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St. Petersburg has joined a series of rallies as part of the international campaign demanding the release of the “Khimki Hostages.” The two activists were imprisoned after an anarchists’ protest in front of the headquarters of the Khimki administration, which is instrumental in destroying the Khimki Forest to make way for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-backed toll highway project to connect Moscow and St. |
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SOCHI — Foreign investors on Friday lauded Russia’s stability and openness at an economic forum headlined by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who oversaw the signing of deals to attract $800 million of investment from the United Arab Emirates. |
 MOSCOW — Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Yanukovych drove a pair of vintage Pobeda sedans across the border between Russia and Ukraine on a sunny Friday afternoon in what analysts say looked like a second-hand publicity stunt. The presidents took to the road for a car rally commemorating a similar event held exactly 100 years ago by Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. |
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MOSCOW — A government agency registered the domain name Putin-2012.rf last week only to revoke its application two days later, stirring speculation in the media over the possible start of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign. |
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MOSCOW — Nashi, the outspoken pro-Kremlin youth group, said Friday that it had withdrawn a defamation lawsuit against French newspaper Le Monde that it filed last year. Nashi decided to drop the case because Le Monde had refused to participate in a dialogue with the youth group both in and out of the courtroom, said Nashi’s lawyer, Sergei Zhorin. |
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Avenue Opened ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg companies marking the 20th anniversary of their activities in Russia this year planted oak trees in the city’s suburb of Pushkin last week to launch an avenue titled “20 Years of Business in the Russian Federation. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Reputed crime boss Aslan Usoyan, 73, and his bodyguard were hospitalized in stable condition after being shot by an unidentified assailant on Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow late last week, police said. Usoyan — who is thought to be the most influential crime boss on former Soviet soil and is known as Grandpa Khasan — and his bodyguard Artur Bagramyan were shot by a Kalashnikov assault rifle equipped with a silencer as they entered a building late Thursday, police said, according to national news agencies. Usoyan had been staying in his son’s apartment in the building, Lifenews.ru said. In order to prevent more attempts on Usoyan’s life, police intentionally reported Friday that both men were killed, while in fact they were only hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, Interfax reported. |
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 MOSCOW — Under the fire of a smear campaign, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov lashed out at the federal authorities over migration laws, promised new metro stations and then announced that he was leaving for vacation in Austria. |
 MOSCOW — The heat and smog are gone, but many people have made a purchasing decision for next summer: to buy an air conditioner. Still, they all face a vexing problem. There are very few air conditioners for sale these days. Stocks of air conditioners and fans have been depleted since early July, when frenzied customers bought any cooling device they could find. |
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MOSCOW — In an effort to improve views in downtown Moscow, City Hall is pushing to eliminate banner advertisements within the Garden Ring over the next three years, significantly damaging a market worth $50 million last year. |
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MOSCOW — A leading gay rights activist was detained at a Moscow airport and resurfaced in Minsk in a bizarre case that his supporters linked to his campaign to pressure Moscow’s City Hall to allow gay pride rallies. Nikolai Alexeyev was held by police shortly before the departure of his flight to Geneva from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on Wednesday evening, gay activist Nikolai Bayev said. |
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MOSCOW — A new Sochi airport terminal intended to serve passengers arriving for the 2014 Winter Olympics and built by Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element at a cost of 6.2 billion rubles ($200 million) officially opened Thursday. The terminal is the first major facility commissioned for the games and ticks off a box on Russia’s long to-do list in preparation for the event. The new terminal is fully operational and services both domestic and international flights. It boasts the latest know-how in ecological and resource efficiency and the most modern equipment, the company said in a statement. “This is a major event not just for Basic Element … but also for the main Russian resort city of Sochi and the Krasnodar region, as a modern airport is a key element of the region’s future prosperity,” Deripaska said. |
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 Companies belonging to Arkady Novikov, Igor Leitis and Yevgeny Prigozhin battled it out at an auction last week for the right to a ten-year rental agreement for the former Yeliseyevsky delicatessen store on Nevsky Prospekt. |
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SOCHI — The market for the construction of roads, bridges and tunnels may grow at least 4 percent to 730 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) this year, the head of a builders’ association said Thursday. Sergei Mozalyov, executive director of the Russian Bridge Builders Association, based his estimate on rising spending in the sector by regional governments. |
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Kopeks Face the Chop ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia may stop minting 1 kopek and 5 kopek coins because increased prices mean they now cost more to produce than the value of their metal, Vedomosti daily reported. |
 MOSCOW — The Communications and Press Ministry has its finger on the trigger of the starter’s pistol, but no one knows when the race will begin or who is actually participating. Once they are off and running, the players, who have already spent billions of dollars to get in shape, will have to overcome large hurdles, while the prize money keeps going down. |
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MOSCOW — Transneft and Ziyavudin Magomedov’s investment group Summa Capital are purchasing a controlling stake in Novorossiisk Commercial Sea Port to merge it with their Primorsk port, giving the partners control of almost all crude loaded for export from European Russia. |
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British journalist Mary Dejevsky, whose Sept. 5 ode to St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko in Britain’s The Independent newspaper shocked many with its rapturous, one-sided tone and crude factual errors, responded to critics last week with another article published on openDemocracy. |
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While in England traveling with a British friend, I was speaking to a cashier at a railway station when I was dumbstruck by the look of frightened amazement on the woman’s face at my use of the word “passenger. |
 The biggest news story by far last week was the scandal surrounding Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. After NTV aired its “Delo v Kepke” program on Sept. 10, which included serious allegations of corruption against him and his wife, Yelena Baturina, there were more anti-Luzhkov reports in the following days on Channel One, Rossia One and NTV. |
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Not long after the smoke from the summer’s fires had cleared away from Moscow streets, the city awoke to the amazing spectacle of multi-channel television attacks on Mayor Yury Luzhkov. |
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 The Mariinsky Theater looked to the future as it celebrated its 150th birthday with a gala night that included segments from the ballets “Swan Lake” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” featuring ballerinas Ulyana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva, and talk of the new stage that is set to open in 2012. Legendary Bolshoi Theater ballerina Maya Plisetskaya was among the guests Friday who saw an exquisite performance by Lopatkina as the dying swan. |
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 The city’s internationally renowned Mikhailovsky Theater opened its 178th season last week with two of its most recent premieres: Vakhtang Chabukiani’s ballet “Laurencia,” which played on Wednesday, followed the next day by a new production of Verdi’s opera “Un Ballo in Maschera. |
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 KABUL — Concerns were growing Monday about intimidation and fraud in Afghanistan’s parliamentary election as allegations of voting irregularities filtered in from outlying parts of the war-torn country. Millions of Afghans voted Saturday in their second parliamentary poll since the 2001 U. |
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BAGHDAD — Two near-simultaneous car bombs rocked the Iraqi capital on Sunday, killing at least 29 people and wounding 111 in the city’s deadliest day in a month. |
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SYDNEY — Australia said Monday there was a “high risk of terrorism” during next month’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, in a stark travel warning after gunmen wounded two tourists outside a famous mosque. The foreign affairs department urged visitors to pay close attention to their safety “at all times” during the Games, after a tour bus was sprayed with sub-machinegun fire at Delhi’s Jama Masjid. |
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WASHINGTON — U.S. officials finally declared BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico “dead” on Sunday, five months after the deadly oil rig explosion that set off one of the costliest and largest environmental disasters ever. |
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 To those who have never been to Hong Kong, the city seems distant, mysterious and other-worldly. When you visit it, however, you can’t help but fall in love with this fantastical city, this seething anthill of activity, this mixture of East and West, this Asian New York. Getting There You can fly to Hong Kong from Moscow. |
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