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The Vozdushnye Vorota Severnoi Stolitsy (Northern Capital Air Gateway) consortium has begun preparations for the construction of a new terminal that will replace St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo 1 and Pulkovo 2. The consortium’s authorities are also negotiating with at least 20 international airlines with the aim of persuading them to start flying to and from St. Petersburg. At the 16th World Route Development Forum held earlier this month in Vancouver, Canada, the consortium discussed the possibility of opening new routes to St. Petersburg in 2011 with airlines from Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East and Pacific regions, a representative of VVSS said. Sergei Edmin, head of VVSS, said that only 70 airlines currently operate flights to St. |
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MASTER OF SATIRE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Kevin Kallaugher, cartoonist for The Economist magazine, poses next to some of his work on display at the Museum of Political History on Tuesday. The cartoons are part of the ‘Russia-U.S.: Political Caricatures Yesterday and Today’ project. The exhibit runs through Nov. 15. |
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MOSCOW — Ousted Mayor Yury Luzhkov weighed his options Wednesday as federal authorities vowed to pursue corruption investigations into the city’s old guard. Luzhkov said in an interview released late Wednesday that he would not challenge President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to fire him a day earlier, The New Times magazine reported on its web site. But a close friend said earlier in the day that the mayor would go to court.
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 A group of ten cheated investors in off-plan residential property developments began an indefinite hunger strike Thursday at the local headquarters of the democratic party Yabloko at 13 Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Seated on inflatable mattresses, the strike’s participants — seven of them women — are determined to survive on nothing but water until their campaign attracts the attention of City Hall. |
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A judge refused to hear a case against four local anarchists who seized the Belarussian Embassy representative office in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, citing irregularities in the police reports and sending them back to the police precinct to be rewritten, one of the activists said by phone Thursday. |
All photos from issue.
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Rock musician Sergei Shnurov denied this week that he had intended to attack activists and musicians campaigning for the preservation of Khimki Forest amid a controversy caused by his reformed band Leningrad’s new song. In a sarcastic rap song called “Khimki Forest,” Shnurov, singing in the first person, describes himself as the “last singer of democracy” who is writing a song about the Khimki Forest. The forest has been the subject of controversy since felling there began to make way for a Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-backed paid highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the song, Shnurov sings that if the forest is saved, “there will be happiness for everyone.” At the end of the song, it becomes apparent that the fictional musician in the song is simply using the issue to increase ticket sales and make more money. |
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GIRLS ON TOP
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A man watches the show at the opening of the city’s first Coyote Ugly bar on Liteiny Prospekt on Wednesday. |
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Murder on Marata ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A businessman was fatally stabbed in front of his home in the city center on Wednesday evening, Fontanka.ru reported Thursday. Fifty-nine-year-old Boris Khachinsky was stabbed in the chest area multiple times at about 8:10 p.m. outside 84 Ulitsa Marata by an unidentified stocky man aged 20-25.
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MOSCOW — Yury Luzhkov will be remembered by posterity as a fan of newsboy caps, multistory construction, bees and monuments designed by Zurab Tsereteli. Critics will also link Luzhkov’s name to the success of his wife’s construction business, tight control over courts, corruption, infill construction, cutting down trees, tearing down historical buildings and harassing sexual minorities. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has fired a Defense Ministry bureaucrat for providing false information about his earnings, marking the first time that someone has been dismissed in connection with a Kremlin order requiring state officials to release income declarations. |
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MOSCOW — “Wow! It looks like we’ve got a president after all.” This was the typical reaction from political commentators in the Russian blogosphere Tuesday after the news emerged that President Dmitry Medvedev had fired the entrenched and defiant Mayor Yury Luzhkov — and many political analysts agreed. |
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MOSCOW — Two U.S. congressmen, Benjamin Cardin and James McGovern, introduced a bill Wednesday that would freeze assets of and block visas for individuals responsible for the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. |
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MOSCOW — A former senator has been detained in Moscow on suspicion that he sexually assaulted at least two young women, one of whom claims that he lured her into his posh Lexus sedan for a quick ride, news reports said Wednesday. Igor Provkin, 43, who represented the Kalmykia republic in the Federation Council from 2001 to 2004, was detained last Thursday and faces up to 20 years behind bars if charged and convicted of rape, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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City Hall and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko are preparing to announce the terms of a second competition for the reconstruction of New Holland Island. The terms of the tender are set to be less restrictive than they were in 2006. Investment in the project will be no less than $300 million, while the starting price for renting the site for the entire period will be 300 million rubles, according to Vyacheslav Semenenko, chairman of City Hall’s construction committee. City Property Management Committee Chairman Dmitry Kurakin said that the construction of a business and cultural complex on the site will take seven years. The first competition for developing the 7.8-hectare island took place in 2006 and was won by Novaya Gollandiya, a company owned by businessmen Shalva Chigirinsky and Igor Kasayev. |
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ROBOT WARS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Two pupils from a specialist technical school show off their robot at the Innovations Forum at Lenexpo on Wednesday. |
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The Swedish clothes retailer H&M is to open its fourth store in St. Petersburg in 1,541-square meter premises in the Galeria retail and entertainment complex next to the Moscow Train Station. H&M has signed a long-term contract for the lease, said a representative of Jones Lang LaSalle, which is responsible for leasing the complex. The rental rate at Galeria is at least 2,000 rubles ($66) per square meter per month, and operators may additionally pay a percentage of their turnover, said Sergei Fyodorov, CEO of Praktis.
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MOSCOW — TNK-BP intensified its involvement in Vietnam on Wednesday by signing a contract for oil deliveries and discussing deals on a Vietnamese oil refinery and BP natural gas assets there. “This long-term contract for oil deliveries to Vietnam marks a key step in securing TNK-BP’s footprint in the Asia-Pacific over the long haul,” said Maxim Barsky, deputy chairman of TNK-BP’s management board. |
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MOSCOW — A court may suspend the competition for the Trebs and Titov oil deposits if any of the four companies disputes its removal from the running, Interfax reported Wednesday. |
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 The story of Yury Luzhkov’s ouster is extremely interesting and instructive, and it reveals a great deal about the structure of the current political system. Although Luzhkov’s firing is in line with President Dmitry Medvedev’s policy of dismissing heavyweight governors, this case is clearly different. |
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During the past few weeks, Russians watching state-controlled television channels were treated to a spectacle as President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin competed to prove who could better copy Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was sacked by the president on Tuesday. |
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 Ismo Alanko is a Finnish living legend. Having started out as a teenager with the prog-rock band Sight, Alanko went on to front Hassisen Kone, the new wave band which won the annual Finnish Rock Championship in 1980, and then the avant-rock Sielun Veljet. He had a successful solo career before performing with Ismo Alanko Saatio — a band featuring avant-garde accordion player Kimmo Pohjonen. Over the years and with different lineups, he has released more than 20 albums of original and very diverse music, but always with the Finnish spirit. Despite his fame, gold records and multiple awards, Alanko has never performed in St. |
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Pentti Hokkanen / For The St. Petersburg Times
The Capital Beat, a Finnish band whose music combines elements of ska, reggae and soul, will play at The Place on Saturday. |
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Sergei Shnurov seems to have miscalculated the reaction he would get when uploading the song “Khimki Forest” by his reformed band Leningrad onto YouTube late last week. (See article, page 3). Making a comeback two years after it disbanded, and with two concerts in Moscow and one stadium show in St. Petersburg already scheduled for November and December, the once hugely popular band needed something really strong to attract attention to themselves.
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Located on a streetlight-less corner across from the Chernyshevsky Gardens, Laplandia has been intriguing passers-by for months with its frosted windows that glimmer with the hues of the northern lights. The walk to the restaurant, starting among the hustle and bustle of Nevsky Prospekt, down the more subdued Grechesky Prospekt, and finally along a quiet, residential stretch of 5aya Sovietskaya Ulitsa, is both a literal and romantic progression away from the center of St. |
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 MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s departure won’t deal a body blow to the country’s economy, but foreign company executives and analysts said business in the capital is facing harrowing uncertainty that will result in a temporary slump, especially in the real estate sector. Luzhkov and his team have been linked to rampant corruption, but the political machine that they built has provided predictability for businesses over the years, people interviewed for this article said. |
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 SEOUL — Secretive North Korea on Thursday published a photograph of the youngest son and heir apparent to the communist state’s ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, the first official image of him ever released. The photo of Kim Jong-Un was taken after the ruling party’s highest-level meeting for 30 years, which bestowed powerful posts on him in a clear sign he was being groomed for the next dynastic succession in the communist state. |
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RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — U.S. envoy George Mitchell and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton converged on Israel and the Palestinian territories Thursday in a bid to rescue peace talks on the verge of collapse. |
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PARIS — Parents of hyperactive children should not be blamed for poor parenting, according to scientists who found that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a genetic condition. One in 50 children are affected by the disorder — which makes children restless, disruptive and easy to distract — and has often been attributed to bad parenting or too much sugar in the child’s diet. |
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ABU DHABI — Cutting-edge camel breeding technology, including embryo transfers and cloning, is being pioneered in the United Arab Emirates to reproduce the prized desert beasts that now fetch staggering sums. |
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Issues Archive