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MOSCOW — Two activists from a Chechnya-based children’s charity were found shot dead in the trunk of their car early Tuesday, a day after a human rights group reported that they were kidnapped from their office in Grozny. The killings, which come less than a month after the murder of prominent Chechen human rights campaigner Natalya Estemirova shocked the world, raise new questions about the republic’s ability to protect activists and rights workers. Zarema Sadulayeva, head of a nongovernmental organization called Save the Generation, and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, were abducted from their office at about 2 p.m. Monday by unidentified gunmen dressed in camouflage, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. |
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WONDERWALL
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Pedestrians walk past a copy of 'The Easter Procession' by Illarion Pryanishnikov on Thursday. The copy has been hung on a wall on the embankment of the Griboyedov Canal as part of a project being run in St. Petersburg and Moscow by the State Russian Museum. |
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CHERESHNYA, Krasnodar Region — Ashot Galstyan moved his family from Krasnodar three years ago to the tiny village of Chereshnya, about 200 kilometers away, in the hopes of raising his children in a more peaceful environment. The following year, however, Sochi was selected to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, and Galstyan found himself right in the middle of the single-most complicated and expensive part of the construction.
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MOSCOW — Ingushetia’s construction minister was shot dead by two masked gunmen who burst into his office in the republic’s capital on Wednesday morning in a brazen attack, investigators said. The unidentified gunmen entered the office of Construction Minister Ruslan Amerkhanov at about 10:30 a.m. and fired four shots at him at close range, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised military protection and additional financial aid to the separatist leadership of Abkhazia on Wednesday during a one-day visit to the breakaway republic that infuriated Tbilisi. Putin is the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Abkhazia since the Black Sea region broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. His trip came on the anniversary of the end of the five-day Russia-Georgia war last year that resulted in Moscow’s decision to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another breakaway Georgian region. “Russia provides and will provide systemic economic, political and, if needed, military support” to Abkhazia, Putin told reporters Wednesday at a news conference with Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh in the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi. |
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THE FIRST CUT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
City cleaners compete in a lawnmower tournament in the Frunzensky District on Wednesday. Ten strimmers and five tractor drivers took part in the event. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev lashed out at Ukraine’s pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko on Tuesday, indicating that the Kremlin is counting on a change of leadership when Russia’s most important neighbor state votes in a presidential election. Analysts said Medvedev was effectively telling Ukrainians to vote Yushchenko out of office in the election scheduled for January.
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PARIS — A Russian woman frustrated at failing to obtain French nationality hurled a ceramic cup at the “Mona Lisa” but did not damage Leonardo da Vinci’s famed portrait, a spokesman for the Louvre Museum said Tuesday, Reuters reported. The attack happened on Aug. 2, and the unidentified assailant was immediately arrested. |
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 Construction of the $800-million container terminal at Ust Luga port has been halted due to differences among the shareholders of the National Container Company (NKK). NKK announced last week that construction of the Ust Luga Container Terminal (ULKT) was being stopped as a result of Fesco Group’s refusal to participate in its financing and construction. |
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Large banks are beginning their traditional summer debt sales, but they are finding that collection agencies are only offering to pay about half of what they did last year. |
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New low-cost airline Avianova will begin flying out of Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to four Russian cities on Aug. 27, with one-way tickets starting at 250 rubles ($7.70), Avianova director Vladimir Gorbunov said Wednesday. The airline’s fleet of two Airbus A320 jets will initially fly from Moscow to Sochi, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don and Samara, while Naberezhniye Chelny and Astrakhan will be added within a month, Gorbunov said at a news conference. |
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A government initiative to triple the excise tax on beer would be disastrous for the brewing industry, resulting in job losses and crippling smaller producers, members of the Beer Producers Union said at a news conference Tuesday. |
 MOSCOW — Car owners will soon be able to trade in their clunkers for a 50,000 ruble ($1,500) voucher redeemable for a domestic automobile, a program the state hopes will help fuel demand for cheaper models like the Lada. A preliminary proposal regarding the program was brought before a working group formed on the orders of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a representative of the Industry and Trade Ministry told Vedomosti, without saying when a final version of the initiative would be available. |
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Iceland Loan Discussed MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Iceland rejected a 4 billion euro ($5.7 billion) loan from Russia in October and decided to turn to the International Monetary Fund instead, Russia’s ambassador to the island Victor I. |
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 It has become fashionable lately to discuss the impending “second wave” of the financial crisis and the next round of sharp ruble devaluations. Paradoxically, the more evidence we see that the world is gradually emerging from the crisis — there is a good chance the United States and leading European countries will show positive growth in the third quarter — the gloomier Russia’s financial analysts become. |
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Some actions invariably lead to the opposite result of the one intended. Pro-Kremlin PR agents recently waged a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against users of the Cyxymu blog, which promotes a pro-Georgian point of view on the Russia-Georgia war. |
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 Contemplative nomads, serene Mongolian beauties and never-ending Eastern Siberian steppe take center stage at a new exhibition that opens at the Russian Museum’s Marble Palace on Thursday. Titled “A Steppe Story,” the exhibition, which has already traveled to New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Moscow, showcases more than 50 paintings by the internationally renowned Buryat artist Zorikto Dorzhiev. “The artist belongs to the ancient Buryat nation, yet he has rejected the straightforward, no-nonsense approach and the traditional perception of the Great Steppe,” said Alexander Borovsky, head of the Latest Trends Department of the State Russian Museum. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
A work from Nikolai Vasilyev's new exhibition, 'Old People and Children,' that opens Thursday at the Didi Art Gallery on Vasilyevsky Island. |
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Ìðàêîáåñèå: obscurantism, anti-Enlightenment, die-hard conservatism, reactionary politics. Knowledge of Russian word formation is a great tool for making sense of unfamiliar words — except when it doesn’t work. A prime example of formation analysis failure is the word ìðàêîáåñèå. Ìðàê — darkness, cheerlessness, something nightmarish or shadowy.
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 An exhibition running at the Loft Project Etazhi arts center this weekend differs from the average installation in two ways. Firstly, visitors can take the exhibits home — absolutely free of charge. Secondly, the exhibits are alive. The project, titled “Khochu Domoi!” (“I want to go home!”), is a joint initiative between Etazhi and the Rzhevka animal shelter in St. |
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When we arrived at Na Rechke, the new Ginza Project restaurant on Krestovsky Island, for a late Friday evening meal, chaos reigned supreme. A pack of kids raced circles around the elegant dining area as shouted toasts rang out from a rowdy party in the back. |
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On Sunday, Channel One launched its own version of the British comedy show “The Kumars at 42.” The original show has jokes about an Indian family, while the Russian version chose Armenians as its local amusing ethnic group. And the Armenians aren’t very happy. The concept of the British show is that a would-be television star can’t get a job, so he decides to film his own chat show at home. |
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 MOSCOW — Ten years ago, on Aug. 9, 1999, President Boris Yeltsin told a weary and bewildered country that he was sacking his government again but that his new, 46-year-old nominee for prime minister would be “very useful to the country.” A former KGB officer who had gone on to work for St. Petersburg Governor Anatoly Sobchak and most recently to head the Federal Security Service, Vladimir Putin was then little known to the public. |
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Issues Archive