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A lawyer on a popular TV court show has become embroiled in a bribery scandal that exposed him as a fraudulent lawyer and will put him behind bars for two years.
Co-host of popular TV show "The Court is In Session" Vladimir Oreshnikov was convicted of soliciting a 500,000-ruble ($17,000) bribe from a client in exchange for halting a criminal investigation against him, Kommersant reported Monday. |
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The state-run All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) predicts presidential candidate Vladimir Putin will win the election in the first round of voting with 58. |
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A group of gay-rights activists spray-painted a rainbow and the words "We cannot be banned" on the facade of the United Russia party headquarters in Moscow on Sunday evening, to protest a St. Petersburg law that effectively outlaws gay-pride parades and other displays or discussion of gay and lesbian sexual orientations. |
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Speculation of an orchestrated attack on the country's most high-profile radio station grew stronger Wednesday after Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov said prosecutors had summoned him for questioning and a prominent show host said hackers had taken over his e-mail and blog accounts. |
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Monaco-based potash tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlyev has bought the priciest piece of residential real estate in New York City, paying $88 million for a Manhattan penthouse, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Rybolovlyev purchased the apartment from a former head of Citigroup in the name of a trust for his daughter Yekaterina, a 22-year-old college student, the newspaper reported. |
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Voting for the presidential election began Friday for residents of remote and hard-to-reach areas of the country.
Members of the election commission will bring mobile ballot boxes to people in 36 of the country's 83 regions, primarily in the Far East, parts of Siberia, the Urals and northern territories, Channel One reported. |
All photos from issue.
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 Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov denied persistent speculation about him being a Kremlin project during a pre-election visit by the billionaire to St. Petersburg on Saturday.
“Why would I be a Kremlin project? What do I owe to Putin? I’m just taking my own risk,” Prokhorov, Russia’s third-richest man, said in his distinctive baritone at a meeting with the city’s young people at Yubileiny sports complex.
During a recent visit to Siberia ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for March 4, Prokhorov reportedly said that his main goal in the race would be to ensure a second round of voting by keeping Putin under 50 percent and emerging as the second-place finisher.
Tall, slim and composed, Prokhorov, 46, elicited a fair number of chuckles from the crowd and barely said a critical word about his opponents in next month’s elections.
“I respect all my competitors, just like when I played sports I always respected my rivals,” said Prokhorov at a press conference held the same day. Prokhorov, who played basketball in his youth, now heads Russia’s Biathlon Union and owns the U.S. basketball team the New Jersey Nets.
The billionaire, who made his money in the nickel, aluminum and gold industries, said the recent street protests in Russia have already put significant pressure on the country’s authorities. |
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HIGH AND MIGHTY
DMITRY LOVETSKY / AP
Billionaire and presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov stands beside a statue of Tsar Peter the Great during a visit to Pushkinskaya 10 art center in St. Petersburg on Saturday, during a visit to the city in which he addressed voters. |
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MOSCOW — The head of the St. Petersburg police was sacked following an investigation into the beating death of a 15-year-old boy while in custody, amid an ugly power struggle that came to a head at the annual meeting of police brass with President Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev, who had made police reform one of his signature achievements during his term — which is set to end in May — said efforts to clean up the police would continue after he departs.
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The number of measles cases in the city had risen to 130 people by Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Ninety-one of those affected are children, Interfax quoted the local branch of Rospotrebnadzor, the consumer goods watchdog, as saying.
St. Petersburg State University issued a statement saying it could not yet confirm reports that one of its students had fallen ill with measles, but said that the entrance to its student hostel on Ulitsa Korablestroitelei had been closed as a precautionary measure, Interfax reported.
The first case of measles registered in the city for the last few years was recorded in Children’s Hospital No.1. A teenager arriving from outside the area has been identified as the original carrier of the disease. |
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 British actor and author Stephen Fry joined opponents of United Russia’s bill outlawing “promoting homosexuality,” as the Legislative Assembly passed it in a second reading. |
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Urban beaches could appear in St. Petersburg by 2015 or 2016, local officials said last week.
“All we need to do is to disinfect sewage at the Central and Northern water supply plants in St. Petersburg, but the problem is that the bodies of water that border St. |
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Moscow and St. Petersburg were among the world’s top 50 cities for the highest volume of real estate investment last year.
According to 2011 year-end results, Moscow ranked among the top 20 cities with the highest investment activity, while in 2010 it held 25th place, according to a report published by Jones Lang LaSalle real estate consultancy. |
 Prices will rise after the upcoming presidential elections, with utilities and petrol among the first expenses predicted to increase, economic analysts in St. Petersburg said last week.
“It’s no secret that the current temporary price freeze in the country is a pre-election decision,” Yury Gatchin, head of the Industry, Economy and Property Commission at the city’s Legislative Assembly, said at a press conference Friday. |
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Russian teenagers are four times more depressed than those the same age in the West, Interfax reported.
About 20 percent of Russian teenagers suffer from serious depression, according to a UNICEF report. |
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Investment on the Rise
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Investment in the economy of the Leningrad Oblast increased by 11 percent last year.
Investment in the real economy of the Leningrad Oblast reached 300 billion rubles ($9.9 billion) from last year’s 270 billion rubles ($8.9 billion), the region’s governor, Valery Serdyukov, said Tuesday. |
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin unveiled his plan on social policy Monday, focusing on how Russia will boost its dwindling population amid a demographic crisis that threatens to turn the country into “void space.”
Among the measures Putin proposed was improving financial and living conditions to encourage Russians who have moved away to return and providing better support for families with many children. |
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MOSCOW — Corruption in Russia was “normal” and “civilized” during Vladimir Putin’s first stint as president and support for him has grown stronger as a result of recent opposition rallies, the prime minister’s campaign manager has boasted. |
 ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov won a new five-year term by capturing 97 percent of the vote, election officials said Monday, but a Western expert called the vote a democratic sham.
All of Berdymukhamedov’s seven opponents praised his leadership in their campaigns, making the authoritarian leader’s victory in Sunday’s election a mere formality. |
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MOSCOW — United Russia, the country’s dominant political party for more than a decade, might be radically reformed or even dissolved in the coming months, media reports said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Nikita Mikhalkov, director and official backer of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin, admitted during a debate that he would vote for his opponent Irina Prokhorova, sister of billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, if she were on the ballot. |
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MOSCOW — A fire at a dry-docked Russian nuclear submarine in December could have sparked a radiation disaster as it was carrying nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and other weapons, despite official statements to the contrary, a Russian news magazine reported Monday. |
 MOSCOW — Australia is making a renewed effort this year to lift a 2009 ban on imports of kangaroo meat to Russia.
The Federal Consumer Protection Service, which issued the ban after it uncovered cases of bacterial contamination, said Australia is also asking to allow its meat producers to ship other animal products to the newly formed Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, Bloomberg reported. |
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 MOSCOW — According to the law, it’s impossible to buy alcoholic beverages at night, but there are ways around that. For example, alcohol can be received as a present, rented, or accepted as collateral. |
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 KAZAN — Truck maker KamAZ could see a reduction of its market share due to price competition from other manufacturers after Russia joins the World Trade Organization.
“Will our efforts suffice when Russia joins the WTO, when structural business reform should continue further? We have not yet achieved the technological level we need,” said KamAZ general director Sergei Kogogin last week, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — Anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader Alexei Navalny could become a member of the board of Aeroflot after he was nominated to the position by billionaire Alexander Lebedev. |
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MOSCOW — New regulations are needed on the pharmaceuticals market before Russia enters the World Trade Organization, the head of the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers said Monday.
“The Health and Social Development Ministry needs to develop new regulation in the pharmaceuticals market now. |
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MOSCOW — During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi a three-star hotel room will cost $160 per night and a four-star room $240, organizing committee president Dmitry Chernyshenko said Sunday, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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MOSCOW — Up to 50 percent of Russia’s grape crop could be lost due to the extreme cold, spokesmen for several wineries told Vedomosti.
First tests on grapevines in Krasnodar’s Taman region are showing a 30 percent loss, said Fanagoria chief agronomist Pavel Kurilo.
Southern Wine Company general director Andrei Kulko sees losses hitting 50 percent, due to minus-20-degree-Celsius weather and strong winds over the last month — the likes of which he has never seen in his 25 years in the business. |
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 In the Internet age, the famous aphorism of the 19th-century military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, “War is the continuation of policy by other means,” may no longer be applicable. Today it’s difficult to say whether an Internet war is the continuation of political battles “by other means,” or whether it’s the spark that sets off new political conflicts. |
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Responding to efforts to formulate a concept of public-service broadcasting in Russia, legendary television personality Anatoly Lysenko quipped: “The authorities tossed the public a bone, and rather than chew on the bone members of the public began gnawing on one another. |
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As most St. Petersburg rock musicians and artists show no sign of rushing to disclose their attitude to lawlessness and violations in view of the upcoming presidential elections (see article, this page), some people invited criticism by appearing on a list of 499 official endorsers of Putin published last week.
Most of them are established cultural figures, but one of them caused eyebrows to rise on the St. Petersburg artistic and music scene: The formerly underground artist Sergei “Afrika” Bugayev, who was friends with some leading bands of the Leningrad rock revolution in the late 1980s and was even seen on stage with some drumsticks at a Kino concert. |
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BUDDHISM AT HOME AND
ABROAD IS THE SUBJECT OF
AN EXHIBIT BEING HELD AS
PART OF THE DAYS OF
TIBETAN CULTURE FESTIVAL. |
 Musician Mikhail Borzykin believes it will take a long time for St. Petersburg artists and musicians to unite to fight electoral fraud and oppression. Borzykin, who has fronted rock band Televizor since the 1980s, is one of the most high-profile members of the newly formed Civic Creative Union.
The new association was presented at the Regional Press Institute last week, with journalist Leonid Parfyonov coming from Moscow to give his blessing on behalf of the League of Voters that he helped to found.
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 British director Graham Vick is closely monitoring the course of the presidential campaign in Russia, trying not to miss television reports about mass public protests in Moscow and other Russian cities that have been gathering dozens of thousands of people who are looking for an alternative to the Putin-Medvedev vertical of power system. |
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To put: about a dozen Russian verbs
Remember how I drove you all nuts with the innate propensity of Russian creatures and inanimate objects to stand, sit or lie? And how relieved you were when I moved on to other topics?
Well, I’m back. |
 Russian fashion from the dawn of perestroika to the turbulent ’90s is the subject of a new exhibit at Loft Project Etagi.
“Alternative Fashion Before the Arrival of Glamour: 1985-1995,’ which comprises a collection of about 100 photographs, offers insight into the Russian underground scene in its most fecund period through the prism of fashion.
Intimately tied to the social background of the period, the exhibit is intended as a journey from the beginnings of Perestroika to what curator Irina Meglinskaya considers its logical conclusion, in terms of fashion at least: The introduction to Russia in 1995 of glossy magazines — the glamour referred to in the exhibit’s title. |
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 Russia’s only traveling exhibition of Buddhist art has returned to the city in a new and bigger format, nearly 10 years after it was first unveiled in St. |
 Last week, MTV Russia switched off the reality shows for an hour to teach the kids about politics with a chat show called “Gosdep,” or “State Department,” presented by blonde it-girl and media personality Ksenia Sobchak.
The show was a brave if slightly uncomfortable attempt to bring politicians and activists out of their traditional habitats. |
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Slimline dining
Luce will inevitably arouse high hopes and vast expectations of any visitor. After all, it is a restaurant neatly tucked onto the top floor of the upscale Grand Palace boutique mall and boasting a fabulous panoramic view over the Church on the Spilled Blood, Arts Square, the Russian Museum and the Mikhailovsky Castle. |
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 St. Petersburg was the “breakthrough of the year” on the world’s commercial real estate market last year, as the investment volume here increased almost 10 times and reached $2.1 billion, according to Global Capital Flows research published by Jones Lang LaSalle. As a result, St. Petersburg, which had never been ranked among the top 100 cities in terms of real estate investment volume, entered the list in 34th position. |
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 MOSCOW — A play lost but not quite. A musical score quartered and plundered. Three great names in the Russian arts — Alexander Pushkin, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Tairov — who were to have come together under a single marquee in 1937 but never quite did. |
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