|
|
|
 MOSCOW — Smolensk’s mayor was arrested Sunday in an extortion investigation that could fuel calls for the Kremlin to end direct mayoral elections. Mayors are the most senior local officials still elected to office after the Kremlin abolished gubernatorial elections in 2004, and a number of them have faced criminal charges in recent months amid a drive in certain quarters of the federal government to cancel mayoral elections. Eduard Kachanovsky, mayor of Smolensk, a city of 325,000 located 360 kilometers west of Moscow, was arrested together with his deputy and his bodyguard on charges of extorting an apartment as a bribe from the head of a construction company in exchange for granting a permit for the apartment building, investigators said. |
|
Issei Kato / Reuters
One of Russia’s three teams, piloted by Alexander Zubkov, crashing during heat one of the four-man bobsled competition at the Winter Olympics on Friday. |
|
Perhaps it’s surprising that Russia managed to walk away with even three gold medals after giving its worst-ever performance at a Winter Olympics. Its luge team, for one, has to build its own sleds for lack of money and only got a track to practice on at home in 2008 — and even then it doesn’t freeze properly. “We make the equipment ourselves and almost from scratch,” Valery Silakov, president of the Russian luge federation, told The St.
|
|
Frustrated local residents are planning protest events as City Hall makes plans to exclude 861 green areas from a list that protects them from construction — which would ultimately result in the city’s green spaces shrinking by a staggering 40 percent in coming years. A special commission led by Roman Filimonov, deputy governor of St. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — The Kremlin had a hard time getting teachers and parents to care about education reform. Then a raunchy teen series debuted on state television. The documentary-style “School” is breaking taboos by showing Moscow teens with emo hairstyles discussing their sexual adventures and dragging on joints in the schoolyard, a female teacher stalking a ninth-grade boy and girls fighting in the restroom. The gritty, in-your-face show is forcing outraged teachers, parents, politicians and even Cossacks from the southern city of Kuban to ask: “Has the Russian public school system come to this?” The answer is “yes,” said Valeria Gai Germanika, the 25-year-old indie director behind the show, which debuted on Channel One state television in January but has been on hiatus for the past two weeks because of the Vancouver Olympics. |
|
MAKE A STAND
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A visitor examines one of the exhibits at ‘Andrei Sakharov: Alarm and Hope,’ an exhibition currently showing at the Museum of Political History. The exhibition runs until March 10. |
|
The historic Rogov House, which was severely damaged during three unsanctioned demolition attempts on Feb. 20 and 22, has been given back its heritage status — if temporarily. Gosstroinadzor, the state construction watchdog, said the demolition work was “illegal,” as the watchdog had not issued a demolition permit, and fined the contractor. The developer Prestizh is planning to demolish the building, which dates back to the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, in order to build a seven-story business center complete with an underground parking lot.
|
|
‘Abandoned’ Tanks MOSCOW (SPT) — The army is rushing to remove dozens of tanks from a forest in the Ural Mountains after a video circulated on the Internet showing the vehicles unguarded and covered in snow. About 200 vehicles were left in the woods more than two months ago, local residents told Rossia television. |
|
MOSCOW — State Duma deputies on Friday gave preliminary approval to a presidential bill that would grant one seat in regional legislatures to parties that collect at least 5 percent of the vote. |
|
MOSCOW — The Constitutional Court on Friday ordered the state to obey decisions by the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights and demanded further legislative action to ensure their smooth implementation. “The European Court of Human Rights’ decisions are binding for Russia,” the court said in a ruling published on its web site. The judges called upon lawmakers to treat the European court’s rulings as a basis for reforming the country’s judiciary. They also demanded changes to the Civil Procedural Code, which so far does not force national courts to review cases after a decision from Strasbourg. “The state must pay compensation to a person whose rights were violated as determined by the European Court and make sure his/her rights are restored as far as it is possible,” the judges said. |
|
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday ordered his administration to re-examine how strict laws against money laundering are tacked on to other economic charges, a practice that has long drawn complaints from the business community. |
|
|
|
 City Hall has decided to cancel tax exemptions for St. Petersburg’s water supplier, Vodokanal. Without the benefits, which have been in force since 2004, Vodokanal will be forced to pay property tax at two-thirds of the city’s rate by 2014. The city government was due to meet Tuesday to discuss amending laws concerning property tax and tax exemptions. |
|
The firm Tsertum-Invest, a partner of Tashir and Gazprombank and a co-owner of the Blagoveshchensk Valves Plant, has purchased the palace of Count Alexander Kushelev-Bezborodko. |
|
Laundry Ring Busted MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian investigators have busted a crime ring that laundered more than $1.6 billion since 2007 for companies and individuals in and around Moscow, the Interior Ministry’s economic crimes department said. |
|
The volume of foreign investment in St. Petersburg decreased by 6.8 percent to 5.5 billion last year compared to 2007. The good news for the city was that the decrease was significantly smaller than the overall fall of foreign investment in Russia, which stood at 14. |
 MOSCOW — Foreign direct investment fell in 2009 to a fourth of the level of previous years, while authorities have said the return to the pre-crisis level is unlikely until 2013. FDI came to $15.9 billion last year, down 41 percent year on year and massively below the $60 billion to $70 billion that came in the years before the recession enfeebled the resources-rich economy, according to Central Bank statistics. |
|
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that the government would only support mortgages for newly built apartments in a bid to boost the flagging construction industry. |
|
MOSCOW — The volume of investment in Russia’s real estate market dropped dramatically in 2009, brought on in large part by an exodus of foreign capital, real estate consultant CB Richard Ellis said in a report Thursday. Total Russian investment in real estate fell 77 percent in 2009, declining to 790 million euros ($1. |
|
MOSCOW — Arms exports hit a record high in 2009, but analysts said Friday that the defense industry may have reached the limits of its export revenue-generating capacity, Reuters reported. |
|
|
|
 Once again, we have learned that NATO is the greatest external security danger to Russia. But this time it’s not coming from the country’s arch-conservative journalists or analysts carping at the alliance’s evil intentions on government-controlled television, but from the holy of holies in terms of Russia’s national security documents — the new military doctrine that President Dmitry Medvedev signed on Feb. |
|
A year ago, many of us dreamed that the end of the financial crisis was just around the corner and that soon things like affordable loans and exciting, well-paid jobs would return. |
 Rita has a few problems — her husband’s pregnant lover for a start — but when she dyes her mousy hair a vivid shade of scarlet, things start going her way. In “Love and Other Stupidities,” a new series on the Domashny channel, the action centers around a beauty salon, where the staff dole out tea, sympathy and big hair to their sobbing clients — before passing on every juicy detail. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Pressure on media in the Krasnodar region is making fair coverage of preparations for the 2014 Sochi Games all but impossible, a media watchdog said Saturday, as the host city’s mayor visited Vancouver to receive the Winter Olympics flag. Local journalists confirmed to The St. |
|
VANCOUVER — Organizers of the Sochi 2014 Olympics have topped $1 billion in domestic sponsorship revenue, putting the group more than three times ahead of its initial target, Reuters reported. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive