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St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said on Thursday that plans for the construction of a controversial 10-story residential building on the site of a public park by 40 Komendantsky Prospekt will be scrapped. The city government’s decree giving Severny Gorod construction company permission to construct the building will be revoked, Matviyenko said at a press conference. Matviyenko said that talks on the matter had already been held with Severny Gorod, and that the construction company did not intend to appeal the decision in court, Fontanka.ru reported. Residents of 40 Komendantsky Prospekt and the surrounding area, who have been campaigning against the construction since early October, welcomed the governor’s decision. |
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 MOSCOW — In a surprise protest, State Duma deputies representing three factions walked out of the parliament Wednesday to denounce weekend elections swept by United Russia. |
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An international custody battle over a child with Russian-Finnish citizenship continued this week when the Russian mother was given a suspended sentence in Finland for taking her son out of Finland to Russia without the Finnish father’s permission. The Russian prosecutor’s investigative committee is meanwhile preparing a legal request for Finland to extradite Paavo Salonen, the ex-husband of Russian citizen Rimma Salonen, to Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Canada’s decision to deny a visa to Senator Mikhail Margelov paradoxically helped to improve political ties between both countries, a senior Canadian lawmaker said Wednesday. |
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Cop Murders Girlfriend MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A policeman in Siberia shot his girlfriend to death and then killed a taxi driver before committing suicide, Russia’s Interior Ministry said. A lieutenant detective in the Omsk region’s police force shot his 21-year-old girlfriend three times in the back during a quarrel late Monday and then fled the scene, the ministry’s Investigative Committee said on its web site. |
All photos from issue.
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As a report by the Ministry of Culture’s heritage watchdog on the controversial Okhta Center skyscraper project sent by Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev to St. Petersburg Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev was leaked to the press this week, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said on Thursday that a final decision on construction had not yet been taken. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Court Marshals Service, long an innovator in the field of forcing individuals to pay their debts, is now looking to make collection less of a hassle for small-time delinquents owing less than $1,000. |
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Georgian Denial TBILISI (Bloomberg) — Georgia’s Security Council chief Eka Tkeshelashvili denied a Russian claim made on Thursday that Georgian security services have been conspiring with the terrorist organization al-Qaeda to send terrorists into Russia’s southern Chechnya region. “To say that Georgia is helping al-Qaeda is groundless and laughable,” Tkeshelashvili said by telephone in the capital Tbilisi. |
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Beer Decline Drops Off MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A decline in Russian beer production slowed last month after worsening in August, according to figures released Thursday by the country’s Federal Statistics Service. Output fell 5.7 percent compared with September, 2008, an improvement on August’s 15. |
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MOSCOW — With new Class B office space in Moscow available for rent at an annual $50 per square meter, developers of business centers — both planned and under way — are seriously considering a new direction, particularly remodeling as hotels. |
 Russia and China signed deals worth $3.5 billion and reached a tentative agreement on gas trade during a trip by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Beijing on Tuesday, an indication that the countries have taken their relations to a new high. In the accord with the most potential for future revenues, Gazprom and Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, or CNPC, reached agreement on the amount and timeline for gas deliveries to China, said Gazprom chief Alexei Miller. |
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MOSCOW — More Russians believe that plant management and even President Dmitry Medvedev are at fault for the August dam disaster than they do Anatoly Chubais, the former UES chief blamed in a government investigation, according to a VTsIOM poll released Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — Vneshekonombank received a five-year, $500 million loan from the state-controlled Chinese Development Bank for the construction of a shopping and office complex on Leningradsky Prospekt, VEB announced Tuesday. The planned 480,000-square-meter complex will be built on the site of Clock-Making Factory No. |
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Just as the rest of the world finally seemed to acclimate itself to a particular Russian form of state capitalism, the government has decided to begin privatizing a perhaps significant amount of its corporate stakes. On Oct. 5, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov mentioned that up to 5,500 companies could be targeted for privatization over the next three years, and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin added that Russia should reduce state and regional authorities’ ownership of business to 30 percent or less, from about 50 percent now. Maybe we should not be so surprised. The purported state capitalism model, with government at various levels owning all or large stakes in a broad range of companies, especially large and strategically positioned ones, was always more of a concept than a reality. |
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 Sunday’s elections were depressing. The problem is not that the results suggest that the authorities remain hugely popular despite the crisis, but that the authorities seem to be digging their own graves. |
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The report issued by the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection on the cause of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant accident is chock full of senseless data designed to divert attention away from the core issues. In plain English, the report’s findings read as follows: Following repairs, an unbalanced GA-2 turbine unit was labeled as “satisfactory” and installed at the plant in March. |
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 The biggest international arts festival St. Petersburg has seen for some time got underway at the beginning of this week. One hundred years ago, the talented Russian impresario and dedicated patron of the arts Sergei Diaghilev took Europe by storm with his Russian Seasons — a combination of Russian ballet, art and music presented to audiences in Paris, London and other European capitals. |
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A new underground music club was launched Thursday, having failed on open on Saturday due to a severed power cable. Called Ulitka Na Sklone (The Snail on the Slope), after Arkady and Boris Strugatskys’ 1966 sci-fi novel, the venue will be orientated toward live music and ignore trendy styles. |
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The city’s third Festival of Korean Culture, titled Scent of Korea, opened Wednesday and runs through Sunday. The Week of Korean Culture has been organized by the Consulate General of the Korean Republic in St. Petersburg, along with the Korean Youth Cultural and Educational Center in cooperation with the Russian-Korean society. |
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Fransmanni is a French-style restaurant situated behind a small park in the Sokos Hotel Olympic Garden, about five minutes walk from Tekhnologichesky Institut metro station. |
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