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Twin suicide car bombs killed at least 13 people and wounded just over 100 more in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala late Thursday, in what police are calling a terrorist attack.
Analysts said the attack was further evidence of the government’s inability to bring peace to the restive North Caucasus, but warned against linking it to Vladimir Putin’s inauguration on Monday.
The toll from the bombings made it the most deadly terrorist attack since the January 2011 bombing at Domodedovo Airport that killed 37.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police told Interfax that they had information about who organized the attack and released a list of wanted alleged gang members, all in their 20s. |
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 Outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday promoted Leningrad region deputy head Alexander Drozdenko to the post of governor of the region, the Kremlin said in a statement on its website. |
 Correction appended
Speaking Thursday at an international conference on missile defense in Moscow, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov cast doubt on the future of missile defense negotiations, saying they were leading nowhere.
"We have not been able to find mutually-acceptable solutions at this point and the situation is practically at a dead end," Serdyukov said, cautioning that Russia might be forced to deploy strategic missiles positioned to destroy elements of a Europe-based missile shield. |
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Vladimir Putin will deliver a speech as the new Kremlin leader at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum next month, and investors will have a chance to meet the new Cabinet, a presidential aide said Friday. |
 The body of a man was found in the elevator shaft of a partially built high-rise apartment building in western Moscow around six months after he died.
The gruesome discovery was made Thursday evening at the building at 2 Ulitsa Tvardovskogo, located between the Strogino metro station and the Moscow Ring Road, Interfax reported. |
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A St. Petersburg court handed down its first conviction under the city's new anti-gay law on Friday, ordering a leading gay activist to pay a 5,000-ruble fine for his picket against the law. |
All photos from issue.
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 The police deployed a notorious United Russia anti-gay law to detain 17 LGBT activists for attempting to raise rainbow flags or demonstrate anti-homophobia posters during the May Day demonstration in downtown St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
Before the march started, City Hall official Nikolai Strumentov approached the organizers with two police officers to request that the 100-strong LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) group — part of a larger group of democrats — put away all of their rainbow flags and posters.
He said that the flags and posters violated the ban on the “promotion of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism” proposed by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov in November and signed into law by St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko in March.
The posters and a large pink banner that the activists held read:
“We didn’t vote for discrimination,” “They came for gays today, they will come for you tomorrow,” “What difference does it make what you are, if you’re a human being,” “Hatred is the enemy of children,” “Freedom to Pussy Riot; freedom to us all,” “LGBT rights are human rights,” “To choose who you love is anyone’s right” and “The world is colorful, not black and white. |
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FREEDOM OF CHOICE
DMITRY LOVETSKY / AP
Communist Party supporters hold a poster depicting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as they march in a rally to mark May Day in St. Petersburg on Tuesday
morning. The sign reads: ‘Prices, tariffs and poverty rise — you, my friend, chose all this.’ Dozens of groups marched down Nevsky Prospekt on May Day. |
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Zorbing Season Begins
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s Zorbday entertainment company, which specializes in zorbing — an activity that involves rolling in a giant transparent plastic ball — will launch its new summer season with a four-day event called Zorbday Big Picnic. It will be held in Tokkari Park in the village of Koltushi outside St.
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Dozens attended a preliminary court hearing last Thursday in support of St. Petersburg teacher Tatyana Ivanova, who refused to falsify results during the December 2011 Duma elections and is being sued for 100,000 rubles ($3,400).
Ivanova was put on trial after announcing that she was pressured to falsify the results at her polling station during the State Duma elections. |
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Thousands of St. Petersburg residents celebrated in the city center Saturday after FC Zenit St. Petersburg clinched a 2-1 home victory against Dynamo Moscow to claim the Russian Premier League title for the second season running. |
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City Hall has canceled the construction of the Orlov Tunnel under the Neva River, deputy governor Sergei Vyazalov announced last week.
According to him, an evaluation of the project showed that it would entail significant expense to the budget without improving the city’s transport situation. |
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FIFA representatives visited the city’s new stadium being built on Krestovsky Island last week. The soccer officials received assurances from the city authorities that the stadium would be ready in time for the 2018 World Cup, said Jurgen Muller, head of the FIFA commission. |
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Large-scale repair work on the city’s Petrogradskaya metro station has been postponed until December. The construction was initially planned to start in June, Interfax reported.
The schedule has changed due to roadwork being done on the Pirogovskaya embankment and the redistribution of passenger flows. |
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 MOSCOW — In a widely expected move, President Dmitry Medvedev has accepted an offer to take over the United Russia party, all but guaranteeing his election at a special convention this month.
President-elect Vladimir Putin announced last week that he would resign the party chairmanship after his May 7 inauguration and recommended that Medvedev take his place. |
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MOSCOW — Russia coach Dick Advocaat reportedly will not extend his contract and will quit after the European Championship.
“After the European Championship, I’ll go,’’ Advocaat was quoted as saying in the Sport-Express newspaper on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — An opposition activist was detained and beaten Sunday after he tried to enter Moscow’s landmark Christ the Savior Cathedral to pray for Russia to be delivered from Vladimir Putin.
Several riot police officers forced Roman Dobrokhotov into a police car just meters from Russia’s largest church, widely seen as a symbol of resurgent Orthodox Christianity after seven decades of atheist Communist rule. |
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BRUSSELS — The chief of the European Union’s head office says he will not go to Ukraine during the European soccer championships in June unless there is a swift improvement in the human rights situation there. |
 MOSCOW — Police said more than 150,000 people participated in a march Tuesday down one of Moscow’s main arteries to a square near the Kremlin, accompanied by President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who arrived to greet the crowd just days before they will switch jobs May 7. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow is deeply unhappy with Washington’s decision to deny a visa to singer and lawmaker Iosif Kobzon, but won’t retaliate by barring U.S. artists from entry, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published Saturday. |
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MOSCOW — Former Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin, who was appointed as Perm’s next governor over the weekend, has promised to improve the region’s infrastructure.
President Dmitry Medvedev replaced the governors of Perm and Yaroslavl on Saturday, continuing a shuffle that has seen a dozen regional leaders dismissed since December. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian companies find cultural differences and linguistic barriers more of a problem when looking to expand internationally than most of their emerging market peers, according to research released last month.
Unfamiliarity with foreign mores and a poor command of languages are perceived to be obstacles to global business success by 89 percent of Russian companies surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and language-teaching firm Education First in a report titled “Competing Across Borders. |
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MOSCOW — The increased popularity of Mail.Ru Group’s online games, social networks, applications and advertising pushed up revenue 45 percent in the first quarter, while revenue for 2011 increased nearly 60 percent, the Internet company said. |
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MOSCOW — The Economic Development Ministry expects the country’s economy to grow 3.4 percent this year before expanding 4.7 percent in 2015, according to an updated version of the forecast that was approved at the Presidium meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin late last week. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow city authorities have held the first auction in their plan to distribute rental rights to buildings recognized for their historical and cultural significance — at the price of 1 ruble per square meter. |
 MOSCOW — Russia has seized real estate in France worth about 13 million euros from former tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London and is wanted by Russian authorities on fraud and other charges, a Prosecutor General’s Office report said.
The report said more than $320 million worth of illegally obtained property and funds had been seized as a result of requests to foreign governments, including $300 million in Switzerland allegedly embezzled from state-owned shipping company Sovkomflot by businessman Yury Nikitin, Interfax reported. |
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 The United States is stepping up the creation of its missile defense system, which is based on two key elements. The first is the land- and sea-based Standard SM-3 interceptors, which are to be deployed in Europe and, at some point in the future, in Asia. |
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Ten years ago retired colonel Alexander Polukhin, a professor at the Aviation Engineering Institute in Voronezh, launched a family business with his wife, their daughter, and his wife’s sister. |
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 With a new novel and a poetry collection freshly published and a music album about to be released, the 69-year-old author and dissident Eduard Limonov — whose biography won a major literary award in France last year — came to St. Petersburg last week. He came not, however, to promote his literary achievements, but to support the 12 local activists of his party The Other Russia, now on trial for oppositional activities and facing sentences of up to four years in jail.
Dubbed the “Trial of the 12,” the case has raised many questions, but Limonov — who spent two years in prison and a prison camp charged with the illegal acquisition, storage and transportation of arms before he was released on parole in 2003 — said it’s typical of the way in which Russian law enforcement operates.
“I remember my own criminal case and those of other people; for instance I wrote a book about entrepreneur [Anatoly] Bykov,” Limonov said.
“I went to Krasnoyarsk and investigated [the case] in 2000, I read his indictment, and it contained absolutely ridiculous things — for instance, that there was a criminal group affiliated with him that he was planning to use to assassinate [President Boris] Yeltsin. |
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STATE MUSEUM OF THEATER AND MUSIC
MARIA KUZNETSOVA, STAR
OPERA SINGER AT THE
MARIINSKY THEATER 100
YEARS AGO, IS ONE OF THE
ACTRESSES, SINGERS AND
DANCERS FEATURED IN A
NEW EXHIBIT TITLED
‘BEAUTIES OF THE RUSSIAN
STAGE. BEAUTY WITHOUT
PHOTOSHOP. |
 Portraits and belongings of famous female dancers, actresses and singers from Russian theater during the late 19th and early 20th centuries are on display at the State Museum of Theater and Music in a new exhibit titled “Beauties of the Russian Stage: Beauty Without Photoshop.”
The exhibit aims to showcase how beauty was portrayed before the days of the now-ubiquitous airbrushing and photoshopping techniques, when the woman in front of the camera was the same woman seen in the photograph.
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Òÿæ¸ëûé: heavy, difficult, oppressive, depressed
Òÿæ¸ëûé (heavy), like its antonym ë¸ãêèé (light), is more than just a description of weight. It also refers to a variety of difficult, depressing, or oppressive qualities — you know, stuff that is, like, heavy, man.
It can describe something that weighs a lot, like òÿæ¸ëûé ÷åìîäàí (a heavy suitcase), the bane of my existence when I am traveling. It might also be used to describe something that doesn’t weigh a lot, but more than expected — like the small traveling purse that I pack to the brim with electronics and books.
This äàìñêàÿ ñóìî÷êà (ladies’ purse) may look like it’s only filled with lipstick and lace hankies, but when porters try to pick it up, they exclaim: Óô! Òÿæ¸ëàÿ! ×òî ó âàñ â ñóìêå — êèðïè÷è? (Yikes! That’s heavy. |
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 The internationally acclaimed French American actress Julie Delpy, who starred in “Before Sunset” and “Broken Flowers,” has also proved herself as a film director. |
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The greatly underpublicized Russian Nobel Prize and the foundation that supports it are named in honor of Ludvig Nobel, an elder brother of Alfred Nobel, whose enormous wealth, derived in large part from the invention of dynamite, lies behind the infinitely better known Nobel Prizes that are awarded annually in Sweden and Norway.
Ludvig Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1831 and moved with his family at a very early age to St. Petersburg, to which his industrialist father, Immanuel, had been invited by the Russian government for the purpose of establishing an armaments factory. Due to a sharp fall in orders for armaments following the end of the Crimean War in 1856, Immanuel Nobel’s business became bankrupt and, in 1859, he returned to Sweden. |
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 Last week, Rossia channel came out loud and clear with its position on the Pussy Riot punk group, airing a talk show called “Provocateurs” with a weeping nun and ominous graphics of snakes slithering over the screen. |
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Noodling around
Variety is said to be the spice of life, but sometimes spice itself is what really gives life a kick. Lapsha (Noodles) bills itself as an Asian restaurant specializing in Thai and Indian dishes, but its ownership by the Probka restaurant group — a series of upscale wine bars and Italian eateries spread across the city — is an influence it could do well to shake off. |
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 When American Denise Wesolowski found out that she could not have her own biological children, she was upset, but years after learning the news, she said she was “glad it worked out that way.”
“That’s because now we have our Anna!” Wesolowski told The St. Petersburg Times.
Back in 1993, Wesolowski and her husband turned to Russia to adopt a child.
It took them almost a year to arrange the adoption from Russia, and in December of 1993, they finally received a phone call that an 11-month-old girl from Moscow was available for adoption. |
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 MOSCOW — The Russian high school students listened eagerly to tips on living in the United States.
Be communicative and polite, keep an open mind when encountering America’s diverse forms of worship, and volunteer in your community, like millions of Americans. |
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 MANILA, Philippines — May Day moved beyond its roots as an international workers’ holiday to a day of international protest Tuesday, with rallies throughout Asia demanding wage increases and marches planned across Europe over government-imposed austerity measures. |
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LONDON — News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead his global media empire, an influential group of British lawmakers said Tuesday in a closely divided ruling. |
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BURABURI, India — Army divers and rescue workers pulled 103 bodies out of a river after a packed ferry capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote northeast India, an official said Tuesday.
At least 100 people were still missing Tuesday after the ferry carrying about 350 people broke into two pieces late Monday, said Pritam Saikia, the district magistrate of Goalpara district. |
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JERUSALEM — Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced her resignation from parliament on Tuesday, weeks after she was ousted as opposition leader, in a move that could shake up Israeli politics ahead of widely expected national elections. |
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Issues Archive