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MOSCOW — Seventy-two passengers settled into their seats as their Tu-154 jet lifted off the runway of the Sakha republic’s Polyarny Airport for a five-hour flight to Moscow. But 3 1/2 hours later, the plane suffered an electrical failure and made a remarkable emergency landing at an unmapped, abandoned military airfield in the Komi republic — with no injuries among the passengers and nine crew members. In fact, rescuers found some of the passengers foraging for mushrooms in the taiga forest where the plane had come to a stop after overrunning the short runway, said Pyotr Dityatev, head of the Izhma district, where the airfield is located. “I saw from a distance how it was landing quietly. The speed was quite high,” Dityatev said of the plane. |
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Kazbeg Basayev / The St. Petersburg Times
Cars lie wrecked at the blast site in Vladikavkaz following an attack by a suicide bomber on Thursday. |
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A spacious new zoo looks set to be built at the Yuntolovsky National Reserve Park to the northwest of the city by 2014. Three respected design bureaus, including Beckmann-N’Thepe (France), Amusement Logic (Spain) and Studio 17 (Russia) have been commissioned by City Hall to develop their concepts for the new zoo. A public exhibition of the projects will be held in the middle of December.
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VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia — A suicide bomber killed at least 16 people and injured 100 Thursday at a market in the Russian Caucasus, the deadliest militant strike for months in the troubled region. Officials said the blast in the city of Vladikavkaz was caused by a suicide bomber who drove up to a local market in an explosives-packed car and whose headless body was later discovered. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Novosibirsk Governor Viktor Tolokonsky as his new envoy to the Siberian Federal District on Thursday, a reshuffle that rids Novosibirsk of a corruption-tainted leader weeks before key elections. Tolokonsky will replace Anatoly Kvashnin, a former chief of the General Staff who has held the envoy post since 2004, the Kremlin said. Tolokonsky will be succeeded by Deputy Governor Vasily Yurchenko, whose popularity United Russia is banking on to attract votes in October elections by placing him at the top of its list of candidates running for the regional legislature, even though Yurchenko is not expected to take a seat. |
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MAKING A SPLASH
Ilya Naymushin / Reuters
A Russian-made Beriev Be-200ChS amphibious aircraft dumps water during a demonstration flight at the Gydroaviasalon 2010 salon in the Black Sea town of Gelendzhik on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW — Flamboyant Kalmykia leader Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is stepping down after 17 years in office, will likely be replaced by a pragmatic-minded business manager, analysts said Tuesday. Ilyumzhinov, 48, said Monday that he would not seek reappointment after his fourth term expires in October. He cited President Dmitry Medvedev’s policy of not keeping regional leaders on the job for more than three terms as the reason for the decision.
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St. Petersburg’s Kalininsky court has given a six year suspended sentence to local computer hacker Viktor Pleshchuk, who cracked the Royal Bank of Scotland’s computer system. Pleshchuk, 29, was charged with taking part in a major banking fraud committed by an international group, which was alleged to have stolen more than $9 million with the help of fake banking cards. |
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MOSCOW — Two senior U.S. officials promised that Washington would speak openly about its concerns over Russia’s human rights record during a meeting with the country’s top rights activists Wednesday, two activists said. |
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St. Petersburg’s Consulate General of Finland has announced that it will be outsourcing work surrounding the visa application process. The diplomatic mission believes that this innovation will improve the quality of client service. In late February or early March, 2011, a Finnish Visa Center will begin operations in the city. |
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NIZHNY NOVGOROD — The Nizhny Novgorod region has had its share of tribulations in the past few years. The heavily industrial region saw the number of registered unemployed quadruple last year, and foreign investment fell 63 percent from $708.5 million to $263 million. The region was also among the worst hit when wildfires swept through central Russia in late July and August. |
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 Russia is our strategic partner and a major player in many areas. Russia is also a European country and our close neighbor. The time is ripe to give a new boost to European Union-Russian relations, while continuing open and sincere dialogue based on common interests and values. |
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After Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cruised around the Far East in a Lada Kalina for 11 days, political pundits claimed that it was the start of his presidential campaign. |
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A ruble exchange-rate crisis in two or three years is not inevitable, but if inflation is allowed to accelerate and real interest rates — adjusting for the effects of inflation — become negative again, an exchange-rate crisis just becomes a question of time. |
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Even after the passage of new financial regulations in the United States — the Dodd-Frank Act — and the publication of the Basel Committee’s new capital requirements, the financial sector’s prospects over the next few years remain highly uncertain. |
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September is set to be a very busy month at the country’s oldest drama theater, according to Artistic Director Valery Fokin, speaking at a recent press conference. Two major events are taking place simultaneously, setting the theater’s autumn marathon on track. First, there is the opening of the Alexandrinsky’s 265th season with a new production of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” which premieres on Sept. 14 and 15 and promises to be the main show of the year. Then, for the fifth time, it hosts the International Theater Festival with several of Europe’s leading companies participating. For “The Taming of the Shrew,” the theater has invited in Lithuanian director Oskaras Korshunovas. Though this is his first appearance at the Alexandrinsky, Korshunovas is known to Petersburg theater-goers thanks to his participation in the Baltic House Festival. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
The Toy Dolls, a British rock punk band formed in 1979, will perform at the newly launched club Kosmonavt — located in a former Soviet cinema on Bronnitskaya Ulitsa — on Saturday. |
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Ginza Project is already a household name among the culinary connoisseurs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Known for endowing each of their restaurants with a carefully planned concept and design, the franchise has been at the forefront of raising restaurant culture in Russia to a new standard. And as their popularity grows constantly, Ginza Project opens a new restaurant every two to three months.
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Things got even more bizarre in Russia this week as a singer was summoned by investigators who asked, among other things, whether she had a permit to perform the song she recited into a megaphone at last month’s outdoor concert in defense of the Khimki Forest in Moscow. Maria Lyubicheva, singer with Moscow’s electro punk band Barto, had to recite the song rather than to sing it, because the police had blocked the truck carrying the PA system in an attempt to prevent the previously authorized event. They said the truck had dirty license plates and that the PA system had no proper certificates. The musicians, who opposed the destruction of the forest and managed to get through the police cordons (some were not let into the square), had to sing unplugged, like Yury Shevchuk, or into a megaphone when the protesters managed to get hold of one. |
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 After the summer break, the Mariinksy Theater’s new 2010/11 season will open on Sept. 14 with Mussorgsky’s opera “Khovanshchina,” conducted by maestro Gergiev. |
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 GAINESVILLE, Florida — A small Florida church has shrugged off global outrage and vowed to go ahead with a Koran burning ceremony amid growing fears it will ignite a wave of Islamic rage. Condemnation rained down from top US officials, the military, the Vatican and other religious and world leaders, but the church refused to halt plans to torch the Islamic holy book on Saturday’s anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. |
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DUBAI — Taliban leader Mullah Omar said the NATO-led coalition is losing the war in Afghanistan, calling on Afghans to redouble their struggle and pressing the United States to withdraw. |
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BAUCHI, Nigeria — Police hunted hundreds of inmates Thursday who escaped when suspected Islamists used machine guns and bombs in a Nigerian prison attack, while authorities warned other jails may be vulnerable. The Islamist sect suspected in the attack that freed more than 700 prisoners had launched an uprising in the country’s north last year put down by a brutal assault, and Nigeria’s government said it would move to prevent a repeat. |
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BUCHAREST — France will call on Romania to draw up an emergency plan to integrate its Roma community, France’s European affairs minister said Thursday in Bucharest ahead of talks with the countries’ leaders. |
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Issues Archive