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 The blackout that left almost half of St. Petersburg without electricity on Friday evening was allegedly caused by a control cable at the city’s Vostochnaya substation wearing out, Kommersant daily reported Monday. The cable was due to be replaced in 2011 during planned renovation work on the substation, an anonymous source close to the investigation into the incident told Kommersant. The accelerated deterioration of the cable could have been caused by the abnormal heat experienced by St. Petersburg this summer. One of the reasons for the power cut could be a change in the voltage of one of the high voltage cables. The substation works using partly new equipment and partly very old equipment, and could shut down at any moment due to even the smallest changes in the voltage, Kommersant said. |
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FLYING THE FLAG
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Admiralty building is seen through a Russian flag from the Alexandrovsky Gardens during celebrations of Russian Flag Day on Sunday. For photo essay, see page 9. |
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MOSCOW — A jury has acquitted a group of nationalists headed by a former military intelligence colonel of trying to kill Anatoly Chubais, an architect of Russia’s market reforms, in a high-profile retrial that cast rare light on anger in some military circles toward Vladimir Putin’s rule. The jury on Friday also ruled that the attempt on Chubais’ life in 2005 was real, squashing speculation that the incident was a ruse staged by authorities as a pretext to crack down on nationalists.
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MOSCOW — Russia and Iran on Saturday jointly launched the Bushehr atomic power plant, the first in the Middle East, bringing the Islamic republic into the ranks of the world’s 29 nuclear power generating nations. Both sides hailed the startup as a landmark. Russia, which agreed to complete the facility for $800 million in 1992, had delayed the final work in recent years amid international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — An Islamist militant leader suspected of organizing suicide bombings that killed 40 people in the Moscow metro in March was killed in a shootout with security forces in Dagestan on Saturday, officials said. Madomedali Vagabov was killed along with four others during a gunfight with special forces in the Dagestani village of Gunib, officials said. |
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United Russia has assailed one of the country’s most prominent humanitarian aid activists with accusations of secretly working for A Just Russia, a rival pro-Kremlin party. |
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YEREVAN, Armenia — President Dmitry Medvedev secured a long-term foothold for Russia in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region Friday by signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base to operate until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and fresh security guarantees. |
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Kuznetsov Released ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Former boxer Alexander Kuznetsov was released on parole Friday from the fourth penal colony in Isilkul in the Omsk Region, Fontanka. |
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A scandal is brewing over a memorial plaque to Grigory Romanov, who ruled the city from 1970 to 1985 as the first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Praised by fellow Communists and some of the members of the current political establishment as a strong leader, Romanov is despised by the democratic camp and numerous prominent cultural figures. |
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MOSCOW — More than 3,000 people crowded onto Pushkin Square in Moscow on Sunday evening to denounce the authorities’ plan to cut down a centuries-old oak forest north of Moscow, and rock musician Yury Shevchuk belted out two songs despite a concert ban. |
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GROZNY — Chechen women said Friday that they had been harassed and some physically harmed by bands of men for not wearing headscarves during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Reuters reported. Bearded men in traditional Islamic dress have been roaming the streets both on foot and in cars since Ramadan started on Aug. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said Thursday it had banned an advertising campaign for a Kirov regional construction supply firm that featured a President Dmitry Medvedev look-alike sporting a hard hat and chainsaw. |
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MOSCOW — Amid worries that this summer’s devastating wildfires have damaged the country’s ruling tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, United Russia has come up with some unusual news. On Thursday, the ruling party announced that Novosibirsk Governor Viktor Tolokonsky would not be heading the party list for October elections to the local parliament. |
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MOSCOW — Alexander Voloshin, former chairman of mining company Norilsk Nickel, said Thursday that he agreed to be nominated to the board of potash producer Uralkali. |
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MOSCOW — The son of the country’s financial intelligence chief works for state airline Aeroflot, where he is responsible for handling the company’s cash and one of its top projects, Sheremetyevo’s Terminal D. Andrei Chikhanchin, son of Federal Financial Monitoring Service head Yury Chikhanchin, has been working for nearly nine months at the firm Terminal, according to state-run Vneshekonombank’s quarterly report. |
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The Ministry of Economic Development has created a list of foreign and domestic investment banks that will organize the sale of state assets and the deployment of state bonds in the privatization of state companies. Amendments to the law on privatization, which will involve the investment banks in the sale process, were introduced in January this year. ? The main criterion for the selection of the banks was their rated performance. The list includes 20 investment banks, of which 11 are foreign-owned, including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, UBS, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. |
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RIPE FOR THE PICKING
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A stallholder (r) demonstrates tomatoes grown from seeds he is selling at the Agro Rus trade exhibition at Lenexpo on Monday. The agricultural fair runs through Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s competition watchdog opened cases against six bread producers on Friday, accusing them of price gouging as grain prices rise because of a drought that has significantly reduced the country’s harvest. The price gouging cases come as fears grow among consumers that the drought will lead to long-term price rises. According to a survey of 3,000 respondents conducted by Superjobs.
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MOSCOW — Russian farmers began sowing some winter crops after rain fell in central regions last week, though planting conditions will mostly stay worse than usual in the next 10 days, the national weather center said. “Given the uneven distribution of rainfall, farms were able to start selective planting of winter grain crops depending on precipitation levels of specific fields,” the Federal Hydrometeorological Center said on its web site Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Sales of sugary goods have fallen at least twice as hard as usual this summer, as the abnormal heat causes consumers to stay away from sweets, retailers and producers said. |
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Drought Damages MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian agriculture suffered a loss of about 32.7 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) from this year’s drought, Interfax reported Monday, citing Alexander Petrikov, a deputy agriculture minister. Wheat Prices Slump MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian wheat prices fell as much as 8. |
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MOSCOW — Bank of Moscow gets along so well with the city government that the approaching shakeup at the Mayor’s Office may have an effect on its business. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin singled out Volgograd City Hall in his criticism of corruption Friday, while blasting regional and local officials for some $13.5 billion in pointless spending last year. The city handed out most land plots for construction to its officials or their partners and relatives, he said. |
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MOSCOW — Germany’s E.On is asking Gazprom to lower its prices for gas again, after convincing the export monopoly to give way on prices just this spring. |
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On Friday evening, St. Petersburg suffered a massive blackout. At about 6.30 p.m., the electricity went off in seven of the city’s 18 districts and some parts of the Leningrad Oblast. The metro ground to a halt, along with commuter trains and the trolleybus network. Automatic doors were blocked, and hundreds of elevators stopped with people inside them. To make matters worse, the water was also turned off almost everywhere because the pumping facilities had no electricity. Huge traffic jams formed on the city’s darkening streets due to the disabled traffic lights. Crowds of people walked along the streets. Storage cell operators claimed that reserves would not last more than two to three hours. |
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 Everyone over the age of 40 has a good collection of failed doomsday prophecies. One of the most recent is that the Internet — especially Web 2.0 — will kill newspapers. |
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MOSCOW — On a quiet Sunday afternoon, a group of children gathered around a giant moon replica hanging from a wall in the Russian Space Museum. “Work hard, so that we will be able to fly to the moon in three days,” an elderly museum attendant urged the children. “I think the Chinese will be able to do it faster,” replied one of the children’s mothers. |
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SYDNEY — Australia’s political leaders Monday began horse-trading with a handful of independent MPs in a bid to form government after a cliffhanger poll that delivered the first hung parliament in 70 years. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who suffered a fierce voter backlash, and opposition leader Tony Abbott both launched talks on a coalition administration with three key independent lawmakers who will likely hold the balance of power. |
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KIGALI — Rwanda’s capital is changing from a sleepy backwater where most things closed at 9 p.m. to a future Singapore with gleaming office blocks and all-night shopping. |
 TEHRAN — Iran kicked off mass production of two high-speed missile-launching assault boats on Monday, warning its enemies not to “play with fire” as it boosts security along its coastline. The inauguration of the production lines for the Seraj and Zolfaqar speedboats comes a day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled Iran’s home-built bomber drone, which he said would deliver “death” to Iran’s enemies. |
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Issues Archive