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Three recruits serving at the Kronshtadt military base just outside St. Petersburg who contacted the Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group earlier this month to complain about brutal hazing have withdrawn their claims. Pavel Gavrilov, Ilya Smorodin and Alexei Voitov had reported that beatings, torture, humiliation and financial extortion had been carried out by senior recruits. The parents of the three conscripts, who visited their sons where they were serving, demanded that the military prosecutor’s office conduct an investigation into the claims. The mothers told Soldiers’ Mothers that they had found their sons to be in poor health and in a desperate psychological condition. |
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ON THE ROCKS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A ship moored up and trapped in ice on the Petrovskaya Embankment on the Neva River on Sunday evening. Weather forecasters are predicting higher temperatures towards the end of the week, with highs of minus 4 deg. Celsius on Friday. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday promised a few cosmetic changes to the political system but firmly defended the results of disputed regional elections in October and the country’s much-criticized election system. Medvedev, who articulated his allegiance to the course of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, spoke during the first meeting on Russia’s political system in at least a decade.
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MOSCOW — In a victory for a Kremlin determined to replace old-guard regional leaders with new blood, Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev announced Friday that he would step down after nearly two decades in office. The replacement of the deeply entrenched Shaimiyev, 73, when his fourth term expires in March comes weeks after President Dmitry Medvedev replaced Sverdlovsk’s long-serving governor Eduard Rossel, 72, and it raises new questions about the future of two other veteran regional bosses, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, 73, and Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov, 75. |
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MOSCOW — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has praised a Hollywood film being made about the 2008 Russia-Georgia war but mocked Russia’s efforts to produce a movie about the conflict. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared on Saturday that peace has returned to the North Caucasus and called for the region’s economy to be rebuilt. Putin ordered Alexander Khloponin, a new deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, to improve the quality of life of its population by creating jobs, signaling a new approach to restoring stability — something that military force has so far failed to achieve. “The bandits have been fended off. We did this together. … Together we won and returned the peace,” Putin said at a meeting in the Stavropol regional city of Pyatigorsk, which serves as the new capital of the North Caucasus Federal District. President Dmitry Medvedev grouped the most troubled provinces together in the new federal district this week and appointed Khloponin, a former Norilsk Nickel chairman and Krasnoyarsk governor, as its head. |
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A WINTER’S TALE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Skiers prepare to tackle the slopes during a yearly competition for journalists at the Korobitsyno Resort, 100 kilometers north of St. Petersburg. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new security pact sets a litmus test for the honesty of the West versus Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. The lukewarm reception of the pact by Western leaders can only be explained by an unwillingness to live up to earlier promises of a united Europe, Lavrov told reporters at his annual news conference in the Foreign Ministry.
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MOSCOW — The Constitutional Court has decided that the Supreme Arbitration Court has the right to set legal guidelines, not just follow the law — a move that lawyers say is the first step toward a precedent-based system of law. The Constitutional Court has found that the Supreme Arbitration Court’s right to review a decision that has already come into force poses no contradictions to the fundamental law. |
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MOSCOW — Washington and Beijing played the leading roles in last week’s downturn on the Russian stock markets, and though the West delivered more theatrics, the East was widely credited with the performance of note. Adding to the drama, there was some evidence of profit taking after a strong performance to start the new year. |
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MOSCOW — United Company RusAl raised 17.4 billion Hong Kong dollars ($2.24 billion) in its initial public offering in Hong Kong, giving the firm a valuation bigger than that of competitor Alcoa. |
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MOSCOW — About 20 percent of loans given out by Sberbank in Moscow are overdue, primarily because of fraud at three branches where former managers gave out more than 35 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) in loans to criminals. At the end of 2009, Sberbank’s consumer credit portfolio in Moscow was 74. |
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Beer Production Up MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian beer production increased in December from a year earlier, according to figures released Friday by the Federal Statistics Service. |
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MOSCOW — Russian Technologies is preparing to sell off noncore assets beginning this year, chief executive Sergei Chemezov told Vedomosti, and the state corporation will likely start with property held by AvtoVAZ. “We have an interest in having a clear ownership structure for the state corporation’s holdings, allowing them to operate effectively in their core businesses and minimize costs not related to production, which will improve the companies’ financial results. Revenue from the sale of noncore assets will go toward financing and developing innovative programs and new, high-tech production,” Chemezov said. “In essence, this is our modernization budget. |
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 MOSCOW — Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, opened its first Russian outlet in Moscow on Thursday as it seeks to capitalize on a booming fast-food market several years after its main competitors started operating in the country. |
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 After lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a pretrial detention cell in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, State Duma deputies and President Dmitry Medvedev started using the word “humanization” a lot. This word needs to be applied to the country’s corrupt and criminal law enforcement agencies. |
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In the 1970s, dissident balladeer Alexander Galich wrote a song about a KGB major who loses his passport and facetiously declares that he is Jewish. His commanding officer assumes that he wishes to go to Israel and tells him resentfully: “While all of us here, with blood on our faces / March in lockstep toward the bright future / You’ll be having a ball in Israel / Gorging yourself on matzos, you bastard!” Soviet propaganda couldn’t decide how to portray Jews who were emigrating to Israel and the United States in the 1970s in growing numbers. |
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 Finland remains as popular a destination as ever for St. Petersburg residents, with many having chosen to spend the extended New Year break in Russia’s friendly neighbor. While shopping in Helsinki is nearly always somewhere on the agenda, many also choose to take part in more physical outdoor activities. In addition to the ever-popular skiing and snowboarding, traditional Finnish activities are proving increasingly popular with Russian tourists. |
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 According to official statistics from the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg, 2009 set records in terms of the number of visas issued to St. Petersburgers, with a grand total of 542,560. |
 It’s midnight at the Vienna Airport Hotel. A group of wet, disheveled and strange-looking people, one with his head covered with a towel, walking through the lobby looks a little out of place in the quiet setting. But when several tired Russian business journalists try to head to their rooms, they are stopped by a short but muscular man with a mustache. “Don’t move! Stay where you are!” the man hisses, while starting to assume what appears to be a martial arts combat stance, but after the mysterious group disappears down a corridor, he follows them briskly. |
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 The St. Petersburg Times photographer Alexander Belenky travels to Spain, via Finland, to see what the country has to offer and to take some professional snaps. |
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Issues Archive