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 After months of delays, the government has finalized a much-touted visa agreement with the United States and drafted the corresponding bill, though it was unclear Wednesday when the State Duma would hear it.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved the bill and ordered it to be sent to the Duma, the government said in a decree published on its website.
The decree was dated and published May 25 but only became known when national media reported it Wednesday. |
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 The Central Bank has begun large-scale intervention in currency markets as steadily slumping oil prices stoked the plunge of the ruble to levels not seen in three years. |
 A bank card designed to finance Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund was criticized Wednesday by state-owned Sberbank as the opposition leader revealed his biggest financial backers.
The list of 16 includes representatives of major Russian companies. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — European Union leaders sit down for the first time with President Vladimir Putin since his return to the Kremlin this Monday for a summit that is expected to send out many signals but little substance. |
 U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul and the U.S. State Department responded Wednesday to blistering criticism from the Foreign Ministry, saying they were surprised by the harsh reaction to the ambassador's comments to university students last week.
"As a proponent of better U. |
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After the city spread soil containing "grass" seeds around the Brateyevo metro station, a field of marijuana plants sprouted up instead of a lawn.
But don't go rushing over there with your bong. |
All photos from issue.
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The police arrested local opposition leaders Olga Kurnosova and Nikolai Bondarik as they distributed white balloons for the second Test Walk that started on St. Isaac’s Square amid City Day celebrations Sunday.
The walk, whose aim was to check whether residents can walk around freely with white balloons and white ribbons — which represent the campaign for honest elections and anti-Putin protests — went ahead without Kurnosova and Bondarik, who were taken to two different police precincts and charged with jaywalking.
They were fined and released about three hours later, Kurnosova said.
Between two and three hundred took part, marching on Nevsky Prospekt toward Ploshchad Iskusstv, where anti-Putin protesters have been gathering after being evicted from two previous locations. |
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DEFENESTRATION
DMITRY LOVETSKY / AP
Residents walk through the ‘window to Europe,’ a phrase coined by city founder Peter the Great to describe St. Petersburg. The city celebrated the 309th
anniversary of its founding at the weekend and hosted an array of events including theater performances around town. |
 As International Children’s Day is celebrated around the world on June 1, a charity event aimed at drawing attention to one of the most sobering social topics, child mortality, will be held in the city.
On this day, people are encouraged make a donation to St. Petersburg Children’s Hospice and in exchange receive a white paper flower as a sign of hope and new life.
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The majority of St. Petersburg and Moscow residents love living in their cities, according to a new poll.
According to a sociological survey carried out by the website Superjob.ru, at least 87 percent of St. Petersburg residents and 72 percent of Moscow residents said they liked living in their cities. |
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The prosecution presented its most intriguing witness yet during the trial of the 12 Other Russia activists Tuesday. An undercover agent, who reported to counter-extremism Center E on the activists’ meetings and protests, took the stand at the trial’s latest session. |
 A direct rail link between St. Petersburg and the Estonian capital of Tallinn reopened Sunday after a four-year break.
The train service between St. Petersburg and Tallinn was canceled in 2008 because of both technical and economic reasons, including insufficient demand. |
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A criminal investigation has been opened into a fatal shooting that took place in a local restaurant, resulting in the deaths of two people Sunday night. |
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Tokyo Route Begins
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City residents and guests will once again have the opportunity to fly directly between St. Petersburg and Tokyo. Russia’s Transaero airline will fly to Tokyo’s Narita Airport once every other Thursday.
According to the St. Petersburg press service of the Russian Travel Industry Union, flights will start on June 21. |
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 MOSCOW — About 150 people were detained Sunday as scores of people gathered for a series of anti-government demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Police detained some 40 people outside the Mayor’s Office, where gay rights activists gathered to protest anti-gay legislation passed in several Russian cities and waiting for a vote in the capital. |
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MOSCOW — Diplomas from 210 foreign universities will now be acknowledged in Russia without additional state evaluation, according to a government order published Friday by Rossiiskaya Gazeta. |
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MOSCOW — Opposition activists have submitted an application to hold a rally June 12, asking Moscow authorities to approve the attendance of up to 50,000 people in a protest that may serve as the first test of a new rally law that could be approved as early as next week. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called for United Russia to be “rebuilt from scratch” at a convention that elected him party leader over the weekend. |
 MOSCOW — British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday became the first senior Western official to hold talks with the new Russian government, in what analysts labeled an initiative to prevent further deterioration of relations.
Hague discussed the Syria crisis and the upcoming Olympic Games in London and Sochi with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before holding more Olympic-related talks in the White House, the British Embassy said. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry assailed U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul for comments he made to students last week, saying the ministry was “utterly shocked” and that McFaul’s remarks went “far beyond the bounds of diplomatic etiquette. |
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 VOSTOCHNY PORT, Primorye Region — The bottom half of what will be Russia’s biggest ice-resistant drilling platform looked like a gigantic upside-down table.
The 52,000 cubic meters of concrete and 27,000 tons of steel mark the beginning of the third phase of the Sakhalin-1 project operated by ExxonMobil, which anticipates peak annual oil production of 4. |
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MOSCOW — Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman on Monday unexpectedly announced his resignation as chief executive of TNK-BP, a sign of rising tensions between shareholders at the Russian venture of British company BP. |
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A high-speed railway project between Moscow and St. Petersburg is ready for realization, said Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways.
When the new route opens, which is planned to coincide with Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup, the trip between Moscow and St. |
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For the first time ever, the number of Internet users took the lead over television in Russia in April.
Yandex website became the new leader on the Russian media market, outstripping the country’s leading Channel 1 TV station, Vedomosti newspaper reported. |
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 “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
This quote from Albert Einstein is a very convenient explanation for the surge of nationalist sentiment in Russia. Post-Soviet Russia, age 20, is a young country. The migration and demographic shifts that we are seeing today are unprecedented in Russia’s history. |
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In “The Godfather,” author Mario Puzo describes criminal boss Don Corleone’s organization as a highly centralized money-making machine. The Godfather is the CEO of an underground business empire, a kind of shadowy Henry Ford who collects all the money and makes all the decisions. |
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 St. Petersburg will now have its own BalconyTV, the international daily online viral music show that features bands, musicians and other variety acts on balconies around the world.
The St. Petersburg page is already present on the BalconyTV web site, which boasts over 20 million video views, and will start being updated with material this Friday.
BalconyTV St. Petersburg was founded by musician Seva Gakkel, formerly cellist in the seminal rock band Akvarium and the pioneering TaMtAm Club founder. The long balcony where the show will be filmed runs around an apartment on the seventh floor of a building on the Petrograd Side, and was provided by ballerina and film actress Sofya Skya. |
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NATASHA RAZINA
GRAHAM VICK OFFERS A
CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATION
OF ‘BORIS GODUNOV’ WITH HIS
NEW PRODUCTION AT THE
MARIINSKY THEATER. |
 Looking at one’s reflection in the mirror can be a most sobering sight. This is certainly the case with British director Graham Vick’s daring production of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov,” which premiered on Friday, May 25 at the Mariinsky Theater.
The idea that every nation gets the government that it deserves may sound insulting to some, yet if voters themselves would reflect upon this idea, the chances of getting a decent government would increase greatly, no matter how bad things may seem at the start.
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Ïðîâîêàòîð: plant, rabble-rouser, troublemaker, provocateur
One of my favorite new language toys is Google’s Ngram Viewer, which lets you — in highly technical Googlese — “search lots of books” to find the frequency of a word or phrase. This is a helpful tool for translators who are trying to choose a word in English that matches, more or less, its Russian equivalent in frequency of usage.
Take, for example, ïðîâîêàòîð and provocateur. They are both originally from Latin and mean a secret agent who foments violence or encourages commission of a crime, although the Russian word can refer more generally to anyone who incites enmity or causes trouble. |
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 We download their music and become familiar with their voices. We would recognize them on the street and we envy their swagger. But what do we really know about our favorite musicians? After this weekend, hopefully a little bit more. |
 BAKU, Azerbaijan — Sweden’s Loreen clinched the top spot at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest at the weekend with her dance hit “Euphoria,” pushing aside competition from a sextet of Russian grannies and a Serbian balladeer.
Juries and television viewers from across Europe awarded Loreen a total of 372 points, handing her an easy win in an event that ended in the early hours Sunday in host country Azerbaijan. |
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Family values
While Italianskaya Ulitsa certainly did not get its name from being home to a wealth of Italian restaurants and could hardly be described as the city’s Italian district, new trattoria Little Italy, which opened on the street in March, is certainly doing its best to live up to its name. |
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 PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY — In a corner of this huge country, at the very edge of the world, the Kamchatka Peninsula juts 1,500 kilometers into the Pacific.
Eight thousand kilometers east of Moscow, Kamchatka is an incredible place. It holds such titles as the highest recorded density of brown bears on Earth, the only geyser field in Eurasia and the tallest active volcano on the continent. For decades the peninsula was shut by the Soviet government to protect its local military assets, but the Soviet collapse caused this region to open, bringing in waves of outsiders. |
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 As the city’s Hotel Astoria celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, its owner, Sir Rocco Forte, talks to The St. Petersburg Times about combating Sicilian bureaucracy, learning from wasted opportunities, storming out of a fencing competition and his plans to conquer Moscow and New York. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive