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Lenfilm, one of Russia’s oldest and most venerable film studios, looks set to pack its bags and leave its central location at the heart of the Petrograd Side as it faces being absorbed at a bargain price by Sistema Financial Corporation, Russia’s largest diversified consumer services company, headed by the tycoon Vladimir Yevtushenkov.
At present, Lenfilm, whose history dates back to 1918, produces only about three to four films per year and is struggling to stay afloat. It is saddled with debts and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Earlier, the Culture Ministry asked the Finance Ministry for a subsidy to remedy Lenfilm’s financial plight. The request has been turned down. Instead, the solution currently being offered is to create a partnership between the state and Sistema under which Lenfilm would merge with a private studio owned by Yevtushenkov. The scheme, if it takes shape, would see Lenfilm moving to new pavilions on the outskirts of St. |
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STREET ART
FOR SPT
Graffiti artist Zhenya Pacer paints an advertisement board in central St. Petersburg in preparation for this week’s International Graffiti Art Forum, otherwise known as GraFFFest. The festival will culminate in short films and artwork being projected onto Palace Bridge. |
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Maxim Reznik, head of the local branch of the Yabloko Democratic Party, has called for the city’s Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the facts surrounding the sacking of journalist Alexandra Garmazhapova after she wrote an article published on Fontanka.ru web site accusing the Kirovsky district authorities of using administrative resources to reach political goals.
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St. Petersburg’s environmental prosecutor has called for a ban on the use of animals that have no health certificates on the city’s streets.
“Activities related to the showing of animals and allowing people to have photos taken with them when those animals lack essential veterinary documents may cause the spread of infectious diseases common to both animals and humans,” the city prosecutor’s office said in a statement. |
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Police seized the circulation of A Just Russia newspaper published by the St. Petersburg branch of A Just Russia political party Monday.
Police confiscated at least one tenth of the 1. |
 St. Petersburg is finally protected from potentially devastating flooding after the St. Petersburg Flood Protection Complex (FPC) was officially completed Friday.
The complex, located between the village of Gorskaya and the city’s naval suburb of Kronshtadt on Kotlin Island, is designed to hold at bay water levels rising up to 5 meters. |
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Northwest Extremism
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia’s northwest has been ranked the second most dangerous place in the country in terms of the number of extremist crimes, the region’s officials said. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A group of North Caucasus insurgents, including at least one young Chechen driven by hatred over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the second Chechen war in 1999, attempted to bomb a Sapsan bullet train last month, but their plot was foiled by the Federal Security Service, a news report said Monday.
The report in Kommersant provided the first details of a plot first mentioned by Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov during a televised meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev last month. |
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QUIET TIME
IGOR TABAKOV / The St. Petersburg Times
A busload of OMON riot police officers take an afternoon nap in Moscow last week. |
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MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova and tennis star Marat Safin are among the hopefuls running in United Russia’s primary elections, a novelty for Russian politics meant to give an aura of competition to the State Duma elections.
The celebrities are competing against thousands of regular people who stand little chance of making it into United Russia’s party list for the Duma elections because, as one party official said, the votes cast in primaries count for nothing.
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MOSCOW — Two Chechen teenagers who survived last month’s massacre on Norway’s Utoya Island said they pelted right-wing extremist Anders Breivik with stones and saved lives.
Movsar Dzhamayev, 17, and Rustam Daudov, 16, told the Norwegian Dagbladet daily that they were reminded of the war in their native Chechnya after seeing Breivik killing three people in front of their eyes on July 22. |
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WARSAW — Poland’s Foreign Ministry apologized Friday after prosecutors gave Belarussian investigators financial information about a human rights activist who was then detained. |
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MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee has filed the first charges in connection with the pretrial detention death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, 20 months after he died and two weeks after the United States blacklisted dozens of Russian officials implicated in the case. |
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KIEV — A Ukrainian court on Friday refused to consider an appeal to release former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail, where she has been kept for a week while her abuse-of-office trial proceeds. |
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 An international consortium led by investment company VTB Capital, a subsidiary of VTB Group, has won a concession to build a 120 billion ruble ($4 billion) segment of a high-speed toll road in St. Petersburg, the city government announced last week.
The project involves building an 11. |
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The fallout from the collapse of the International Industrial Bank last fall led a court to impound the world’s first floating nuclear power station late last week. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has appointed himself and Sberbank chief German Gref to the board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, a project to curry favor with businesses.
The prime minister, who will chair the board, ordered the organization to officially register itself by Aug. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday unanimously promised Belarus cheaper gas next year as a reward for its accession to a customs union with Russia. |
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 The liberal opposition is often called upon to repent for the “sins” of the 1990s, a period strongly associated in the public mind with liberal reforms.
We are told that as soon as liberals and democrats repent for our mistakes, the public will believe us, vote for us and offer us various forms of support. |
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The United Russia primaries held across the country for the last few weeks have almost ended, but, despite what skeptics say, the primaries are not a pro forma procedure or a superficial public relations campaign by the ruling party. |
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 The annual art-house Open Cinema festival aims to promote independent films from around the world and to introduce Russian audiences to new names. The festival’s organizers claim it is the largest international short film forum in Russia, and the sole open-air film festival in St. Petersburg.
“Open Cinema is eager to attract creative people who appreciate independent, individual visions of contemporary film trends,” say the organizers. |
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 Graffiti may not be the first thing that springs to mind in connection with imperialist St. Petersburg, but an innovative festival taking place this weekend may just change that perception. |
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Õóëèãàíñòâî: hooliganism (sort of)
As the world watched the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations, Standard & Poor’s rating downgrade and the stomach-flipping volatile market, it seems like everyone and his brother (êîìó íå ëåíü) had something nasty and accusatory to say about the U.S. economy and political system. Can’t say I blame them. I myself was nasty and accusatory — that is, when I wasn’t frantically recasting my retirement to admit the possibility of subsistence farming.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin couldn’t resist getting into the act. In his first foray, he said the United States was behaving like “ïàðàçèò ìèðîâîé ýêîíîìèêè” (a parasite on the world economy). |
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 While the ecological situation may be getting worse, the only silver lining in the cloud of pollution is that the level of ecological awareness is rising. |
 Last week, Roman Abramovich’s teenage daughter reportedly moved into a starter home in London worth ?4 million ($6.46 million), soon after calling off an engagement that had raised eyebrows in the British press.
Anna Abramovich’s new place in Belgravia is a mews cottage with three bedrooms, which is all you get for a few million pounds in such a chi-chi area. |
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Wet Blanket
Odeyalo occupies the former premises of what once claimed to be the first Indonesian restaurant in Russia: Sukawati.
When the once popular Sukawati closed late last year, Odeyalo is what rose from its ashes, but there is little left of the restaurant’s upmarket, elegant predecessor. |
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 TALLINN — The life of Estonians — and especially residents of its capital Tallinn — has been connected to the sea for centuries.
But under the Soviets — the small Baltic nation was annexed by the Soviet Union in August 1940 — few had access to the seashore lying within walking distance from the picturesque Old Town.
As Tallinn, a medieval Hansean city located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland in northwestern Estonia, is only 60 kilometers across the sea from Helsinki, the shore was under tight control by KGB border guards and the military, with industrial facilities such as a power plant and a fish-processing factory as well as the Tallinn Central (Paterei) Prison scattered along the coast. |
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 ZHUKOVSKY — Lines of sleek combat jets and gleaming airliners filled an air base outside Moscow on Tuesday for Russia’s top air show, as the country aimed to burnish the image of its aviation industries and secure new export contracts. |
 MOSCOW — Twenty years ago, Moscow’s Izmailovsky Park was a place where artisans and antique collectors got together on weekends to mingle, have a drink and maybe sell something to interested foreigners.
Alexei, a nesting doll painter who now sells Soviet antiques, said profits from the sale of one doll, also known as a matryoshka, would feed him for a month back then.
Tourists were richer, looking for unique masterpieces. |
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 DECORAH, Iowa — President Barack Obama’s Midwestern tour is offering a mix of offense and defense that signals both his governing approach for the remainder of his term and the evolution of a campaign message for his re-election bid. |
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LONDON — A 16-year-old boy was ordered Tuesday to stand trial for the murder of a retiree attacked when he confronted rioters in London, as British judges and prosecutors used tough punishment and name-and-shame tactics against hundreds of alleged participants in the mayhem. |
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PARIS — The leaders of Germany and France met Tuesday to discuss Europe’s debt crisis as new figures show their economies stalled even before the latest bout of turmoil struck financial markets. |
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Issues Archive