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 A poll by the independent Levada Center shows that 38 percent of Russians are against the protest bill that President Vladimir Putin could sign as early as today, and two thirds think the leader should enter into dialogue with opposition forces.
The bill, which would to increase fines to up to 300,000 rubles ($9,000) for individuals who violate rally rules, cleared the final parliamentary hurdles Wednesday, now needing only the president's signature to become law. |
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 United Russia is gearing up to make opposition leader Alexei Navalny pay for his "party of crooks and thieves" moniker, which has haunted its members since the blogger coined the phrase. |
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Russia will attempt to play mediator between Iran and the West when President Vladimir Putin sits down with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Beijing on Thursday, a top Putin aide said.
The timing of the encounter between the two leaders has not been officially confirmed but is widely expected, and comes as the United Nations Security Council gears up for another round of talks with Tehran later this month aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear-enrichment program.
"The meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will allow Vladimir Putin to feel the heat of the situation surrounding Iran's problem and how the situation is interpreted in Tehran," said Putin aide Yury Ushakov, according to RIA-Novosti. |
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 Three months after icon-like posters portraying members of the all-female punk band Pussy Riot appeared on Novosibirsk streets, a local artist has been fined for “desecrating venerated symbols. |
All photos from issue.
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 President Vladimir Putin on Monday offered European Union leaders help in their fight against a deepening debt crisis, on the same day that the ruble slid to new lows against the euro.
Putin also defended Russia’s democratic system and laughed at a call for him to be sent to prison.
Speaking at a joint news conference with European Council President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in the lavish, baroque Konstantinovsky Palace outside St. Petersburg, Putin acknowledged that a European recession would directly affect Russia’s economy.
“We are ready to cooperate in this process because we are also interested,” he said, adding that he hoped the European Union manages to overcome its deepening currency crisis. |
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MAD HATTERS
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
Guests celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at the British Consulate on Tuesday evening. The monarch’s 60 years on the throne
were celebrated all over the world from June 2 to 5 with a series of events, from street parties in London to the lighting of beacons around the Commonwealth. |
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Disabled children have been excluded from society for a long time, and one of the main causes of this situation lies in the closed nature of Russia’s social system and the undefined legal status of mothers of disabled children. These were the conclusions reached and discussed by representatives from non-governmental organizations and social foundations, along with members of City Hall’s Committee for Social Policy, at a press conference in St.
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A St. Petersburg traffic policeman who rescued a man and his two-year-old son last month from a car that caught fire has been awarded a medal, Interfax reported.
Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev awarded the medal “For Heroism in Service” to police captain Dmitry Poltorypavlenko for risking his own life to save others. |
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City Hall has authorized two anti-Putin rallies in the center of St. Petersburg to coincide with the March of Millions opposition rally in Moscow and the Russia Day national holiday on Tuesday. |
 Eduard Khil was a beloved Soviet crooner who won sudden international stardom two years ago when a 1976 video of him singing “trololo” instead of the song’s censored words became a global Internet hit.
Khil, best known as Mr. Trololo, died Monday at age 77. |
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The city’s parliamentary Committee for Culture, Science and Education has decided to organize a support movement for teachers as a result of the court case brought against a St. |
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The second secret witness provided by the prosecution for the Trial of Twelve provoked questions concerning his identity and evidence at the Vyborgsky District Court on Friday.
A group of The Other Russia opposition party activists are on trial for allegedly continuing the activities of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which was banned as extremist by a Moscow City Court in 2007. |
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 BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Tuesday that five of its soldiers were killed in clashes with Armenian troops alongside the border separating the two countries, deepening tensions between the two former Soviet nations.
The ministry said in a statement that exchanges of gunfire have been reported over the last two days at numerous points along Azerbaijan’s western border. |
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BEIJING, China — The leaders of Russia and China met Tuesday to foster an evolving partnership that has counterbalanced U.S. influence and shielded Syria from international moves to halt its crackdown on a 15-month uprising. |
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BERLIN — Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s chronic back ailment has improved somewhat, but she is far from cured and the conditions at the hospital in her homeland are making treatment very difficult, German doctors said Tuesday.
Officials in Berlin have tried to persuade Ukraine to allow Tymoshenko to travel to Germany for treatment. |
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Sixteen national soccer teams and thousands of fans will descend on Ukraine and Poland’s biggest cities this week for the start of the Euro 2012 soccer championship Friday. |
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MOSCOW — U.S. lawmakers plan to vote on the “Magnitsky List” legislation this week, raising the specter of a harsh response from the Kremlin.
The bill, introduced by a group of influential U.S. senators, would blacklist Russian officials linked to the 2009 jail death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other officials implicated in human rights violations.
Russia has accused the United States of meddling in its internal affairs with the legislation.
“If the new anti-Russian Magnitsky bill is passed, it would require a response from us,” presidential aide Yury Ushakov said last week, adding that Moscow hoped it would not happen, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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 MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has created his own political party, but the former presidential candidate’s efforts to distance himself from the protest movement mean he will remain loyal to the Kremlin, analysts said. |
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KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s parliament has given tentative approval to a hotly contested bill that would allow the use of the Russian language alongside Ukrainian in some regions.
Defying vehement protests by the opposition, pro-government lawmakers passed the bill in the first of two readings Monday. |
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MOSCOW — RT, the Kremlin-backed English-language TV channel formerly known as Russia Today, cranked up its U.S. viewership to become the most-watched foreign news channel in five key U. |
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Finnish company Industry Park East Management and the government of the Leningrad Oblast’s Vsevolozhsk district signed a lease agreement on 20.5 hectares of land to be used for the company’s Industrial Park Morozova at the Finnish Business Forum last week.
The park, which will be located in the village of Morozova, 35 kilometers from St. Petersburg, is designed to house small and medium-sized Finnish companies that work in metal processing and other types of production.
In addition to their manufacturing capacities and infrastructure development, the companies will provide clients with services ranging from helping people open businesses in Russia to providing support for projects that have already been launched. |
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 Finland’s Minister of European and Foreign Trade, Alexander Stubb, called for more Finns to do business in Russia at the Finnish Business Forum that took place in St. |
 MOSCOW — A new wide-gauge railway line to Vienna could be a key part of Russian plans to build a Eurasian “land bridge” between China and Europe.
The multibillion-dollar scheme, which would take more than a decade to complete if it gets off the drawing board, would be the most westerly extension of the “Russian” 1,520-gauge railway lines. |
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin doesn’t believe that BP’s possible departure from its Russian joint venture would be a bad signal for other foreign investors, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Having served as the chief telecommunications policy expert in Tatarstan and now heading Russia’s Communications and Press Ministry, Nikolai Nikiforov has covered a lot of ground in his 29 years.
That isn’t his time in the industry: He turns 30 later this month. Nikiforov is the youngest minister in the Cabinet created by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in mid-May, and by all accounts he is the youngest-ever appointee to a post-Soviet Cabinet.
Though significantly younger than his predecessor, 46-year-old Igor Shchyogolev, Nikiforov has already spent more time in the Internet industry and telecom regulation than Shchyogolev had by the end of his term. |
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 MOSCOW — Soviet botanist Ivan Machurin’s immortal phrase “We cannot wait for favors from nature. To take them from it — that is our task” could be the all-encompassing slogan by which Russia’s resource-driven economy now lives. |
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 If ever there were a country for which the adage “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” aptly applies, it is Russia. Time and time again, global investors and business leaders are left thinking that Russia is a dangerous place to invest in and is on the brink of yet another crisis. |
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A new law on gubernatorial elections came into effect on June 1, but there will be only a few gubernatorial elections during the next two years because the Kremlin hurriedly replaced roughly one-fourth of all the governors beforehand. |
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 More than 200 bands donated tracks to the “White Album” in the first 12 days since the project to support Russia’s protest movement — whose symbol is a white ribbon — was announced in Moscow on May 21.
Center’s frontman Vasily Shumov, music journalist Artemy Troitsky and ex-Zvuki Mu musician Alexander Lipnitsky have invited musicians who support the demands of the Moscow anti-fraud rallies and Russian Occupy movement to take part in the album, which will also call for the immediate release of political prisoners, including the imprisoned members of female punk band Pussy Riot.
“White Album” is also a reference to The Beatles’ eponymous 1968 album, which contained the songs “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Revolution,” the project’s initiators said.
“This album is our (musicians’) protest,” the album’s producer Shumov said via Skype from Moscow on Sunday.
“There was the writers’ walk in Moscow, and then the painters’ walk, who supported the protest movement. When the idea for musicians to do something came up, we thought a bit and decided to do an album, rather than a musicians’ walk. |
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NATASCHA THIARA RYDVALD / OPERA NORTH
THIS YEAR’S EDINBURGH
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL HAS AN
UNPRECEDENTEDLY RUSSIAN
FLAVOR, LED BY ST.
PETERSBURG’S OWN
VALERY GERGIEV. |
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Not up to the Italian Job
Pecorino makes a very favorable first impression: Small evergreen bushes, delicate purple flowers in window boxes and a wrought iron bench on the sidewalk outside the establishment are not only attractive, but hint at the Italian theme of the restaurant.
The interior, despite not having the cozy, authentic décor the exterior suggests, is classy and elegant in beige and white downstairs.
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 Russian art will take center stage at the upcoming Edinburgh International Festival, which is to take place from Aug. 9 through Sept. 2. More than one million spectators are expected to visit the festival, whose main focus this year is theater.
The Russian element in the program is by no means small, with the Mariinsky Theater Ballet Company giving four performances of Alexei Ratmansky’s playful and witty take on Sergei Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” (Aug. |
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Ôèíèø: finish line, finish, unbelievable (slang)
Once upon a time, Russians borrowed the words ñòàðò (start) and ôèíèø (finish) from sports matches. |
 Ukraine will co-host the continent’s biggest football tournament, the European Championships, in a few days time, just as a new Russian film has stirred up controversy.
Actor Sergei Bezrukov recently played legendary bard Vladimir Vysotsky, but in “Match” he plays a goalkeeper who faced up against Nazi officers over the course of 90 minutes and won.
“Let’s show these super-humans!” Bezrukov’s character Nikolai Ranevich says before the start of the game. |
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 Last week, media personality and reality-show-host-turned-opposition-activist Ksenia Sobchak very publicly lost her job hosting the MUZ-TV music awards, the competitor to MTV Russia on the local music scene. |
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 KIEV, Ukraine — Victor Chikelu, a Nigerian medical student, was punched and told to go back to Africa by a drunk in the Kiev subway two years ago. But he, like other Africans who have suffered racist abuse in Ukraine’s capital, has a message for football fans: Don’t boycott Euro 2012.
“I don’t think this should prevent the fans from coming down,” said Chikelu. |
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Issues Archive