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MOSCOW — When police major Denis Yevsyukov walked into a Moscow supermarket last year and opened fire, killing two and wounding six, the resulting public outcry forced the Kremlin to order a dramatic overhaul of the Interior Ministry. But chilling security videos of the attack also showed that the store’s two private security guards were woefully unready or unwilling to halt the rampage, which only ended after a shootout with police. The attack on April 27, 2009, was a turning point in the public’s already unfavorable opinion of Russia’s 1.4 million-member police force. President Dmitry Medvedev subsequently ordered his interior minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, to slash the force by 20 percent over the next two years and raise salaries for the rest. |
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 More than 2,300 participants will attend the 14th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which runs Thursday to Saturday at Lenexpo. This year, the city’s leading international business event will be held under the motto “Laying the Foundation for the Future. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Two U.S. astronauts and a cosmonaut blasted off aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a two-day trip to the international space station, Reuters reported. The rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome early Wednesday, marking the 100th flight to the orbital outpost, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that is nearing completion after more than a decade of construction 350 kilometers above Earth. Riding inside the Soyuz capsule were cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, a former station commander returning for a second stint, NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock, a veteran shuttle astronaut, and first-time flier Shannon Walker, Houston’s first hometown astronaut. |
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UNDER PRESSURE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A visitor to St. Petersburg’s new Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, the largest non-state institution of its kind in Russia, views one of the installations on Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow authorities are preparing an etiquette handbook for foreigners that advises them to speak in Russian, not to walk around the city in national attire and to avoid slaughtering sheep in the courtyard of apartment buildings. City Hall is collaborating with diasporas and scientists to create the “Muscovite’s Code,” a list of nonbinding behavior guidelines to be presented to every foreigner who moves to Moscow.
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MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service has killed more than 240 insurgents, including 11 rebel leaders, in the North Caucasus since the start of the year, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said Tuesday. Bortnikov said the FSB has tracked and eliminated “most” perpetrators of twin bombings in the Moscow metro that killed 40 people on March 29 and a May 7 blast at the Derbent railway station in Dagestan that killed one and injured six, Interfax reported. |
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Gay Parade ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Representatives of sexual minorities submitted a request to City Hall on Tuesday to hold a gay pride parade, Interfax reported. |
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Keeping track of what’s being said at this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum is a truly gargantuan task which will involve 35 transcribers in St. Petersburg and 25 translators and editors in eight time zones around the world. Eclectic Translations, the St. Petersburg-based firm tasked with transcribing and translating the Forum sessions, estimates that it will produce somewhere in the region of 360,000 words as it types up about 3,500 hours of audio and then translates it, creating thousands of pages of text which will be posted on the Internet within hours. |
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 Damage caused by a concrete wall collapsing on Konnogvardeisky Boulevard on Friday, crushing six vehicles parked next to it, could amount to six million rubles ($192,000), analysts estimate. Concrete blocks measuring 0.4 meters by 2 meters fell from a wall at 5 Konnogvardeisky Boulevard, which is undergoing major reconstruction work, wrecking six vehicles including a Honda C-RV, Mitsubishi L200 and Opel Astra, the press service of the Emergency Situations Ministry reported. |
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City Hall plans to auction off 17 historic buildings for a total of 2.5 billion rubles ($79 million) by the end of the year. On May 20, City Hall approved amendments to the city’s privatization program for 2010. |
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The United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) and City Hall intend to make the territory of the Admiralty Wharves eligible for development. The main production facilities of the Admiralty Wharves will be relocated outside of St. Petersburg, Roman Trotsenko, president of USC, announced last week. City Hall intends to sign an agreement with USC on the decommissioning of the Admiralty Wharves later this week, said Alexei Chichkanov, chairman of the city’s investment and strategic investment committee. A bridge to Vasilyevsky Island crossing New Admiralty Island will be completed by 2013, and by 2016, USC will vacate the island of all its facilities, concentrating its production at a different site and modernizing it, according to the plans. |
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 As most commercial real estate sectors begin to show signs of recovery, analysts say the next couple of years could be the last opportunity to snap up decent office premises for a reasonable price. |
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Mobile phone operator Tele2 is upping the stakes in its campaign to attract corporate clients, with its prime targets being small and medium businesses. In June the discount operator launched three new rates for corporate clients. One new rate offers calls to St. |
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A new draft law put forward by City Hall plans to raise the volume of investment that entitles firms to tax benefits and extend the term for which those benefits apply. |
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 As soon as the news of the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, in which nine people lost their lives, broke on May 31, I started getting e-mails from my contacts in New York’s Russian-Jewish community. I have many such contacts, since I used to work for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a refugee relief agency that brought half a million of us to the United States. |
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Ali Taziyev, a successor to slain Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, was taken alive in the Ingush town of Malgobek. Taziyev — also known as Magas and as Magomed Yevloyev — was the second-most important figure of the so-called Caucasus Emirate after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov. |
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 This month the Russian Center of Photography (Rosphoto) is hanging out the Hungarian flag with two exhibitions dedicated to the work of that country’s most celebrated photographers. Encompassing everything from street scenes to avant-garde experimentation, both shows are certain to fascinate even the most jaded of exhibition-goers with their luminous tones and compelling subject matter. First up is an exhibition of the black and white photographs of Gyula Halasz. Better known as Brassai, Halasz became famous for his remarkable images of Paris made during the first half of the 20th century. |
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PEN-PUSHER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Visitors to the ‘Floral Fantasy, Versailles Motifs’ landscaping festival at the Palace of Congresses in Strelna, just outside St. Petersburg, walk past a grass hand with a quill formed from a tree. |
 In a city with hundreds of museums, many of which are dedicated to literary figures, the recent announcement by the St. Petersburg Culture Committee of plans to open a museum dedicated to Josef Brodsky may not at first seem very significant. That is, however, until one recalls the animosity that the poet faced from Soviet officials who denied his right to call himself an author.
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Anyone browsing Russian newsstands for an art magazine to read on the long flight or train ride home would be forgiven for thinking that Russians just don’t care about the subject. Among the various interior design and home improvement titles available for purchase — most of which are local outlets for international brands — it is hard to find a single magazine dedicated to contemporary art. |
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