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 MOSCOW — Ever since his first flight in a Sukhoi warplane in October 1999, Vladimir Putin has dazzled the world with a machismo extravaganza and scored high popularity ratings that have became the backbone of the state he runs. But nothing compares to the past few days. A trip to the Far East this week turned into a public relations rampage that saw Putin shooting gray whales with a crossbow from a boat, studying the bones of mammoths at an excavation site, and watching a brown bear gobble up fish in a river just a stone’s throw away from him. Needless to say, the national media, especially the state-run television channels, played up the juicy images and Putin’s trademark one-liners. |
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BELLS ARE BACK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga consecrates new bells cast for the Fyodorovsky Cathedral close to the Moscow Railway Station on Saturday. As in the pre-Revolutionary era, the cathedral’s bells can now be heard by new arrivals at the station. |
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While a criminal case about the police excesses during the July 31 demo in defense of the right to assembly was opened in St. Petersburg last week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made news Monday by speaking approvingly of police beatings in an interview with Kommersant. “You have to get a permit from the local authorities,” Putin was quoted as saying.
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MOSCOW — While it is becoming easier to build in Russia, administrative barriers in several regions, such as Moscow and the Moscow region, remain high, the Regional Development Ministry said. The ministry analyzed administrative barriers to construction in a report submitted to the government on the efficiency of government agencies in 2009, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti. |
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MOSCOW — A former Komi police major who accused his ex-colleagues of fabricating a case against two convicts in a 2005 fire that killed 25 people was detained in Moscow on Friday, police said. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — In a rare reversal, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has backed down on his opposition to halting the construction of an $8 billion highway through a centuries-old oak forest north of Moscow — even as loggers said they already cut down almost half of the trees in question. Putin said he was open to an alternative route Friday, a day after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to the deforestation needed to make way for the highway from Moscow to St. Petersburg. “The question about what route the road will take is an important one,” Putin told reporters during a tour of the Far East, according to a transcript on the government’s web site. |
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BAD!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
To celebrate the 52nd anniversary of singer Michael Jackson’s birth, a flash mob assembled to dance on Palace Square on Sunday. Flash mobs also gathered by Gostiny Dvor and by the Cathedral on the Spilled Blood. |
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MOSCOW — At the height of this summer’s heat wave, some doctors warned that a few hours of inhaling the thick, acrid smog that blanketed Moscow was like smoking a pack of cigarettes. One scientist declared that cases of suicide, diabetes and alcoholism would soar once winter set in because of the aftereffects of the toxic smoke. But now that chilly rains and a cold front have swept away both the heat and the smoke, doctors are not so sure that the consequences of the summer spent sweating and coughing in smog hell will be quite so bad.
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Federal Forestry Agency to be transferred to the direct control of the government as the authorities take steps to ensure that there will be no repeat to the wildfires that ravaged central Russia last month. |
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Man in Trunk MOSCOW (SPT) — Four Moscow policemen were arrested Saturday with a businessman in the trunk of their car, RIA-Novosti reported. The officers are accused of kidnapping the businessman in Moscow to force him to pay his debts to unspecified lenders, it said. |
 MOSCOW — An icon of Jesus embedded in a Kremlin gate used by Soviet leaders but bricked over in the 1930s during communist times was restored on Saturday to public view, Reuters reported. On a rainy and windy day of the Assumption in the Orthodox calendar, President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill unveiled the icon on Spasskaya Tower, or Savior Tower, that has been covered for more than 70 years and had been regarded as lost. |
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MOSCOW — Glamorous secret agent Anna Chapman has posed provocatively for a Russian magazine shoot in her first public appearance since she was deported from the United States in a major spy swap, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — A daring militant raid on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village on Sunday erupted in a gunbattle that killed at least 14 people, officials said. Kadyrov was in the village of Tsentoroi, about 20 kilometers east of Grozny, when the gang of about 30 Islamist militants entered at about 4:30 a. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has forwarded to the Investigative Committee an appeal from an international alliance of lawyers for justice in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the association said Thursday. |
 LOSEVO, Leningrad Oblast — Adrenaline-addicts from the city and beyond competed in a three-minute wet and wild ride on inflatable women from sex shops in the eighth annual Bubble Baba Challenge at the Losevo Rapids on the Vuoksa River, about 80 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg. The competition was held on Aug. |
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia was not short of grain after the worst drought in half a century cut yields, and that there was no reason for an increase in domestic grain prices. The country has reserves of 9.5 million metric tons of grain, including 3 million tons of feed grain, Putin told Russian news agencies while driving on the Amur highway in the Khabarovsk region. |
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A public feud between Norilsk Nickel’s two largest shareholders is damaging the company, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told news agencies Friday, while noting that Russia had not yet emerged from the economic crisis. |
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MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber took the Economic Development Ministry to task on Friday, saying its forecasts for the crisis-hit 2009 were too inaccurate. The ministry’s predictions for gross domestic product growth in 2009 were off by 14.6 percentage points from the actual figures, while the maximum acceptable deviation is only 0. |
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Gazprom-Naftogaz MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ukrainian household gas prices may fall to Russian levels after a merger between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said Friday. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin got behind the wheel of a Glonass-equipped Lada Kalina to test the new Amur highway over the weekend, but he complained that the “historic” road’s quality was unsatisfactory and that gas prices are too high. The government is planning to raise excise taxes on fuel next year to help rebuild Russia’s notoriously bad roads. |
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MOSCOW — RusHydro began construction of a $1 billion power plant in the Far East on Friday in a project that would feed electricity to consumers including coal mines, an oil pipeline and a launch pad. |
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MOSCOW — Low-cost airline Avianova said Thursday that it had created a “price revolution” on the Russian market in its first year of operations, though analysts and competitors said the startup was just revving its engines. Avianova — owned by Alfa Group’s A1 investment arm and U.S. private equity firm Indigo Partners — has grown quickly since starting last year as Russia’s second discount airline, though executives hedged when asked about its financial success. The airline sells tickets starting from 250 rubles, or about $8, before taxes and tariffs, and management says the goal is to charge nothing for tickets and draw revenue from travel-related “auxiliary” services. |
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 MOSCOW — The number of airline passengers increased 30 percent in the first seven months of the year, showing that the business is recovering after the economic crisis, the Federal Air Transportation Agency said Thursday. |
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 The wildfires and heat wave that recently ravaged central Russia brought climate change to the forefront of the country’s domestic agenda. While Russian leaders have often played down the threat of higher temperatures on the country, the severe impact of the fires — which caused more than 50 deaths and destroyed more than a third of Russia’s wheat crop — offers an opportunity to rethink policies and devote urgent attention to becoming a global leader in climate change — as Russia modernizes its economy. |
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Millions are suffering and thousands have died from flooding in Pakistan and China. An extraordinary heat wave in Russia sparked fires that caused dreadful pollution and wiped out swathes of the wheat crop. |
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 Now in its thirteenth year, the city’s groundbreaking Early Music Festival returns on September 5. Every fall, vibrant performances of its refined ensembles evoke, embody and revive the long-lost noble spirit of St. Petersburg. The event kicks off at the State Academic Cappella on Sept. 5 with a concert by the world-renowned Collegium Vocale Gent under the baton of Philippe Herreweghe of Johann-Sebastian Bach’s famous Mass in B Minor. |
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 The discovery of a long-lost musical masterpiece is always something of event. Imagine, then, what it feels like to find the entire legacy of a wonderful composer. |
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 KABANJAHE, Indonesia — An Indonesian volcano spewed a vast cloud of smoke and ash high into the air on Monday, disrupting flights and sending thousands more people into temporary shelters. Airlines were warned to avoid remote Mount Sinabung in northern Sumatra as it erupted for a second day after springing to life for the first time in four centuries. |
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COPIAPO, Chile — Chilean rescuers begin Monday the months-long task of drilling a shaft to rescue 33 miners trapped deep underground for 25 days, as officials push for an accelerated rescue plan. |
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AMMAN — A UN human rights inquiry into Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla started on Monday a probe in Jordan where investigators interviewed four Jordanian activists. “The UN investigators arrived last night and met today with four Jordanian activists who were on board the Mavi Marmara ship,” in which nine passengers died on 31 May 2010, said Alaa Borqan, who is in charge of public relations at the Islamist-dominated trade unions. |
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SUJAWAL, Pakistan – A torrent of water threatening to deluge a city in flood-hit Pakistan has begun to recede, officials said Monday, as emergency workers plugged a breach in defences against the swollen Indus river. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive