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MOSCOW (AP) -- Vladimir Putin scored a decisive victory in Russia's presidential election Sunday to return to the Kremlin and extend his hold on power for six more years. His eyes brimming with tears, he defiantly proclaimed to a sea of supporters that they had triumphed over opponents intent on "destroying Russia's statehood and usurping power. |
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A student was arrested in St. Petersburg on Wednesday after selling 30 absentee ballots to an undercover police officer, RIA-Novosti reported.
Police made the purchase for 50,000 rubles ($1,700) and found that the student had another 300 ballots in his possession. |
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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the opposition was planning to commit falsifications during the presidential vote and then present them as proof that the election was rigged, RIA-Novosti reported.
Putin, the leading candidate to win the vote Sunday, was echoing accusations made by elections chief Vladimir Churov — among others — who has accused the opposition of seeking to present fraudulent evidence of violations to discredit the results. |
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The Investigative Committee has opened an investigation into who is responsible for creating fake videos showing voting fraud during the upcoming presidential election and will check to see if a crime has been committed, RIA-Novosti reported Thursday. |
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Despite international outcry from quarters ranging from Amnesty International to British author Stephen Fry, a controversial anti-gay bill was passed during a third and final reading at St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Twenty-nine deputies voted for the bill, five voted against and one abstained. |
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Nationalist firebrand and presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky caused controversy Tuesday by calling beloved singer Alla Pugachyova, and all other artists, "prostitutes" in a televised debate with billionaire candidate Mikhail Prokhorov. |
All photos from issue.
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 Anti-Putin protests were held across Russia on Sunday, a week ahead of the March 4 presidential elections.
St. Petersburg held two rallies, on both Saturday and Sunday, where thousands came to protest large-scale violations that took place during the Dec. 4 State Duma elections and have continued to take place during the presidential campaign.
Opposition leaders from Moscow — Alexei Navalny, Garry Kasparov, Sergei Udaltsov and Ivan Mironov — came to join Saturday’s For Honest Elections march, which turned out to be the larger of the weekend’s two protests, drawing between 10,000 and 15,000, according to organizers’ estimates.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has grown into a full-fledged popular protest leader during the past few months during the For Honest Elections campaign, stressed that the forthcoming presidential elections would be illegitimate, describing them as the “reappointment of Putin.”
“You are treating them as elections,” Navalny told reporters before the rally.
“They are not elections. This is a specific event. We should use this event to create additional stress for the authorities.”
Navalny urged voters to use the same strategy that he promoted during the Duma election campaign — to vote for anyone except the United Russia party and its candidate, Vladimir Putin, describing them as “crooks and thieves. |
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HOT TO TROT
DMITRY LOVETSKY / AP
The 18th-century Beloselsky Belozersky Palace on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Fontaka embankment caught fire at about midday Tuesday. Firefighters successfully extinguished the blaze without any damage to the historic interior. The incident resulted in major traffic jams around the city center. |
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A new zoo consisting of six islands to be inhabited by animals from different continents could be coming to the city.
It is possible however, that St. Petersburg’s new zoo could be built not in Yuntolovo Park as planned, but in Udelny Park, Dmitry Meskhiyev, head of the city’s Culture Committee, was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Deputy Governor Vasily Kichedzhi said the issue of the construction of the new zoo had not yet been completely decided.
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The volume of advertising structures in the city center could decrease by 20 percent after City Hall revises the rules.
The Committee for Print and Cooperation with Media took down two advertising boards measuring 1.2 meters by 1.8 meters (a size known as “city format”) belonging to News Outdoor advertising operator last week. The boards were located at numbers 190 and 119 on Nevsky Prospekt. The advertisements were hindering the work of snowplows, according to the committee. Their removal was agreed with the committee, said Vladimir Ryabovol, general director of the St. Petersburg branch of News Outdoor.
According to the committee, 561 advertisement structures were taken down in St. |
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 St. Petersburg firefighters worked to save priceless historical architecture when a fire broke out at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in the city center Tuesday. |
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St. Petersburg’s local hockey team, SKA, finished the regular season with a 4-1 victory over Sibir Novosibirsk on Sunday night at the Ice Palace.
With the win, SKA ended the season with 113 points, enough to win the Western Division and a top seed in the playoffs. |
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Arshavin Returns
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Andrei Arshavin, captain of the Russian national soccer team, will arrive in St. Petersburg after the Russian team’s match in Copenhagen on Feb. |
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 MOSCOW — Thousands of people formed a human chain around the center of Moscow on Sunday as the opposition upped its campaign for honest elections just a week before the presidential vote.
Despite light snow and slush and some skepticism among supporters, the “White Circle” — as the unsanctioned rally was called — saw people stand side-by-side and hand-in-hand all the way round the 16-kilometer-long Garden Ring. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered a blueprint of his foreign policy priorities in a 6,060-word article published Monday, but analysts said it contained little new thinking. |
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SHELBYVILLE, Tennessee — An American woman who sent her seven-year-old adopted Russian son back to Moscow has been ordered by a judge to appear in court to face a possible motion for contempt.
Attorney Larry Crain — who represents the adoption agency and the boy, Artyom Savelyev — said the mother, Torry Hansen, has not appeared for three depositions. |
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MOSCOW — Ukrainian and Russian security officials announced Monday that they had uncovered a plot by a Chechen-connected terrorist group to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. |
 MOSCOW — Billionaire-turned-presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov invited supporters to join his own political party over the weekend, which he has promised to found after the March 4 election.
Prokhorov said nothing about the party’s ideology, but it will face numerous competitors if it follows his liberal, pro-business stance. |
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MOSCOW — Peter the Great outstripped the competition in a bid to become Russia’s next president in a rehearsal vote held in 12 voting stations in Moscow on Saturday. |
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 MOSCOW — As a political bloc in Finland pushes for a federal bill to limit the purchase of real estate to Finns and other European Union citizens, Russians wanting to buy property in their northern neighbor are facing a cold gust of Nordic air.
Though both precedent and political sentiment in Finland give the bill little chance of becoming law, the proposal suggests mixed feelings about Russians, who in 2010 bought more than 400 properties in Finland for a total of 56 million euros ($75 million). |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is on course to win this weekend’s presidential election, but at what cost?
About $161 billion, according to some estimates. |
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MOSCOW — Severstal said Monday that it plans to spend a total of $1.7 billion this year to modernize its facilities and carry out new projects in Russia and abroad as part of its development strategy until 2015.
The steel giant intends to “invest significantly” in its local assets, which is the major focus of Severstal’s investment program for 2012, and it plans to complete the modernization of its North American facilities, the company’s chief financial officer Alexei Kulichenko said in a statement. |
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 The latest joke about the presidential election campaign in Russia comes from comic Mikhail Zadornov. “The recent electoral debates remind me of a swingers club. Everyone knows how the evening will end, but beforehand you have to introduce yourself and make small talk. |
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When I came out two years ago to my mother, the first response I got was the question, “Sounds good honey, but just one thing: Are you a political lesbian?” Bewildered, I asked, “What is that supposed to mean?” After a moment’s pause, she replied, “Well… Have you cut your hair?” Apparently the two go hand-in-hand. |
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 Peter Hook, a founding member and the bassist with the British post-punk legends Joy Division, is bringing music to St. Petersburg that has not been heard live for decades since the untimely death of vocalist Ian Curtis in 1980.
The 56-year-old Hook has since played with bands such as New Order, Revenge, Monaco and Freebass, and co-owned Manchester’s infamous Hacienda (he went on to write a book called “The Hacienda – How Not To Run A Club” about his experience) and now runs a new club called The Factory.
On May 18, 2010, Hook commemorated the 30th anniversary of Ian Curtis’ death by performing “Unknown Pleasures,” Joy Division’s debut album, live with his band The Light at his club The Factory. |
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TIMOTHY NORRIS
BRITISH ROCK
LEGEND PETER
HOOK COMES TO
THE CITY THIS
WEEKEND TO
PERFORM CLASSIC
JOY DIVISION
MATERIAL. |
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Members of Pussy Riot, a Moscow feminist punk band known for their unsanctioned public protest performances held in unlikely places from the metro and boutiques to Red Square, have found themselves the subject of a criminal investigation.
On Feb. 21, the group, which is seen as a music band and contemporary art collective crossover, entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow to hold what it described as a “punk service.
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 As for so many of her heroes, for jazz singer Olesya Yalunina, jazz is freedom: A means of expressing emotions and ideas, as well as a means of freeing oneself from the homogeneity of daily life. This is apparent not only in her music and her singularly expressive voice, but in her personality as well. |
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Big, red, sweet and juicy strawberries, homegrown in St. Petersburg — and ready to eat in the first days of March! This may sound near impossible, but it is not a fantasy. |
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Îôèñíûé ïëàíêòîí: “office plankton,” aka cubicle rats, office monkeys, desk jockeys
Every once in a while I fall in love at first sight with a Russian slang expression. Such was the case with îôèñíûé ïëàíêòîí (literally, “office plankton”). As soon as you hear it, you envision the workplace as a big aquarium with its big and little fish, a few sharks, several crabs and a whale or two — all chewing up the plankton, that mass of indistinguishable workers that keeps the system functioning. Brilliant!
Îôèñíûé ïëàíêòîí has a bad rep with people outside the workplace or at the top of the corporate food chain. The phrase is sometimes used as a synonym for îôèñíîå áûäëî (office rabble) and means low-level white-collar workers who spend most of their time at work drinking coffee, chatting with their co-plankton, texting and bungling the few mindless tasks they are assigned. |
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 Emir Kusturica would vote for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s upcoming presidential elections, the Serbian filmmaker and musician said during a visit to St. |
 NEW YORK — “Putin’s Kiss,” a new documentary by Danish director Lisa Birk Pedersen, will disappoint those hoping to see the softer side of Russia’s once and future president: Putin only appears briefly at the film’s outset to receive a bashful peck on the cheek from Maria Drokova, then a star of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi.
Instead, the film aims to portray Russia’s first post-Soviet generation through the meteoric rise and eventual disillusionment of Drokova, born in 1989. |
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 Last week, rock musician Sergei Shnurov, whose band Leningrad was once banned in Moscow for its lyrics littered with swearwords, took on a very different role — playing a dad in a sitcom. |
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Under neon lights
Stepping into Luxury Café feels like stumbling into a Ray Bradbury nightmare: Light pulsates from neon walls onto black polyethylene tables and shiny, lacquered seats, reflecting painfully into one’s eyes, and ornately framed TVs deck the walls like production-line Picassos, blaring out VH1 on loop. |
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 NIZHNEVARTOVSK, Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District — If St. Petersburg was built on a swamp to open a window onto Europe, Nizhnevartovsk arose from the bogs of western Siberia as a tribute to crude oil and human greed.
Celebrating 40 years since it became a city on March 9, this young and vibrant settlement on the mighty Ob River is populated by people looking to make quick money from the black gold nearby. |
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 Mongolia is a country of extremes. From the climate to the economy to the landscape — it is dramatic and unpredictable. Ulaanbaatar, the capital city, is even labeled “the coldest capital on earth. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive