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LONDON — The first Russian gold medal to be won at the Olympic Games in London was won by Arsen Galstyan, a judoka in the weight category of under 60 kilograms, on the very first day of the Olympics on Saturday, June 28.
According to Galstyan, the semi-final, in which he fought Uzbekistan’s Rishod Sobirov, was much more difficult to win than the final against Japanese judoka Hiroaki Hiraoka, in which he got a winning score in the 40th second after the start of the fight. |
All photos from issue.
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 As a new pre-trial detention facility in the suburb of Kolpino nears completion, the city government is exploring the possibilities of breathing new life into the infamous Kresty prison on the Arsenalnaya embankment. In the autumn, City Hall plans to announce a tender for potential investors to redevelop the territory of the prison and its surroundings.
Turning the prison into a hotel, a museum, an art gallery, a business center and even a creative cluster complete with studios of local artists are just some of the ideas that have already been voiced. City Hall’s Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects has already voiced the cluster idea to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, and it was received favorably, according to the committee’s representative, Irina Babyuk. |
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GUN SHOW
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
History enthusiasts mark the 200th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812 by reenacting the Battle of Klyastitsy in the village of Siverskaya outside the city Saturday. During the battle, Russian forces prevented Napoleon’s army from moving toward St. Petersburg. |
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Unidentified criminals stole 10 million rubles ($307,000) in cash from a branch of VTB 24 bank on Moskovsky Prospekt on Saturday.
The robbers broke into the bank through a hole they dug through the bank’s floor from the building’s cellar, Fontanka.ru reported.
The culprits worked quickly, apparently realizing that they would have very little time before the alarm system went off.
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The city’s consumer rights service, Rospotrebnadzor, has warned St. Petersburg parents about local banking market violations in which children have been given bankcards without the knowledge of their parents.
Over the last three months, the service has received seven complaints from local parents with claims against Svyaznoi Bank, Rospotrebnadzor wrote on its website. |
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Freedom of Press
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police, Sergei Umnov, said that when journalists are detained during mass events, police should release them once the journalists identify themselves. |
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A scandal has erupted over a children’s summer camp in the Leningrad Oblast after the LenOblast prosecutor’s office said the children attending the camp were not being fed enough and that the living conditions were too poor to host HIV-positive children.
At least 112 children from St. Petersburg children’s homes are currently residing at the summer camp in the village of Roshchino in the Vyborgsky district. Some of these children have HIV.
According to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, institutions for health and recreation can only receive children who do not have special dietary or medical requirements. When Yunost registered as a camp, it reportedly failed to provide for additional health facilities for children with additional needs. |
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 Forty-seven athletes from St. Petersburg are to participate in the London Olympic Games, the city’s Sports Committee said.
St. Petersburg usually sends high numbers of track and field athletes and swimmers to the Olympics. |
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 MOSCOW — Russians would rather lose a body part or several years of their life than lose their eyesight, yet they do little to make sure that their eyes are healthy, according to a recent study by eye-care company Bausch & Lomb.
The international online survey, Barometer of Global Eye Health, collected responses from over 11,000 people from 11 countries: The United States, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Britain, China, Japan, India and Russia. |
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KIEV, Ukraine — If a group of Ukrainian lawmakers succeeds in its mission, TV shows and movies sympathetically portraying homosexuals such as “Brokeback Mountain” will be banned. |
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MOSCOW — McDonald’s found no irregularities at one of its Moscow restaurants that a customer said sold her a chicken burger containing worms.
“No foreign objects were found in the contents of the sandwich,” McDonald’s said in a statement, adding that staff had inspected the offending McChicken shortly after it was returned Sunday at one of the chain’s restaurants in the Global City mall in the south of the city. |
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MOSCOW — An unmanned Russian cargo vessel failed to dock with the International Space Station early Tuesday morning due to technical complications, NASA said in a statement on its website. |
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MOSCOW — More than 1,800 Kalmyks are seeking compensation from the government as victims of a forced deportation ordered by Josef Stalin 60 years ago.
A court in Elista, the capital of the Kalmykia republic, which lies between the southern end of the Volga River and the Caspian Sea, has rejected their claims, prompting them to rush to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. |
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MOSCOW — Up to 900 prisoners are refusing food, and five slashed their forearms in a high-security prison in Bashkortostan after an inmate was beaten to death, rights activists said. |
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MOSCOW — Villagers in Russia’s south Urals have stumbled upon a gruesome discovery — four barrels containing 248 human fetuses left in a forest.
Police in the Sverdlovsk region said Tuesday that the fetuses, preserved in formaldehyde, were kept in barrels with tags containing surnames and numbers. |
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MOSCOW — Authorities have called off an airborne search operation for a biplane that went missing more than a month ago in the Sverdlovsk region and will rely on volunteer crews on the ground to keep up the efforts, local media reported. |
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MOSCOW — Murmansk prosecutors have sued Vkontakte, the country’s largest social network, over pornographic materials distributed by its users.
Prosecutors for the city’s Oktyabrsky district said in their lawsuit that Vkontakte contains a large amount of pornographic materials that can be easily accessed by minors and urged it to monitor uploaded content and remove any that violated the law.
“Under current legislation, the Vkontakte social network owns the website and therefore is obliged to take measures to limit access to pornography,” prosecutors said in a statement. They did not cite which law obliged the website to take such action.
Last week, the Federation Council passed a bill that allows the government to disable access to content that it believes shows child pornography, solicits children to appear in pornographic materials, encourages drug use, promotes suicide or distributes content that is illegal under Russian law. |
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 MOSCOW — Ukrainian investigators have wrapped up an inquiry into two suspects accused of plotting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin after the March presidential election on orders of Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov. |
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MOSCOW — A Paris court has ordered the liquidation of the France Soir, a 70-year-old newspaper owned by the son of Russian billionaire Sergei Pugachyov.
Pugachyov’s son, Alexander, purchased the French paper in 2009 in a bid to save it from looming bankruptcy at that time.
He invested some 75 million euros ($90. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian conservation specialists will go to South Korea to aid efforts to reintroduce Siberian tigers, which were wiped out on the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century.
“Korea plans to develop [a tiger] population, and we have enough experience, we will send experts to help them save the population,” Natural Resources and Environment Minister Sergei Donskoi told reporters last Wednesday. |
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UFA, Bashkortostan — Boris Titov on Monday made his first trip in the capacity of business ombudsman to Ufa, where he chided the local interior minister in a show of the new clout of the community he represents. |
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MOSCOW — Oil major Rosneft and Italian energy company Eni on Monday signed a landmark deal to finance oil and gas exploration at three offshore blocks.
The document, and a number of others, was signed at a meeting between Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Italian counterpart, Mario Monti, Interfax reported. |
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 Novaya Gazeta published documents last week that are widely believed to have been written by top members of the presidential administration. The documents provide a good snapshot of how an authoritarian regime strengthens monopoly political control while trying to keep the semblance of free elections. |
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In the 1990s, Russia was a poor country struggling to make ends meet and to find its place in the post-Soviet world. Then came a sudden rise in global commodity prices, notably oil and gas. |
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 Mariinsky Theater baritone Yevgeny Nikitin loves tattoos. Spiders, dragons and demons cover a fair share of the Russian singer’s muscular body. One of them has just cost the 38-year-old star baritone a long-awaited engagement with Germany’s prestigious Bayreuth festival, where the singer was due to appear in the title role of Richard Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Hollander” (“The Flying Dutchman”) on Wednesday. The tattoo in question was a swastika on the singer’s chest.
Expectations were high for this engagement. Nikitin’s participation in “The Flying Dutchman” would have been the first-ever involvement of a Russian singer with the Bayreuth festival, and Russia’s entrance to a prestigious club with restricted access. |
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FOR SPT
SIMON PAETAU’S SHORT FILM ‘MILA CAOS’ ABOUT A CUBAN TRANSVESTITE IS AMONG THOSE BEING SHOWN AT THIS YEAR’S OPEN CINEMA FESTIVAL THAT KICKS OFF IN THE CITY ON FRIDAY. |
 The 8th Open Cinema International Short and Animation Film festival that kicks off in St. Petersburg this weekend is open in more than one way: It is in part an open-air festival, and focuses on being open to new cinematic directions.
Its spotlight is on animated films and experimentation. In addition to countries traditionally prominent in the cinematic world such as France, the U.
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 The State Hermitage Museum spread its wings as far as Italy this month, with the inauguration in Florence of an Italian Association of Friends of the Hermitage Museum.
Hermitage Italy is the fifth association of its kind, following Hermitage friends’ clubs in the U. |
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Çëîáîäíåâíûé âîïðîñ: the question of the hour
I’m always fascinated by Russian words that come from the same root and are very similar in meaning. |
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Whatever I might read about the members of Pussy Riot, I’ll never believe for a minute that they are “silly” or mere “hooligans.”
Who doesn’t have an opinion about Pussy Riot, the punk feminists who are currently in custody awaiting a trial that could bring them a sentence of seven years in prison?
Their supporters, of which there are legions, consider them heroines of Russia’s recent political protest movement. |
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Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the U.S. group Red Hot Chili Peppers, appeared on stage in St. Petersburg during a concert last Friday wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of the controversial Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot. |
 Last week, figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko and his wife, pop producer Yana Rudkovskaya, announced that they are expecting in Hello! magazine. This was also an opportunity for Rudkovskaya to plug a brand of moisturizer.
To be fair, their pregnancy news was broken for them a long time ago by television host and friend to the stars Andrei Malakhov, who somewhat unethically wrote on Twitter back in May that Rudkovskaya was nine weeks pregnant. |
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A veggie restaurant in Petersburg is still a surprise in itself, although the ranks are gradually swelling with the relatively recent addition of Rada and K to the several branches of Troitsky Most around town and the ever-popular Botanika café. |
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 YAKUTSK — Flying into Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha republic and the coldest city in the world, feels like flying to the end of the Earth.
A pale brown, desolate expanse with the contours of a crumpled paper bag covers the western approach to the city, fingers of white filling its crevasses even in May. Rusty tankers sit packed together in a canal off the nearly 5-kilometer-wide channel of the still-frozen Lena River, awaiting the short spring and the month-long thaw, when the unbridged river is impassable. |
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 SABUROVO, Moscow Region — The group of 35 teens linked arms and formed two parallel lines.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!” they shouted, stamping their feet. |
 Every weekend, Mikhail Vasin suits up for the unexpected.
The lanky 31-year-old is no stranger to performing under pressure, having spent his college years as a member of an improvisational acting group, which was appropriately named Risk. However, that experience hardly matches up to the risks Vasin faces today. |
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Issues Archive