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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fueled speculation about the identity of Moscow’s next mayor by holding a United Russia meeting Friday with only one of the potential candidates in attendance. Sergei Sobyanin, Putin’s deputy and chief of staff, was promptly tagged by the media as the main favorite after attending the meeting to discuss mayoral nominees at Putin’s residence outside Moscow. The 52-year-old Sobyanin is not seeking the job, but his chances of getting it anyway have increased, Kommersant reported Saturday, citing unidentified officials. “According to Kommersant’s information, he is not very excited about this. But the party — or at least its leader — could say: ‘It is necessary,’” the newspaper said, quoting a Soviet-era slogan in an apparent reference to Putin, who heads United Russia but is not a card-carrying party member. |
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CULTURE CAPITAL
A poster stuck up on a column on Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa as part of a flash-mob event to publicize plans to turn the surrounding architectural ensemble into a specially-protected zone. |
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Author and Kremlin political opponent Eduard Limonov opened the St. Petersburg branch of his newly formed party, The Other Russia, at a conference at the Angleterre hotel on Saturday. Regional branches of The Other Russia were earlier launched in Ryazan and Krasnoyarsk. Saturday’s conference in Komsomolsk-Na-Amure in the Far East was disrupted by the SOBR (The Special Rapid Response Unit), who detained participants and took them to a police precinct to forcibly fingerprint them.
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LONDON — Igor Sutyagin, the only convicted spy from this summer’s swap to profess his innocence, is an unlikely figure to have participated in the most dramatic public episode of international espionage since the Cold War. “I would not defecate on the same field as them,” Sutyagin said of his accusers. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Inteko billionaire Yelena Baturina mysteriously rented a humble residence in a village some 50 kilometers south of Vienna together with Inteko vice president Oleg Soloshchansky, Austrian media reported. In March, Baturina, wife of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, rented a 150-square-meter house in the center of Breitenbrunn, which has fewer than 2,000 inhabitants, but nobody in the village remembers seeing her there, Vienna’s Die Presse newspaper reported Friday. The landlord, Josef Kloyber, said the one-year rental contract had been canceled recently. “[Baturina’s] lawyer called and asked for an annulment,” he was quoted as saying. |
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BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Anatoly, a 72-year-old St. Petersburger, feeds the birds on the Griboyedov Canal embankment on Monday. Forecasters are predicting highs of 12 deg. Celsius through the end of the week. |
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Ella Polyakova, one of the city’s most prominent human rights advocates and the chairwoman of the Soldiers’ Mothers pressure group, is on trial for “participating in an illegal protest meeting” and “resisting the police.” Polyakova was among 12 local residents who were detained by the city’s police during an opposition event on Palace Square on Aug.
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MOSCOW — European election monitors, who backed out of observer missions for Russia’s 2007 and 2008 elections because of Russian restrictions, want to be invited for 2011 and 2012 elections without limitations. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is seeking to deploy monitors for Russia’s next two national elections “without any restrictions,” ODIHR director Janez Lenarcic told Kommersant in an interview published Friday. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court began hearings Thursday on a lawsuit against inventor Viktor Petrik on accusations that he developed and promoted water filters that were ineffective and potentially harmful. |
 MOSCOW — Although Yury Luzhkov made a fair share of enemies during his 18 years as mayor, he also won respect from thousands of public sector workers and pensioners by using municipal funds to boost their income. With Luzhkov’s ouster, teachers, police officers and pensioners voiced concern Tuesday about cuts to their incomes — cuts that some said they had already heard were in the pipeline. |
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MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee said Thursday that probes have been reopened into the deaths of five journalists after it received new information from a U. |
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MOSCOW — An election campaign took an odd turn when the Central Elections Commission banned the Communist Party from boycotting the upcoming legislative vote in the Krasnodar region. The Communists decided last week to withdraw all 39 candidates from the Oct. 10 election after four of them had their registrations canceled on a court order over paperwork problems. But election officials informed the party Wednesday that the boycott violated the party’s charter and infringed on the rights of the other candidates. It was unclear whether all candidates on the Communist ticket in Krasnodar had supported the boycott. “Some of the candidates have already withdrawn their bids. |
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 MOSCOW — These “pirates” may be sailing against the tide, but they are riding a wave of popular opinion. A group of activists in their 20s who advocate modernizing the economy by “copying everything” are trying to register as a political party just as Russia tightens its anti-piracy policies in a bid for membership in the World Trade Organization. |
 MOSCOW — Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the outgoing leader of the Kalmykia republic, managed to keep his other job last Wednesday, winning elections to head the World Chess Federation, or FIDE. A State Duma deputy said Ilyumzhinov’s FIDE bid, backed by Kremlin aide Arkady Dvorkovich, was meant by Russian authorities as a sinecure for the flamboyant politician, who has governed the impoverished Buddhist republic of 300,000 people since 1993. |
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Viktor Vekselberg, chairman of United Co. RusAl, said he could see no early resolution to the shareholder conflict around GMK Norilsk Nickel, in which the aluminum producer owns 25 percent, Bloomberg reported Monday. “It’s hard to forecast when it will end, but I think it won’t be soon,” Vekselberg told reporters on Saturday in Yalta, Ukraine, the news wire reported. The battle for control of Norilsk, Russia’s largest mining company, between RusAl co-owner Oleg Deripaska and billionaire Vladimir Potanin began in 2008 and reignited after an annual general meeting in June. RusAl said the board election, which left it with three seats — one less than Potanin’s Interros Holding — was manipulated, a charge Norilsk and Interros have denied. |
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 During the six months that a nationwide cash-for-clunkers style initiative has been underway, 12,603 cars have been given in for recycling in St. Petersburg. |
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Manufacturers of bread and confectionary goods have been warning retailers of price increases of 5 to 10 percent since August. Abnormal weather conditions, namely the drought and wildfires, caused crop failures and are now leading to a five to 40 percent increase in primary commodity prices, according to a letter from Karavai manufacturer, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti. |
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MOSCOW — The Economic Development Ministry is proposing to extend existing export duties on timber for the next year, which would further delay the government’s initial plan to raise the tariffs to a prohibitive level, Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday. |
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Wireless provider Skartel, which operates under the Yota brand, hopes to get back the frequencies it was planning to use to build its fourth-generation network that were taken away by the government, without having to go to court. Russian Technologies, which owns 25 percent of Skartel, is leveraging its general director, Sergei Chemezov, and his relationship with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, to facilitate a resolution to the conflict. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s annual inflation rate grew for a second month in a row after the country’s worst drought in at least half a century hindered agricultural output, Bloomberg reported Monday. |
 MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ is starting production of a bright yellow Lada Kalina Sport — just like the one Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used for his road trip on the Amur highway at the end of August. “After the event, there was a barrage of phone calls to the AvtoVAZ hotline from people who wanted to buy this kind of car,” company spokesman Igor Burenkov said. |
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MOSCOW — A new seaport may be built in Murmansk as part of a government initiative to develop the northern city as a key transportation hub, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Thursday. |
 MOSCOW — Cumulative revenue for Russia’s biggest 500 companies in 2009 fell by 3 percent over the previous year, according to an annual rating published by Finans magazine last Monday. It is the first time in the ranking’s four-year history that the number has dropped. |
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MOSCOW — Bashneft, controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s AFK Sistema, may be favored to win Russia’s largest undistributed oil fields as one of only two producers cleared to bid, Bloomberg reported. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry has warned U.S. legislators against passing a law that would punish Russians linked to the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, saying it would undermine cooperation, Reuters reported. A bill introduced in Congress on Wednesday would bar 60 Russians from the United States and its financial markets, sanctions that would be lifted only after those responsible for Magnitsky’s jail death were brought to justice. |
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 A vivid example of how detached from reality Yury Luzhkov became in his last weeks in office was when he gave an interview to Ren-TV’s “Nedelya” program on Sept. 18. He was asked what percentage of City Hall’s contracts were fulfilled by Inteko, the construction company owned by Yelena Baturina, his billionaire wife. |
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In 2005, then-President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. As time passes, I find myself agreeing with him more and more. |
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 Twenty years ago, Russia’s only true rock martyr died in a car crash at the age of 27. Viktor Tsoi, lead singer of rock band Kino, left behind a brooding series of songs that still remain deeply popular among younger generations. This fall, cinema screens are showing Tsoi once again in a remake of the cult film, “Igla,” or “Needle,” and on Thursday, musicians will play his songs in a concert in Moscow titled “20 Years Without Tsoi. |
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 MOSCOW — The Moscow Bolshoi Theater’s 235th season got off to a highly unusual start with the world premiere of a new ballet by the celebrated French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, co-produced by the Bolshoi and the choreographer’s own Aix-en-Provence-based Ballet Preljocaj. |
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 Three of the five most ecologically clean countries in the world — Sweden, Norway and Finland — are situated in the Nordic region. The average Finn drinks 23.5 kilograms of coffee a year. The longest car tunnel in the world is in Norway. The oldest flag in the world belongs to Denmark. None of these facts are well known in Russia, but the Nordic Week in St. |
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 PARIS — Japan on Monday became the latest country after Britain and the United States to issue a travel alert for its citizens amid growing fears of a major Al-Qaeda attack on landmark sites in Europe. Tokyo joined Washington and London in issuing an alert warning of a “possible terrorist attack” by Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups against their citizens traveling in Europe. |
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BRASILIA — Dilma Rousseff, the woman President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wants to succeed him in office, faces a runoff vote after falling unexpectedly short of an outright victory in Brazil’s presidential election. |
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STOCKHOLM — Robert Edwards of Britain won the Nobel Medicine Prize Monday for the development of in vitro fertilization. Edwards, 85, won the prestigious prize for his work on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), which has helped millions of infertile couples to have a child. |
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SARAJEVO — Hardline Bosnian Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik won presidential elections in Bosnia’s Serb-run entity Republika Srpska (RS), partial results showed Monday. |
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Issues Archive