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MOSCOW — Russia will join NATO and the EU, reduce its military, reintroduce gubernatorial elections and four-year presidential terms and disband its Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, according to a paper released Wednesday by a think tank close to President Dmitry Medvedev. |
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St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko is campaigning for the introduction of a two-euro city tax to be paid by tourists visiting St. Petersburg. |
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Cautious criticism by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov of several Putin initiatives has provoked an angry squabble between two pro-Kremlin parties in what analysts called political posturing ahead of March regional elections. Mironov, leader of A Just Russia party, said in an interview with Channel One television host Vladimir Pozner on Monday night that his party “strongly objects” to the 2010 budget compiled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and to several of Putin’s anti-crisis measures. Mironov — a fierce Putin loyalist who ran against Putin in the 2004 presidential election in what he described as an effort to support Putin’s bid — also told Pozner that the idea that he and his party backed Putin in everything was “outdated,” A Just Russia said on its web site. |
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 A homemade bomb exploded on a railroad track in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, slightly injuring a driver, in what investigators said they suspected was a terrorist attack, Reuters reported. |
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Jewish Agency Barred ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia has barred the Jewish Agency, which deals with the Jewish Diaspora and immigration issues, from meeting in St. Petersburg because former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin is a member, the Haaretz newspaper reported Thursday. The agency’s board meeting was scheduled for later this month with hundreds of participants from around the world, but the Israeli Embassy in Moscow was told Wednesday that the event could not take place, the report said. |
All photos from issue.
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 Two people died and eight were injured when a bus careered into a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s central thoroughfare, on Wednesday afternoon. A 26-year-old woman who was injured in the accident remained in serious condition on Thursday. |
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St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko fired 11 City Hall officials on Tuesday for unsatisfactory work in clearing the city of snow. Among those fired were Boris Chernyashenko, first deputy of the city’s Road Maintenance Committee; Valentin Schemelyev, head of the committee’s road and bridge department; and the deputy heads of the Central, Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky district administrations. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow’s OMON riot police rallied around one of their commanders on Tuesday after a media report based on his subordinates’ accounts accused him of corruption. OMON officers unanimously supported Colonel Sergei Yevtikov, head of the city’s 2nd battalion, at a staff meeting Tuesday, the Moscow police force said in a furious statement posted on its web site, Petrovka-38. |
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MOSCOW — Executives at some of the country’s top consumer goods companies said Wednesday that while the crisis took a toll on their business, it also provided a number of valuable lessons about Russian consumers. But a panel at Troika Dialog’s annual Russia Forum found that the lessons learned were as varied as the goods they sell. |
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MOSCOW — State-run Aeroflot will absorb the regional aviation assets controlled by Russian Technologies to help make the country’s flag carrier more competitive on the global market, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday. |
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 MOSCOW — In the troubled Rechnik neighborhood, a 90-year-old veteran of World War II has become a local celebrity and a symbol of civil resistance. “If I hadn’t fought in the war, Luzhkov wouldn’t be the city’s mayor but Hitler’s slave. Now he wants to make me homeless,” said Filipp Tsiglakov, the oldest resident in Rechnik. |
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 The one-year anniversary of U.S. President Barack Obama in office has been noted all over the world. Of particular importance is the fact that almost one-third of Obama’s supporters have abandoned him as they change their view of him from president of hope to president of disappointment. |
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Haitian police have detained 10 Baptists from the United States who had planned to evacuate 33 orphans to a shelter in the Dominican Republic. The Haitian authorities claim that the group took the children illegally and hinted that the Yankees were involved in an illegal adoption scheme, child trafficking or even organ trafficking. |
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 Seva Gakkel, the man responsible for the first proper Russian music club that spawned many indie rock talents and influenced a generation of musicians and fans, is back on the club scene. From playing cello in the ’80s in Akvarium, a leading Soviet band of that era, Gakkel went on to manage TaMtAm club, which he founded in 1991 and closed in 1996 after a clash with raiders who had the backing of the authorities. |
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An elegant translation may not always be possible, but the diligent translator can always can get the message across. Íåïåðåâîäèìîå: the untranslatable. |
 Konchalovsky and the Russian Avant Garde; the landscape painter Levitan; French parks and gardens in Russian art; Russian advertising posters; and contemporary Japanese art will be among the themes of exhibitions opening this year at St.Petersburg’s State Russian Museum. |
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At a bustling intersection not far from the Vityebsky Railway Station, among a sea of headlights and traffic signals, a new beacon beckons. Massmidiya, a recently opened Belgian restaurant, is an exciting addition to the city’s developing culinary landscape. |
 An Australian writer best known for his historical novels, Thomas Keneally portrays characters who are gripped by their historical and personal past, decent individuals often at odds with systems of authority. At age 17, Keneally entered a Roman Catholic seminary, but he left before ordination. His best-known work, “Schindler’s Ark,” adapted into the film “Schindler’s List,” tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than 1,300 Jews from the Nazis. |
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 Ravshan and Dzhumshud arrive at Sheremetyevo Airport packed neatly in a suitcase and are promptly set to work redecorating an oligarch’s apartment for the princely wages of 500 rubles ($16) each. |
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Issues Archive