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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s telecoms and IT adviser Leonid Reiman abruptly resigned Friday, saying he was going to “focus on using his expertise” outside the government sector. The move followed the resignation by the chief executive of state-controlled telecoms giant Svyazinvest, causing industry players to speculate whether Reiman is among the candidates to take over the holding. “I made a difficult decision to finish a big stage of my life — service to the state. The industry, to which I have devoted so many years, has become a dynamically developing economic segment during this time,” Reiman said in a statement Friday, adding that he was grateful to Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for support. |
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REACH FOR IT
Sergio Perez / Reuters
U.S.A.’s Durant (l) blocks a shot by Russia’s Mozgov their FIBA World Championship game in Istanbul on Thursday. The U.S. beat Russia 89-79, before going on to win the event (see story, page 16). The NBA opened an office in Moscow last week to expand its presence in Russia. |
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MOSCOW — A simmering conflict between Mayor Yury Luzhkov and President Dmitry Medvedev broke into the open over the weekend as Medvedev criticized the mayor and major television channels aired unprecedented critical reports. NTV got the ball rolling with “Delo v Kepke,” a 20-minute report aired in prime time Friday evening that accused Luzhkov of helping his wife, Yelena Baturina, become the country’s richest woman and of neglecting his duties when Moscow was choking in smog during this summer’s wildfires.
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MOSCOW — A feud between Nashi and Moscow prefect Oleg Mitvol is escalating, with the pro-Kremlin youth group demanding that Mitvol’s staff vacate an office and the prefect seeking criminal charges against a Nashi spokeswoman who said he protected brothels in his district. Nashi activists rallied Friday outside the headquarters for Moscow’s Northern Administrative District, which Mitvol runs, to demand that Timiryazevsky District authorities vacate their office in a building originally meant to house a kindergarten, Nashi said in a statement. |
All photos from issue.
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SKA St. Petersburg suffered a heartbreaking 5-4 overtime loss to Dinamo Riga in its Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) season opener at the Ice Palace last Thursday night. Dinamo stalwart defenseman Sandis Ozolins fed the puck to forward Alexanders Nizivijs, who knocked it past SKA goalkeeper Evgeny Nabokov with five seconds remaining in overtime to seal the win. |
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YAROSLAVL — With a little more than a year left in his first presidential term, Dmitry Medvedev said Russia has achieved democracy but democratic institutions remain so weak that citizens prefer to appeal to him directly. |
 Russian researchers claim that they have found the remains of Tsar Ioann VI, the only Russian emperor whose place of burial has been hitherto unknown, and who had one of the most tragic life stories in the history of the Romanov dynasty. “Experts say the probability that the remains are authentic is very high,” said Anatoly Karanin, head of the research group, Interfax reported on Monday. The remains were found during a search for the secret burial site of Generalissimo Anton Ulrich Herzog von Braunschweig, who was buried near the Assumption of Virgin Mary church in the village of Kholmogory in Arkhangelsk Oblast in 1776. |
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 “People Meet in Architecture” was the manifesto of the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice. The topic came from Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima and was an attempt to search for links between humans and their surrounding space. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma opened its fall session last week looking to pass economic legislation that clarifies tough anti-monopoly regulations and puts further pressure on the country’s rampant alcohol consumption. In a bid to upgrade the country’s antitrust practices, the Duma plans to pass the so-called third anti-monopoly package, which clarifies the previous, one-year set of laws in the field. |
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 MOSCOW — VTB Capital on Thursday announced that it will open an investment banking division in Ukraine, as it sees more deal making with the country after the election of a pro-Moscow president there. “We see strong development potential for Ukraine-Russia economic relations,” VTB Capital president Yury Solovyov said in a statement. |
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MOSCOW — The upcoming reorganization of state nanotechnology giant Rusnano into a joint-stock company will enable it to purchase assets of companies with foreign ownership, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — A bank in the republic of Udmurtia lost 98.68 percent of its clients’ money last month, but the lender is asking clients to deposit more funds so it can cover the losses. Udmurtinveststroibank’s “Bazovy” investment fund was overseeing 112.6 million rubles ($3. |
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MOSCOW — The heavily indebted owner of one of Russia’s largest car dealers disappeared from Moscow last week, sparking worries that he had been kidnapped, but it turned out that he had been whisked away by Dagestani police officers and freed after four days. |
 MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska’s construction company Transstroi fired its chief executive for embezzlement, the billionaire’s investment vehicle said last Monday, in a rare public dismissal of a major Russian firm’s CEO. Ivan Kuznetsov lost his job because of his “extremely unsatisfactory work” and his involvement in “illegal transfers of shareholder money,” Deripaska’s Basic Element holding said in a statement. |
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 MOSCOW — Yelena Baturina’s building conglomerate Inteko has acquired a 35-hectare plot in western Moscow to build a golf club, possibly to be designed by U. |
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HP Bribery Case MOSCOW (SPT) — A bribery investigation into a Hewlett-Packard government contract in Russia has broadened to include more deals dating back to 2000, the U.S. computer giant said in a statement Friday, Reuters reported. HP said it was cooperating with authorities, “who have now expanded their investigations beyond” a transaction with the Prosecutor General’s Office. |
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MOSCOW — United Company RusAl unveiled a web portal Wednesday detailing its complaints against Norilsk Nickel’s management and Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Holding, a rival shareholder in the miner, in what analysts said was a long-shot bid to win support from minority owners. |
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 Russia’s worst drought in a century has turned fresh attention to agriculture’s vital importance for the country’s economy and society. With food prices spiraling and lines for buckwheat growing longer by the day, the authorities are frantically working out schemes to contain inflation and reassure the population that no real food shortages are looming. |
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One reason Russia’s economic policy often falls short of the mark is because the government believes that it is unable to carry out the recommendations it receives from economists. |
 In the Svirstroi village in the Leningrad region, there is a large bronze statue of a strong, stocky man in a long coat and cap on a high red granite pedestal, located behind brightly colored tents where the locals do a brisk business selling souvenirs at the Vepskoi market. |
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For the past year, the World Health Organization has been working on the first-ever comprehensive tobacco survey for Russia, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2009. |
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 The world-renowned Mariinsky Theater opens its new 228th season on Tuesday with a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” with mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina and tenor Vladimir Galuzin in the lead roles, and Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky symphony orchestra. In the new season, the Mariinsky will be presenting its new guest conductor, Nikolai Znajder, who originally carved out a career as a violinist. |
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 The title of John Miller’s new book, “All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening,” is a fitting illustration of the fact that until recently Russia was (and perhaps remains) another planet. |
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 TOKYO — Japan on Monday released the 14-strong crew of a Chinese fishing trawler seized last week but kept its captain in custody, doing little to soothe Beijing’s fury in a bitter row between the Asian rivals. The diplomatic spat centers on a disputed island chain in the East China Sea, where Japan says the Chinese boat was fishing illegally last week and, when ordered to leave, rammed two Japanese coastguard vessels during a chase. |
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ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday celebrated an emphatic victory in a referendum on constitutional changes that analysts said strengthened his Islamist-rooted party’s chances of winning a third term in elections next year. |
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TEHRAN — A senior prosecutor said on Sunday that Iran will release US hiker Sarah Shourd on bail, as he criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government for interfering in judicial issues. Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said Shourd, one of three US hikers detained in the Islamic republic for more than a year, had been granted bail on health grounds on a surety of about 500,000 dollars. |
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ISTANBUL — The United States captured their first world basketball title since 1994 on Sunday when they defeated Turkey 81-64 in the gold medal match. It was the Americans’ fourth world crown and comes two years after they won the Olympic title in Beijing. |
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MEXICO CITY — Authorities have arrested one of Mexico’s most wanted men, alleged drug trafficker Sergio Villarreal, who is said to work for the Beltran Leyva cartel, a military source said on Sunday. “Sergio Villarreal, ‘El Grande,’ was arrested with two other people in a non-violent operation in the (central) city of Puebla,” the source said on condition of anonymity. |
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 The last thing you would call the Montreux Riviera is monotonous: It’s home to a world-famous jazz festival, boasts a spectacular lakeside, one of the world’s most renowned vineyards, some of the world’s most respected health and beauty clinics and an unrivaled reputation as a haven of tranquility that has even hosted the meditation sessions of an Indian maharaja. |
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