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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev praised Moscow police for a violent crackdown on shocking downtown rioting near the Kremlin’s walls Saturday, even as police sought information on who had led the mob of some 5,500 football fans in shouting racist phrases and attacking North Caucasus natives. The unsanctioned rally demanding an investigation into the killing of a football fan on Dec. 5 erupted into violence after demonstrators spotted a group of dark-skinned teenagers and tried to beat them, news reports said. A similar rally took place Saturday in St. Petersburg, where some 3,000 football fans clashed with police during an unsanctioned downtown march, RIA-Novosti said. |
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ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Visitors on Monday walk through the Christmas market on Ploshchad Ostrovskogo, which is due to open Tuesday.
The annual market features traditional Russian crafts, mulled wine and an open-air ice rink. |
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MOSCOW — Talk about 15 minutes of fame. Or, in this case, 10 minutes. Three political parties without representation in the State Duma were invited to participate in a parliamentary discussion Friday — but for only 10 minutes each. And the topic was restricted to labor conditions in Russia. Yabloko, the liberal party shut out of the Duma in 2003 elections, joined the Kremlin-linked Right Cause and the leftist Patriots of Russia for the discussion thanks to a presidential bill giving registered parties not represented in the Duma or regional legislatures the right to speak at parliamentary sessions once a year.
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The confiscation of all assets belonging to anyone found guilty of a serious case of corruption, along with those of their close relatives, and “political death” for any law enforcement official caught in the act of corruption were just some of the possible measures against graft discussed at an international conference on anti-corruption strategies held at the city’s Legislative Assembly on Friday. |
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MOSCOW — A former senior Federal Drug Control official charged with fraud and abuse of office has pleaded guilty, and the Moscow City Court is set to sentence him Tuesday, Interfax reported. |
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Human rights activists have criticized the imprisonment of two members of the radical art group Voina as illegal, while British graffiti artist Banksy has joined the international campaign demanding the release of the artists. Banksy pledged to donate the proceeds from the sale of a limited series of his prints to Voina. |
All photos from issue.
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The annual Christmas market on Ploshchad Ostrovskogo opens its doors Tuesday and runs through Jan 7, offering visitors the chance to browse traditional Russian crafts, ice-skate in the open air in the center of the city, or simply warm themselves with a glass of mulled wine. “This year, there will be about 69 stalls,” said Polina Vavilina, press secretary of the Tsarskoselsky Carnival foundation that organizes the fair. “Petersburgers will be able to buy souvenirs and folk crafts from various regions of Russia, as well as sample traditional food — blini, pies, roast chestnuts and honey drinks,” she said. |
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GOING SOLO
Alexei Niolsky / Reuters
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plays the piano at a charity concert for children suffering from eye diseases and cancer in St. Petersburg at the Ice Palace on Friday evening. |
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MOSCOW — A two-day police hunt for an Ingush woman believed to have arrived in Moscow to carry out a terrorist attack ended in farce Friday when it was revealed that she had fled to the capital to meet her Internet lover. Law enforcement sources initially said Bella Barkinkhoyeva, 22, was suspected of being involved with extremist groups, including Muslim radicals and ethnic gangs.
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Medvedev on 2nd Term MOSCOW (SPT) — Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said he believes President Dmitry Medvedev wants to seek a second term in the 2012 presidential election, the BBC reported Friday. When asked whether the president wanted another term in the Kremlin, Dvorkovich answered: “I believe he does.” He also said he believed Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had not yet decided who will run. “I think that from what anyone can see when they look at what President Medvedev does … he wants to continue his term and continue the agenda he started in 2008,” Dvorkovich told the BBC in English, according to a transcript BBC supplied. |
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 MOSCOW — First lady Svetlana Medvedeva was dubbed the “biggest nuisance in years” by annoyed staff and officials in Bruges after behaving capriciously during a lightning visit to the Belgian city last week, a local newspaper reported. |
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KIEV, Ukraine — Want a better understanding of the world’s worst nuclear disaster? Come tour the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Beginning next year, Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the tragedy that occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday. |
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Salaries in St. Petersburg increased more from April this year than in other Russian cities, research carried out by the personnel management firm Case shows. Local enterprises are gradually making up the cuts brought about by the crisis, analysts say. St. Petersburgers earn on average 7.74 percent more than they did six months ago, while in Moscow incomes increased by 4.5 percent. Case and Ancor recruitment company surveyed 589 companies in 10 cities from August to November this year. Sixty-seven of the companies were in St. Petersburg. The fall in wages in St. Petersburg during the economic crisis was one of the most severe, and now a correction is taking place, said Natalya Danina, development director at Case. |
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 Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Tarja Halonen traveled to St. Petersburg on the first high-speed Allegro train launched between the city and Helsinki on Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber has found that Emergency Situations Ministry officials improperly spent millions of dollars of federal money in the past three years, Interfax reported Friday, citing the chamber’s recent report. The chamber found that several regional authorities had misspent emergency assistance and rebuilding funds. |
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MOSCOW — Kirov Governor Nikita Belykh said on his blog Friday that he has no complaints against lawyer and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, despite the fact that the latter is now being probed by the Investigative Committee. |
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ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — The leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan on Saturday agreed to move forward with a complicated and risky plan to build a natural gas pipeline across rugged territory plagued by war and terrorism. The pipeline, which would terminate in India, would bring huge amounts of gas to underdeveloped regions and could earn impoverished Afghanistan hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees. The route for the 1,700-kilometer TAPI pipeline from Turkmenistan would cross Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, where the Taliban and international forces are locked in battle, as well as some of Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas. |
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 A new joint venture created by St. Petersburg’s CrushMash and the U.K.’s Keltbray, a specialist in the field of demolition, aims to introduce a range of new technologies on the local market that will reduce damage to the environment and allow for greater levels of recycling. |
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MOSCOW — International companies doing business in Russia will be subject to greater scrutiny by the United Kingdom beginning in April, when a draconian anti-corruption law enters into force, lawyers warn. The U.K. Bribery Act will apply to any company that has an office in Britain or sells its products there. It applies a “zero tolerance” principle, making companies liable for their own and their partners’ corrupt practices, even if there is no connection with the British part of the business or the companies are not aware of the corruption. Justin Williams, a partner in the Akin Gump international law firm, said the law differs in significant ways from the U. |
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 MOSCOW — PepsiCo is setting up a $250 million ecosystem of farming and production in the southern city of Azov, opening a new potato chip plant and laying the cornerstone for a beverage plant in close cooperation with Rostov regional authorities. |
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MOSCOW — Siemens will most likely do its initial projects at the Skolkovo technology hub in the areas of bio or nuclear medicine, and could show results by late 2011, Siemens Russia vice president Martin Gitsels told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. Similar projects elsewhere have had budgets of up to to $4 million, Gitsels said. |
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 Russia’s blogosphere has always been a treasure chest for people who love conspiracy theories. On Runet, Holocaust and 9/11 denial are moderate views. So it’s no surprise that after the latest batch of documents were published by WikiLeaks, Runet began spreading the theory that Julian Assange was a secret agent of the CIA and that the publications were a controlled leak of information designed to cause trouble for regimes the United States doesn’t like. |
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On Thursday, the world marked International Anti-Corruption Day. President Dmitry Medvedev, who has declared that combatting corruption is one of his most important political and economic programs, should declare it a holiday for all government officials. |
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 The flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov dominated the tabloids last week after he reportedly hit a director’s assistant at a concert rehearsal. She showed off a large bruise on her thigh, while in a bizarre twist, Kirkorov complained he suffered from “fits” and fled to a psychiatric hospital in Israel. Kirkorov, a towering figure with a taste for black eyeliner and flashy Roberto Cavalli outfits, has never left the headlines since marrying the nation’s favorite pop diva Alla Pugachyova in 1994, although they divorced in 2005. |
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 The most important aspect of Maurice Ravel’s music is the sheer diversity of its influences. He is most often compared to Debussy, and it is true that an inattentive listener could mistake some of his early piano music for the work of the older Frenchman. |
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MOSCOW — A majority of Russians are weary of rampant corruption, with 52 percent ready to report graft, according to an annual corruption report by Transparency International released Thursday. But this dissatisfaction has yet to translate into action, said Yelena Panfilova, head of Transparency International’s Russia office. “We don’t know whether they would dare to actually do that [report graft],” Panfilova said. “Only 7 percent have actually faced corruption and thought it necessary to contest it,” she said. Tellingly, the number of people who have to pay bribes remains unchanged at 26 percent, placing Russia on par with Belarus, Thailand, Turkey and Papua New Guinea, according to the new report. |
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 Russia’s leading preservationist campaign group Arkhnadzor called on the public last week to gather Saturday in protest of what they say is an attack on the country’s cultural heritage. |
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 Just inside the entrance, a placid well-fed cat lounging in the surprisingly warm corridor looks up at visitors. A small boy sits on a sofa, knitting from a ball of pink wool with extreme concentration. In the next room, children do their homework with the help of an older girl. Three boisterous kids rush past noisily, heading to the ceramics workshop. |
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 STOCKHOLM — The suicide bomber who killed himself in Stockholm carried three sets of bombs and had sent threats referring to “jihad” in an e-mail shortly before his death, a prosecutor said Monday. Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand identified the suicide bomber behind Saturday’s blasts as 28-year-old Taimour al-Abdaly, a Swedish citizen who had lived in Britain for the past 10 years. |
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PARIS — Masked French gendarmes detained a 17-year-old who took a class full of preschoolers hostage Monday, releasing all the children safely after hours of tense negotiations that drew nationwide attention. |
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AMSTERDAM — Amsterdam police called for the public to provide information on a possible child pornography ring Monday after a teacher was arrested on suspicion of molesting dozens of very young children. The 27-year-old suspect in the Amsterdam case worked as a substitute teacher for at least two preschools in the city and also offered babysitting services online in what is feared to be one of the worst cases of sexual abuse in the Netherlands, the city’s mayor said at a late-night press conference Sunday. |
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A South Korean fishing boat sank in the Antarctic Ocean’s frigid waters Monday, with 22 sailors feared killed in the open sea where vessels trawl for deep-water fish. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive