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 St. Petersburg’s famous trolleybuses may disappear from the city to be replaced with high-speed trams, City Hall announced last week.
The idea of getting rid of the city’s trolleybuses was announced by City Governor Valentina Matviyenko at a meeting with representatives of Germany’s MAN Truck&Bus company on Thursday. |
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People who attended Strategy 31 rallies to demand that their constitutional right of assembly be respected by the authorities were within their right to do so, while the police acted illegally in breaking up the rallies and arresting protesters, a St. |
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Stray Dogs on Increase
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — There are more than 7,000 stray dogs in St. Petersburg and attempts to control their population are futile, local experts say.
“There are more than 7,000 stray dogs in St. Petersburg now, and in the fall their numbers usually increase to 10,000 after dog owners leave their pets behind when leaving their dachas,” Yury Andreyev, head of the city’s Veterinary Board, was quoted by Interfax as saying last week. |
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St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko was far from the highest earning city official last year, earning just 2.3 million rubles ($81,000) — far less than some of her lower-ranking officials. |
 The iconic sculpture of Samson pulling open the jaws of a lion that crowns the central cascade of fountains in the suburb of Peterhof returned to its pedestal after restoration on Sunday.
Three months ago, the symbol of Peterhof left its historical home for the first time since 1947. |
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The British Consulate General in St. Petersburg hosted a reception and presentation for representatives of the local LGBT community Tuesday.
“The United Kingdom government is committed to defending the basic rights and freedoms of vulnerable groups, not least gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people,” Deputy Consul General Ben Greenwood said in an email Tuesday. |
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The St. Petersburg Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation denied Tuesday that Oleg Vorotnikov, a key activist in the award-winning radical art group Voina, has been put on the federal wanted list after he left a routine interrogation fearing he would be put under arrest by counter-extremism Center E operatives on Saturday. |
All photos from issue.
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 BERLIN — A critical rift between NATO and Russia over a European missile shield appeared to ossify Friday, even as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov toned down Moscow’s criticism of the alliance’s military operation in Libya.
Lavrov, speaking at a news conference after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Berlin, reiterated Moscow’s stance that a joint missile shield should be formed to defend both NATO members and Russia from potential missile threats. |
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DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Tajik government forces haves scored a significant victory in the fight against Islamist insurgents, killing at least 10 suspected militants in the turbulent eastern Rasht Valley. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev took a step toward fulfilling a promise to examine residential neighborhoods nationwide Monday, dropping by a six-story apartment building during a trip to Irkutsk to inspect its courtyard and mailboxes.
Medvedev stopped his cortege while driving to a local youth sports school, exiting his car to take a walk through the courtyard and enter the building’s hall, where he poked his finger in unlocked gray-green mailboxes. |
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MOSCOW — A man upset over the loss of his driver’s license set himself on fire in a Krasnoyarsk regional courthouse, killing himself and a court official when the blaze engulfed the building, police said. |
 MOSCOW — While President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin keep the nation guessing whether either will run for the presidency, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov became the first politician to announce that he will stand in next year’s election. |
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MOSCOW — Travelers driving to Sheremetyevo Airport dread the short stretch just beyond the Moscow Ring Road near the sprawling Mega shopping mall.
“Things are getting worse and worse,” said Georgy Idrisov, who regularly flies as part of his research work on national economic development. |
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 TIKHVIN, Leningrad Region — In Soviet times this larger-than-life industrial plant in Tikhvin, a city near St. Petersburg, hummed with 20,000 employees and the manufacture of parts for giant tractors.
Those days are long gone. But the factory’s walls now will house a new venture: Investment conglomerate IST Group will use the plant to make freight cars using systems from a U. |
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Because of the ice coating the Gulf of Finland, the growth rate of cargo turnover in St. Petersburg’s port has fallen, and dockworkers have received about $10 million less than they could have, shipping experts said. |
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The Supreme Court has rejected City Hall’s attempt to fine officials for misappropriation of budget funds.
Bureaucrats from the city’s Avtovo administrative district are challenging a law concerning administrative violations relating to the St. Petersburg budget introduced in June 2010 that will result in fines being levied for misspending of state budget funds. |
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The architectural project for Gazprom’s planned business center that was originally intended to be built in St. Petersburg’s Krasnogvardeisky district will form the basis of the company’s new construction project on the Gulf of Finland, according to Okhta Public and Business Center, the company behind the project. |
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MOSCOW — Demand for high-end apartment rentals jumped by 40 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, as more foreigners are moving to Moscow due to stable economic growth, a real estate agency said Friday.
Moscow-based companies are hiring more foreign employees because the economy is recovering after the financial crisis, driving demand for high-end property, said Galina Tkach, head of the rental department at IntermarkSavills. |
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MOSCOW — Midsized oil company Bashneft won a crucial jump-start for its development of the lucrative Trebs and Titov oil fields Friday when it signed a cooperation agreement with LUKoil, which will receive a 25. |
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MOSCOW — A recent VTsIOM survey indicates that Skolkovo, the high-tech research facility planned to be built outside of Moscow, is currently the key element associated with President Dmitry Medvedev’s innovation program; but the new roads leading to the hub are reportedly already in poor shape. |
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MOSCOW — Investigators dropped tax evasion charges against the former owner of Arbat Prestige, once Russia’s biggest cosmetics retailer, and his business partner, a reputed crime boss, Interfax reported Monday. |
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 With global demand for oil rising and Libya supplying about 1 million barrels per day less than it did before the coalition bombing started on March 19, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch have forecast that there is a 30 percent chance that the price of Brent crude will reach $160 per barrel in 2011. |
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The Soviet era was comprised of two roughly equal parts. During the first half, which lasted from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until Stalin’s death in 1953, the country was put through an extraordinary reign of terror and a radical experiment in social engineering and national reorganization. |
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 The Mariinsky Theater created a sublime and detached rendition last week of Angelin Preljocaj’s ballet “Le Parc,” deservedly praised as the visual epitome of sensuality. The ballet saw its local premiere on April 14 as part of the Eleventh International Mariinsky Ballet Festival, starring Diana Vishneva and Konstantin Zverev as the two protagonists. |
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It’s late Saturday afternoon, and having finally accepted that spring has been canceled this year, the downcast expat trudges to the local shopping mall. |
 “What you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise... In fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff,” says Meryl Streep’s uncompromising heroine in the film “The Devil Wears Prada. |
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The recent Sergei Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Awards distributed earlier this month not only honored and paid some artists for their work, but suddenly showed what kind of art the St. |
 The world’s biggest country has been reduced to 800 square meters in a unique new exhibition depicting the whole of the Russian Federation — from its most Western point of Kaliningrad to Kamchatka in the East — that opened in a test regime in St. Petersburg this month.
The project, called the “Grandmaket” (the Grand Model), resurrects the technique of producing miniature models of well-known places and historical events that was once so popular in the Soviet Union. |
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 As the children return for a new term at their well-appointed boarding school, everything seems normal. Except for the new cleaner who has just escaped from a psychiatric hospital, the bodies of dead hares scattered in the snow and the dungeon with its decaying skeletons. |
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 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev called Monday for a crackdown on rampant drug use, proposing compulsory treatment for addicts and nationwide drug testing for grade school students.
He also proposed expelling drug-using college students, allowing employers to fire employees who use illegal drugs, and cracking down on clubs and web sites where drugs can be purchased.
Experts said the proposals resembled a Kremlin attempt to score points before State Duma and presidential elections, but also called the measures long overdue. |
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 While the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union putting the first man in space was celebrated across the world last week, less well documented are the many canine cosmonauts who preceded Yury Gagarin. |
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Issues Archive