the embassy’s fence was covered with flowers, toys, hats and gloves reminiscent of Jackson’s costumes and pictures of the singer. Posters read “I don’t believe” and “Just call my name, and I’ll be there.
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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday threw his support behind a local politician who said he was fired from his job at a state-run company because of his oppositional views and political activities. Yevgeny Konovalov, chairman of the Russian Social-Democrat Union of Youth (RSDSM) and a member of the executive committee of the Gorbachev-led Union of Social Democrats, was fired from Pochta Rossii (the Russian Post Office) on Wednesday. |
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U.S. President Barack Obama will make a commencement speech to 1,000 guests at Moscow’s New Economic School and hold talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, officials said, as details emerged of Obama’s much-anticipated visit to the capital on July 6 to 8. |
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Lightning killed two students celebrating their high school graduation and wounded the police officer acting as their chaperone Saturday, RIA-Novosti reported. The boy and girl were among a group of 15 students who went to the Pacific coast to watch the sun rise after their graduation ball in the Primorye region village of Zarubino, the report said, citing local police. |
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Prosecutors will send a new extradition request to Britain after a Moscow region court on Friday sentenced self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky to 13 years in prison for defrauding AvtoVAZ in the 1990s. |
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Members of the Romanov royal family plan to return to Russia to help develop civil society and charitable programs — but no longer make a claim to restore the monarchy, Alexander Zakatov, director of the Romanov Emperor House Chancellery, said Friday. “The emperor’s house is faithful to the idea of monarchy, but we are not going to peddle it to anyone,” Zakatov told reporters. “Yet coming to its native land, working in cultural, charitable and other nonpolitical programs for Russia’s benefit — that is what the house is able and indebted to do,” he said, Interfax reported. Zakatov represents Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and members of her family, who live in Madrid, the city where she and her son Georgy Mikhailovich were born. |
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 Defense lawyers took four months to exonerate their clients in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It took the Supreme Court less than an hour Thursday to throw out the jury’s acquittal of the four men and order a retrial. |
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Back in the 1990s, the police show “Dorozhny Patrul” used to show unpixelated, mutilated bodies at a time when most people were sitting down to dinner. While television has toned down the graphic scenes since then, there is still no clear rating system that specifies whether the content is appropriate for children. |
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The State Duma on Friday passed in a first reading a presidential bill that would ease tight regulation of nongovernmental organizations, despite opposition from Communists, who called it a gift to U. |
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Gazprom will use its planned South Stream pipeline to carry a third of its gas exports to Europe by 2015, chief executive Alexei Miller said Friday in an apparent warning to Ukraine, which now handles the bulk of the transit. Gazprom and Italy’s Eni recently agreed to expand the capacity of South Stream, which will run under the Black Sea, to 63 billion cubic meters of gas — or 35 percent of Gazprom’s exports to that region, Miller said. |
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Polymetal to Sell Bonds MOSCOW (Bloomberg)— Polymetal, Russia’s biggest silver producer, plans to sell 5 billion rubles ($160 million) of bonds to refinance debt. |
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How the mighty have fallen. The MICEX and the dollar-denominated RTS, which was touted at the beginning of the month as the world’s best-performing equity index, are again in bear territory. While neither is close to the January doldrums, both are already feeling the pangs of a correction that will either smart like ripping off a bandage or burn — like fourth-quarter 2008. By June 23, the MICEX had lost 24 percent from its postcrisis high on June 1, while the RTS fell 20.1 percent during the same period. Though some, like Deutsche Bank chief economist Yaroslav Lissovolik, are predicting a brief one or two weeks of volatility, others such as Alexander Zakharov, head of equities at Metropol, say the MICEX is looking to decline to as low as 850, either in a sharp sell-off or gradually. |
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 Shareholders of state electricity trader Inter RAO walked into their annual meeting in Moscow on Thursday determined to oppose management’s calls to skip dividends and pay four independent directors a combined $180,000. |
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 Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms giant, is caught in a dispute with Alfa Group, one of Russia’s largest holdings, over the highly lucrative mobile telephone business in Russia and Ukraine. The Norwegian state is a majority shareholder of Telenor, and Alfa is owned by Mikhail Fridman, an oligarch estimated by Forbes in 2008 to be among the 20 richest people in the world. |
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Just as Europeans are packing their bags for the beaches, another Russia-Ukraine gas dispute is flaring up. The European Union should use it as a stimulus to speed up connecting its energy networks to reduce Eastern Europe’s vulnerability to gas cutoffs. |
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Issues Archive