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 Numerous violations of human rights and violence used against military conscripts were encountered during this year’s spring draft, which ended a month ago, representatives of the human rights organization Soldiers’ Mothers said at a press conference devoted to the draft last week.
“In May, about one third of all the military-age men appearing in front of the draft board were brought to the military registration and enlistment office by force,” Yelena Popova, PR-coordinator for Soldiers’ Mothers, said Wednesday. “By June, that figure was a half of all men, and in July, it was more than half, since there were no volunteers left.”
Those “captured,” as Popova calls young men detained by the police and taken by force to the military office, are not always eligible conscripts — some of them are military-age men who have deferred their military service due to health or education reasons — but they are not given chance to explain before being bundled into police cars and driven away, according to Soldiers’ Mothers. |
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RED SKY AT NIGHT
ALEXANDER AKSAKOV / The St. Petersburg Times
The Peter and Paul Fortress is seen against the glow of the setting sun. While the city’s celebrated White Nights may be drawing to a close, the heat makes evening boat trips an appealing option. The next two weeks may be the hottest of this summer. |
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Murderer Sentenced
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A man from the Leningrad Oblast was sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony for a series of murders and robberies, the prosecutor’s office reported Tuesday.
A 45-year-old resident of the Gatchinsky district was found guilty of committing six murders involving armed holdups and 4 robberies. From 2006 to 2010, the victims were elderly people, Interfax reported.
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 The territory of the Bronka cargo port that has been under construction since 2007 in the harbor of Lomonosov, formerly known as Oranienbaum, is due to be silted to form reclaimed land after a perimeter of dams made of earth was formed.
“The idea of building a port in that part of the Neva Bay isn’t new,” said Alexei Shukletsov, CEO of Phoenix investment company that is funding most of the port project, during a trip to the construction site last Thursday. |
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The next two weeks could be the hottest of St. Petersburg’s summer this year, according to meteorologists.
From Friday to Sunday, temperatures will soar to 30 degrees Celsius, the city’s senior meteorologist Alexander Kolesov said, Fontanka. |
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Three unregistered oppositional parties started what they call a broad campaign of civil disobedience protesting the upcoming State Duma election — which is expected to exclude oppositional parties — with a protest rally on Sunday.
An estimated 200 came to the authorized demo held on Pionerskaya Ploshchad by the local branches of the ROT Front (Russian United Labor Front), The People’s Freedom Party (ParNaS) and The Other Russia, parties that have repeatedly been refused registration by the Justice Ministry during the past 12 months. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Investigators said Monday that a criminal case has been opened into two prison officials in connection with the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and that they face possible charges of negligence.
Larisa Litvinova, former medical official at Moscow’s Butyrskaya pretrial prison, faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted of unintentional manslaughter by breach of professional duty, the Investigative Committee said.
Her former superior, Dmitry Kratov, may be jailed for five years if charged with negligence that resulted in death, committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said, Interfax reported.
Other prison officials, including those with high ranks, may face charges in the ongoing investigation, Markin said. |
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 MOSCOW — There probably aren’t many things that Sberbank president and former economy minister German Gref tries not to think about. But a U.S. default, which will take place if warring political parties in Washington cannot agree on a deficit reduction plan, is one of them. |
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MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee pledged to look into an leak that saw about 8,000 text messages by MegaFon users hit the web Monday.
The veritable trove of messages, accessible at a version of MegaFon’s web site cached by the Yandex search engine, runs the gamut of emotions, ranging from regular “where are you?” exchanges to tender love notes, accusations of cheating complete with obscenities, invitations to watch movies and requests to feed the cat. |
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MOSCOW — The hunt continued Sunday for a “depressed” ferret who escaped Disney-style from a Chita circus along with a monkey and a red-breasted parakeet last week. |
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MOSOW — While U.S. and Russian diplomats promised last week to ease visa rules, travelers on the ground have found that attempts to improve the process have resulted in new headaches.
On July 1, the Foreign Ministry opened a new web site for U.S. and British citizens seeking Russian visas. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow police on Monday promised to look into a complaint that a traffic police officer threatened a pregnant woman with a gun for failing to yield to an unidentified government official’s car. |
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HAMBURG — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has been admitted to a hospital in the city of Hamburg, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Mass-circulation Bild said, without identifying its source, that the 71-year-old Kazakh leader had admitted himself to the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. The report said the reason for his admission to hospital was unknown.
“There is a celebrity patient being closely guarded in the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf — and according to information obtained by Bild it is Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev who is being secretly treated here,” the report said. |
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 MOSCOW — Many Russians remain unexcited about Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front — but some are willing to vote for it anyway, according to a new poll. |
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 Architectural projects for the redevelopment of New Holland island were unveiled to the press Friday, a day before the island was opened to the public for the first time in its 300-year history.
All eight of the design entries, which are now on show to the public at the branch of the Central Naval Museum on the Kryukov Canal, envisage the emergence of the historic island, which was used as a timber-drying facility in the 18th century and later used to test new ship designs, as a new cultural hub of the city. |
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 MOSCOW — Two fatal plane crashes within weeks have prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to put on his tough face and call for the grounding of the Soviet-made aircraft involved in the accidents.
But Medvedev neglected to say how the planes might be replaced. |
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MOSCOW — Expatriate executives who were locked out of budget airline Avianova’s offices last month as a part of an apparent battle between Russian and U. |
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MOSCOW — Sberbank head German Gref has said the pioneering acquisition of Austria’s Volksbank International, which has operations in nine European countries, for an estimated $1 billion will give Russia’s biggest lender a platform to establish a global presence.
Sberbank, which currently has operations in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in addition to Russia, signed a conditional agreement with shareholders for 100 percent of Volksbank International, or VBI, last week. |
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 There may not be a scientific explanation for it, but every Russian knows that August is a month of catastrophe. The sinking of the submarine Kursk, the forest and peat bog fires last year — not to mention the 1991 coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — all took place in August. |
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I have noticed that tandemocracy, while beneficial for Russia’s internal development, may not be such a healthy arrangement for the country’s foreign policy. |
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 If the summer weather continues to fluctuate between stiflingly hot and torrential rain, there is no need to despair: The city’s museums and galleries have prepared a whole host of original exhibitions of work by both Russian and foreign artists this summer.
The State Russian Museum has something interesting on show at every one of its branches. The Mikhailovsky (Engineers’) Castle is home to Ana Tzarev’s “The Life of Flowers” through Sept. 5. The exposition introduces works devoted to flowers and executed in the traditions of Van Gogh, postimpressionism, primitivism and fauvism, together with Tzarev’s own distinctive style. |
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KIRSTEN DUNST STARS IN
LARS VON TRIER’S LATEST
MOVIE ‘MELANCHOLIA.’ |
 Lars von Trier is nothing if not controversial. In the past the Danish filmmaker was content to let his provocations play out in the darkness of the cinema. But with “Melancholia” — an extremely restrained film for the director — he chose to take things a step too far at the Cannes Film Festival with his now infamous Nazi jokes.
Following 2009’s brutal psychodrama “Antichrist,” which had audiences squirming in their seats at the devastation he wrought onscreen, it was always going to be tough for von Trier to lure viewers back into the cinema.
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Îáûâàòåëü: average person, pleb
When I told a friend what I was going to write about this week, he complained: Ó òåáÿ ñïëîøíîé íåãàòèâ! ×òî ñ òîáîé? (Everything you write is so negative! What’s up with you?)
What’s up with me? Well, Awful August has arrived early this year. I can’t watch Russian news without three handkerchiefs. I can’t watch Western news without throwing something at the television. Ãäå òóò ïîçèòèâ? (Where’s the bright side?)
So in this gloomy frame of mind, I’ve been investigating Russian words for average folks and wondering why so many of them are so frankly disdainful.
Take îáûâàòåëü. In the old days it simply meant a resident, as in ãîðîäñêîé (urban) or ñåëüñêèé (rural) îáûâàòåëü (dweller). |
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 Scotland and Russia may not seem to have much in common, aside from a shared image as countries of terrible winters and heavy drinking, but this August several Russian performers will be making the trip to Edinburgh to perform at the city’s famous festival. |
 First the back story, and then to catching a car from Kiev to Moscow in eight minutes.
The other day, there were three journalists — two British — in the car heading back from Vorobyovy Gory, but surprisingly the only one secretly recording anything was the young driver of the Ford. |
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Berry Season
If you are looking for something hip and a little off the beaten track, Barberry is the place for you. With a light, cheery veranda downstairs and a darker, more sophisticated bar upstairs where the atmosphere is as chilled as the cocktails being served, Barberry has a lot to offer at any time of day. |
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 ASTRAKHAN — While the Russian word for “tomato” may be masculine, Astrakhan natives tag an “a” on the end, switching the gender. A bizarre sound to Russian ears, perhaps, but Astrakhan’s tomatoes grow to be so enormous, so red and so succulent in the sweltering summer temperatures and the plentiful fresh water of the Volga Delta that the locals cannot resist that little bit of affection.
Indeed, the surrounding region is known as “Russia’s kitchen garden” for the abundance of locally grown fruit and vegetables, from watermelons to eggplants. |
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 LIPETSK — Slim and bare-chested, his jumpsuit half-unzipped, Igor Sulim looks no different from the other parachuters kicking back in the warm summer sun after a jump. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
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