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MOSCOW — Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov lashed out at President Dmitry Medvedev on CNN television, accusing the president of not fulfilling any of his promises and of negligence in connection with terrorist attacks and this summer’s drought. Luzhkov was fired by Medvedev last week for “loss of confidence” after facing accusations of negligence for remaining on vacation while Moscow choked on toxic smog this summer. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin accused him on Wednesday of being a poor manager. Luzhkov, dressed casually in a black polo shirt with stripes, told CNN that Medvedev had not taken charge as “calamities, terrorist acts and bad harvests” unfolded during his two-year presidency. |
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FASHION FRENZY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Visitors to the 36th International Fashion Industry Exhibition, focusing on textiles and light industry, try on garments at one of the stands on Thursday. The event, which opened on Wednesday, runs through Saturday at the St. Peterburg Sports and Concert Complex (SKK). |
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MOSCOW — State Duma Deputy Ashot Yegiazaryan has disappeared without trace, the leader of his party’s parliamentary faction said Wednesday, fueling speculation that the Liberal Democrat lawmaker might have fled the country. Igor Lebedev, head of the Liberal Democrats’ Duma faction, said he and his colleagues had no idea about Yegizaryan’s whereabouts.
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 Deputies of the St. Petersburg parliament have voiced their opposition to a suggestion that Moscow’s controversial 98-meter tall monument to Peter the Great be moved to St. Petersburg. The statue, which has found itself under fire since Yury Luzhkov, under whom it was erected, was fired from his position as mayor of Moscow last week, was offered to St. |
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It has been a week since a group of ten cheated investors in off-plan residential property developments began an indefinite hunger strike in a desperate effort to attract the attention of the authorities, and the outcome has so far been disheartening. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Investigators have located the underground workshop that made the gun used to kill journalist Anna Politkovskaya, pushing forward their inquiry into her 2006 death, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported Wednesday. But Politkovskaya’s editor expressed skepticism over the report, which appeared ahead of the four-year anniversary of her death Thursday. The workshop, located in a tramcar plant in an unspecified Moscow suburb and run by a local locksmith, rebuilt air guns into actual firearms, a law enforcement official told the newspaper. Police investigators have confirmed that the gun used in Politkovskaya’s murder was made in the workshop and have also linked the workshop to a gun silencer used in the 2004 killing of reputed mafia boss Mikhail “Monya” Pishchik, the unidentified official said. |
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HELPING HANDS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Teachers gather for the unveiling of the Monument to Teachers, created by St. Petersburg sculptor Alexander Chernoshokov, on Uchitelskaya Ulitsa on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — Eleven Russian students are among 20 people detained in the United States on suspicion of working for an international group of hackers that stole at least $70 million from bank accounts worldwide. The FBI called the hacker ring “one of the largest cyber criminal cases we have ever investigated,” but news reports said the Russian detainees were only underlings looking for easy cash.
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MOSCOW — A self-proclaimed alien from the star Sirius has been arrested in Novosibirsk on charges of organizing a nationwide totalitarian sect that brainwashed and sexually abused members, police said Tuesday. A local court on Saturday approved the arrest of Konstantin Rudnev, 43, leader of the Ashram Shambala religious group, a Novosibirsk police spokeswoman said by phone. |
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Woman Left Legless ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A woman lost a leg after falling under a train at Ladozhskaya metro station on Wednesday evening, Interfax reported Thursday, citing the press service of the St. |
 MOSCOW — A dark booth. A hole in the wall. Or just a window next to a casino door. It was inside these currency exchange booths where Russians first traded rubles for American dollars in post-Soviet days. Now, as the government carries out its long-time plan to shut the last of the standalone booths, with the Central Bank making them illegal this past Friday, Muscovites have mixed feelings about their disappearance. |
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Tobacco advertising in Russia, where more than half of adults smoke, should be outlawed by 2012, and smoking in public places banned by 2015, the government press service said Monday, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — European minority shareholders are unlikely to support United Company RusAl’s initiative to re-elect Norilsk Nickel’s board of directors at an emergency shareholders meeting scheduled for Oct. 21, one of the investors said Wednesday. An investment fund based in Western Europe that owns a minority stake in Norilsk Nickel does not support RusAl’s initiative to re-elect the board and will vote against it, said a fund representative, who did not want the fund’s name mentioned because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Minority shareholders are interested in finishing the feud between RusAl and Norilsk Nickel,” the fund’s representative told The St. |
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GOING, GONE!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Krugly Rynok (“Round Market”) building on the River Moika embankment was auctioned off to Sovkomflot on Wednesday by the St. Petersburg Property Fund for 200 million rubles ($6.7 million). |
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NICOSIA, Cyprus — President Dmitry Medvedev’s first-ever visit to ethnically divided Cyprus will be an “historic” event underscoring the two countries’ very close ties, the island’s president said Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. Medvedev’s visit will also help boost slow-moving talks aimed at reunifying the east Mediterranean island, Dimitris Christofias said.
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MOSCOW — IKEA is changing its strategy in Russia to focus on existing stores rather than expansion to more sites, new IKEA CEO for Russia Per Wendschlag said Wednesday. No new sites will be opened in the next three to five years, he said. “We put in the tenants who were waiting,” Wendschlag said of the company’s Mega malls. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow region prosecutor was sentenced to 15 years in prison Tuesday for ordering the destruction of 50,000 mobile phones belonging to Yevroset and seized by police in April 2006. |
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 While the global recovery is stalling, renewed concerns over sovereign debt and bank liabilities are adding to the gloom of sluggish growth and high unemployment. This is exacerbated by a looming currency and trade war between surplus countries such as China and deficit countries like the United States. |
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Reading tea leaves — or coffee grounds if you happen to be in Russia — won’t help anyone guess who the next mayor of Moscow will be. My prediction is that our leaders will opt for the candidate who is least likely to make a play for the Kremlin in the future. |
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 Jimi Tenor, an innovative and multi-faceted Finnish saxophone player, will headline the annual Ethno Mechanics music festival, dedicated to world music and held at the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center this weekend. Appropriately, he will bring some intense rhythms to the event, coming with Kabu Kabu, a group featuring a West African rhythm section, with whom he has worked for several years. Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times by phone recently, Tenor said he met the musicians six or seven years ago when he was looking for an African percussionist to use on a track. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
Israeli-born South Africa-raised singer-songwriter Yoav, known for his unique guitar-playing style, plays at Kosmonavt on Wednesday. |
 Jimi Tenor, an innovative and multi-faceted Finnish saxophone player, will headline the annual Ethno Mechanics music festival, dedicated to world music and held at the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center this weekend. Appropriately, he will bring some intense rhythms to the event, coming with Kabu Kabu, a group featuring a West African rhythm section, with whom he has worked for several years.
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Barto, the Moscow electro-punk band whose song has been under investigation for “extremism” after being performed at a rally, will showcase its new album with a concert at Tantsy on Saturday. For the album, which is called “Intelligence, Conscience and Honor,” the band recorded a new version of the song, featuring Alexei Nikonov of the St. Petersburg band P.T.V.P. reciting his poetry, but the track will not be released on CD. Instead, it will only be available on the Internet version of the album, Barto vocalist Maria Lyubicheva said Thursday. According to Lyubicheva, it was the label that took the decision to exclude the song — called “Ready” (“Gotov”) — from the finished album. |
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 Mention Sergei Rachmaninov to your average concertgoer, and one of the long-breathed, sentimental melodies from the Second Piano Concerto is sure to enter their head instantaneously. |
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If history is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past, then a meal at the recently opened Istoria (History) is in need of serious revision. Nothing is quite what it seems and confusion and unevenness are the defining characteristics. Stepping down into the restaurant from the bustling street is a bit like entering a shabby-chic gift shop. |
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 Standing in the middle of a penthouse suite overlooking Lincoln Center in New York, William Christie seems comfortable, relaxed and satisfied. And why shouldn’t he? The 66 year-old musician is at the top of his game. He is inarguably the world’s foremost conductor of baroque music, is celebrating three decades’ worth of triumphs on the world’s greatest stages and is seeing his many years of labor spent championing early music bear fruit. |
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 PESHAWAR, Pakistan — More than 40 NATO vehicles were destroyed in two separate Taliban attacks in Pakistan Wednesday as the militants stepped up their efforts to disrupt supply routes into Afghanistan. In the latest attack at least 26 NATO oil tankers were torched when militants opened fire on a convoy of dozens of vehicles parked in Nowshera in northwestern Pakistan, police said. |
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BUDAPEST — Hungary’s toxic sludge spill, which has killed four people, reached the Danube River on Thursday, threatening to contaminate the waterway’s entire ecosystem, officials said “The red mud pollution has reached the Danube — its so-called Mosoni Branch, about 10 kilometers from the main branch of the river — this morning,” said Tibor Dobson, the local head of the disaster relief services. |
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SANAA, Yemen — A British embassy car came under rocket attack in Yemen on Wednesday and a Frenchman working for an Austrian oil firm was shot dead, highlighting the growing dangers in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest nation. The Yemeni government pointed the figure at Al-Qaeda. |
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STOCKHOLM — Peruvian-Spanish author Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the Swedish Academy said. The 74-year-old author, a one-time presidential candidate, is best known for works such as “Conversation in the Cathedral” and “The Feast of the Goat” but is also a prolific journalist. |
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Issues Archive