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 MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin spoke out against construction of a large number of mosques for the city's booming Muslim population because many worshippers are not Muscovites.
Sobyanin told reporters late Thursday that a residency check revealed that "two-thirds" of the worshippers at the city's main Cathedral Mosque were not registered in the city of Moscow.
"These are either people from the Moscow region or migrants without residency permits," he said in comments carried by Interfax. |
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 MOSCOW — The first popular gubernatorial elections since 2005 were held Sunday in five regions, with the ruling party's candidates expected to win in all of them after many of the opposition hopefuls withdrew from the races. |
 MOSCOW — The government will distribute 6 billion rubles ($192 million) to farmers hit by this summer's drought that blighted Siberia and Russia's southern regions, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said.
As the last crops are gathered across the country, the Agriculture Ministry now expects the grain harvest to come in at 71. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — St. Petersburg's main airport temporarily halted all inbound and outbound flights Sunday morning due to thick fog shrouding its runways. |
 MOSCOW — Transaero could account for up to a third of the 15 million passengers Vnukovo Airport expects to handle next year, as the airline continues an aggressive expansion.
The company has signed a memorandum with the airport to expand services to "not less than" 2 million passengers a year, Vedomosti reported. |
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HOUSTON — The owner of a Texas microelectronics company instructed co-workers and associates to cover their tracks as they conspired to sell highly regulated microelectronics to the Russian military, U. |
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MOSCOW – Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov was questioned by investigators Thursday in connection with a documentary accusing him of plotting a revolution in Russia.
"Anatomy of a Protest 2," which aired last Friday on state-controlled NTV, included footage that it said showed Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement, receiving instructions from Givi Targamadze, the former head of the Georgian parliament's defense committee and a close ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, about how to trigger mass riots across the country. |
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MOSCOW – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that a civilian plane headed to Syria grounded by Turkish fighter jets was carrying Russian-made munitions, an announcement that could put strain into Moscow's relationship with Ankara. |
 MOSCOW — News that Moscow wants to end a multibillion-dollar program with Washington to dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons triggered fears Thursday that the Kremlin is embarking on an increasingly isolationist foreign policy course.
The Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that the United States wants to prolong the so-called Nunn-Lugar program, which expires next year, but that it believes the agreement is outdated in its current form. |
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MOSCOW — A gay activist says three people have been injured by masked men who stormed into a Moscow gay club in an apparent hate crime.
Viktoria Soto of the 7 Freedays club said Friday that a dozen attackers broke in late Thursday during a "Coming Out" party. |
 MOSCOW — A Moscow court Wednesday released one member of punk band Pussy Riot and upheld two-year prison terms for the other two members convicted of hooliganism for performing a song decrying President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.
The Moscow City Court freed Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, in the courtroom, to the joyous screams of about 130 spectators and reporters outside the courtroom where the band members' appeal was being heard Wednesday. |
All photos from issue.
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 Author Eduard Limonov, chair of the Other Russia opposition party, said Friday that the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which he co-founded in Sept. 1993, has not existed since it was banned as “extremist” in 2007.
Limonov testified as a defense witness at Vyborgsky District Court, where St. Petersburg activists from The Other Russia are on trial on charges of allegedly continuing the “extremist” activities of the NBP.
“I don’t look suicidal, and why should we take such a risk?” Limonov said. “No, we submitted to the ruling, without arguing with the law. How could we argue? The party was banned and that’s that.”
Limonov said he had applied for registration for a new party, The Other Russia, in May 2007, a month after a Moscow court banned the NBP. |
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AMBER NECTAR
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark inhales the aroma of ingredients used in beer brewing at the Baltika beer factory, part of Danish brewery
Carlsberg Group, in St. Petersburg on Monday. The royal also opened an exhibit of the Queen of Denmark’s art during her visit. |
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The city’s controversial Narodny supermarket listed several phantom firms as its official food suppliers, according to inspectors for St. Petersburg’s Russian Consumer Watch (Rospotrebnadzor).
Rospotrebnadzor investigated a number of Narodny’s suppliers, including Telsi, Orkhideya, Geostar and Interform, according to the watchdog’s press service, Interfax reported.
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A children’s playground to be designed by St. Petersburg families will be set up in one of the city’s residential complexes.
The winning design in the “Children’s Dream Playground” contest will be built in the yard of the Tridevyatkino Tsarstvo residential complex in the northeastern part of the city on the order of the complex’s developer, the Unisto Petrostal consortium. |
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The number of tourists visiting St. Petersburg this year will increase by 3.6 percent to 5.7 million people, said Tatyana Gavrilova, director of the northwestern office of the Russian Tourism Union, Interfax reported. |
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Repairs to St. Petersburg’s celebrated Dvortsovy (Palace) Bridge are due to start in the middle of October, Boris Murashov, head of the city’s Transport Development Committee said last week, Interfax reported.
During the repair work, only four lanes of the bridge will be open to traffic. |
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Aloft Hotel Project
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s town planning committee last week approved the design for the construction of a new hotel on Pirogovskaya Naberezhnaya. |
 MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry has weighed in on a subject not typically within its purview: the naming of a St. Petersburg metro station.
The ministry sent a letter to St. Petersburg City Hall recommending that the name of Bukharestskaya station, set to open in the city's south in December, be changed on the grounds that Russia has strained relations with Romania. |
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 MOSCOW — The European Union might be dragging out the possible cancellation of the visa regime with Russia, since the main reason this goal can’t be reached could be of a political nature, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.
“We have a feeling that … the reasons on the side of our partners from the European Union are not of a technical or administrative nature,” he said at a meeting with the leaders of the Association of European Businesses. |
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MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has ordered an investigation into claims in a television expose that opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov received funding from an ally of Georgia’s president and the former head of Bank of Moscow aimed at sowing discord in Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Most Russians believe that the Vladimir Putin era has brought positive changes, although Putin’s approval ratings are far from uniform across the country, a poll released Monday said.
Five months into Putin’s third term as president, sixty-four percent of respondents told the state-run VTsIOM pollster that his work as president has brought improvements, with 83 percent of United Russia supporters and 74 percent of those in midsize towns backing the country’s leader. |
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MOSCOW — Public support for large opposition protests is slipping, with 39 percent of Russians continuing to support them, compared with 44 percent after disputed State Duma elections in December, according to a new poll released Monday, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — Three train cars carrying ammunition to an Orenburg region military base exploded Tuesday, sending a white cloud of smoke into the air and causing emergency workers to evacuate thousands of residents from the surrounding area.
As a result of the explosions, which took place at the Donguzsky base at about 1 p.m. local time, up to 10,000 residents of two nearby towns were being evacuated Tuesday afternoon, emergency officials told Interfax. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties in the incident, but Interfax reported that ambulances and rescuers had set out for the base.
When questioned about the cause of the explosions, emergency officials told RIA-Novosti that they were triggered by a fire at the Donguzsky base’s ammunition-loading station. |
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 MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said in a first-person documentary aired on his 60th birthday Sunday that the current generation of opposition leaders needs to be cast aside, and he brushed aside concerns that the two-year jail sentence for punk bank Pussy Riot was too severe. |
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MOSCOW — A group of people in wheelchairs were blocked from boarding an Air Berlin flight to Germany at Domodedovo Airport early Monday due to an airline policy limiting the number of immobile passengers in wheelchairs on a flight.
One person in the group, which was traveling to Dusseldorf for a conference on creating accessible environments for people with disabilities, said the incident highlighted the need to pass legislation specifying the transportation rights of people with disabilities. |
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MOSCOW — A group of Russian Orthodox believers Monday called for the closure of all gay clubs in Moscow as part of the drive to ban the promotion of homosexuality, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s top health official said Monday that drinking and driving don’t mix — even when the drink in question is kefir, a fermented milk beverage containing less than one percent alcohol.
The comments by Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector, sparked an outburst of criticism and ridicule on Twitter. |
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MOSCOW — Russia's foreign minister says a dispute over the U.S.-led missile defense plans and other frictions have strained Moscow's ties with NATO.
Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow is continuing to seek guarantees that the planned shield wouldn't pose a threat to Russia's nuclear forces. |
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MOSCOW — Almost two-thirds of Russians believe that Internet censorship is a necessary measure to restrict access to harmful online content, a poll released Wednesday said.
Sixty-three percent of respondents backed Internet censorship in the independent Levada Center poll, while only 19 percent said the dangers of the Web are overrated, Interfax reported. A further 17 percent were undecided one way or another.
The poll's findings come ahead of new legislation set to come into effect in November that will require websites, website-hosting companies and Internet service providers to remove or block content that the government adds to a blacklist of illicit online material. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian diplomats demanded an explanation from Ankara on Thursday after Turkish fighter jets forced down a Syrian passenger plane on suspicion of carrying Russian military equipment on a Moscow-Damascus flight and seized some of its cargo. |
 HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A former Canadian navy intelligence officer who pleaded guilty to espionage was selling secrets to the Russians for about $3,000 a month.
Sub-lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle showed no emotion as he acknowledged to a Nova Scotia provincial court judge Wednesday that he understood the consequences of entering guilty pleas to three charges and was voluntarily giving up his right to a trial. |
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 PORTOVAYA COMPRESSOR STATION, Leningrad Oblast — The second phase of the mammoth Nord Stream pipeline went into operation Monday, increasing Gazprom’s options for selling its natural gas to Europe.
Unlike for the first line, no country leaders turned out for the ceremony, but President Vladimir Putin received perhaps the biggest ever tribute for his distinct role in the Gazprom-led project. |
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The council for the protection of cultural heritage has spoken out against restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin’s proposal to set up retail stalls in the city center. |
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MOSCOW — BP’s billionaire Russian partners in TNK-BP indicated Tuesday that they are considering selling their stake in the oil joint venture.
Moscow-based TNK-BP is jointly owned by BP and AAR, a group of Russian billionaire shareholders. The two partners have been locked in a boardroom dispute for much of the group’s existence. |
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MOSCOW — Despite near-record oil prices, the Russian economy is expanding at its slowest pace in 15 years, excluding the 2009 and 1998 recessions, the World Bank said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has moved closer to commercial production of a military transport aircraft that will rival the Boeing C-17 Globemaster.
A demonstration flight of the upgraded Ilyushin-76 airlifter took place as President Vladimir Putin looked on late last week. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin will soon travel around Moscow in a Russian-built limousine, a prototype of which has already been completed.
Putin said in an interview broadcast on NTV television late Sunday that the model was finished and currently undergoing tests. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s second-largest mobile phone operator MegaFon says it will go public in London and Moscow in November.
MegaFon, the last of Russia’s big three mobile companies to hold an IPO, said Tuesday in a regulatory filing that it would sell an unspecified amount of stock at Moscow’s MICEX and the London Stock Exchange by the end of the year. |
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MOSCOW — A Spanish architecture firm has won a state contest to design a new, sustainable city on the banks of the Volga, but the designs won’t be realized since the land on which the new city was to be built is now being sold in pieces at an auction. |
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 Among all the senior officials, only Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin felt it necessary to respond to the FBI’s arrest of former Russian nationals in the United States on charges of illegally exporting advanced electronics to Russia. Although Rogozin denied that any such shipments had occurred, he also said, “If we start saying publicly that we have a shortage of certain imported components, our oxygen will be cut off and their delivery will be cut off. |
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In October 2004, I stood next to my mother, Yelena Bonner, at an elegant dinner at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and translated her keynote remarks addressed to the participants of a conference on the impact of Cold War broadcasting. |
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 The opening of new venue A2’s main room Saturday turned into near-chaos when thousands turned up to see French musician Yann Tiersen and formed a nearly half-kilometer line to get into the show, which started with a huge delay.
The 5,000-capacity room was packed and Tiersen later posted a photo of the crowd with their arms raised on Twitter, adding “You all look good,” while many visitors complained on the club’s blogs about having to wait.
“We offered our apologies,” said art director Claire Yalakas. “There were a number of problems, one of which was an electrical problem that caused the delay of the soundcheck, after which Yann rehearsed for two hours, and people could not be let in into the venue. |
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KIRILL SHEVCHENKO
PHOTOS TAKEN BY STUDENTS —
PAST AND PRESENT — OF
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER
ANDREI CHEPAKIN ARE NOW ON
SHOW AT THE KARL BULLA
GALLERY. |
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The Russian language is believed to be rich and highly nuanced.
This made foreign journalists think hard about how to translate the word dvushechka, used by President Vladimir Putin in reference to the two-year sentences the imprisoned women of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot were given in August for an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
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 This year’s Week of French Film, which opens at Dom Kino movie theater on Oct. 12, celebrates the award-winning actress Nathalie Baye.
Three of the films being shown at this year’s festival star Baye: “Every Man for Himself” (1980), a drama directed by Jean-Luc Godard; “The Flower of Evil” (2003), a thriller directed by Claude Chabrol; and “Together Is Too Much” (2010), a comedy directed by Léa Fazer. |
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Òðàâìàòèêà: traumatic or nonlethal weapon, slang
On their resumes, translators and interpreters list their education, experience and particular areas of expertise. |
 A selection of the most accomplished work by the students and graduates of local photographer Andrei Chepakin’s school went on show at the beginning of this month in a photo exhibit titled “The Best 2011-2012.”
Hosted at the Karl Bulla Photosalon, a quiet gallery located four floors above Nevsky Prospekt, “The Best” brings together 150 pieces of documentary photography created by students and graduates of Chepakin’s Modern Photo school. |
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 The artist behind a new exhibit at the State Hermitage Museum is no poverty-stricken bohemian struggling to meet ends meet in a chilly garret. The author of the “Wild Swans” exhibit, which comprises decoupages and costumes for the film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, is no other than Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. |
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Golden age dining
French cuisine is somewhat richer than the baguettes, soups and éclairs that the city’s many boulangeries would have us believe, and newly opened Legran aims to restore the good name of haute cuisine by proving just that. Nestled in a shy corner of Millionnaya Ulitsa, in a district that was once occupied by wealthy expatriates (and still is, to a large extent), the restaurant aims to satisfy their tastes 200 years on. |
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 DESNOGORSK, Smolensk Region — At a time when many of the country’s single-factory towns are crumbling, one settlement located 350 kilometers southwest of Moscow tells a different story.
Fueled by one of Russia’s 10 nuclear power plants, Desnogorsk has boasted steady growth throughout its short history. The town, which traces its roots to a cluster of apartment blocks built in 1974 to house the employees of the then-newly constructed Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, only gained the status of a municipality in 1989. |
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 Mysterious, half-forgotten and little visited by tourists, the medieval fortress of Oreshek is situated at the source of the Neva River in Lake Ladoga, about 50 kilometers from St. |
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 MINGORA, Pakistan — A Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in Pakistan’s volatile Swat Valley on Tuesday and shot and wounded a 14-year-old activist known for championing the education of girls and publicizing atrocities committed by the Taliban, officials said. |
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CAIRO — Egypt’s new president on Monday issued a decree pardoning all those charged with or convicted of acts “in support of the revolution” since the beginning of the popular uprising that forced his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, from power. |
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BEIRUT — Syria’s cross-border attacks on Turkey in the past week look increasingly like they could be an intentional escalation meant to send a clear message to Ankara and beyond, that the crisis is simply too explosive to risk foreign military intervention. |
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ATHENS, Greece — German chancellor Angela Merkel said Greece has covered “much of the ground” required for recovery, during her landmark visit to the financially stricken country. |
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Issues Archive