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MOSCOW — The gray streets around the Lubyanka metro station seemed eerily quiet in the moments after the first bomb went off at 7:52 a.m. during morning rush-hour traffic. Then the masses of people began to emerge from the metro, surging out of underpasses and heading onward by foot. The throng included many children. Monday marked the first day of school after a weeklong spring break, and Moscow schools opened at 8:30 a.m. Police cordoned off all metro access points on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, dominated by the towering yet empty-windowed headquarters of the Federal Security Service. Fire trucks and ambulances stood idly waiting. |
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FELINE FUN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children take part in the festivities at the State Hermitage Museum’s traditional March Cat Day on Saturday, where the museums innumerous cats are rewarded for their rat-catching duties. |
 At least 38 people were killed and 102 wounded on Monday when suicide bombers detonated explosives filled with bolts and iron rods on two packed Moscow metro trains during the morning rush hour, the worst attack in the Russian capital in six years, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts but suspicion is likely to fall on groups from the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.
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A reputed mobster with a U.S. criminal record has been illegally residing in the country, the Federal Security Service said Friday, thus removing a main obstacle to extradition to Spain. An investigation by the Federal Migration Service found that Leonid Kaplan illegally obtained a Russian passport in 2003 and has been illegally living in the country since mid-2009, the FSB said in a statement carried by news agencies. |
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MOSCOW — German media giant Axel Springer defended the editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek on Monday as the victim of a “targeted campaign based on lies” after a video surfaced that appears to show him snorting cocaine. |
All photos from issue.
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Organizers of Strategy 31, an ongoing campaign of events in defense of the right to assembly – due to take place in St. Petersburg near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare – have not yet made a final decision on whether to hold the demos following the bombings on the Moscow metro Monday. Strategy 31 events are currently scheduled in 35 cities across Russia and are due to take place on Wednesday. Local organizer Andrei Dmitriyev said on Monday that he was in the process of consulting with organizers in Moscow and would make a final decision by Tuesday. |
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PRETTY IN PINK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Students of the Vaganova Ballet Academy rest during rehearsals on Monday in the Mikhailovsky Theater for a gala concert to be performed in the Festival Dance Open. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has allowed a large number of officials to use flashing lights on their cars. But there are hundreds more on the streets than are allowed in public regulations, Vedomosti has discovered, with the help of its readers. An order on March 23 amended the list of government agencies whose automobiles can use light and sound signals, not counting emergency response services.
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As the city comes out of a winter that brought the heaviest snowfalls in the last 30 years, experts are warning of the high risk of flooding. According to Shamsutdin Dagirov, head of the Northwestern regional center of the country’s Emergency Situations Ministry, more than 300 towns and villages in the area are likely to be affected by floods that may begin as soon as the first or second week of April. |
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MOSCOW — As the Olympics flag was hoisted in Sochi, President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that he was considering an investigation into how sports officials spent millions of dollars to prepare athletes for the Vancouver Games and warned them to secure more gold medals in 2014. |
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MOSCOW — The Pentagon plans to build military capabilities in Georgia and the three Baltic states to ready them for operations in Afghanistan, a move that could raise alarm in Moscow. The Pentagon announcement Friday came on the same day that U.S. President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev sealed an agreement on a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty that they are to sign on April 8 in Prague. |
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 MOSCOW — Here’s an unusual excuse for razing an entire settlement that the authorities have not used before — and are unlikely to use again. The federal government wants to demolish a tiny settlement of 75 people in the Moscow region because it sits on the land where Napoleon fought the pivotal Battle of Borodino in 1812. |
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MOSCOW — Nineteen regions are at risk of failing to provide free apartments to World War II veterans before a deadline coinciding with the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May, the Regional Development Ministry said. |
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MOSCOW — Stock markets rose the most in two weeks on Monday, being driven up by gains by telecoms operators, after a pair of deadly metro bombings rocked Moscow. Two explosions — believed to be triggered by suicide bombers from the troubled North Caucasus — killed at least 36 people, the biggest such attack since 2004. |
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MOSCOW — Sistema, billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s holding company, said Friday that it reached an agreement to buy 49 percent of oil producer Russneft for no more than $100 million. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank cut key rates by 25 basis points, knocking the ruble off multi-month highs on Friday, and analysts forecast more easing to come as the economy remains sluggish and the currency remains strong, Reuters reported. The widely expected cut, the 12th in a year, puts the benchmark refinancing rate at a new historic low of 8. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s interest in operating Ukraine’s gas transit pipelines has declined, having taken great pains to promote other export routes, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, signaling that Kiev may have a hard time convincing Moscow to lower its gas import bill. |
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Peugeot Hatchbacks MOSCOW (SPT) — Peugeot will start production of the Peugeot 308 hatchback at its plant in the Kaluga region on April 23. The plant, jointly controlled by PSA Peugeot Citroen and Mitsubishi, had been running in test mode since March. |
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MOSCOW — Eighteen U.S. pork plants will be able to resume shipments to Russia within days after Moscow lifted a ban that had closed the United States’ fifth-largest export market for several months, officials said on Friday, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — Brazil, Russia, India and China agreed to combat hunger and boost efforts to promote food security, according to a strategy signed by the countries’ agriculture ministers in Moscow on Friday. “In order to promote food security, it is necessary to have a well-functioning, worldwide food market and a trade system based on the principles of justice and freedom from discrimination,” the declaration said. |
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MOSCOW — The government is working on a plan to simplify the migration system, seeking to attract foreign professionals and investors, which it says are necessary to help modernize the country. |
 MOSCOW — Between 800 and 1,000 people turned out Sunday on Bolotnaya Ploshchad to protest the planned relaunch of a paper and pulp plant on Lake Baikal, Greenpeace Russia spokesman Yevgeny Usov said by phone. The protest followed demonstrations Saturday as well as a rally in favor of restarting the facility in Baikalsk. The Baikalsk Paper and Pulp Mills has been preparing for relaunch since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree in January that would allow the plant to dump waste into the lake. |
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 MOSCOW — Traveling by train between Moscow and St. Petersburg can be perilous. The Nevsky Express, which travels along that route, was the target of two terrorist bombings in 2007 and 2009. |
 MOSCOW — The former superpower Russia suffered another downsizing this weekend, and at President Dmitry Medvedev’s initiative, no less. The world’s biggest country by land mass shed two of its time zones when daylight saving time was introduced nationwide early Sunday as five regions shift to zones lying to the west — that is, closer to Moscow. |
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 The crisis is not over. There are three economic indicators that demonstrate this. The first is the continuing growth of foreign exchange reserves in China and the corresponding increase in U.S. budget deficits. China consumes far less than it could in relation to its economic potential, while Americans consume too much and beyond their means. |
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Have you ever wondered why the Kremlin does not control the Internet as China does? China surpasses Russia on every conceivable front. After Russia suffered more than any other country in the Group of 20 during the crisis, economists rallied to rename BRIC as BIC, while China overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter. |
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 Vyacheslav Molotov’s initials are the same as the acronym for the death penalty in Russian, vyshaya mera, the “highest measure.” He was a monster; one of Stalin’s most loyal henchmen who personally signed 373 documented execution lists containing the names of 43,569 people in the years of the Great Terror — more than Stalin himself. He was, however, a true bibliophile. The personal library in his former apartment in central Moscow forms the foundation for Molotov’s Magic Lantern, Rachel Polonsky’s splendid journey through Russian history. |
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 MOSCOW — This year’s Golden Mask theatrical awards festival, which officially began on March 27, has come up with a bumper crop of 11 nominees for best opera production of the 2008-2009 season. |
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Issues Archive