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MOSCOW — Georgia is negotiating with the United States about accepting Guantanamo Bay prisoners, a process that highlights the tricky relationship between President Mikheil Saakashvili, one of Russia’s harshest critics, and President Barack Obama, who wants to reset relations with Moscow. Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze discussed the issue with U.S. diplomat Daniel Fried during talks late Tuesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Interfax reported. Fried, who is the State Department’s special envoy on closing Guantanamo, told reporters after the meeting that if Tbilisi agreed, a small number of detainees might be sent there. |
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LEVEL CROSSING
Ilya Naymushin / Reuters
Trains hauling coal Wednesday at the SUEK-controlled Borodinsky opencast colliery near Borodino, 150 kilometers east of Krasnoyarsk. Seven kilometers long and 100 meters deep, Russia's biggest opencast mine was built by gulag prisoners in 1945-1949. See story, page 4. |
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MOSCOW — The Cabinet approved a draft 2010 budget Wednesday after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stressed that it would severely cut spending on government offices and offer ballooning payouts to retirees. “Spending on running ministries and other government offices is being reduced more than it has ever been reduced, I think, in all recent history,” Putin said in his opening remarks to the Cabinet session.
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The Day of Europe comes to town on Saturday, featuring a host of film screenings, gastronomic feasts, intellectual discussions, classical music concerts and cutting-edge art exhibitions. Organized by the European Commission’s Russian office jointly with local consulates and cultural centers of the EU member states, this grand-scale culture festival will plunge locals and visitors to St. |
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MOSCOW — Mayor Yury Luzhkov has sued Right Cause party co-leader Leonid Gozman for libel after Gozman said the mayor should be held responsible for corruption in Moscow. |
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MOSCOW — Chinese and Russian investors plan to open a new, 10,000-square-meter complex near the Vladykino metro station, the first market of its kind since the closing of Cherkizovo in June. The market will be manned primarily by Chinese merchants and is expected to do more than $1 billion per year in sales, its owners said. |
All photos from issue.
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City Hall on Tuesday approved the 403-meter Okhta Center skyscraper that Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, intends to build in the historic center of St. Petersburg, despite opposition from local residents and both Russian and international cultural bodies. Members of the Yabloko Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the city government on Wednesday, as architects, politicians and artists protested the decision. |
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 MOSCOW — Utility companies are having to get creative to find ways to collect payment for electricity and heat as consumer debt grows and winter approaches. In addition to using debt-collection agencies, the utilities are having to act as court marshals themselves, and even going as far as publicly shaming offending consumers. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ, the country’s largest carmaker, said on Thursday that it has agreed to cut more than a quarter of its work force as the producer of the iconic Lada struggles with a sharp decline in demand for its cars, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — Car owners had debt outstanding for half of all stolen cars that were insured by Rosgosstrakh in the first half, suggesting a big increase in insurance fraud over the period, the insurance company reported Monday. The share of thefts of cars that were not yet paid-off increased 30 percent year on year to 266 vehicles in the first half of 2009, Rosgosstrakh said in a statement. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ, the country’s largest carmaker, said on Thursday that it has agreed to cut more than a quarter of its work force as the producer of the iconic Lada struggles with a sharp decline in demand for its cars, Reuters reported. |
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 NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen rightly acknowledged that NATO-Russia relations have a great deal of untapped potential during a major policy speech in Brussels on Friday. However, he said, relations are burdened with misperceptions, distrust and differing agendas. |
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There is a rather wealthy fellow named Andrei Boiko who co-owns the Burevestnik Yacht Club on the Moscow River. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently paid a visit to the club. |
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 If you have ever dreamed of being invited to an elegant drawing room and finding yourself among like-minded guests, attending a concert where the finest opera music is performed by renowned opera singers from Russia and Italy, and concluding the evening exchanging views with the musicians and other guests — all while gazing out at the enchanting panorama of a city that Italian architects helped to create, and listening to music to which Italian musicians made a significant contribution — then a new initiative titled, “The Vernissage of Arts. |
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St. Petersburg youth activists held an unauthorized rally called Extremist Demarche — as part of national campaign protesting Vladimir Putin’s Law on Extremism, and the “E” (anti-extremist) Centers – on Sunday. |
 Just before the Mariinsky Ballet 2008/09 season closed last month, Yekaterina Kondaurova, a rising star and soloist at the Mariinsky Ballet, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times at the end of the company’s two-week season at the Royal Opera House in London. |
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Ferma (farm) does not take its name lightly. A wooden feeding trough stacked full of pumpkins and root vegetables stands inside the entrance, beside another planted with heather of varying hues. |
 Confessional, tell-all interviews used to be about ex-lovers, not children. But recently, Russian celebrities have been casting reserve to the wind and giving us blow-by-blow accounts of their custody disputes. This week, gym mogul Olga Slutsker talked of her painful custody dispute in Hello! magazine — posing next to poignant photographs of her two children and curling up on a sofa with a toy elephant. |
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 SVETLANA, Leningrad Region — When Dima, 18, first came to the village of Svetlana, he wasn’t able to button his shirt and needed snow to be swept away before he could step onto a sidewalk. As a child, he was diagnosed with an intellectual disability and was used to being assisted with everything. Now, less than a year later, he not only dresses himself in the morning but has become a happy and productive member of his community. |
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Issues Archive