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MOSCOW — Swedish carmaker Saab got a new lease of life after U.S. owner General Motors signed a binding agreement with Spyker — on condition that the tiny custom-built sports carmaker leave its Russian investor out of the equation. Financing for the deal has not yet been approved by European Union regulators, but both companies announced the agreement confidently late Tuesday. Netherlands-based Spyker Cars will pay $74 million to GM for Saab, while the Swedish government will guarantee a loan of 400 million euros ($563 million) from the European Investment Bank. GM will also get preferred shares worth $326 million in the new company Saab Spyker Automobiles. |
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SIEGE REMEMBERED
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
People place flowers by a sign dating back to the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during WWII to mark the anniversary of the lifting of the siege on Wednesday. The sign on Nevsky Prospekt was put up to warn citizens to cross over the street in the event of shelling. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s top investigator said crime and corruption are hurting the investment climate and that the best solution would be to update legislation and create a new agency to tackle financial crime. The rare admission from a law enforcement official was all the more unusual because it came from Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin, whose own agency has been accused of harming the investment climate by conducting corruption-inspired investigations against businesses.
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Enthusiasts from the international environmental group Greenpeace held a flash-mob Thursday outside the presidential administration reception office, as volunteers dressed up as tree stumps handed over a petition from Russian citizens asking for the country’s state forestry service to be restored. |
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MOSCOW — Heroin has become a national pandemic, with the number of drug users soaring 20 times during the past 20 years, Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — The state’s arms exporter announced Thursday that it had set a new sales record in 2009 despite the global financial crunch and said it saw no formal obstacles to selling weapons to Iran. Anatoly Isaikin, head of Rosoboronexport, which enjoys a monopoly on selling finished defense hardware, said his agency’s 2009 revenues grew to $7. |
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MOSCOW — Property mogul Telman Ismailov, who left Russia last year after his Cherkizovsky Market was shut in a politically tinged crackdown, may be planning a return to Russia to build a new luxury hotel. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Investigators have dropped charges against a Chechen suspect in the killing of Paul Klebnikov, the former editor of Forbes Russian edition, a news report said Wednesday. Magomed Edilsultanov showed up voluntarily for questioning at the Moscow offices of the Investigative Committee, Rosbalt.ru reported. After questioning, he was released and the murder charges were dropped, the report said, citing an unidentified law enforcement source. An Investigative Committee spokeswoman refused to immediately comment on the report. Edilsultanov was among a group of Chechens accused by police of participating in the killing of Klebnikov, a U. |
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SMOKE ON THE WATER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A photographer (l) takes a picture on the ice of the Neva River between Dvortsovy and Blagoveshensky bridges, looking towards the Gulf of Finland. |
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MOSCOW — Nikolai Rastorguyev, whom Prime Minister Vladimir Putin calls his favorite folk rock singer and who has no experience in politics, became a State Duma deputy with United Russia on Wednesday. The front man for the rock band Lyube fills a seat vacated by Sergei Smetanyuk, who was recently appointed deputy presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District.
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The proportion of children in Russia’s population has shrunk by nearly a third since 1995 and is not expected to rebound any time soon, demographers said. President Dmitry Medvedev last week touted the end of a 15-year drop in the country’s overall population, but the decline in children raises the specter of future demographic problems. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian-American businessman Peter Vins says he could have apologized for calling the policemen who raided his company “bandits” and seen his legal problems limited to a $10,000 fine. But Vins, a former Soviet dissident, refused and now faces up to six years in prison on tax evasion charges. |
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MOSCOW — Last year saw an eightfold increase in economic crime, the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee said Wednesday — a figure that raises eyebrows as the body fights off accusations that it harasses businesses. |
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MOSCOW — A customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is looking to create a single body that would replace the three countries’ customs services, but a dispute is brewing over the distribution of customs duties, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Wednesday. The new body will “swallow” the countries’ customs services or control them as a watchdog, Shuvalov told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the Customs Union Commission held its first meeting after an agreement on the customs union came into force Jan. |
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 A year ago, when the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama initiated its “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations, two things were clear: First, the U.S. Congress, particularly the Senate, would have an outsized role to play in the process; and, second, the Democrats would likely have a fillibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, making the advancement of Obama’s major Russia policy overtures a bit easier than might otherwise be the case. |
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The main crisis gripping Russia is a crisis of government. When a government is unable to govern it pretends to govern, and Moscow proposed a record number of measures that could be termed “pseudo-governance” last week. |
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 “Unfettered freedom for nightclubs has ended,” St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said early last month, ordering a thorough fire safety check for every club or restaurant in the six to eight weeks to follow. Raids and media reports ensued, but the campaign appears to have come to an end, leaving dozens of businesses blacklisted and some closed for the time being. |
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Rock music and protest often go hand in hand, but not in today’s St. Petersburg. A Blue Ribbon campaign against the planned 403-meter Okhta Center skyscraper was stopped by the authorities at a sell-out concert by the popular local band DDT, whose leader Yury Shevchuk is an outspoken opponent of the project. |
 The thinking is clear: There is no point in making futile efforts to copy Hollywood; it is better to do our own thing and depict our national character and mentality. This was the decision taken by Turkish directors whose best films are being shown in St. |
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Beneath a small business hotel on a busy stretch of Zagorodny Prospekt, a short walk from the Dostoyevskaya and Vladimirskaya metro stations, sits Kristoff restaurant: Two dim, moderately sized rooms with limited embellishments — beyond the requisite flat screen showing an MTV knock-off channel. |
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Issues Archive