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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday predicted that inflation this year would be just over 8 percent, a post-Soviet low, as the strengthening ruble helps cut prices and the faltering economy slows demand. Double-digit inflation was a constant headache during Putin’s presidency, angering politically active pensioners who saw rising consumer prices hammering their fixed incomes. Prices rose 13.3 percent last year, and inflation was running at an annual rate of 15 percent before the economy began contracting. The prime minister’s estimate is dramatically lower than the most optimistic forecasts from his government and the Central Bank. But analysts said the goal was reachable, as prices have not risen for the past nine weeks and year-to-date inflation is at 8. |
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FULL STEAM AHEAD
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A boy smiles in front of a steam train on Monday, shortly before it set off from the Warsaw Railway Station on a trip across Russia. The steam engine is pulling carriages containing a museum devoted to the foundation of railway transport in Russia. |
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For the first time ever, court marshals have begun seizing several hundred apartments that have already been sold, along with other assets, after Baltiisky Bank filed a lawsuit against St. Petersburg developer Stroimontazh. Court marshals want to seize the 8,500-square-meter Monblan business center and 1,700 apartments belonging to Stroimontazh clients, the developer said last week.
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The city’s human rights community had a mixed reaction to the news that St. Petersburg has been awarded the UNESCO Tolerance Prize for what the United Nation’s cultural wing regards as a major achievement in promoting tolerance. “The UNESCO decision came as an even bigger surprise than the news about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Alexander Vinnikov, St. |
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MOSCOW — World powers should show maximum patience in the Iranian nuclear crisis, a top Russian foreign ministry official said Monday, in the latest sign of Moscow’s unwillingness to give Tehran ultimatums. |
All photos from issue.
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Critics warn the planned transfer of the power to allow exemptions on height regulations from Governor Valentina Matviyenko to a city committee might make the regulations unworkable and lead to the widescale construction of skyscrapers. The final decision on exemptions will in future be taken by the Town-Planning and Architecture Committee (KGA), rather than by St. Petersburg’s governor, according to the city’s chief architect Yury Mityuryov, Interfax reported Friday. “The relevant order will be issued in the immediate future,” the Russian news agency quoted Mityuryov as saying. |
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BEST OF BRITISH
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
An exhibit at the Newspeak: British Art Now exhibition, comprising items from the Saatchi Gallery, which opened at the State Hermitage on Saturday and will run for three months. |
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MOSCOW — A leading Ingush opposition activist was shot dead in his car Sunday in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, investigators said. Unknown gunmen fired about 60 shots at his Lada Priora at about 10 a.m. on the Kavkaz highway, killing Maksharip Aushev and badly injuring a woman passenger, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
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Okhta Conflict ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Activists will sue Fort-S, the security firm in charge of the Okhta Center construction site, for severely beating two activists during a protest on Friday, Andrei Dmitriyev, the local leader of Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), said by phone on Friday. |
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New urban planning regulations in St. Petersburg have forced Raiffeisen Evolution, a development company established by Raiffeisen Bank and Strabag, to downscale its project for a multi-purpose complex by one-third. San Gally Park Center was due to comprise 118,000 square meters of construction, including a class-A business center covering 58,000 square meters, a four-star hotel with 230 rooms, and 7,000 square meters of retail space. |
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MOSCOW — Russia may start gas supplies to Europe through a Black Sea pipeline before westbound deliveries will flow under the Baltic Sea, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a surprise announcement Thursday. |
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Russia will not raise its export duties on timber in 2010, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Sunday at talks with his Finnish counterpart amid a trade row with Finland over the taxes. “The Russian government already took the decision to delay the next round of tax increases on round wood. |
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MOSCOW — When the stock market soured last year and banks were scrambling to meet margin calls on their outsized loans, one recent entrant to the Russian credit market managed to escape unscathed. |
 MOSCOW — Sergei Tarasov, a senator from St. Petersburg in the Federation Council, has been appointed to head Avtodor, the new state road construction company. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the decree appointing Tarasov as chairman of the company’s board last week, according to a statement posted on the government web site. |
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 The Russian labor market has shrunk significantly since a year ago, with many companies having reduced their staff and completely stopped recruiting new personnel. The decrease in vacancies and increase in demand for jobs has raised competitiveness among candidates and made it more difficult to find a job. |
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The economic crisis has brought waves of redundancies to many large companies in Russia this year, with thousands of people losing their jobs. Many of those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs have been faced with salary cuts or a reduced working day or week, and benefits packages in many organizations have become an unaffordable luxury. |
 According to a new survey carried out by Antal Russia recruitment company, 36 percent of managers regard training and educational programs as a major incentive when accepting job offers. Respondents said that 8 percent of them would prefer their employer to focus such programs on the teaching of a foreign language, while 7 percent said that they would prefer to receive an MBA. The crisis, however, has led companies to drastically reduce their outgoings, and one of the budget items hardest hit is spending on personnel development. |
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 The Finnish company Nokian Tyres on Wednesday unveiled Hakkapeliitta Village, a brand new housing complex built for workers of the company’s local factory. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev may have decided to make modernization his platform for re-election in 2012, provided he gets the approval to run from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Medvedev is investing a tremendous amount of political capital in promoting a vision of Russia as an innovation-driven economy, where knowledge, intellect and a desire for experimentation will create more wealth for ordinary Russians, as opposed to exports of hydrocarbons and metals that enrich only a handful of oligarchs today. |
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One sign that an adversary isn’t serious about negotiating is when it rejects even your concessions. That seemed to be the case Friday when Iran gave signs it may turn down an offer from Russia, Europe and the U. |
 The level of falsifications in the Oct. 11 Moscow City Duma elections was unprecedented in modern Russian history. Officials did everything in their power to prevent opposition candidates from registering, and Yabloko was obstructed by local authorities and siloviki structures as early on as the signature collection stage. |
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In Russia, neglect of all things public is notorious. Some blame the government, while others believe that Russians were so fed up with Soviet collectivism that they have withdrawn into private life, ignoring awful highways, corruption, electoral fraud and other public indignities. |
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 Last week, TNT television lost an appeal and was forced to shift its long-running reality show “Dom-2” to an 11 p.m. slot because it has been officially classed as “erotic.” The show is nominally about young people working together to build a house, which will then be the prize for a couple that falls in love on the show. |
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