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 While thousands of St. Petersburg residents celebrated FC Zenit’s early victory in the National Champions’ League on Sunday night, a number of Zenit fans wreaked havoc and violence in the center of the city, though the city’s police later denied that there had been any trouble. Witnesses said that Zenit fans were involved in a number of conflicts with local OMON special task police officers around the city center. The first major fight broke out at Manezhnaya Ploshchad, where about 200 fans threw bottles and flares at about 30 OMON policemen, RIA Novosti reported. |
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MAKING A SPLASH
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A wave splashes against the cobbles by the Winter Canal, against the background of the Neva River and the Peter and Paul Fortress. Forecasters are predicting rain until the weekend. |
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In a surprising, apparently conciliatory gesture, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has offered one of her fiercest critics a key position at City Hall. Yulia Minutina of the Living City movement, which campaigns for the preservation of the historic center of St. Petersburg and is extremely critical of City Hall’s construction policies, has been invited to become deputy head of the Committee for the Protection and Preservation of Historic Monuments.
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MOSCOW — Russian authorities claimed Monday that a Russian lawyer who was left to die in jail after exposing police corruption is suspected of stealing the $230 million that he said Interior Ministry officers had defrauded from the state. The case of Sergei Magnitsky — who died last year at age 37 when the pancreatitis he developed in jail was left untreated — is being scrutinized as a barometer of President Dmitry Medvedev’s commitment to the rule of law and also of investment-hungry Russia’s true openness to foreign capital. |
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MOSCOW — Tula’s mayor has rebelled against United Russia after being kicked out of the party’s faction in the local legislature during an emergency session Saturday. |
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MOSCOW — Motorists can consume kefir and kvas without having to worry about the zero-tolerance policy on drunk driving, the country’s top traffic cop said. There is no scientific evidence that lightly fermented drinks lead to intoxication, but even if it does, such “endogenous alcohol” vanishes after a short time, traffic police chief Viktor Kiryanov told Interfax in an interview published Saturday. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin returned from a trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, on Saturday with an agreement on starting construction of the South Stream gas pipeline and a puppy from his Bulgarian counterpart. |
All photos from issue.
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As antifascist activists marked the fifth anniversary of the murder of the 20-year-old antifascist activist and punk musician Timur Kacharava on Saturday, they claimed that they are under increasing pressure from the police, while the threat of attacks from nationalist radicals has not decreased. |
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With the number of immigrants in St. Petersburg increasing every year, the city needs to focus on programs to help migrant workers and their children adapt to the local environment and to promote tolerance in society, city officials said last week. |
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Hundreds of people beat drums, blew whistles and sounded other instruments Sunday at a central Moscow rally to protest the brutal beatings of Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin and Khimki forest defender Konstantin Fetisov this month. More than 500 people “armed” with drums, whistles, horns and pipes attended the rally near the Chistiye Prudy metro station, which was authorized by City Hall and ended peacefully, said Yevgenia Chirikova, a rally co-organizer and a leading defender of the Khimki forest. “The rally was very noisy, dynamic, but civilized,” she said by telephone. Kashin, who was beaten by two unidentified assailants on Nov. 6, remained in serious condition in an intensive care ward through the weekend, and his colleagues from the Kommersant daily distributed a mock newspaper called ÊàøèíÚ (Kashin) at the rally. |
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 MINSK — Alexander Lukashenko knows he will win a fourth term as president of Belarus when voters cast their ballots next month. He also knows that this election will be the pivot — or the pothole — that defines his rule. |
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 Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse company is to invest at least 12 billion rubles in construction on New Holland island after it won a tender Monday. The committee in charge of the tender to redevelop the island, situated in the center of the city, opened the envelope containing applications for the reconstruction of the island Thursday. Applications were submitted by two companies: Novaya Gollandiya Development (NGD) and Meridian. |
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Russia’s largest Stockmann department store — and the second largest in the world — opened its doors on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Vosstaniya on Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Real estate developer Shalva Chigirinsky may return to Russia now that criminal investigations targeting him for tax evasion have been closed, Vedomosti has learned. Two energy companies Chigirinsky headed, Moskovskaya Neftyanaya Kompania, or MNK, and its successor Moskovskaya Neftegazovaya Kompania, or MNGK, were investigated for criminal tax evasion, but the cases have been closed, a source close to the businessman told Vedomosti. |
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MOSCOW — Entrepreneurs would no longer face prison sentences for incorrect paperwork if a bill proposed on Saturday by top United Russia lawmakers is approved. |
 YOKOHAMA, Japan — U.S. President Barack Obama commended President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday for moving Russia forward and for condemning attacks on journalists and offered assurances that getting the Senate to ratify the New START nuclear weapons treaty is a “top priority” of his administration, Reuters reported. |
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YOKOHAMA, Japan — Japan’s prime minister strongly protested President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to a disputed island and said in a meeting on the sidelines of a Pacific Rim leaders’ conference Saturday that the two nations must build mutual trust. |
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MOSCOW — Top sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko said Saturday that the government would not ban sales of all frozen chicken starting next year, backtracking on his previous statement earlier this month. Current restrictions on frozen chicken would only expand next year to ban its use for manufacturing “best quality” foods, he said after talks with European Union trade experts, RIA-Novosti reported. A market source and an official said Saturday that the new restrictions would ban manufacturers from using frozen chicken in products unless they subject these products to heat treatment afterward, Interfax reported. Frozen chicken currently cannot be an ingredient in baby food and diet food, Onishchenko said. |
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 MOSCOW — Shoe retailers in Russia including Ekonika and Ralf Ringer are focusing on women because male clients are buying less than half as much footwear as their female counterparts — and at lower prices. |
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‘Bomb Cat’ Charges? ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg resident could face three years in prison on charges of filing a fraudulent terrorism report for claiming that a bomb was planted in her cat, Interfax reported Friday, citing a law enforcement source. |
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MOSCOW — Clients at National Reserve Bank withdrew 1.5 billion rubles ($49 million) in the two days after a raid by police and investigators, more than the lender lost on the rescue of Rossiisky Kapital, owner Alexander Lebedev said in a letter to prosecutors. |
 MOSCOW — Finding a hotel room built to international standards and priced at Western rates is a challenge in the nation’s high-cost capital. This begs the question: Why are Western hotel chains hesitant to fill the gap in Moscow — and why are some rushing to open in Russia’s smaller cities? The answer comes straight from the Western hotel playbook. A Russian city with a population of several hundred thousand people is a prime destination for hotel development, said international and regional executives of Western hotel companies. |
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 LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — Unlike in the United States where the pizza delivery industry is more than 50 years old, the Russian market started developing only in the 1990s and will demonstrate stable growth in the coming years with more customers ordering pizzas to homes and offices, a U. |
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MOSCOW — As per the Central Bank’s requirement, the majority of the city’s exchange points have renamed themselves operkassy, or operational cashiers, the legal equivalent of a full-fledged bank office. But in practice, most are still only exchanging currency. |
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MOSCOW — Rustam Tariko’s Russian Standard has agreed to purchase Nemiroff, one of Ukraine’s largest alcohol producers, an acquaintance of both companies’ management and a distributor for one of the companies told Vedomosti. |
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 Recently, Russia commemorated the victims of political repression, including tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens arrested, brutalized, sent to labor camps or executed under Stalin. Until recently, the Oct. 30 date has passed with scant notice outside small groups of dedicated human rights activists. |
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A recent radio feature by Anne Garrells, a U.S. correspondent with National Public Radio in Moscow, quoted a Russian engineer who described the Moscow-Volga canal: “The Moscow River, which often dried up, could not supply the capital’s growing needs. |
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 YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi began the nuts and bolts work of reviving her political movement Monday, consulting lawyers about having her now-disbanded party declared legal again, her spokesman said. Suu Kyi was released at the weekend from 7 1/2 years in detention. |
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PRAGUE — An international team of scientists opened the tomb of a famous 16th-century Danish astronomer Monday in an effort to shed light on his sudden and mysterious death. |
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 Take an eccentric 59-year-old author with wanderlust, a dilapidated van, two intrepid Russian guides and the vastness of Siberia, and you have a small taste of Ian Frazier’s latest book, “Travels in Siberia.” In this chronicle of the author’s 17-year quest to explore areas of Russia most fear to trek, Frazier is downright smitten with what he calls “Russia-love. |
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Issues Archive