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 St. Petersburg authorities arrested dozens of anarchists and left-wing activists to prevent them from marching as part of the May Day demonstrations on Nevsky Prospekt on Sunday.
Spearheaded by St. Petersburg Governor and pro-Kremlin party United Russia member Valentina Matviyenko, a wide range of political parties and movements, trade unions and pressure groups took part in the demonstrations. |
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More Russians want to have two children in their families now than they did five years ago, a sociological survey carried out by the Public Opinion foundation has showed, Interfax reported. |
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All Russian war veterans will be able to use the St. Petersburg metro system free of charge on May 8 and 9 during celebrations of the 66th anniversary of the country’s victory in World War II.
Metro rides will be free not only for the city’s veterans, but also for veterans from other regions of the country, the St. |
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A former minority shareholder in the Yekaterinburg-based Betfor company, a maker of reinforced concrete units, has challenged a secondary share issue that allowed major developer LSR to consolidate 100 percent ownership of the company. |
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A Georgian citizen has been arrested in St. Petersburg on suspicion of shooting a businessman to death in the center of the city in 2005, Interfax reported.
The suspect has been charged with robbing and murdering the businessman, the Petersburg department of the Investigative Committee reported on its web site Tuesday.
A criminal investigation into the case was opened in November 2005, when the body of the deputy general director of Vostok-Invest was found in the courtyard of a building on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa.
The investigation alleges that the murder was carried out by David Meladze, a 37-year-old citizen of Georgia and member of an organized crime group. |
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 MOSCOW — Legendary mathematician Grigory Perelman, a notorious recluse, explained in a one-off interview why he has rejected a $1 million cash prize for solving a century-old mathematical problem. |
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Two of the city’s cultural heritage experts have asked the Russian Culture Ministry to save St. Petersburg’s historic Summer Garden from innovations, Fontanka reported.
Alexander Margolis and Mikhail Milchik wrote to Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev, saying that while it was too late to save the southern part of the garden from alterations, the northern part could still be protected. |
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Tank Found in Neva
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A KV-1 tank, the remains of military personnel and more than 30 mines and shells dating from the time of World War II have been discovered by soldiers of the 90th special battalion of the western military district, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin was the first international leader to call George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Now President Barack Obama has returned the favor, notifying the Kremlin that U.S. forces killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden before making the public announcement. |
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MOSCOW — Motorists may be spared the notoriously cumbersome and corruption-ridden procedure of mandatory car inspections, with President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting that the practice be abolished. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service has collected personal data on people who donated to whistleblower Alexei Navalny, and the information was later leaked to third parties, including possibly a pro-Kremlin youth movement, bloggers said.
Yandex confirmed on April 2 that the FSB had requested information on people who used its web money system to donate to Navalny’s Rospil.info project, an online watchdog monitoring murky state tenders.
A company spokeswoman told The St. Petersburg Times that Yandex was obliged to comply by law.
Neither the company nor the FSB explained why the data were collected.
But at least three bloggers reported that they had received cell phone inquiries about their ties to Rospil. |
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 MOSCOW — An ultranationalist couple was convicted Thursday of gunning down a rights lawyer and a journalist, the verdict ending a court process fraught with accusations of publicity manipulations. |
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MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika vigorously defended his record on April 27, as his tenure nears an end amid a turf war that has engulfed his own son.
Chaika told the Federation Council that his office was not engaged in a power struggle with the Investigative Committee and, seemingly contradicting himself moments later, asked for more power to control the actions of investigators. |
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MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber has threatened to sue liberal activist Marina Litvinovich for implicating its head and his family in a report on government corruption. |
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Efficient Internet marketing, highly qualified personal and an effective economy are the key factors for the successful development of the hotel industry, hotel experts said at the 39th general assembly of the European Hotel Managers Association (EHMA) in St. |
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There are currently 48 industrial zones in St. Petersburg, covering a total of 10,500 hectares — land that is ripe for developing into mixed-use projects, according to one local real estate consultant. |
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MOSCOW — The government banned exports of refined petroleum products on April 28, as the country grapples with fuel shortages in several regions.
“I think that in May we must satisfy our own demand with the help of export cutbacks. As of today we have made an agreement that oil companies will deliver all volumes [of gasoline] to the domestic market,” Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said at an emergency meeting with oil companies. |
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MOSCOW — Sberbank said Wednesday that its total corporate loan portfolio had expanded 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to reach 4.9 trillion rubles ($176 billion), and announced the launch of a new product aimed at supporting first-time entrepreneurs. |
 MOSCOW — A panel of government officials and experts met for the first time last Wednesday in an attempt to dispel the idea that road building is so corrupt that Russia’s notoriously bad roads are much more expensive than in Europe and the United States. |
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MOSCOW — Cars, apartments and refrigerators are what Russians most often look to finance, data collected by the Mail.ru search engine Go.mail.ru indicate. |
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MOSCOW — The volume of mergers and acquisitions on the Russian market showed annual growth in 2010 of $46.8 billion, but no structural changes were seen in the field, which remains skewed by a few big foreign deals.
“The first impression of a balanced market with a strong share of cross-border transaction does not reflect the underlying deal activity,” said a report released by the international accounting and consulting firm KPMG. |
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MOSCOW — The Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee on Wednesday hired EF English First to teach the language to an astounding 70,000 people as part of preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics. |
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 Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly had the most influence on Dmitry Medvedev in the beginning of Medvedev’s presidential term in 2008. But starting a year or so later, Medvedev’s political role model began to shift away from Putin and toward U.S. President Barack Obama when Medvedev started adopting Obama’s style, language and, most importantly, many of his political views. |
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Last week, there was an unmarked anniversary: 120 years since the birth of an extraordinary Russian, Nikolai Bruni. The only reason he is remembered at all is because he belonged to an illustrious family descending from a Swiss-Italian nobleman who moved to Russia in the early 19th century. |
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 Elakelaiset (Pensioners) is the band responsible for resurrecting Finnish pre-war “humppa” music — which before them was loved only by old men in Finland — and making it popular in its native country and beyond. They take Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and turn it into “Smells Like Humppa” or make “Jaakarihumppa” (Infantry Soldier Humppa) out of Europe’s “The Final Countdown. |
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Sting will perform at the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June.
The announcement came from Deputy Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky via his Twitter account late last week, Fontanka reported. |
 MOSCOW — In May 2009, Lena De Winne stood on a barren steppe in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, as she watched her husband, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne, launch into space. Struggling to remain the composed wife amid cameras and a crowd of observers, she alighted on an unexpected source of emotional support: 1980s power ballad “The Final Countdown,” which she played on her iPod as the shuttle disappeared into the atmosphere. |
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Âőîä: entrance, door, input,
admission
Âőîä (entrance) and âűőîä (exit) are crucial words to know and among the first we foreigners master in Russia. |
 MOSCOW — Before the premiere of “Master and Margarita,” the actors who starred in the first big screen version of the once-banned Mikhail Bulgakov novel observed a moment of silence.
They were paying respect to a number of their fellow artists, such as Soviet great Mikhail Ulyanov who played Pontius Pilate in the film, who had died in the 17 years between its filming in 1994 and its release last month. |
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 Last week, someone planted explosive devices on the set of the long-running reality show “Dom-2” in a bizarre incident that was the most serious in the show’s seven-year history. |
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St. Petersburg’s dining scene is famous — or infamous — for its many fusion restaurants. Food connoisseurs tend to look down on the idea of mixing various national cuisines at random, and they have a point: Any given chef might be comfortable with either Duck a l’Orange or Peking Duck, but probably not both. |
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 MOSCOW — Life has not been easy for legendary rock critic Artemy Troitsky since he moved into public activism: He has already lost a libel suit and now faces another, this time for calling a pro-Kremlin rock star a “poodle.”
But in a recent interview, Troitsky said he would not back down.
“I don’t want to don the armor of a protector of the people, but circumstances are driving me to it,” Troitsky, 56, said last week in his Moscow apartment, holding his infant daughter Lidia in his arms. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian film lovers can explore a treasure trove of Soviet films as legendary movie studio Mosfilm has posted dozens of its most famous films on YouTube for anyone to watch for free. |
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Issues Archive