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By inking a deal with the Greek company Helector S.A.-Aktor Concession S.A. to build an incineration facility in the village of Yanino on the outskirts of the city, City Hall has agreed to what local environmentalists have branded as “thirty years of garbage slavery.” The agreement was signed on Monday.
The Greek holding, which is investing around 300 million rubles ($10.6 million) in the project, will begin construction work on the site later this year. It is expected that the plant will start operating in May 2015. After 30 years, the plant, which has the capacity to process at least 350,000 tons of garbage per year, will become the property of City Hall.
“The plant in Yanino is of the utmost importance for St. Petersburg as a fine example of a partnership between the state and foreign investors,” City Governor Valentina Matviyenko told reporters Monday. |
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OVER THE RAINBOW
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A rainbow is seen next to the Winter Palace. As the White Nights approach and the weather gets warmer, the tourist season is getting underway. Visitors to the city may find it difficult to secure accommodation during the International Economic Forum in June however, when many of the city’s hotels double their room rates. |
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City Hall’s six-month flirtation with local preservationists turned sour last week when negotiators issued a statement after their sixth monthly meeting with St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Thursday in which they expressed doubts about continuing the talks and presented Matviyenko with a list of key issues that have not been resolved despite her promises.
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 The Rainbow Flash Mob — an extremely rare authorized LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights event — took place without incident due to heavy police presence Tuesday, despite threats from nationalists and the arrival of tough-looking opponents at the site. |
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Infanticide Sentence
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A local drug addict who murdered his wife and two young children has been sentenced to 17 years in jail. |
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A video of four teens sexually assaulting a schoolboy over 10 rubles (35 cents) he owed them got local news web site Fontanka.ru slapped with an official warning last week, the first step toward shutting down a media outlet.
The video of the incident, which took place in St. Petersburg in late April, was shot on a cell phone camera by the teens, who used a shovel handle to rape the 12-year-old boy. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The first of 30 Sukhoi SuperJet 100s will be delivered to Aeroflot by the end of May and will make the initial commercial flight with the airline in June, a Sukhoi Civil Aircraft spokeswoman told The St. Petersburg Times on Friday.
Earlier it was reported that Aeroflot had scheduled the aircraft for its Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod route starting this past Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev made a series of statements Friday that could be construed as jabs at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, although the phrasing was vague enough to pass for an ordinary pre-election speech. |
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MOSCOW — The Public Chamber urged the Prosecutor General’s Office to ban an anti-Semitic publication favored by Adolf Hitler on Friday, weeks after Moscow prosecutors found it to be of “historical and educational” value.
The chamber’s secretary, Yevgeny Velikhov, asked Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to open an investigation into the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the rights watchdog said. |
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MOSCOW — Accusing investigators of a political crackdown, Hermitage Capital said its head, William Browder, was given 11 hours’ notice to travel from London to Moscow for questioning — even though he has been banned from Russia. |
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MINSK, Belarus — A Belarusian presidential candidate was sentenced to five years in prison Saturday following a trial that he denounced as political punishment for challenging the nation’s authoritarian ruler.
A district court in the Belarusian capital handed out the sentence to Andrei Sannikov after convicting him on charges of staging riots following December’s presidential election. |
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MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said Monday that he would lead Right Cause, the only party that has supported a second term for President Dmitry Medvedev, but observers expressed doubt that he would be able to salvage it from political limbo. |
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MOSCOW — The personal driver of Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu was fined and reprimanded for threatening to shoot in the head a motorist who refused to give way, news web site Infox.ru reported Sunday.
A video posted on YouTube on Saturday showed Shoigu’s Mercedes sedan, identified by its license plates, trying to pass other cars in a traffic jam on the Moscow Ring Road but making slow progress despite its siren and flashing blue lights, which give officials’ cars priority on the road. |
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 VTB Capital, together with Aeroexpress, will create a design company to attract financing for the construction of terminals at Pulkovo Airport and at Baltiisky Railway Station, according to Alexei Chichkanov, chairman of the city’s committee for investment and strategic projects (CISP).
Aeroexpress works in passenger rail transport from the center of Moscow to the Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports. |
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 MOSCOW — Taxi drivers will have to carry licenses beginning Sept. 1 and will face fines for not giving receipts from January, under amendments to existing traffic laws. |
 For participants in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which will take place on June 16-18, 1,000 hotel rooms have been set aside — a 20 percent rise on last year, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has said via her press service. |
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MOSCOW — The fate of the $16 billion “deal of the century” between BP and Rosneft hung in the balance late Monday night as four-way talks between the two companies, BP’s oligarch partners and the Russian government ended in a game of brinkmanship. |
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MOSCOW — Russia and China are likely to sign an agreement on natural gas supplies during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, presidential economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said Thursday.
Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation hope to complete talks in the next weeks, he said. |
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MOSCOW — A new partnership between the Russian Energy Agency and the International Financial Corporation could open up credit lines and provide broad support system for investors in renewable energy. |
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 Revolutions happen silently in bureaucratic circles, without a single shot from enemy forces. One fine day, the head of the government simply signs a document that changes the entire structure of authority. At first, nobody understands exactly what has happened. |
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Sometimes I think President Dmitry Medvedev has a split personality. On one hand, he stubbornly fights legal nihilism in public and official life. Many still recall the public dressing down he gave in February to the heads of the Federal Security Service and Investigative Committee for announcing that the Domodedovo bombing had been solved “before carrying out all investigative procedures. |
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 When Dusche, a music club owned by members of St. Petersburg bands Leningrad and Spitfire, opened in December with a gig by Leningrad, few came — out of disbelief, musician and co-owner Andrei Kurayev says.
Billed as an “open rehearsal” by Leningrad, the club’s opening on Dec. 7 featured a live set by the band, three days before a comeback stadium show in St. Petersburg marking its reformation after a two-year hiatus.
Leningrad fans seemingly thought there must be a catch, and did not come, Kurayev says.
Dusche’s forte is that it is one of few local clubs that are actually owned by musicians, meaning it understands the needs of both the bands and the public. |
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ANNA NETREBKO IS ONE OF THE STARS SET TO DAZZLE AT THIS YEAR’S STARS OF THE WHITE NIGHTS FESTIVAL.
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Deep Purple, the British band that President Dmitry Medvedev claims is his favorite, has made waves in Israel, criticizing artists who joined the cultural boycott of the country in protest of its treatment of Palestinians, Haaretz reported.
According to the Israeli newspaper, the band said at a press conference ahead of their third Israeli tour last week that artists should not take sides in political conflicts, with drummer Ian Paice calling the musicians who have boycotted the country “real wimps.
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 It took a year of deliberation and discussion before a vague notion crystallized into a major exhibition at the Russian Museum dedicated to the subject of gates and doors that combines installations from the last two years with items from the museum’s permanent collection.
According to Alexander Borovsky, head of the Russian Museum’s Contemporary Russian Artistic Trends department, the idea for the exhibition, which introduces visitors to 90 works by 80 living artists, emerged a year ago. |
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 Last week, Johnny Depp came to Moscow to promote the latest installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” prompting Depp-mania. Even journalists attending his news conference at the Ritz-Carlton hotel got sprinkled with a little of his glamour. |
 Guiseppe Verdi’s “Aida” in an unorthodox rendition by Switzerland’s Daniele Finzi Pasca — the name behind Cirque du Soleil’s globe-trotting show “Corteo” — is one of the two biggest catches in the program of the 19th international Stars of the White Nights festival that kicks off on May 23 and will run for nine weeks. |
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With the White Nights rapidly approaching, a new eatery has taken the concept of a panoramic restaurant to a whole new level. Teplitsa, which means greenhouse, is indeed entirely made of glass, and is housed in a new extension on top of the former Stereo Kino movie theater. |
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If you ever have occasion to talk with a native Russian speaker under the legal drinking age, you’re going to hear the adjective êðóòîé a lot, along with the adverb êðóòî and comparative form êðó÷å. In fact, I’ve come to think of êðóòîé as the quintessential Russian word for the 21st century. But what the heck does êðóòîé mean?
The primary meaning in literary and standard language is steep or twisted. |
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 Space is the central theme of this year’s Museum Night, an annual overnight treat for culture vultures in which dozens of local museums, exhibition halls and galleries stay open long after dark to welcome nocturnal visitors.
This year, from 6 p.m. on Saturday until 6 a.m. on Sunday, more than 60 local museums will greet guests at odd hours and treat them to special displays inspired by a cosmic theme and the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s historic achievement of becoming the first man in space. |
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Issues Archive