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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended the honor of Russia after it was branded a “mafia state” in the WikiLeaks memos and he was accused of being aware of a plot to murder a dissident in London. As the whistleblowing web site’s founder Julian Assange, wanted by Interpol over rape allegations in Sweden, remained out of sight, one of his close associates voiced fears that he could be assassinated. The United States meanwhile named an anti-terrorism expert to lead a review of security in the wake of the leaks of some 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables that has embarrassed and angered Washington’s friends and foes alike. Some of the most eye-catching of the latest revelations centered on Russia, with one memo quoting a Spanish prosecutor describing it as a virtual “mafia state” whose political parties operate “hand in hand” with organized crime. |
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STEAM SHIP
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A tug boat moves amid the ice on the Neva River on Wednesday, with St. Isaac’s Cathedral visible in the background. Weather forecasters are predicting more snow over the weekend. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev did not say a word about political stagnation or United Russia’s monopoly on power during his annual state-of-the-nation address Tuesday, passing up a chance to elaborate on remarks he made last week. Instead, the 72-minute speech focused on social issues, mainly demography, child protection and public utilities, treading lightly into territory where the ruling tandem’s dominant partner, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, rules unequivocally.
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ZURICH — Russia has been chosen over England and joint bids by Spain-Portugal and Netherlands-Belgium to host the 2018 World Cup, marking the first time the country will host the event. The 22 voters on FIFA’s executive committee, some accused of corruption in the weeks leading up to their meeting, chose the tiny desert nation of Qatar as the 2022 World Cup host, beating out the United States, with FIFA brushing aside doubts about blistering heat to bring soccer’s showcase event to the Middle East for the first time. |
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India-Russia Seminar ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A seminar devoted to Emerging Global Powers in Contemporary International Relations will take place at St. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday ordered $3.3 billion in tax relief for small businesses and called for the sale of more state-owned assets, including news media, by likening officials to a wealthy U.S. businessman from a Soviet poem. Delivering his annual state-of-the-nation address, Medvedev also outlined measures to stimulate regional economies, fight corruption and improve the system of state purchasing contracts. Announcing the tax move, Medvedev said he felt compelled to mitigate the effects on businesses of an increase in payroll taxes that comes into effect in January to finance retirement pensions and health care. |
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FESTIVE FIR
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The New Year tree on Palace Square, shown here against the backdrop of the Victory sculpture on top of the General Staff Headquarters building, awaits decoration after being put up Thursday. |
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World AIDS Day on Wednesday saw an unusually high number of protests in Russia as activists across the country joined forces to combat the epidemic and campaign for the protection of patients’ rights. Protests by people living with HIV/AIDS have escalated in recent months as more and more of them fall victim to medicine shortages. A mock funeral march was held at the protest meeting in St.
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MOSCOW — Russians will remember 2010 by the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro, the record heatwave, and the dismissal of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, judging by the list of top search queries for the past year’s events published by Yandex on Wednesday. The annual list, which is based on queries for Yandex, the country’s largest search engine with 64 percent of the market, does not include regular events like holidays and movie premieres. |
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 The first light-emitting diode (LED) production plant in Russia and the largest in Eastern Europe and the CIS was launched Monday in St. Petersburg by the Optogan Group with overall investment of 3.35 billion rubles ($106 million). The factory will employ up to 800 people at its 15,000-square-meter site on the Tallinskoye Shosse in the south of the city. |
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Oil is old. Metals are outmoded. Securities are pass?. The latest area attracting investment in Russia is antiques, as illustrated by the third international Collector exhibition currently showing at St. |
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Russian-Japanese relations are not what they were in the 18th century, when most Japanese citizens in Russia were fishermen who had been shipwrecked and were unable to return home, nor what they were in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union was Japan’s biggest trade partner. |
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MOSCOW — About 60,000 Cyrillic domain names improperly processed by registrar Ru-Center were unfrozen Tuesday, according to the national domain coordinator, which had ordered the temporary blockage. |
 MOSCOW — Russian airlines look ready to weather the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of overflight fees from European airlines. An agreement to eliminate the charges was announced Monday by Fernando Valenzuela, head of the EU delegation to Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Many of us put pencil marks on banknotes when we were kids, hoping to get them back someday. Thanks to the Internet, tracking bills online has become possible and is gaining popularity in Russia due to two special web sites. |
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MOSCOW — Global warming in the next 40 years will allow Russian authorities to save on central heating, increase agricultural production and extend sea navigation in the north, a leading Russian climatologist told a Russian-German conference Wednesday. But authorities will have to fork out money to reconstruct several big Siberian and Far Eastern cities to prevent them from collapsing as a result of a warmer climate, Vladimir Klimenko, head of Laboratory of Global Power Engineering Problems at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute told the conference co-organized by Alexander von Humbolt Foundation. |
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 President Dmitry Medvedev’s annual state-of-the-nation address could be held up as an exceptional illustration of his recent musings on how, without political competition, Russia’s leadership runs the risk of “becoming bronzed,” like a statue, and “degrading like any living organism that remains motionless. |
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It must be nice to be president. Could you imagine if every half hour Ekho Moskvy radio announced, instead of the news: “Tomorrow at this time you’ll be able to hear the news on this station. |
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 This year’s German Film Festival, which starts Friday and runs through Monday, showcases a new generation of film directors pinpointing the most pressing social and political issues in Germany, tackling the question of self-definition and exploring eternal topics such as human feelings and dignity. |
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×åñòü: honor, reputation, credit I’ve become a bit obsessed with ÷åñòü (honor). Just about every major Russian thinker and philologist wrote about it. |
 After 15 minutes of talking, Alexander Nevsky — aka “Mr. Universe” — is hungry. Really hungry. “Mind if we take a break?” he asks, his fork hovering eagerly over his brunch. Granted permission, Nevsky dives into the mammoth plate of five eggs before him. |
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Steadily, the waiter loads our table with a stove, ladle, rice, noodles, cabbage, leeks and large shiitake mushrooms. Just when there is no space left, a plate with three kinds of sliced meat arrives. |
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 BAGHDAD — Iraq’s interior minister called Thursday for the death penalty for a group of 39 detained al-Qaeda-linked suspects, even before they have been put on trial for allegedly plotting to bomb targets in Baghdad. Showing off the handcuffed suspects at a Baghdad press conference, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told reporters he is confident the men will be found guilty, citing their alleged confessions, documents and video found at their homes that he said showed their earlier attacks and plans to carry out new ones. |
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VATICAN CITY — Anyone have a fast, solar-powered electric popemobile for his holiness? The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI would gladly use one as another sign of his efforts to promote sustainable energy and take care of the planet, but one has yet to be offered. |
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CANCUN, Mexico — Prospects for a limited deal at the latest climate talks appeared to brighten with the U.S. and China narrowing differences on a key element: how to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. But other issues that go to the heart of a new global warming treaty — long-term commitments for cutting emissions — proved stubbornly unmoving, and out of reach for any resolution during the annual two-week conference. |
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CANCUN, Mexico — Prospects for a limited deal at the latest climate talks appeared to brighten with the U.S. and China narrowing differences on a key element: how to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. |
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CAIRO — Egypt’s top two opposition movements on Wednesday pulled out of parliamentary elections after they were all but shut out in a first round of voting, in a surprise response to widespread allegations of fraud. The move by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood — the country’s strongest opposition force — and the smaller, secular liberal Wafd party is a blow to this top U. |
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Issues Archive