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St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko is preparing to become a councilwoman in one of St. Petersburg's 111 district councils — a step that will pave the way for her to be appointed speaker of the Federation Council.
At least three St. Petersburg districts — Rzhevka, Porokhoviye and Finlyandsky — have publicly voiced their readiness to hold an early election and welcome Matviyenko as councilwoman.
Matviyenko's deputy and possible successor, Mikhail Oseyevsky, said Thursday that most of the city's 111 districts were ready to call an early election for the governor and a final decision would be announced next week, Interfax reported.
Matviyenko, who has not participated in a direct election since first becoming governor in 2003, has to be a lawmaker to be appointed senate speaker. |
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CALL OF DUTY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A young army recruit gives his girlfriend a farewell hug as he prepares to leave for national service duty from the city’s military draft center Tuesday. More than 150 recruits departed for destinations all over the Russian Federation on the same day as part of the summer draft. |
 Three days weren’t enough for St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to make up her mind.
But a closed-door Kremlin meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev did the trick Tuesday, and his spokeswoman announced afterward that Matviyenko had accepted the speaker’s seat in the Federation Council.
“Valentina Matviyenko will hold all necessary consultations with the governing body of the Federation Council and will proceed with election to the upper chamber,” spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said, Interfax reported.
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An excess of harmful emissions was registered during a fire at the Krasny Bor waste dump outside St. Petersburg last week.
The emissions levels were not hazardous for people’s health, Yulia Pykhtyreva, St. Petersburg’s prosecutor for environmental affairs, said at a press conference Monday, Interfax reported. |
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Concerned citizens of St. Petersburg protested draft bills introduced by State Duma deputies from pro-Kremlin parties late last month and earlier this month with the purpose of lowering the number of abortions and increasing the birth rate. |
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New Metro Stations
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — According to a new plan for the development of the St. Petersburg metro, seven new metro stations will appear in the city before 2015, and in total 45 stations will be built by 2025. New underground railways will connect the center of the city with Pulkovo airport, Gazprom’s Lakhta Center and Zenit’s new football stadium.
More Traffic Lanes
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 80 separate traffic lanes for trams will be built in St. Petersburg by 2025, and more than 40 bus lanes will be constructed, Stanislav Popov, chairman of the city’s Transport Committee, said Tuesday.
As well as separate lanes there will be 41 new lanes for both trams and buses. |
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 The unauthorized Slavic Gay Pride march, which lasted just four minutes, was first attacked by neo-Nazis and then dispersed by the police in St. Petersburg on Saturday. |
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Tony Kettle, an architect with British RMJM — the firm behind the design for the controversial Gazprom tower — had to cut his presentation short amid shouts of “Shame on you,” “Time’s up!” “Go home!” and other hostile reactions from the planned skyscraper’s opponents at a public hearing in St. |
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St. Petersburg will celebrate Dostoevsky Day for the second year running on Saturday.
Last year’s celebration was dedicated to the writer’s classic novel “Crime and Punishment,” whose action opens “on an exceptionally hot evening in early July. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Monday that the government hoped to raise $45 billion in a second round of privatization that could include stakes in Aeroflot.
A three-year, $30 billion privatization is already under way, and the figure mentioned by Kudrin means that the government could end up raising a total of $75 billion. |
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MOSCOW — A senior intelligence official was sentenced in absentia Monday to 25 years in prison for betraying Anna Chapman and the nine other sleeper agents in the United States who flew to Moscow in a spy swap last summer. |
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MOSCOW — A suspect has been detained on suspicion of blinding pilots of passenger airplanes with laser beams near the Rostov-on-Don airport, police spokesman Alexei Polyansky said Monday.
Polyansky did not identify the suspect, but Interfax said he was 22 and had denied blinding anyone. |
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MOSCOW — The Russian Union of Architects became the first public group to snub Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front on Monday, days after the front listed it among hundreds of federal and regional public entities on its web site. |
 MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov seized the reins of the pro-business Right Cause party over the weekend with ambitious plans to expand direct elections, to coax foreigners unhappy with the climate at home to invest in Russia, and to perhaps become prime minister after State Duma elections. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday submitted a bill to the State Duma that would return the threshold to win Duma seats to 5 percent from the current 7 percent, the Kremlin said. |
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MOSCOW — Under a barrage of pressure from Hermitage Capital, a tax evasion case against the fund’s head, William Browder, has been transferred from the Interior Ministry’s investigative committee to another branch of the ministry in an attempt to add objectivity to the investigation, news reports said Monday. |
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 The domestic film industry will become more transparent and attractive for private investors after an independent organization is created this year to ensure that projects are completed and a new investment fund is set up to provide financing for a local project, market players said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — When per capita contribution to gross domestic product reaches $10,000, democracy becomes “eternal,” according to a Renaissance Capital report. |
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MOSCOW — Prominent fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin is looking at Ingushetia, in the North Caucasus region, with hopes of starting a large-scale sewing factory, which would bring potential growth opportunities to the region’s economy.
Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov met last week with Yudashkin, who was invited by the local government, last week to discuss building his planned factory in Ali-Yurt, a small village about 1,400 kilometers south of Moscow. |
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 The Justice Ministry on Wednesday refused to register the opposition Party of People’s Freedom, thus denying my party its constitutional right to participate in the December State Duma elections. The ministry also denied the constitutional rights of millions of the party’s supporters across the country to choose their representatives in parliament. |
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Russians react nervously to any narrative about World War II that differs from their own. When the United States, Britain or France pay tribute to their countrymen who fought and defeated Adolf Hitler, it is seen in Moscow as an attempt to diminish Russia’s contribution. |
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5.jpg) Stereoleto, arguably St. Petersburg’s finest outdoor summer event which marks its 10th anniversary this year, claims it is not seeing any slump in attendance despite the warm weather and city residents’ tendency to escape the city for their dachas.
Held on the beach of the Malaya Nevka on Krestovsky Island, the two-night event’s first night — featuring Ilya Lagutenko and KETA, Chinawoman, Club des Belugas and Zenzile — drew about 2,000 people — a solid number for St. Petersburg, organizers say.
Stereoleto will resume this Saturday with a night of performances by acts including Austrian modernist pop group Architecture in Helsinki, Germany’s Apparat Band, Finland’s Uusi Fantasia and Norway’s Casiokids. |
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BELGIAN GROUP ZAP MAMA WILL HEADLINE THE SECOND DAY OF THE USADBA JAZZ FESTIVAL HELD ON YELAGIN ISLAND THIS WEEKEND.
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The fact that the KGB conducted surveillance on rock musicians, their families and fans during the Soviet era received material confirmation late last week, when Fontanka.ru published several photographs belonging — they say — to the vast archives of photographs related to the 1980s Russian underground rock scene, which were passed to the local news web site by former KGB officers.
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 Jazz musicians and lovers will congregate this weekend for the Usadba Jazz international music festival that is taking place in St. Petersburg for the first time in the festival’s history.
Usadba translates as a large country estate. In the 19th century, noble families would invite guests over to their spacious but cozy summer houses outside Moscow and St. |
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Lately it seems that every time I turn on the radio or television, I’m hearing the word ïðîäóêò (product). And it’s not just that I’m hearing the word, but I’m hearing it in unexpected contexts. |
 One of the world’s most celebrated modern dance troupes, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, comes to St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater next week, bringing with it two programs centered around and dedicated to “Revelations,” a work choreographed by company founder Alvin Ailey half a century ago that has gone on to become, according to Dance Magazine, “the most popular modern dance piece of all time. |
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 DTV’s new drama series “Bailiffs” aims to bring a touch of humanity to the service, which for one reason or another, has always had a bit of an image problem. |
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Punkt Pitaniya — literally “Feeding Point” — despite the utilitarian, no-nonsense name, is clearly pitching itself as something of a French bistro or cafe, with its brown ceramic tiled floor, its tiny outdoor tables for people-watching, its small mirrors fitted into the white wooden paneling running around the walls, its artworks, the piano and its Francophone soundtrack. |
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 Summer has arrived, the traditional time of extended vacations in these parts, but to which destinations should travelers be heading? Our nearest neighbor, Finland, perhaps, so popular with Petersburgers looking to indulge themselves in a frenzy of shopping? Some locals might think that they’ve already been there so often that there’s nothing of interest left. That is far from being the case, however, and Turku, Finland’s oldest city, is well worth visiting this summer, especially as it has been named Europe’s official capital of culture. |
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 MOSCOW — The Wendy’s models in trademark pigtails who greeted reporters outside the U.S. hamburger chain’s first standalone Russian restaurant on Thursday didn’t resemble your traditional Wendy girls. |
 In the 1970s and 80s, the literacy rate of the Soviet Union reached an impressive 99.7 percent, and the Soviet education system was a source of pride. But widespread corruption in the Russian education system is now dragging down both the system’s reputation and educational standards, for who wants to hit the library when money will buy students a top grade and a place at university? As a result, for more than a decade now, wealthy Russians have been sending their children to prestigious — and expensive — boarding schools abroad. |
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Issues Archive