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MOSCOW — State Duma deputies will boycott the Sochi International Investment Forum later this week because of the “unreasonably high” prices local hotels charge, a senior deputy said in an interview Wednesday. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said it suspected that Moscow travel agencies were driving up the prices, while local agencies said many other people were refusing to book rooms when they heard they would cost a small fortune. “Some hotels in central Sochi have increased their prices by three to four times for the forum, and we do not want to encourage violations of Russian anti-monopoly legislation,” said Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee. |
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CIRCLE OF LIFE
/ For The St. Petersburg Times
An image by Rania Matar (U.S.) from an exhibition entitled "Man. Life Circulations" which opens on Thursday and runs through Oct. 3 at the Manege exhibition hall on St. Isaac's Square. |
 MOSCOW — The 2012 presidential race is wide open. President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday followed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s lead in saying that he did not exclude the possibility that he would run for the job again. “A while ago I did not even intend to stand for president. But fate decreed otherwise, and this is why I do not make plans too early and do not exclude anything,” Medvedev told the Valdai Club, a gathering of Western experts on Russia.
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Rimma Salonen, the Russian mother of a child caught in an international custody battle, has been charged with kidnapping her own five-year-old son Anton from Finland in 2008. She could face up to seven years of imprisonment under Finnish law, Interfax reported this week. Finnish prosecutor Mika Makinen on Tuesday brought the charges against Salonen, which include charges of aggravated deprivation of freedom, child abduction and embezzlement. |
All photos from issue.
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 An ardent, eye-catching supporter of the Okhta Center (Gazprom Tower), who was gesticulating vigorously and shouting down opponents at the Sept. 1 public hearing that was marked by beatings and arrests of the tower’s opponents, has been recognized as a professional actor. |
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MOSCOW — Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said Thursday that President Barack Obama had told him that the United States will not deploy a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, Rossia state television reported. |
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MOSCOW — The economy has emerged from crisis, and financial markets have become healthy enough to withdraw some support measures, the Central Bank and the government said Wednesday in a report to the State Duma that touted the effectiveness of their anti-crisis policies. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov predicted that the economy could return to its precrisis level by 2012. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday urged the government to study a blogger’s ideas for speeding the development of the country’s innovative economy, even though the LiveJournal post was heavily critical of state policy. “I won’t conceal the fact that I have already received thousands of similar ideas,” Medvedev said during a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin. “I’ve turned my attention to one of them, because all of Yandex is buzzing about it. A certain citizen by the name of Maxim Kalashnikov addressed citizen Medvedev.” The comments are in keeping with Medvedev’s brand of populism, using technology to open lines of communication with the people. |
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BLACK GOLD
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Vitaly Degrave (r) demonstrates new subsea oil and gas extraction technology developed by the Norwegian company FMC Eurasia, which opened a new engineering center in the city on Thursday. |
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Leonid Mikhelson, the billionaire co-owner of gas giant Novatek, appears to be taking up property development in St. Petersburg after one of his companies purchased 144 hectares along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Severo-Zapad Invest on Wednesday bought at auction 15 plots with a total area of 144.2 hectares in the Kurortny and Primorye districts, the press service for the city's property fund said.
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MOSCOW — Alfa Bank and Mirax Group have agreed on a debt restructuring, under which the lender will forgive $80 million of the developer’s obligations and still manage to come out earning an annual 120 percent on the deal. The sides signed a comprehensive agreement that will see Mirax’s debt of about $250 million restructured for up to 18 months, Alfa Bank said in a statement Tuesday. |
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 The recent visits to Moscow and Tehran by Hugo Chavez raise a number of concerns about the deepening relations between Russia, Iran and Venezuela. The motivation behind the Russia-Iran-Venezuela alliance is often misunderstood. On the one hand, there is the narrative that these governments are pursuing national interests, seeking to deepen their security against ever-present external threats and accrue regional power. |
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Last week, Moscow blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution against Iran and gave Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez $2 billion in arms on credit. |
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 Veliky Novgorod, one of Russia’s most ancient cities that once served as the country’s leading international trade hub and reigned as its second most politically influential city, is celebrating a venerable 1,150 years in existence this weekend with a host of modern and medieval-style festivities. |
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By Michele A. Berdy Ñðî÷íûé: urgent, pressing, fast, immediate, emergency, term, priority, express. Stop the presses! I finally stumbled across a back-to-school, we’re-in-an-economic-crisis sale in Moscow. |
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On the other side of a pair of black tinted doors situated at the top of the stairs leading to Kult Lichnosti lie an interior and atmosphere that cannot fail to make an impression. Despite the sparse scattering of customers around the restaurant’s 20 tables on a recent weekday evening, the plethora of luscious decorations in the one-room establishment made it feel far from empty. The black chandeliers, gold spray-painted chairs, purple wallpaper and red phallic sculpture in the center conjure up something of a cross between a luxurious burlesque house from 19th-century Paris and a Prince video. The atmosphere is overwhelming, and it is easy to forget that outside this candlelit, palatial world, an asphalted street and colder reality await. |
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 When Gosha wakes up after a typical night of boozing with journalist colleagues and dodging phone calls from his latest one-night stand, he has a problem: he is no longer Gosha, but has become an attractive brunette with legs to die for. |
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Issues Archive