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The Investigative Committee is forming a department that will investigate crimes committed by police officers despite resistance to the plan from Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.
Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin has signed the paperwork for the new department, which will be established at both the federal and regional level, committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said Wednesday.
Investigators will also look into crimes that police officers commit together with members of other law enforcement bodies, but will receive assistance from the Federal Security Service because of the "additional obstacles" they face in such cases, Markin said, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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 Opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny was the only Russian named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential figures in a list published Wednesday. |
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LONDON — The opening episode of Julian Assange's new talk show featured an interview with militant leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose Syria-backed Hezbollah militia is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and Europe.
The half-hour segment aired on Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT Tuesday and featured questions about Israel, Lebanon, Syria, theology and encryption. |
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BRUSSELS — Russia's foreign minister sharply criticized NATO's plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2014, saying Thursday that coalition troops should remain in the country until Afghan government forces are capable of ensuring security. |
All photos from issue.
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A trial against 12 local members of the oppositional The Other Russia party began in St. Petersburg last week. The preliminary hearing, which was closed to the public and the media, was held at the Vyborgsky district court on April 11.
The activists, including The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev, were previously members of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which was banned in 2007 under the “anti-extremist” Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code.
Dmitriyev, Andrei Pesotsky and Alexei Marochkin have been charged with organizing activities of an extremist organization (an offense punishable with up to five years in prison) while Alexander Yashin, Oleg Petrov, Igor Boikov, Ravil Bashirov, Alexei Zentsov, Vladislav Ivakhnik, Roman Khrenov, Vadim Mamedov and Andrei Milyuk are charged with participating in activities of an extremist organization and face up to two years in prison.
According to the indictment, the activists held unauthorized protests “aimed at expressing intolerance toward senior executives of the authorities … and promoting the extremist activities of … the National Bolshevik Party.”
Originally, 13 local activists were charged, but in November last year Sergei Porokhovoi fled to Finland, where he requested political asylum. |
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TAKING THE PLUNGE
DMITRY LOVETSKY / AP
A skier dressed in the uniform of the road traffic police, complete with baton, dives into the water at a ski resort located 100 kilometers northeast of
St. Petersburg on Saturday during the Red Bull Jump and Freeze competition. Temperatures in the city are forecast to climb to 16 degrees this weekend. |
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Three hundred gym-goers are currently fighting to get their money back after between 1,500 and 3,000 members claim they were cheated by Galaktika fitness club chain.
At least three Galaktika fitness clubs have come under fire from their staff and members for allegedly owing money.
The most high-profile case is that of the sports club located at 5 Ulitsa Bakunina.
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Judges appear reluctant to use the notorious local anti-gay law, as the court hearing against Igor Kochetkov and Sergei Kondrashov, charged with “promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism” and “failure to obey a police officer” was postponed Monday for the second time. |
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Off-Duty Cop Kills Two
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A local policeman hit and killed a woman and her son, a sixth-grade student, while driving in St. |
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Sweden won a gold medal at the 34th St. Petersburg Grand Prix, or Bolshoi Priz, junior ice hockey tournament with a 5-3 victory over rival Finland at the Yubilieny Sports Palace on Saturday night.
Russia captured the bronze medal with a 6-3 win over the St. Petersburg team and the Czechs destroyed Slovakia 11-6 in the 5th-place match, both held earlier in the day. |
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MOSCOW — A bomb attack Monday in Dagestan severely injured a senior officer of the local branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and killed his wife, Kommersant reported, citing local Investigative Committee sources.
The bomb went off under a Ford Focus belonging to Gasan Achilayev, head of the Khunzensky interdistrict branch of the FSB, about 9:20 a.m. in the regional capital of Makhachkala.
The explosion occurred right after Achilayev and his wife, Patimat, got into the car.
The blast killed Achilayev’s wife and tore off one of his legs. He remained in emergency care Monday.
Investigators linked the attack to Achilayev’s successful campaigns against regional rebels. |
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia will spend about $1 billion this year to build a new space launch pad in the far east that should ease the Russian space program’s reliance on neighbor Kazakhstan. |
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MOSCOW — One of Russia’s top contenders for an Olympic medal may never make it into the London 2012 competition, as cyclist Denis Galimzyanov was suspended after testing positive for a banned performance-boosting substance.
“It’s a bad, very bad surprise,” Russian cycling team manager Hans-Michael Holczer told VeloNews. |
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Syrian opposition members say they have sensed a shift in Russia’s stance on the conflict in their homeland and voiced hope Tuesday that Moscow will crank up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. |
 MOSCOW — Speculation mounted Monday about the future of United Russia following a report that Dmitry Medvedev might assume leadership of the battered party in an attempt to allow incoming President Vladimir Putin to distance himself from the faltering political force. |
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Russia and China kept increasing their spending on weapons last year, while the global financial crisis hit military spending in the U.S. and Europe, a leading think tank said Tuesday. |
 MOSCOW — After eight years of fighting a strict law that virtually bans an anesthetic essential for their work, Russia’s veterinarians say they have nearly reached the end of their tether.
Ketamine has long been used for operating on animals throughout the world, but when it came in vogue as a party drug in the late 1990s, Russia’s response was to ban the substance entirely in 2003. |
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TOMILINO — Two years after Artyom Saveliev’s American adoptive mother put him alone on a plane back to his homeland, the towheaded 9-year-old shivers and barks “No!” when asked if he would ever go back to the United States. |
 St. Petersburg will be filled with the sights, sounds and smells of India for the next week as it plays host to the first Indian culture festival in Russia, Open India. Indian cinema, dance, music, fashion and cuisine will all be showcased at Mirazh and Avrora movie theaters through April 22, giving residents a chance to experience a piece of Indian culture without even leaving the city. |
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The daily work of journalists is often divided by their managers, editors and the like into two categories: “Off-diary” and “diary” articles.
The split means that the former comprises unpredictable, unexpected and undigested news events — anything that the reporter couldn’t have penciled in, such as a terror attack, a natural disaster or a politician’s gaffe. |
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 YOKOSUKA, Japan — To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea-lanes and a slew of potential conflicts. |
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MOSCOW — Igor Putin, a cousin of President-elect Vladimir Putin, has been named head of the board of directors of Russky Zemelny Bank and plans to turn the bank into a backer of large-scale government projects, the bank said Monday in a news release. |
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 In the days following the inauguration of President-elect Vladimir Putin on May 7, he will appoint a new government under future Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. A new government, even with some familiar faces, is still a new beginning. Ideally, what should be the government’s program, at least in the economic and social spheres, and could such a program be implemented?
Before answering these questions, it is important to remember that Russia is an unpredictable country, and expectations of what might be considered normal elsewhere are too often confounded. |
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Astrakhan has suddenly become the political epicenter of Russia.
A political crisis arose out of nowhere thanks to A Just Russia member Oleg Shein, who has been on a hunger strike for a month to protest the electoral fraud that he claims robbed him of his victory in the mayoral race in Astrakhan. |
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 Legendary local rock musician and Zoopark frontman Mikhail “Mike” Naumenko, who died at the age of 36 in 1991, will be remembered at a memorial birthday event at Dada club this week.
“Unlike [Kino leader] Viktor Tsoi, who became a real national hero through his purposeful activities, Mike, in my view, remained an unexposed genius,” said the event’s organizer Alexander Donskich von Romanov, a friend of Naumenko and former member of Zoopark.
“On the one hand, his work, strangely enough, initiated a wave of creative reaction all across Russia — in the provinces and far-off areas, in the Urals, Siberia, the south, east, west and north. |
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NATASHA RAZINA
ANDREI BONDARENKO AND
ANASTASIA KALAGINA STAR
IN DANIEL KRAMER’S
STAGING OF ‘PELLEAS AND
MELISANDE’ AT THE
MARIINSKY THEATER. |
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An unlikely meeting of Scorpions and the Leningrad Rock Club survivors took place in the city Tuesday as part of Scorpions’ farewell world tour, reviving memories of the band’s original visit to the now-defunct Rock Club in April 1988.
Perestroika and what was seen as westernization were all the rage at the time, but at the reunion — which took place at rockabilly club Money Honey — rock veterans said a new perestroika was needed.
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 Up-and-coming French filmmaking talent takes center stage at the Parisian Seasons in St. Petersburg film festival that kicks off on April 19.
Contemporary French cinema has been a missing link in the repertoire of Russia’s movie theaters, which heavily favor Hollywood blockbusters and tend to avoid reflective European films, especially those that come from newcomer directors.
Parisian Seasons nurtures an ambition to become an eye-opener for curious locals who would like to explore French cinema beyond the classics. |
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 Dylan Moran, best known for his role as the Irish alcoholic Bernard Black in the U.K. series Black Books, became the first native English-speaking comedian to perform stand-up in Russia last week. |
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Äëèííîå, çåë¸íîå, ìÿñîì ïàõíåò: long, green and smells like meat
My study of the annual addresses of Russian leaders is something like Kremlinology crossed with reading tea leaves with a bit of linguistic analysis thrown in. I’m looking for a sense of mood conveyed by language, some linguistic hint of what lies ahead. And with Vladimir Putin, I’m looking for some “special” expressions, That is, expressions I don’t understand that turn out to be archaic or crude — or both.
So I listened to Vladimir Putin’s 2012 address before the State Duma on Wednesday. And then I read the transcript. I scratched my head and read it again. Vladimir Vladimirovich! What happened? When did you turn into a linguistic Mr. |
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 Claude Debussy’s 1902 opera “Pelleas et Melisande” has been rendered as a thriller fused with irony and trash esthetic by the American director Daniel Kramer, who presented his take on the work at the Mariinsky Theater on April 13. |
 Last week, flamboyant pop singer Filipp Kirkorov christened his baby Alla-Viktoria. It was just a small event with a national television channel filming, a few pop stars and a church closed for ordinary mortals on the Palm Sunday holiday.
There had been rumors that Alla-Viktoria might not exist. |
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Urban escape
Tucked away a short walk from Chernyshevskaya metro station, the entrance to Kalitka (Gate) resembles that of a Russian cottage nestled in the woods. |
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 Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic symphony orchestra joined Iraqi oud master Naseer Shamma, Indian sitar player Anoushka Shankar and actors from London’s Shakespeare Globe theater at the ninth Abu Dhabi Festival that was held in the UAE capital in March and April.
Connecting cultures was the motto of this year’s event, which welcomed the U. |
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 OSLO, Norway — Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik insisted Tuesday he would massacre 77 people all over again, calling his July rampage the most “spectacular” attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.
Reading a prepared statement in court, the anti-Muslim extremist lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism. |
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Virginia, USA — Space shuttle Discovery soared around the Washington Monument and the White House in a salute to the nation’s capital Tuesday before landing for the last time near its new museum home. |
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UNITED NATIONS — The UN Security Council strongly condemned North Korea’s rocket launch Monday, announcing it will impose new sanctions and warning of further action if Pyongyang conducts another launch or a new nuclear test.
Acting swiftly, the 15-member council, including North Korea’s closest ally China, adopted a presidential statement underscoring its united opposition to Friday’s launch — which violated UN sanctions — and the military policy being pursued by the country’s young new leader, Kim Jong Un. |
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Issues Archive