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 The St. Petersburg authorities thwarted an attempted St. Petersburg Gay Pride rally Saturday, arresting the two organizers who came to Polyustrovsky park in the city’s northwest. The arrests came despite previous appeals to the authorities to allow the rally to go ahead, including a statement from Amnesty International. Four others were detained later the same day during a series of one-man protests near City Hall.
On July 3, City Hall granted a permit for the march and rally to be held in the remote park, which is located more than five kilometers from the nearest metro stations, after rejecting the sites and routes in the center proposed by the organizers, but banned the event two days later and had the organizers charged under the notorious local “gay propaganda” law. |
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FIGHTING TALK
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
A policeman approaches a protester holding a poster with the words ‘A good homophobe is a dead homophobe’ outside City Hall on
Saturday, hours after a gay pride event was thwarted when the police arrested its organizers before it had begun. |
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Incompetence and over-compromising were some of the tougher accusations faced by Eleonora Mitrofanova, chairwoman of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and Russia’s permanent representative in UNESCO, from local historical heritage protection groups as UNESCO’s 36th session came to an end in the city on July 6.
Speaking at the Green Lamp press club earlier this week, Alexander Margolis, co-chairman of the St.
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Points for gathering humanitarian aid for those who have suffered during the devastating floods in the Krasnodar region opened in St. Petersburg on Monday.
People can bring new everyday objects, clothes, bedding, toiletries and children’s goods to the social services centers of the city’s districts. Citizens willing to help can also arrange for their donations to be collected, by phoning 370 4407, City Hall said.
Local volunteers have also organized the gathering of humanitarian aid at 20 Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya and 31 Liteiny Prospekt (entrance from the courtyards). The collection points are open from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. The lists of items needed includes electrical goods such as generators, batteries, canned and instant food, canned baby food and various medicines. |
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 The authorities arrested national protest leader Sergei Udaltsov and dozens of other people in St. Petersburg on Sunday as anti-Putin protesters gathered to take part in an authorized Farewell to White Nights rally. |
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Moms Get Older
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Demographic analysts have registered an increase in the average age among women giving birth to their first child, Interfax reported.
The average age of a woman giving birth for the first time in 1999 was 22 years old, while today the average age is 28. There are also more women now giving birth in the so-called “post-reproductive age” up to 49 years old, Alexander Rzhanenkov, head of the city’s Social Policy Committee, said Tuesday. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The Emergency Situations Ministry acknowledged Monday that Krasnodar region residents had not been properly warned of impending flooding and blamed regional authorities, signaling that senior officials would not be faulted for the weekend disaster that killed at least 171 people. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has called on diplomats to use more soft-power tactics to improve Russia’s “distorted” image abroad.
Speaking to the Foreign Ministry’s annual assembly of ambassadors on Monday, Putin said that envoys should add new technologies, “so-called ‘soft powers’” to their traditional work methods. |
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Questions are mounting about the definition of “political activities” in a bill that aims to tighten the screws on foreign-funded NGOs after it passed its first reading in the State Duma.
The bill, which 323 of the Duma’s 450 deputies approved on Friday, would require all NGOs that receive funding from abroad and engage in “political activities” to register as “foreign agents,” a term used for Cold War spies.
“If we oppose an environment ministry initiative … or nuclear policy, is that a political activity?” said Alexander Nikitin, chairman of the Bellona environmental advocacy group.
“Of course, we are not vying for power,” Nikitin said by phone Friday. |
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 Russia will not deliver fighter planes or other new weapons to Syria while the situation there remains unresolved, the deputy director of a body that supervises the country’s arms trade said Monday, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court has refused to free three women accused of performing an anti-Kremlin song in Christ the Savior Cathedral from pre-trial detention, dashing hopes of leniency and rebuking a growing public outcry for their release.
The court upheld the suspects’ detention until July 24, denying their appeal to be set free. Prosecutors have argued that Maria Alyokhina, 24, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 19, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, are flight risks and could commit fresh crimes if let go.
A lawyer for the women said they would continue a hunger strike they began last week after the court gave them until Monday to finish reviewing the 2,800-page court document detailing the hooliganism charges they face. |
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 MOSCOW — Lawmakers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have called for sanctions against Russians implicated in the jail death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, even as one of the key suspects witnessed the vote in person. |
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 MOSCOW — Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on Friday advanced the idea of cutting government-funded jobs in a bid to reduce the growing strain on the federal budget.
He made the proposal as he became alarmingly repetitive in pushing for austerity at a Cabinet meeting that reviewed the first draft of next year’s federal spending, projected at 13. |
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MOSCOW — When international construction-consulting firm Turner & Townsend first approached Russian companies with offers to make their offices more sustainable, the response consisted of a lot of unenthusiastic looks. |
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MOSCOW — Buyers continue to show eagerness to snap up fancy offices, hotels and malls in Russia, and though commercial real estate investment won’t reach last year’s historic high, it could surpass $6 billion, analysts say.
This year’s level of investment, which is measured in purchases of buildings by other real estate players, is already more than $2 billion, according to various estimates. |
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Joining the World Trade Organization could cost Russia as much as 445 billion rubles ($13.49 billion) in direct losses in 2013 and 2014, the country’s top economic official said Tuesday. |
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 This is the last working week for the State Duma before it adjourns for its six-week summer break. Politicians are hurrying to put the last finishing touches on President Vladimir Putin’s policy of tightening the screws on the opposition and nongovernmental organizations — a campaign that has intensified significantly after Putin was inaugurated on May 7. |
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On June 27, Moskovsky Komsomolets published an article about a Russian man who, while skiing, found an iPhone that someone had lost and took it to the local police station. |
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 Regina Spektor, the Moscow-born, New York-based singer songwriter, returns to Russia for the first time since she emigrated to perform in St. Petersburg and Moscow this week.
“I’m really, really happy to be coming, I’m very excited,” the 32-year-old Spektor said of her upcoming Russian concerts in a recent phone interview with The St. Petersburg Times from New York.
Now on tour in support of her sixth album, “What We Saw from the Cheap Seats,” Spektor, who is greeted with an impressive response elsewhere, sounded unsure about her fame in her country of birth.
“I don’t know for sure if there are people who know about me or not,” she said.
“It seems some people know of me. But I don’t know if it’s true, I have no idea, because I know that they don’t play me on the radio or show me on television. |
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LIGHT MUSIC
SINGER-SONGWRITER
REGINA SPEKTOR SPOKE TO
THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
AHEAD OF HER APPEARANCE
AT STEREOLETO THIS
WEEKEND. |
 The style and dress of some of the greatest Soviet fashionistas is the focus of a new display at the Sheremetyev Palace. Titled “Fashion Behind the Iron Curtain. From the Wardrobe of Soviet Stars,” the exhibit showcases more than 100 dresses and 200 accessories from the private collection of fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev that once belonged to the cream of the crop of Soviet bohemians such as film stars Klara Luchko, Lyudmila Gurchenko and Natalya Fateyeva, ballerinas Galina Ulanova and Maya Plissetskaya, as well as socialite Galina Brezhneva, the daughter of the U.
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Ìóíäèð: jacket (of sorts)
Confession: I know virtually nothing about any service or profession that requires uniforms and absolutely nothing about uniforms themselves.
On the street, I can’t even tell a lowly ó÷àñòêîâûé (beat cop) from a ìàéîð (major), and I can never remember if a êàïèòàí (captain) is higher or lower than a ëåéòåíàíò (lieutenant). I can’t help it. When I was growing up, Barbie had Beach Ken, Business Ken and Prom Ken, but no Marine or SWAT Ken. Only boys played with G.I. Joe.
Given my deprived and gender-stereotyped childhood, it’s no wonder that Russian words for various uniforms and their parts give me a hard time. On the other hand, my Barbie was studying languages in her Dream House, so when uniforms intersect with figures of speech, I’m interested. |
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 American photographer Christopher Makos’ previous trip to Russia was 10 years ago when he flew in on Calvin Klein’s private jet along with the designer and a suitcase of underwear that the designer gave away. |
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The Russian capital’s hotel prices are exorbitant enough to make an oligarch cry, but the city has some fine free sights that may dry up a tourist’s tears.
Lenin Mausoleum
Two decades after the Soviet Union died, a visit to the mummy-under-glass of its founder is more about creepy kitsch than political pilgrimage, but still a potent view into the totalitarian psyche. Open 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday. Entrance is free, but bags, cameras and phones must be checked for a fee. To make this a true freebie, go with a companion who can hold your gear.
Winzavod
This former winery on a careworn industrial street has been turned into Moscow’s modern art nexus. |
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 In December, flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov announced that he had become a father, with a daughter born from a surrogate mother. Last week, he said that he now has a son as well — from a different surrogate mother. |
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Hipster hub
Being hip in St. Petersburg is easy: All you need are oversized specs, burgundy pants, a fittingly funky playlist, and, of course, the right venue. With a host of modish cafés and restaurants popping up all over the city, St. Petersburg is fast beginning to trend as a hipster city. |
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 KOSTROMA — There is a rock in Kostroma with the inscription, “Walk forward, and you’ll walk into a fairy tale.” For the traveler heading into the city, the inscription lives up to its promise.
The story of Kostroma is a mixture of legend and reality, and even the locals are not always able to separate the two. Father Frost’s granddaughter, Snow Maiden, calls Kostroma her home. Ivan Susanin’s heroic life ended tragically in the marshes near the city, and miracle-making icons hang in its churches, resilient to the test of time and the onslaught of Soviet forces. |
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 MOSCOW — Six Americans who crossed the Bering Strait on jet skis as part of a television reality show are being held by Chukotka authorities for purportedly lacking valid travel documents. |
 Food sales trends and eating habits may sound like an unlikely item for discussion at an international economic conference, but according to Ferran Adria, the world-renowned Catalan chef whose revolutionary approach to cooking gained his restaurant E Bulli on the Costa Brava the title of the most sought after restaurant on the planet, it is a highly topical subject. |
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