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A political activist who was sentenced to 14 days in prison Tuesday for participating in an Aug. 31 event defending the right of assembly was abruptly released by an appeals court Thursday. Andrei Pivovarov, the local leader of former prime minister turned oppositional politician Mikhail Kasyanov’s People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) and an organizer of Strategy 31 events in St. Petersburg, was detained at last month’s rally and charged with violation of the regulations governing a public event and failing to obey a policeman’s orders. In Tuesday’s court hearing, which he described as “biased,” Judge Alexei Kuznetsov gave him an unprecedented 14-day sentence and fined him 2,000 rubles ($65). |
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A QUICK FIX
Alexei Nikolsky / Pool / RIA Novosti / Reuters
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (l) visits Ivatino village, destroyed by wildfires, to inspect the course of construction of new houses in the Nizhny Novgorod region on Wednesday. Hundreds of wildfires broke out across Russia from late July onwards, costing an estimated $15 billion. |
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MOSCOW — An extraordinary battle between Mayor Yury Luzhkov and President Dmitry Medvedev gathered steam Wednesday as the City Duma issued a motion supporting the mayor, the Kremlin warned that his resignation was imminent, and media reported that more damning television coverage was on its way. City Duma deputies unanimously passed a motion that heavily criticized what they called a campaign to discredit Luzhkov.
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The St. Petersburg authorities kicked a gay art exhibition out of the high-status Union of Artists Exhibition Center, where it was scheduled to open Thursday, organizers said Wednesday. City Hall’s culture committee denies any involvement. The Union of Artists Exhibition Center was one of the venues where Queerfest, organized by LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender) rights organization Vykhod (Coming Out), was due to be held. |
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MOSCOW — Astrakhan police have identified and placed on a wanted list three men suspected of a string of assaults on local cops that left three officers dead this summer, Interfax reported Monday. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — TPG Capital and its partners in Lenta, the Russian superstore chain, plan to hold a board meeting at the end of the month after a shareholder dispute over management and strategy erupted into violence, Bloomberg reported. The U.S. private-equity firm and VTB Capital aim to meet with Svoboda, run by August Meyer, Lenta’s largest shareholder, at a board meeting on Sept. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — As a public discussion of police reform wound up Wednesday with almost 21,000 comments on a government web site, opposition politicians and human rights advocates declared that the bill needed a complete overhaul. The 11-chapter bill, published in early August on Zakonoproekt2010.ru, is a part of President Dmitry Medvedev’s drive to reform the police force. The chapters that sparked the most debate on the web site concern police officers’ responsibilities and rights, with more than 1,500 and 1,400 comments, respectively, as of Wednesday afternoon. The least popular item, “Work Discipline of the Police,” only had about 50 comments. |
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WAR GAMES
Robin Paxton / Reuters
Kazakh soldiers fire a cannon during the opening ceremony of the Peace Mission 2010 exercises involving Russian, Chinese and Kazakh troops in southern Kazakhstan on Monday. |
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The first Children’s Charity Cinema Festival began in St. Petersburg on Thursday, and will last through Thursday. Over the coming week, the city’s Cinema House (Dom Kino) and the Voskhod, Druzhba, Tchaika and Zanevsky cinemas will be screening charity movie performances for children from orphanages, large families and foster families, as well as school children and those with disabilities.
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MOSCOW — Leading human rights groups said Tuesday that prosecutors have initiated a hasty series of in-depth checks of their papers ahead of October elections. The checks, ordered by Moscow prosecutors, are targeting Moscow Helsinki Group; Golos, an independent elections watchdog; the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights; and the Russian branch of Transparency International, among others. |
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 MOSCOW — Former partners Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin have eliminated the trust Folletina Trading and divided up their last joint business, developer Open Investments, ending their lengthy asset split and Russia’s highest-profile corporate conflict in years. The businessmen agreed Friday to terminate their joint trust, Potanin’s Interros and Prokhorov’s Onexim Group said in a statement. Spokespeople for both companies said the statement referred to Folletina Trading. The former partners’ jointly held personal assets and obligations to each other were handed to the trust in 2008, an Interros spokesperson said. |
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FIRST IN LINE
Mikhail Klimentyev / Kremlin / RIA Novosti / Reuters
President Dmitry Medvedev buys a loaf of bread in a Murmansk store. Medvedev signed a border pact Wednesday with the Norwegian prime minister in the Arctic city. |
 MOSCOW — The rebounding domestic car industry will get a seasoned international executive after Siegfried Wolf, co-chief executive of Canadian auto parts maker Magna International, announced Monday that he will resign to take a new position at billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding. Wolf will be appointed board chairman at Russian Machines, Basic Element’s automotive division, where he will be in charge of strategic business development.
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s university classmate Vadim Semyonov, whom the Communications and Press Ministry has nominated to become CEO of Svyazinvest, has dual citizenship, which could complicate a job that requires Russian security clearance. Semyonov has both Russian and Canadian citizenship, a fact he has never hidden, executives who know the businessman told Vedomosti. |
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 If President Dmitry Medvedev or one of his assistants were to call Mayor Yury Luzhkov in for a talk, the conversation might begin with the words, “Yury Mikhailovich, ask not for whom the bell tolls.” On Friday and Sunday, the bells were tolling quite loudly for Luzhkov from multiple sources — first from NTV television, which aired the prime-time program “Delo v Kepke” (or “The Cap Affair,” referring to Luzhkov’s trademark flat cap) containing serious corruption allegations against the mayor and his wife, Yelena Baturina. |
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Long before Vladimir Putin established a monopoly on natural resources, the economy and parliament, he established a monopoly on television in the early 2000s. |
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 Think of a string quartet and the image that usually springs to mind is that of a rather staid group of musicians dressed in black and charged with an elegant concentration. Not so with ETHEL — an unusual string quartet from New York City which will be making an appearance in St. Petersburg on Sept. 25. More rock-and-roll than Rachmaninov, the group eschews the traditional fare of most string quartets in favor of a more contemporary repertoire. Formed in 1998, ETHEL comprises Juilliard alumni Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Mary Rowell (violin). Focusing on adventurous music of the past 40 years, they often perform the work of their contemporaries with a special concentration on music composed during the past 15 years. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
‘Multipolar World’ is one of the works on display at Grigory Maiofis’s exhibition at the Marina Gisich gallery. |
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Íè îäèí: not one, no one, not a single one Among the many things I get wrong in Russian, properly using íè and íå (not) is right up there at the top of the list. In spoken language, I can get away with a vowel sound somewhere between the short “å” of íå and the long “è” of íè and pretend that any perceived incorrect usage is actually just my unfortunate accent.
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 Earlier this month, the popular folk healer and host of Russia’s crankiest television show, Gennady Malakhov, mysteriously disappeared, just as he was supposed to film his show, “Malakhov Plus.” The show, where Malakhov offers cures involving honey, household plants and urine in his trademark country-bumpkin style, runs every morning on Channel One. |
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The Russian spelling of this enchanting new cafe points guests in the direction of the composer of “Carmen,” one of the world’s most popular operas, yet the interiors appear to have no connection with Georges Bizet whatsoever. |
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 FALLUJAH, Iraq — Seven civilians were among 18 people killed in Iraq on Wednesday, shot dead as US and Iraqi troops tried to nab a top Al-Qaeda leader in Fallujah, sparking public anger in the former rebel base. Two Iraqi soldiers were also killed in the firefight west of Baghdad, while a roadside bomb in northern Iraq claimed the lives of nine other troops traveling home on leave. |
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PARIS — The French parliament passed a law Tuesday prohibiting wearing a full-face veil in public, meaning a ban will come into force early next year if it is not overturned by senior judges. |
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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — A landmine believed to have been planted by Kurdish rebels blew up a minibus in southeast Turkey on Thursday, killing 10 people in one of the bloodiest attacks on civilians in recent years. The vehicle was carrying Kurdish villagers to Hakkari city when it hit the mine near Gecitli, a remote village in Hakkari province, on the border with Iraq and Iran, a local security source said on condition of anonymity. |
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EDINBURGH — Pope Benedict XVI urged Britain Thursday to maintain its respect for religious traditions and warned against “aggressive forms of secularism” in his first speech of an historic state visit. |
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Issues Archive