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Investigators say a terrorist attack was the likeliest cause of the Nevsky Express train crash on Friday night that claimed 26 lives and left more than 90 people injured. The scenario was first publicly voiced on Saturday by Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, before being confirmed by Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in reports on the investigation given directly to President Dmitry Medvedev. The investigation has already distributed a photo-fit of two suspects, one of them a short, red-haired man of about 40 years of age with thin lips and a broad nose, and another tall, dark-haired man of about 30 to 35. |
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 Relatives of the victims of Friday night’s fatal Nevsky Express train crash identified at least 17 St. Petersburg residents among 26 people who died in the crash, Interfax reported. |
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Hundreds of football fans were arrested and many reportedly beaten by the OMON special-task police in St. Petersburg on Sunday. A large group of supporters of Spartak Football Club fans who came to St. Petersburg to see the Moscow football club play against the local team, Zenit Football Club, on the final day of the Russian Premier League season was on its way to Petrovsky stadium on the Petrograd Side when the OMON police started making large-scale arrests. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told reporters Friday that he did not know the details of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in pretrial detention, just days after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an investigation and prison officials admitted some responsibility. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Just hours after Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said citizens have the right to fight off unruly and aggressive cops, a drunk Tver resident shot two policemen, killing one, and then killed himself, officials said. The attack came after a spate of police violence against citizens, including the fatal beating of an Abkhaz man in Moscow last week, and an increasingly heated debate over the need to reform the Interior Ministry. |
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MOSCOW — United Russia deputies in Dagestan are in uproar after their party headquarters in Moscow presented the Kremlin with a list of five candidates for the republic’s presidency, which they say contains people unfit for the job. |
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MOSCOW — The Samizdat online magazine, which has published thousands of aspiring authors, ended up on the Justice Ministry’s list of extremist publications because of a local activist’s feud with his former employer. A city court in the Vologda region town of Cherepovets ruled in April that the magazine, available at Zhurnal. |
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MOSCOW — Iran announced plans Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants in a major expansion of its nuclear program, a clear show of defiance after the UN nuclear watchdog rebuked Tehran over such secret work,. |
 MOSCOW — Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko arrived Sunday in Tehran for two days of talks, including on possible exports of refined oil products to Iran and greater participation for Russian refiners there. The prospect of Russian oil product supplies to Iran came as the International Atomic Energy Agency rebuked the country Friday for secretly building a uranium-enrichment plant — a project that fueled fears that it was seeking a nuclear bomb. |
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MOSCOW — Iran expects Russia to deliver powerful S-300 air-defense missile systems within two months, despite fierce objections from the United States and Israel, Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow said Friday, Reuters reported. |
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Political Weatherman MOSCOW (SPT) — President Dmitry Medvedev has named Alexander Bedritsky his adviser in charge of climate issues, presidential press service said Friday. Bedritsky, 62, retired as head of the Federal Meteorological Service, which he led for 16 years, earlier this month. He will act as the presidential sherpa at international negotiations on the climate issues, said Sergei Naryshkin, head of the presidential administration. Since 2003, he has been chairman of the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization. Power Firms MOSCOW (SPT) — The Energy Ministry is preparing legal changes that would introduce punishments — including criminal responsibility — for energy companies that endanger people’s lives by not doing required maintenance, Minister Sergei Shmatko said Friday. |
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 MOSCOW — The debate over Interior Ministry reform began gaining momentum Thursday, after a senior United Russia lawmaker proposed disbanding the police and another death at the hands of law enforcement was reported. |
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MOSCOW — French carmaker Renault agreed to increase its support of AvtoVAZ on Friday, in return for a Russian government promise to inject an additional $1.7 billion into the struggling automaker. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the deal on his two-day trip to Paris, where he also wrapped up a host of other deals, including signing up French participation in the South Stream pipeline (see story, page 7). Renault, which owns 25 percent of AvtoVAZ, will invest 300 million euros ($450 million) in the form of a technology transfer to begin production on the Renault Logan platform, according to the statement released by AvtoVAZ and its three main stakeholders. |
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President Dmitry Medvedev and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov meeting at the state residence of Zavidova outside Moscow on Saturday. The two failed to announce a deal in a gas pricing dispute. |
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Power Machines Plant MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Power Machines, Russia’s energy equipment producer controlled by billionaire Alexei Mordashov, received government approval to begin the construction of a plant to produce energy equipment in the Leningrad region. During the first phase, the company plans to invest 6 billion rubles ($202 million) in a facility, which will produce low-speed and high-speed turbines, the company said.
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MOSCOW — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on Friday gave the go-ahead for the creation of a united customs union, whose tariff regime will be based largely on the one that Russia currently has in place. President Dmitry Medvedev met with his counterparts Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev in Minsk on Friday, where they agreed to the creation of a unified customs tariff, which will start Jan. |
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MOSCOW — Ever since President Dmitry Medvedev made modernization the buzzword of his tenure, much of the country’s entrepreneurial class has been eager to hop on the bandwagon and present their own plans for modernizing the country’s economic and political institutions. |
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On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev met with the 35-member human rights council that was created by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2004 to improve ties between the government and civil society. Council chairwoman Ella Pamfilova expressed her concern about Medvedev’s plan to fight corruption. “There is one serious problem,” Pamfilova said. “Who will carry out this plan, and how will it be carried out?” Medvedev answered, “Only you and I will, together with government officials and representatives of civil society.” You can’t argue with the president on this point. Consider the tragedy of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who paid with his life for blowing the whistle on a major corruption scam involving top government officials. |
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 The ‘reset’ button has worked and … we are moving in a good direction,” U.S. President Barack Obama said after his fourth meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev on Nov. |
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The construction of the planned Okhta Center skyscraper appears to be more and more of a distant dream in these times of financial instability. Gazprom, which was prepared to finance it after City Hall withdrew from the project, is no longer as prosperous as before. And the office real estate market has become a tenants’ market, where supply exceeds demand despite the fact that many projects have been frozen or canceled. |
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 LONDON — Russia’s Nikolai Davydenko won the ATP World Tour Finals title Sunday with a straight sets victory over Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro at London’s O2 Arena. Last year’s beaten finalist won 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 24 minutes to claim the season-ending title, disputed among the year’s top eight players. |
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ROME — Sardinian minnows Cagliari stunned Juventus 2-0 allowing leaders Inter Milan to open up a seven-point lead at the top of Serie A following a controversial 1-0 success over Fiorentina on Sunday. |
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