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MOSCOW — Reputed St. Petersburg crime boss Vladimir Barsukov was sentenced to 14 years in prison late last Thursday after being convicted of fraud and money laundering during a high-profile trial. St. Petersburg’s Kuibyshevsky District Court, whose staff moved to the Moscow City Court for the trial out of fear for the safety of the participants, ruled that Barsukov and seven co-defendants were guilty of money laundering and organizing the illegal takeover of companies and property in St. Petersburg between July 2005 and June 2006. Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Barsukov to 15 1/2 years in a maximum-security prison and to fine him 1 million rubles ($34,880). The court on Thursday also ordered Barsukov to pay the 1 million ruble fine. |
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ART FACTORY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Performers herald the unveiling of the Treugolnik (Triangle) arts center on Friday. The new arts venue is housed in the former Red Triangle Factory on the Obvodny Canal, and plans to host film showings, theater performances, festivals and exhibitions as well as a hostel and cafe. |
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Environmentalists from the international pressure group Greenpeace are trumpeting their biggest success in years after German-Dutch company URENCO announced on Monday that it is ending the practice of sending spent nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing and storage. Radioactive loads on board foreign ships had been arriving at the port of St. Petersburg every month for a decade to be sent by rail to factories in Siberia and the Urals.
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev urged migration authorities to show more hospitality toward foreigners in his state-of-the-nation address last week, even as those same authorities start enforcing a diploma rule that affects most foreign professionals. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the world community Saturday with a call for cooperation and coordination in handling the pullout from economic stimulus measures, but he took a wait-and-see approach on specifics. |
All photos from issue.
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.jpg) Preservationist groups Living City and ECOM Center of Expertise launched a campaign against the planned 403-meter-tall Gazprom Tower, officially known as Okhta Center, with an event featuring artist Dmitry Shagin and rock musician Vladimir Rekshan on Saturday. Called Blue Ribbon, the campaign included distributing blue ribbons for locals and visitors to wear, symbolizing the clear sky endangered by the project, as well as distributing flyers informing them about the issue. In an outdoor theatrical performance on Saturday, an activist dressed in costume resembling the tower was symbolically wrapped up in blue ribbons by participants of the event. |
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FLU FEARS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
With the World Health Organization saying on Friday that a ‘very high intensity of respiratory diseases’ has been reported in Russia, more and more local people such as these schoolboys are now wearing masks. |
 Eduard Limonov, a leading Russian author and oppositional politician, was sentenced to 10 days in custody by a court in Moscow on Thursday. He was found guilty of violating the rules for organizing a rally and disobeying a police officer’s orders. According to his supporters, Limonov called upon citizens to come to Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow on Oct.
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Police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other pieces of the corpse to a kebab kiosk in the Russian city of Perm, Reuters reported. Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of Perm, the Perm branch of the Investigative Committee said in a statement, the news agency reported. |
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Tickets for a new high-speed train between Moscow and St. Petersburg failed to go on sale on Monday and the delay was put down to a misunderstanding. A ticket seller at the Moskovsky Vokzal station in St. |
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Caviar Case Ends in Fine ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local opposition politician Olga Kurnosova will appeal the decision of an Astrakhan court, which fined her for handling illegal goods on Wednesday, she said by phone on Monday. Kurnosova, the leader of the local branch of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF), described the trial itself as “illegal. |
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A military officer arrested on Friday on suspicion of throwing the 8-year-old twin daughters of his common-law wife out of an eighth-floor window said their mother had committed the act. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he thought that hip-hop could be a cure for alcohol and drug abuse and praised the country’s rappers for refining an otherwise alien culture by putting “Russian charm” into it. Putin spoke during his first appearance on a hip-hop show, where he rubbed shoulders with performers in a subculture long associated with alcohol, drugs and violence. |
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MOSCOW — A former Komi prosecutor has made a YouTube appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev over “fabricated” charges that resulted in two people getting life sentences in July, joining a growing group of law enforcement officials responding to Novorossiisk police Major Alexei Dymovsky’s videotaped appeal to denounce corruption. |
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MOSCOW — Alexander Bulbov, a senior Federal Drug Control Service officer detained for more than two years in a case believed to be linked to a government power struggle, said he would return to work Monday after being freed from custody. Bulbov walked out of Moscow’s Lefortovo jail late Friday following a Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that threw out a lower court decision to keep him in jail. “On Monday, I will go to work,” Bulbov told reporters outside the jail, standing with his wife and son and carrying a cluster of plastic bags, Interfax reported. He thanked his supporters for their “courage and patience.” A law enforcement source told Interfax on Saturday that Bulbov had not been fired from the Federal Drug Control Service, even though he had been relieved of his post after being detained Oct. |
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 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev laid out few specific plans to modernize the country in his state-of-the-nation address Thursday, but sometimes offered goals that stretch far beyond his current term. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday held out the remote republic of Tuva to illustrate Russia’s need for political reform and promised to make electoral changes that would promote democracy. But opposition activists and independent analysts said his reforms were too feeble to amount to political change. |
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 GM’s local plant is currently facing labor union action as workers demand changes to the terms of their employment. The employees of General Motors’ St. Petersburg plant went on strike last week, with more than half of the plant’s 120 workers from the welding department participating in a “go slow,” said the leader of the plant’s labor union, Yevgeny Ivanov. |
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Warning System Agreed MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The European Union and Russia agreed on an early warning system in case of energy disruptions, after shipments of Russian natural gas across Ukraine were disrupted earlier this year. |
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Burger King, the world’s second-biggest hamburger chain, said Friday that it planned to open its first Russian restaurant in Moscow this year, Reuters reported Friday. “We are still under negotiations with different parties. We are hoping to open soon. |
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Major outdoor advertising agencies in Moscow and St. Petersburg have refused to carry Russian Newsweek’s latest campaign, saying the satirical ads are “too provocative” or that they violate the country’s law on advertising. |
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 The reaction to President Dmitry Medvedev’s second state-of-the-nation address was largely ambivalent, a reflection of the relative lack of structure and specifics of the address itself. The president acknowledged that “In the 21st century, our country once again needs to undergo comprehensive modernization. |
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To all of the world, St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square is the very symbol of Moscow and Russia. Few, however, know what the cathedral has symbolized to Russians, especially when it was built in the mid-16th century on the order of Ivan the Terrible. |
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 This month, the makers of Tvoi Den tabloid and scoop-grabbing web site Life.ru started a new glossy magazine called Zhara, or Heat. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the British magazine of the same name, known for its “Circle of Shame” features on celebrities who dare to have cellulite. But so far, the Russian stars aren’t revealing any. |
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BEIJING — President Barack Obama’s first visit to China will undoubtedly be marked by difficult talks on trade and climate change, but another thorny issue has emerged: how to write “Obama” in Mandarin. While the Chinese have written “Aobama” since the U. |
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COPENHAGEN — Environment ministers from 44 key countries gathered in Copenhagen on Monday for a two-day closed-door meeting aimed at preventing embarrassing failure at next month’s UN conference on global warming. |
 CANBERRA, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology Monday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, triggering calls for compensation for the abuse and neglect that many suffered. The British government has estimated 150,000 British children may have been shipped abroad between 1618 and 1967, most from the late 19th century onward. |
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Issues Archive