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MOSCOW — Sixteen years after “Burnt by the Sun” won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, director Nikita Mikhalkov has unveiled the first of a two-part sequel set during World War II in a screening at the Kremlin. Mikhalkov said last year that he wanted the film premiere to take place on Red Square on Victory Day, but settled for Saturday at the Great Kremlin Palace where close to 6,000 people, including politicians, celebrities and World War II veterans, watched the three-hour movie. “We intentionally showed this movie at the beginning of the commemorations for the 65th anniversary of the victory,” Mikhalkov said before the film began. “We were confident that to understand what this victory cost, we should see what our people went through. |
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 The Icelandic volcano eruption has caused the disruption of about a hundred flights from St. Petersburg’s international Pulkovo airport and the cancellation of dozens of performances in the city by foreign musicians and artists. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma approved in a first reading Friday a presidential bill that would toughen punishment for crimes committed by police officers, even as President Dmitry Medvedev asked deputies to expand the legislation to include all law enforcement officials. A Constitutional Court expert said earlier in the week that the bill discriminated against the police by singling them out. There is “a point in boosting responsibility not only for police but for all other people whose duty is to protect law,” Medvedev told reporters Friday, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s web site. The bill, which is posted on the Duma’s web site, increases the maximum prison terms for various crimes committed by police officers and introduces a prison term of up to six months for police officers who fail to fulfill orders from superiors. |
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 Young people who gathered to celebrate spring with an annual bubble-blowing flash mob in St. Petersburg were attacked by an organized gang of men, thought to be neo-Nazis, and then dispersed by the police Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — A lawyer sentenced to 12 years in prison has recorded a YouTube video appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev in which he compares his situation to that of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in custody in November. Prison authorities said Friday that they intend to investigate how the video was recorded and posted on the Internet, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
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TEHRAN, Iran — Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov has called for more confidence-building measures from Iran to allay international concerns over its nuclear program. Rybakov was speaking Saturday on the sidelines of a nuclear disarmament conference that appeared timed to be a counterweight to U. |
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Tourism industry figures are recommending that local tourists postpone trips to Finland this weekend due to plans among Finnish border guards to hold a national strike. |
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MOSCOW — Pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, best known for harassing ambassadors and opposition leaders, celebrated its five-year anniversary Thursday with a major show of support from the Kremlin, which said the activists remain a vital force in Russia. Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov — who is widely believed to have organized the group while an adviser to then-President Vladimir Putin in 2005 — spoke to the raucous crowd of 2,000 delegates, as did Nashi’s founding father, Vasily Yakemenko. |
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The mortgage market showed some signs of recovery in March. Demand for mortgages rose 10 percent, and the number of deals increased 3.7 times from the year earlier. Demand for mortgage loans rose about 10 percent over the last month and will continue to grow, experts at Ipotek.ru said. The change in demand is not only one of quantity but of quality as well: “Clean” mortgage buyers who are buying apartments, not just trading up, have appeared. The number of registered mortgage deals for existing homes in Moscow has also demonstrated a positive dynamic compared with last year’s indicators. In March 2010, the Moscow branch of the Federal Registration Service registered 1,609 mortgage deals, which is 3. |
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 St. Petersburg officials earned more last year than in 2008, according to a statement published last week on City Hall’s web site. City governor Valentina Matviyenko earned 2. |
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Svyaznoi Sales Soar MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Svyaznoi, the Russian mobile-phone retailer with 1,949 outlets, said sales jumped 63 percent in the first quarter on demand for low-cost handsets and additional services. Revenue increased to 26. |
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MOSCOW — A mysterious and minor shareholder in VimpelCom on Friday withdrew its lawsuit against Telenor, removing the final obstacle for the Norwegian telecoms firm and Alfa Group to merge their stakes in Russia’s second-largest mobile operator and Ukraine’s Kyivstar. |
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MOSCOW — Pharmacists in Murmansk received an unexpected visitor on Saturday when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was in the northern port city to discuss the fish industry, ordered his driver to stop so he could check on medicine prices. “Are there any complaints from customers? Are you complying with [pricing] requirements on vital drugs?” he asked a pharmacist at a store owned by the 36. |
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MOSCOW — Four firms from Russia and Ukraine pressed ahead with share offerings to raise up to $2 billion, with two lowering valuations following weak demand for a placement last week and a fall in share prices on Monday, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — Russia may abandon its plans to join the World Trade Organization in a joint bid with Kazakhstan and Belarus, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Thursday, recanting a plan that many experts said was doomed from the start. The government had earlier indicated a willingness to apply for accession to the WTO as part of a customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus, but Shuvalov said that model would be changed “due to tactical considerations, as long as the decision is approved by the leaders of the three countries of the customs union — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. |
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MOSCOW — German prosecutors have offered assurances that there was no conflict of interest for Russian investigators helping them with a bribery case involving U. |
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MOSCOW — Passengers on certain Aeroflot flights will soon have access to in-flight wireless data service from MegaFon, the companies said Thursday. One plane will be equipped for the service on June 1, and three other planes will follow on Nov. 1. Aeroflot could not predict which routes will use the outfitted planes, but customers will be able to find out whether their airplane is equipped when ordering tickets on the Aeroflot web site, said Vitaly Savelyev, the airline’s chief executive. |
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MOSCOW — Beleaguered carmaker Toyota said Thursday that it had suspended sales of its new Lexus GX 460 sport utility vehicle, and dealers are hoping that a recall of the vehicle won’t reach Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Forbes on Friday published the Russian part of the magazine’s 2010 global billionaires list, which, for the first time, saw the entry of Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, friends of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The number of dollar billionaires on this year’s list nearly doubled from last year’s, rising to 62 people from 32. |
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 At the annual security conference in Munich in February, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked what he thought of the idea of Russia becoming a member of NATO. The same question was posed to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This idea gets thrown around among top U. |
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During the Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum was the focal point of Red Square. It sat right in the middle of the square and was watched over by a military guard that changed at the stroke of the huge Kremlin clock in an elaborate goose-stepping ceremony. |
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 MOSCOW — “God may work miracles rarely,” quipped one winner of a Golden Mask award at an elegant ceremony in the cavernous atrium of Gostiny Dvor on Friday, “but they happen every evening in the theater.” Golden Mask award ceremonies, of which there have now been 16, have not always been mentioned in one breath with miracles. Over the years the festival has had its share of scandals, embarrassments and slip-ups. |
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 “Russia 88,” a controversial feature film that follows a group of neo-Nazis in Moscow, opened in St. Petersburg last week more than a year after its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009. |
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SYDNEY — The United Nations said Monday it was “deeply troubled” by Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers, as rights group Amnesty International condemned the reopening of a remote detention center. An influx of immigrants has prompted the government to freeze applications from Afghans and Sri Lankans and to reopen the Curtin Air Base, which was shut down in 2002 following riots, to accommodate them. |
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Issues Archive