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 Twelve months after the incident, the defense team of police officer Vadim Boiko, on trial for exceeding authority has put prolonging the proceedings at the top of its priorities, victim Dmitry Semyonov said Tuesday.
In the most recent, twelfth hearing last week, Boiko’s lawyer Anna Myurrei produced a set of motions claiming that Semyonov, whom — as a video from the Strategy 31 rally in defense of the right of assembly taken on July 31, 2010 shows — Boiko hit on his head with his baton, “provoked” Boiko into hitting him.
She demanded that Semyonov’s remark be submitted for linguistic analysis.
The video of the incident made by Nevsky Express television shows Boiko verbally insulting the people who gathered for the rally near Gostiny Dvor and Semyonov asking him to stop using foul language. After the remark Boiko approaches Semyonov, seizes him by his hair and hits him with a truncheon across the left side of his head.
“Our position is that Semyonov’s remark may have been a planned provocation, but to establish whether it was, special expert analysis is needed,” Myurrei was quoted as saying. |
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MEXICAN MAGIC
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A young mother pushes her pram past a sculptural ensemble currently on display at the Kirov Central Park of Culture and Recreation. The work is entitled “Our Silence,” and was created by the Mexican artist Rivelino. It comprises a total of 11 bronze statues and a steel cube. |
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TBILISI, Georgia — Three Georgian photographers were found guilty Friday of spying for Russia but were released from court after receiving suspended sentences in a 45-minute trial.
Irakli Gedenidze, a personal photographer of the Georgian president, Zurab Kurtsikidze of the European Pressphoto Agency, and Georgy Abdaladze, a photographer for the Georgian Foreign Ministry who has also freelanced for The Associated Press, were arrested and charged with espionage this month.
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin has developed a habit of announcing the dismissal of top police officers almost every week. The latest firing occurred last Friday.
But a closer look at the shakeups shows that some of those who lose privileged positions suddenly reappear in other plush jobs — just without the same fanfare. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A city widely reputed as Russia’s dirtiest wants to prevent search queries in Yandex and Google from displaying negative reports about its ecology — and is willing to spend taxpayer money to do so.
Chelyabinsk authorities launched last week a state tender worth 300,000 rubles ($10,700) to “optimize” Yandex and Google queries using 15 search phrases, including “radiation in Chelyabinsk,” “dirtiest city in Russia” and “ecology of the Urals.”
The first 150 search results in each of the queries must display predominantly “positive or neutral opinions of the ecology of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk region,” according to the tender’s description, available on Zakupki. |
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 MOSCOW — Mikhail Senatorov has printed catalogs for carmaker Audi and advertising agency BBDO and campaign posters for United Russia. The Office of Presidential Affairs gave his company its Printer of the Year award. |
 MOSCOW — Pointing to its own struggle with extremism, the government has offered condolences and assistance to Norway in its investigation into a suspected ultranationalist who has admitted to going on a bombing and shooting rampage that killed at least 93 people. |
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MOSCOW — Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin has denounced a growing practice of replacing elected mayors with hired city managers as “ineffective. |
 MOSCOW — It took just two days for the online profile of a fictitious 12-year-old girl to attract the attention of an older man.
When the man asked to meet the girl, whose profile was created by child rights activists and Moscow police, undercover police officers stood by to capture him on video camera. |
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 MOSCOW — Displair, an Astrakhan-based company that develops interactive players that show videos in free air instead of a screen, will be meeting with several investors soon.
About a year ago, the Displair team began visiting innovation-related conferences to market their product, PR director Mikhail Bezruk said.
The team met Marchmont Capital Partners general director Kendrick White at the Seliger 2010 forum. |
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 MOSCOW — Billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, the main owner of Novatek, sold his Zhiguli car in 1991 to take part in the first round of privatizations. He told Vedomosti that only 40 percent of a businessperson’s success is “labor, intellect and goal-orientedness, whereas 60 percent is luck and the ability to take advantage of it. |
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MOSCOW — Expat managers kicked out of airline Avianova in an apparent shareholder dispute will sue the company over allegations of wrongdoing, they said Friday.
Avianova chief executive Andrew Pyne told The Moscow Times that he and his colleagues have already begun consulting with lawyers over claims made by Avianova that they had been fired for improper and legally dubious behavior. |
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 Russia’s party system developed in a decidedly lopsided way during the 2000s. As with all things lopsided, it runs a serious risk of instability, which could occur over the next decade. Understanding how this is the case requires clearing up four common myths about political parties in Russia. |
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Germans rarely treat us to a good laugh, so the decision to award this year’s Quadriga prize to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was a precious moment. Although given by a private foundation, the prize is a semi-official undertaking couched in the somewhat clumsy do-goodnik cheerfulness that the Federal Republic of Germany has affected since the end of World War II. |
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 The state’s pressure on the radical art group Voina — famous for its spectacular stunts spoofing the Russian authorities and the police — has increased in recent days, despite the broad recognition the group garnered after winning an important state-sponsored art prize, invitations to high-profile international art events, and the worldwide attention they have attracted.
Late last week, a local Petersburg court confiscated the bail money deposited for the release of Oleg Vorotnikov, the group’s de facto leader. The money (300,000 rubles, or $10,800) had been donated by British street artist Banksy from the proceeds of a special print sale in support of the group’s arrested members. |
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A WORK IN THE VIVA ITALIA EXHIBITION CURRENTLY ON DISPLAY AT THE MANEGE EXHIBITION CENTER |
 In the interests of full disclosure, I should immediately note that I used to work with the author of this book. Over a decade ago, we wrote up St. Petersburg nightlife together for Pulse, a local lifestyle magazine. He has traveled a long way since then, much of it for this book. It is not, in fact, immediately obvious quite why he should have traveled so far.
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Unless you’ve been out of the country or under a rock, you’ve probably seen the new “Hot Chicks for Putin” video. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. A Hot Chick strolls on 10-centimeter heels down a Moscow River embankment to meet up with her Hot Chick friends. As they chat seductively on their cell phones, you get a chance to finally understand an untranslatable Russian word. The camera lingers on close-ups of pneumatic breasts bursting out of tight tops … with chaste gold crosses dangling above them. That, my friends, is ïîøëîñòü (vulgarity, falsity, cheapness).
At the end, one of the babes — excuse me — one of the soldiers in the self-described Àðìèÿ Ïóòèíà (Putin’s Army) uses her lipstick to scrawl on her T-shirt: Ïîðâó çà Ïóòèíà! (I’ll rip it for Putin!). |
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 A twilight atmosphere, with random shades enveloping the stage, tinted mirrors and elfs fluttering about all abounded at the Mariinsky theater concert hall on Thursday July 21 and Saturday July 23 when the venue played host to the company’s new premiere, Claudia Solti’s mysterious take on Benjamin Britten’s opera “A Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
 Last week, pop star and actress Jennifer Lopez announced she was divorcing singer Marc Anthony, but the show went on, as she sang at the wedding of an Uzbek businessman’s son for a reported $1.8 million.
Lifenews.ru had grainy footage of the concert, where Lopez sang in a silver minidress and thigh-high boots with male dancers with holsters over their shirts. |
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Trial and (Human) Error
No corners have been cut, it seems, in the creation of Serafino. From the two olive trees flanking the entrance and the basket of fresh fruit and vegetables just inside, to the tiles on the floor, the wall lamps and window lanterns, no effort has been spared to create the appearance and ambience of an upmarket Italian eatery. |
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 TOMSK — The 19th-century writer Anton Chekhov praised Tomsk’s food, criticized its women, and ultimately recommended that the city wasn’t worth visiting.
“Tomsk is not worth a wooden nickel. It is the most boring of cities, and the people are the most boring,” Chekhov wrote in his diary when he was traveling to Sakhalin and happened to make a brief stop at Tomsk.
“The city is not sober, the lawlessness is Asian. The dirt is impassible, but there occur the rudiments of civilization — at the inn where I was staying the maid, when giving me a spoon, wiped it against her backside. The dinners are excellent, unlike the women who are hard to the touch.”
Today’s Tomsk would beg to differ. |
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ECO HOME
ALEXEI DRUZHININ / The Associated Press
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspecting newly built eco-friendly housing Friday in Stupino, near Moscow, where he promised $900 million in government support over five years for low-rise housing construction. |
 MOSCOW — About a decade ago, Sergei Moiseyev became so fed up after enduring years of hair-raising driving experiences in his job as a salesman that he enrolled in a driving school that offered lessons on how to cope on Moscow’s roads.
He liked what he learned so much that he quit his job and became a teacher.
“Like all salesmen, I was trying to reach as many customers in a single day as possible.
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 MOSCOW — When Ekanga Davova decided to become a vegetarian in 1993 in an effort to cleanse her body, it made her the odd one out in her social circle.
Davova, an Uzbek native who was then 25, recalls her friends’ extreme wonder and disbelief with her “new” lifestyle, which excluded meat, fish and poultry.
“It was hard to keep up with it then because there were no other vegetarians around me,” she said. |
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 MOSCOW — Foreign architects have become a profitable marketing brand in Russia, and their domestic counterparts are raising concerns about the preferential treatment they receive and the poor quality of some of their work. |
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MOSCOW — Shanghai and Moscow were identified as the most popular business locations across all emerging markets in research conducted by CB Richard Ellis.
According to the real estate services company’s Business Footprints report released last week, which compares the office presence of 280 major companies across 101 countries and 232 cities, 17 of the top 30 most popular company office locations are in emerging markets. |
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MOSCOW — According to a Jones Lang LaSalle study of Europe’s most important luxury shopping destinations, London, Paris and Moscow have the most expensive luxury shopping streets in Europe. |
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MOSCOW — City Hall plans to turn Luzhniki into a cultural center as well as a sports complex, with reconstruction in the run-up to the 2018 football World Cup estimated to cost 40 billion rubles ($1.4 billion).
City Hall consolidated 75 percent plus one share in the Luzhniki complex, a mayor’s official told Vedomosti. |
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Issues Archive