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 MOSCOW – On the eve of the next major anti-government protest, investigators announced that they had evidence that a Georgian politician helped organize violent clashes at a May 6 protest in Moscow.
Givi Targamadze, a close ally of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, "managed" opposition leaders responsible for the so-called "March of Millions" on May 6 that ended in bloody clashes with police and hundreds of detentions, investigators said in a statement Thursday. |
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 MOSCOW – Investigators opened a criminal case Friday against prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, his brother Oleg and a group of unspecified others on charges of large-scale corruption and money laundering. |
 MOSCOW – The dramatic affair of the death of Alexander Litvinenko resurfaced with force Thursday, when a lawyer told a London judicial hearing that an initial assessment of evidence showed that the Russian state is to blame for the mysterious poisoning of the Kremlin dissident.
An examination of British government material establishes "a prima facie case in the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko," Hugh Davies, an attorney acting on behalf of the inquest, said according to news reports. |
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 MOSCOW – British budget airline EasyJet on Wednesday started selling tickets for a Moscow-Manchester service to begin in March, as the no-frills carrier looks set to slash the cost of flying between Russia and Britain. |
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A St. Petersburg workshop is crafting wax figures of Russian rulers past and present for an exhibit ordered by the presidential administration.
The project, which is financed by an unidentified private fund, has been running for several years and won't be completed for several more, Andrei Arsenyev, director of the Russky Vityaz workshop, told Interfax on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW – Black snow has fallen in the Siberian city of Omsk for the second time in a week, a news report said Friday.
Omsk residents first noticed the black snow on Wednesday but were assured that the snow did not present any health risks, RIA-Novosti reported Friday. |
 MOSCOW – Members of the diaspora who gathered in Moscow on Thursday for the Forum of Russian Compatriots welcomed President Vladimir Putin's recent edict to support remote Russian language-learning amid efforts in their home countries to limit the status of their mother tongue. |
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MOSCOW – The government will continue to bolster the country's economic and military prowess as well as dole out benefits to citizens, but political change can only be incremental, President Vladimir Putin said in his state-of-the-nation address Wednesday. |
 MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin expanded Russian vocabulary Wednesday, as he called for “deoffshorization” of the country's economy, a measure he said would help repatriate capital channeled to offshore jurisdictions.
In his state-of-the-nation address, which covered a wide range of economic issues, Putin pushed for agreements with tax havens that would help open up offshore entities and make them disclose their financials. |
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MOSCOW – A Moscow judge upheld a controversial plea bargain that could complicate efforts to determine who ordered the killing of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. |
 MOSCOW – The Moscow Helsinki Group, one of Russia's oldest human rights organizations, said Wednesday that it had received 2.5 million rubles ($81,300) in donations since launching an appeal for financial support late last month.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran rights activist and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said that the donations would fund the group's operational expenses and core personnel, while any additional contributions would go toward targeted human rights programs and providing legal assistance to Russian citizens, RIA-Novosti reported. |
All photos from issue.
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 The State Hermitage Museum has come under fire from the State Prosecutor’s office over a controversial exhibition.
Investigators are examining artwork in the exhibition “End of Fun” by British art duo Jake and Dinos Chapman, after the local prosecutor’s office was swamped with dozens of complaints of blasphemy. The authors of the letters accused the works of being “extremist” and “hurting their religious feelings.”
“We have received nearly 130 complaints about this exhibition; naturally, we took the matter seriously,” said Marina Nikolayeva, a spokeswoman for the State Prosecutor’s Office in St. Petersburg. “What people wrote in their complaints — we received most of them through our Internet site — was actually very similar in character. |
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AGAINST ALL ODDS
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
A street cleaner fights a losing battle against falling snow on Universitetskaya Embankment on the city’s Vasilyevsky Island this week. More snow is forecast on
Thursday, but the weekend is set to see a sparkling, snow-free combination of sun and frost, with temperatures forecast to drop to minus 13 degrees Celsius. |
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City Hall on Monday authorized the March of Freedom, set to mark Saturday’s anniversary of last year’s protests against widespread fraud in the State Duma parliamentary elections, but rejected every route that the organizers proposed.
Natalya Gryaznevich, one of the organizers, said Tuesday that the routes in the busier part of the center used by thousands of protesters for the demos held earlier this year were rejected, and that they had had to agree to a route offered by City Hall as an alternative.
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The dates of Dec. 12 and 21 have proved popular as wedding dates among engaged couples in the city, Interfax reported.
A total of 480 Petersburg couples have applied for the civil registration of their marriage on Dec. 12, which in digital form is 12. |
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Vishnevskaya Dies
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The renowned opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya has died at the age of 87, it was reported Tuesday.
“This is a huge loss, not just for Russian culture, but for world culture as a whole,” Mikhail Shvydkoi, an ex-culture minister and special envoy for the president on international cultural cooperation, was quoted by Interfax as saying. |
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The St. Petersburg-based Rossiya Airlines honored its four millionth passenger of the year last week in St. Petersburg.
While it turned out to be a pleasant surprise for city resident Natalya Grishanova, who happened to be the lucky passenger, it was also a milestone for the airline itself, since it is the first time Rossiya has achieved this threshold. |
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The local charity organization Nochlezhka, which helps homeless people, has begun its annual charity campaign to collect Christmas and New Year gifts for the city’s homeless. |
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FC Zenit went on mid-season winter break after Monday’s home league game against FC Anzhi Makhachkala, which capped a tumultuous half-season that saw sensational signings, in-team rivalry, rifts between players and management and a crisis in results that was only partly rectified in recent performances. |
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 MOSCOW — World-renowned Russian opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya, who with her husband defied the Soviet regime to give shelter to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and suffered exile from her homeland, has died at 86.
Moscow's Opera Center, which Vishnevskaya created, said the singer celebrated internationally for her rich soprano voice died Tuesday in the Russian capital. It didn't give the cause.
Vishnevskaya and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich married in 1955, frequently performed together and used their star status in the Soviet Union to help friends in trouble. |
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 VARVAROVKA, Krasnodar Region — President Vladimir Putin on Friday kicked off construction for the route to deliver Russian gas to Europe.
A ceremony in which two pipes were welded together marked the South Stream pipeline’s graduation from the phase of talks between governments and corporations — and drew the attendance of Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency and chiefs of the three European companies involved in the project. |
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MOSCOW — MTV Russia will stop airing in mid-2013 due to falling ratings, the holding company that controls the music channel has confirmed.
“It’s true, as of June 1, 2013, MTV will be replaced by a new entertainment channel for young people called ‘Pyatnitsa’ [Friday],” ProfMedia president Nikolai Kartozia told Kommersant in an interview published Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — In a widely expected response to the passage of the U.S. Magnitsky Act, State Duma deputies on Monday introduced a bill that would make Americans suspected of mistreating Russians personae non gratae. |
 MOSCOW — A drawing by an 8-year-old resident of a small town in the south of the country depicting national symbols like a nesting doll and samovar was chosen Monday to be the logo for Google.ru.
The drawing, by Pyotr Alexeyev, of Belgorod, was chosen by the Internet giant from more than 5,000 works sent by children across Russia who participated in a contest announced by the company earlier this year. |
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MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court on Monday handed down long prison sentences to four Muslim extremists who plotted to blow up the Sapsan high-speed train between Moscow and St. |
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MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has turned down a U.S. invitation to act as an intermediary in efforts to convince Syrian leader Bashar Assad to step down voluntarily, a news report said Tuesday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Lavrov for diplomatic assistance in facilitating Assad’s departure and forming a coalition government in Syria during their recent meetings in Phnom Penh and Dublin, according to Kommersant.
The U.S. is concerned that the Assad regime could use chemical weapons against its opponents and that these weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists, the report said.
Although Moscow has repeatedly backed the idea of creating a coalition government, Russian officials have refused to pressure Assad by calling for his resignation or voting for additional sanctions against the Syrian government in the UN. |
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 MOSCOW— Television channels were passing the blame Monday after unofficial footage from an interview with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was leaked Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday pledged his support for the Russian Orthodox Church, promising to re-establish the close ties that bound religious and military officials before the October Revolution in 1917.
“We will continue to support the Russian Orthodox Church with renewed energy and, most importantly, restore those traditions that existed under the Russian [pre-revolutionary] government,” Shoigu said at a meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the country’s top Orthodox Church official, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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 The first shot fired by President Vladimir Putin in his anti-corruption battle was aimed at former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. This was followed by the investigation into the large-scale embezzlement at Rosagroleasing, Rostelecom and the Federal Space Agency. |
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On Dec. 5, 2011, the day after the widely disputed State Duma elections, the first large-scale demonstration was staged and the protest movement was born. |
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 The Week of Finnish Cinema that runs in St. Petersburg next week offers city residents the opportunity to see another side to its northern neighbor than simply the shopping malls and ski resorts frequented by Russian visitors every weekend.
This year’s festival — the 23rd annual event — presents both new names in Finnish cinema as well as some celebrated classics, and seems largely oriented on young people, as it mostly deals with the problems faced by teenagers and their parents.
“I especially like the last film of the festival, ‘Miss Farkku-Suomi,’ a retro story about a graduate who is preparing to enter adult life,” said festival program director Alexei Dunayevsky. |
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FOR SPT
THE TEENAGE DRAMA
‘ALMOST 18’ OPENS THE
WEEK OF FINNISH CINEMA
THAT KICKS OFF IN THE CITY
NEXT WEEK, SHOWCASING
FILMS OLD AND NEW FROM
NEIGHBORING FINLAND. |
 “My Perestroika,” a documentary by Robin Hessman that has had huge success in the United States, had its Russian premiere Saturday in Moscow and will be shown again next week. The film looks at five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times. Hessman, who was in Moscow for the premiere, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times about the film.
Q: How did the idea itself emerge?
A: I arrived in the Soviet Union in 1991 when I was 18, went to VGIK [film school] and worked as a producer for “Ulitsa Sezam,” the Russian “Sesame Street,” so my entire early adult life was spent here.
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 The Mikhailovsky Theater will unveil the first ballet premiere of the season this week with choreographer Nacho Duato’s new production of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which will be shown on Dec. 13, 14, 15 and 16. Balletomanes are already heatedly arguing over the choreographer’s style, the theater has been closed for 10 days for rehearsals, and needless to say, tickets are sold out.
It will be the second full-length production that Duato has staged for the Mikhailovsky Theater, following last year’s “The Sleeping Beauty. |
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 The annual German Film Festival returns to the city this week, introducing local filmgoers to the best movies to come out of Germany in recent years.
According to the organizers of the event, the main goal of the festival is to present viewers with a variety of recent German films that have not been screened in Russia before. |
 Experiment and controversy dominated the local artistic scene this year. The St. Petersburg arts environment, which — despite the city’s moniker of “cultural capital” — has frequently been likened to the serenity and academism of “The Sleeping Beauty,” is now booming and blooming. |
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A fad for falafel
Sightings of falafel, the Middle-Eastern chickpea dish beloved by vegetarians and ethno-food explorers around the world, are being reported in St. |
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 The small yet diverse and vibrant Baltic country that is Estonia has plenty to offer in summer, when it is visited by tourists from all over the world, but the winter season in Tallinn is something special.
Fabulous views of Estonian islands and Tallinn’s Old Town open up to visitors even before the tiny, 33-seat SAAB340 airplane that flies between St. Petersburg and Tallinn touches the field of Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport. |
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 While 2012 has been a rather conservative year for the launch of new investment projects in St. Petersburg, the city’s three largest ongoing investment developments enjoyed differing fortunes, analysts said. |
 This year has witnessed a turning point in the attitude of employees toward their work, and according to recruitment experts, family and hobbies are now employees’ top priorities. In other indicators, the labor market has maintained stability and gradual growth throughout the year. |
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As Russia’s second capital, St. Petersburg followed the pace set by Moscow in 2012 on the real estate market.
Both the Moscow and St. Petersburg markets have caught the attention of major investors. |
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Incoming tourism to St. Petersburg has grown by 3.2 percent this year, with 5.7 million tourists having visited the city, the northwest office of the Russian Tourism Industry Union said.
Two and a half million of those visitors were foreigners and 3.2 million were Russian tourists.
Although in 2012 the growth in incoming tourism was slightly lower compared to last year’s increase — when the number of tourists rose from 5. |
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 BAMAKO, Mali — Soldiers arrested Mali’s prime minister and ordered him to resign, showing that the military is still the real power in the capital of this large West Africa country even though soldiers made a show of returning control to civilian leaders several months after launching a coup in March. |
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ROME — Premier Mario Monti on Tuesday defended his government’s austerity measures as necessary to restore confidence in Italy’s financial future, and warned voters to beware of “magic solutions” promised by candidates in upcoming elections. |
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CAIRO — Thousands of opponents and supporters of Egypt’s Islamist president were flocking to key locations in the nation’s capital ahead of rival mass rallies Tuesday, four days before a nationwide referendum on a contentious draft constitution.
The protesters were beginning to gather just hours after masked assailants set upon opposition protesters staging a sit-in at Tahrir Square, firing birdshot and swinging knives and sticks, according to security officials. |
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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela underwent more medical tests Monday in a military hospital as the public and journalists outside asked: What, if anything, is wrong with the health of the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon?
Government officials in charge of releasing information about Mandela have repeatedly declined to provide specifics about Mandela’s now three-day hospitalization, calling on citizens to respect the beloved politician’s privacy. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive