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 Prime Minister Vladimir Putin addressed United Russia’s 11th party congress Saturday in St. Petersburg, where he congratulated his government for averting economic disaster and rehashed a set of policy ideas for the coming year. Putin offered mild praise to the governing party, which had just met with a harsh rebuke from President Dmitry Medvedev, and promoted government programs in his first major domestic policy speech since the president’s state-of-the-nation address. |
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United Russia got a new program, membership of the country’s most prominent female politician and broad praise from its leaders at the party’s 11th congress this weekend. |
 The colorful picture of United Russia’s congress on Saturday was slightly darkened when two participants of the forum fell three meters into a gap between the platforms in the congress hall. The incident happened a few minutes before the beginning of the forum’s opening and the Russian president’s speech. |
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On the eve of Saturday’s United Russia congress, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko joined the party and became a member of its Upper Council. |
 Popular showman and radio host Roman Trakhtenberg, who died in Moscow on Friday while on air during his show on Radio Mayak, will be buried in his home city of St. Petersburg on Tuesday. Trakhtenberg, 41, died from a heart attack during his three-hour radio program titled ‘Trakhty-Barakhty’ on the popular Radio Mayak station. |
All photos from issue.
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Sixteen opposition activists and one reporter were detained as part of a police crackdown during the United Russia party congress in St. Petersburg on Saturday. The detainees were taken to three different police precincts and were released hours later after the ruling party’s meeting had ended. Eight activists, most of whom belonged to Eduard Limonov’s banned National-Bolshevik Party (NBP), were detained as they walked toward the Lenexpo Exhibition Complex, where the congress was being held, to deliver a petition to President Dmitry Medvedev. A reaction to Medvedev’s pro-modernization statements, the letter called on the president to dismiss Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Russian government and fire all the members of United Russia from state positions, describing the Putin-led governing party as a “party of bureaucracy and corruption” that is “putting the brakes” on modernization. |
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SHIP AHOY!
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
A man pushes a pram as France's Mistral helicopter carrier docks on the Neva River on Monday. The Russian navy has confirmed that it may purchase the vessel. |
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The Defense Ministry is deciding the fate of the legendary Avrora cruiser, which is currently officially part of the Russian Navy and may be turned into a branch of the Russian Naval Museum. Earlier this month, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the chief commander of the Russian Navy, issued a special decree banning any entertainment and other events not directly connected to fleet activities on board the vessels of the Russian Navy.
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The St. Petersburg State Conservatory rector election saga is dragging on as the elections that had been scheduled for Nov. 26 were canceled owing to a technicality. The Culture Ministry session held to approve violinist and conductor Sergei Stadler for the position failed to assemble enough members to pass a decision. Stadler, who is opposed by large numbers of the conservatory’s staff, is the only candidate standing in the election. The conservatory has not been able to elect a new rector since the summer of 2008 when composer Alexander Chaikovsky was ousted from the job after a ministerial inspection found financial irregularities and 15 million rubles ($638,000) unaccounted for. |
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 MOSCOW — Hundreds of mourners gathered Sunday to pay their respects to Father Daniil Sysoyev, a Russian Orthodox priest famous for his missionary work and criticism of Islam, after he was gunned down in his church last week. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Migration Service said Friday that it would cut the number of job permits available to foreigners next year to just less than 2 million people, down from an initial 3.8 million at the start of 2009, after the economic crisis severely cut demand for foreign labor. |
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MOSCOW — Relatives and friends on Friday buried Sergei Magnitsky, the key witness in a tax fraud battle whose sudden death in prison prompted an outcry from rights activists. |
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Tax Bill Revised MOSCOW (SPT) — The State Duma on Friday officially approved a revised bill on the transportation tax, which leaves in place the current base rate, after a wave of criticism forced the Duma to recall an approved bill that would double the tax. The government had to backtrack on its intentions to double the rate of the transportation tax, which is key to funding some regional budgets, after protests from car owners, opposition parties and eventually the Kremlin. |
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The management of General Motors’ St. Petersburg plant has fired two workers for carrying out a “go-slow” strike — union leader Yevgeny Ivanov and member Olga Shafikova. Ivanov received his pink slip on Friday, the day after the union met with the management of the plant and was denied all of its requests, Ivanov said. Shafikova found out about her layoff the day before, when she failed a routine medical checkup, he said, adding that the management was happy with her health the year before. Shafikova declined to comment. According to his discharge documents, Ivanov was fired for “absence from work for more than four hours without a legitimate excuse. |
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday called for interest rates on mortgages to be lowered, saying the rates shouldn’t exceed 11 percent. “Of course, 14. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank said Thursday that it withdrew the license of Kuban Commercial Bank, which was implicated in a scheme to steal 1.25 billion rubles ($43.5 million) from the Pension Fund. The order to withdraw the license was signed Wednesday after the Central Bank’s supervisory officials were required to cut short a seminar in Anapa to return to Moscow, bankers and an acquaintance of one of the Central Bank officials told Vedomosti. |
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Cosmetics Sales ‘Flat’ MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian cosmetics sales will change little through the first half of 2010, after remaining “flat” this year in ruble terms, Concern Kalina Chief Executive Officer Alexander Petrov said. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has agreed to an important concession in the gas trade with Ukraine, heading off the threat of a dispute that could disrupt transit to Europe this winter. After talks with Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that ended almost at midnight Thursday, Putin announced that the neighboring countries would revise their gas trade contract to meet Ukraine’s requests and preserve the fragile delivery arrangement. |
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MOSCOW — The customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan could lead to a flood of cheap used cars onto the Russian market, threatening to crush domestic auto production. |
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MOSCOW — Ilyushin Finance Corporation said Friday that it may list shares in Hong Kong next year, following hot on the heels of United Company RusAl, which hopes to list on the Chinese exchange by the end of the year. “IFC is considering listing [shares] on the Hong Kong stock exchange,” said Vasily Prutkovsky, vice president of United Aircraft Corporation. “The issue was discussed during a meeting of the board of directors, and the board did not reject the idea.” Ilyushin could float up to 16 percent of its shares in 2010, Prutkovsky said. Ilyushin, an aircraft-leasing company, is co-owned by billionaire Alexander Lebedev’s National Reserve Corporation, which owns 25. |
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 MOSCOW — Two major shareholders of Polyus Gold on Friday backtracked on their proposal to sell a 5 percent stake in the company, citing unfavorable market conditions. |
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MOSCOW — Turning Vneshekonombank into a joint-stock company is possible, but any change in status won’t require one trillion rubles ($34.6 billion) as claimed, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday. “We haven’t appropriated this money in the budget for next year. |
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MOSCOW — The Supreme Arbitration Court cleared British Airways of tax evasion Tuesday, in a ruling that could have repercussions for foreign airlines operating in Russia. |
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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s regime earlier this week proved to be an even colder and darker place than what a Russian winter alone can offer. Ethicists may debate when not preventing a death becomes murder. But one doesn’t need a Ph.D. to conclude that the death of Sergei Magnitsky was just that — a state-sanctioned murder. Don’t expect Moscow to recognize it as such, however. It doesn’t have to. Magnitsky’s demise can be attributed to “natural causes”: toxic shock, heart failure or rupturing of his abdominal membrane, depending on which Russian official you ask. All as natural as the will to power. The 37-year-old lawyer and father of two died in a pretrial detention center in Moscow on Monday, having been incarcerated for nearly a year on trumped-up tax evasion charges. |
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 In the summer of 1993, I set up a law firm in Moscow with an American friend, Terry Duncan. All of the lawyers were Russians. They were the brightest of the bright. |
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The best known sentence in Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls” is “What Russian doesn’t enjoy a wild ride!” Almost 170 years since the book’s publication, it remains true. Russia’s traffic fatalities, which are bound to exceed 25,000 for 2009, are nearly 10 times higher than in Britain on a per vehicle basis. |
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For those who have been employers in Russia, it is common knowledge that pregnant women and young mothers are the most protected of all groups under the Labor Code. |
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 In sitcom world, the policemen are jolly and journalists can easily afford to live in spacious Stalin-era apartments. But in the harsh new world of Channel One drama, the bailiff is knocking and there’s no chance of help from Elvira Nabiullina. This week, CTC’s new sitcom “The Voronins” — a version of “Everybody Loves Raymond” — went head to head with “Dormitory Suburb,” a new family drama on Channel One that is more like the gritty British soap opera “EastEnders. |
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 Suffering from a lack of attention from the local authorities, the unique architecture of Vyborg’s Old Town could soon be eroded if international organizations fail to give their support to preservation work, according to a local preservationist. The cobblestones of Krepostnaya Ulitsa run straight through the center of the medieval town of Vyborg in the Leningrad Oblast. |
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Issues Archive