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MOSCOW — Russia’s foreign policy should become much friendlier in order to attract more investment, especially from the West, according to a leaked Foreign Ministry paper. The document, titled “Program for Effective Use of Foreign Policy in the Long-Term Development of Russia,” amounts to a new, softer foreign policy after years of hostile relations with the West, according to Russian Newsweek, which first published the document. Officials at the Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin confirmed the document’s existence Wednesday, but they rejected the notion that it amounted to a new doctrine. The text is simply a response to President Dmitry Medvedev’s call to make foreign policy a driving force for foreign investment, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The St. |
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MANE EVENT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A woman gives her horse a shower to cool it down on Palace Square on Thursday, as temperatures soared to 26 deg. Celsius. Temperatures are set to stay high over the weekend, with sunshine predicted, though rain is expected on Sunday and Monday. |
 MOSCOW — Turkey on Wednesday agreed to let Russia build and own a $20 billion nuclear power plant in a deal that opens a new page in Russia’s global expansion in the industry. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Rosatom, the state nuclear corporation, signed the agreement to build four reactors on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast during a visit by President Dmitry Medvedev to the country.
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MEZHDURECHENSK, Kemerovo Region — Rescue operations to find 24 workers missing in a Siberian coal mine explosion were suspended Thursday because of fears of a new blast, Reuters reported. Nonessential workers and miners’ relatives were taken away from aboveground areas around the Raspadskaya mine because of safety concerns. |
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MOSCOW — The life of Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov is worth 2.8 million rubles ($93,000). The administration for the Federation Council has decided to take out a life insurance policy for that amount for the speaker as well as policies worth 2. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow police have closed an illegal casino operated by a British citizen in a $60,000-per-month apartment in western Moscow. The casino raked in tens of millions of rubles, easily recouping the cost of the luxury apartment on the 24th floor of a building on Mosfilmovskaya Ulitsa, police spokesman Filipp Zolotnitsky said Thursday. |
All photos from issue.
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The St. Petersburg Social Adaptation for Teenagers Forum has called upon the city’s educational and work institutions to consider ways in which they can help youngsters from local children’s homes to get into higher educational institutions and find jobs. |
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MOSCOW — The United States and Russia have agreed on key points of a treaty regulating child adoptions, and a final draft will be approved Friday for signing within two months, children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said Wednesday. |
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START a Mystery MOSCOW (SPT) — More than half of Russians have never heard of the landmark New START arms reduction agreement signed by the presidents of Russia and the United States last month, the state-run VTsIOM polling agency said Wednesday. A total of 52 percent of respondents in a new national survey were unaware of the treaty, while 37 percent had heard of it and only 8 percent knew that the document aimed to cut both countries’ nuclear arsenals, VTsIOM said. Most of the Russians ignorant of the New START support the ruling United Russia party, the survey said. The poll of 1,600 people has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. |
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 MOSCOW — The children of royal families have different ways of earning a living. Sheikh Sultan bin Khalifa al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, for example, brokered two deals between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, possibly earning a commission of $260 million, Vedomosti has learned. |
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MOSCOW — The share of unlicensed software installed on Russian computers edged down slightly from last year. Sixty-seven percent of the country’s software was unlicensed in 2009, down from 68 percent last year, according to a report by International Data Corp. |
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MOSCOW — The government wants to introduce capital controls by December on investments shorter than three years as the government tries to limit ruble volatility, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Tuesday, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — An electronic documentation system, known as e-government, will be implemented in full by 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin said Wednesday at a meeting of the Communications and Press Ministry. “We must move toward switching to electronic interagency documentation,” Sobyanin said. |
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MOSCOW — Russian car sales made a year-on-year increase in April for the first time in 1 1/2 years thanks to the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, the Association of European Businesses said Wednesday. |
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 MOSCOW — Internet domain names using Cyrillic characters may start working this week after the world governing body for Internet domain names officially delegates the .ðô domain to Russia. Representatives of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, may officially assign the . |
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MOSCOW — Four Bank Rossia affiliates filed a request with the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to acquire a 45 percent stake in Video International, Russia’s advertising industry powerhouse, the service said Wednesday. |
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 Now that Russia’s economy is starting to recover, the Kremlin is returning to its goal of turning Moscow into a global financial center. To this end, the Kremlin is determined to liberalize financial laws and taxation, reform ineffective institutions and exploit Russian advantages such as well-educated employees and investment opportunities in major infrastructure projects. |
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Five years ago, then-President Vladimir Putin spent a ton of money on the May 9 parade. He blocked the roads in the center of Moscow, expelled all the homeless and other undesirable citizens and invited a host of Western leaders to serve as a backdrop to his personal Victory Day celebration. |
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 Dozens of the city’s diverse museums are preparing to stay open to the public all night long on Saturday for the annual Museum Night, an event held to celebrate International Museum Day. On Saturday, participating museums will open their doors to visitors and prepare special programs such as one-day exhibitions, concerts, performances, original excursions, master-classes and historical reconstructions. |
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Mikhail Novitsky, who fronts the politically conscious band SP Babai and leads the preservationist movement Green Wave, said Chukotka, the band’s headquarters and underground rock club, had been shut down last week for political reasons. |
 A big fish menacingly chases a school of small fish, depicted on a panel on one wall of the small room at St. Petersburg’s European University currently hosting “When One Has to Say ‘We’: Art as the Practice of Solidarity,” a thought-provoking exhibition probing art and politics in contemporary Russia. |
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With a deft touch that will delight many of our British readers, this new restaurant from the people who brought us Ryba, Probka, the Mozzarella bars and Il Grappolo notes on its menu that it features “non-French cuisine. |
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