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A reward has been promised for any information leading to the retrieval of the 19th-century painting "Pool in a Harem" by Jean-Leon Gerome, which was stolen in broad daylight from the State Hermitage Museum on Thursday. Meanwhile, St. Petersburg police and the Federal Security Service are continuing the investigation of what has been termed the boldest heist that the world's largest art museum has seen in 40 years. The reward was declared by the Hermitage and the Culture Ministry on Friday, but the sum of the reward has not yet been announced, said Interfax news agency, citing the museum's chief spokesperson, Larisa Ayerova. However, Larisa Korabelnikova, another Hermitage spokesperson, said the award would be "not less than $1,000, paid to anyone giving a lead [strong enough for police] to find the painting. |
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 In an unmarked and nondescript warehouse off Sadovaya Ulitsa, heads bob up and down as coaches - wrapped warmly in sweaters and scarves - silently watch the bodies of young trampolinists doing somersaults and twists high above their heads. |
 MOSCOW - A year after winning the elections, President Vladimir Putin remains vastly popular, having restored strong Kremlin control and used windfall oil receipts to lift the living standards of the poorest. Despite progress on economic reform, the war in breakaway Chechnya has underscored concerns over human rights and the future of the free media, and raised questions about Russia's direction under the former KGB spy. |
All photos from issue.
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 MINERALNIYE VODY, South Russia - Authorities in a southern Russian province, rocked by a series of deadly bomb explosions, declared a day of mourning on Monday amid a security operation to capture those responsible. Federal authorities almost immediately blamed the blasts - which killed 23 people and injured more than 100 - on Chechen separatist guerrillas, and Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said Sunday they seemed to be the work of rebel commander Khattab. |
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Hijacker Extradition MOSCOW (AP) - Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has sent an official request to Saudi Arabia for the extradition of the two ethnic Chechens suspected of hijacking a Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 airplane bound from Istanbul, Turkey, to Moscow on March 16, officials said. |
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MOSCOW - Russia said Monday that it was expelling four United States diplomats for "activities incompatible with their status," the diplomatic phrase for espionage, and added that it would take "other measures to halt the unlawful activities" of official American representatives, but did not elaborate. |
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'Free Trade' Nixed MOSCOW (AP) - The government late last week said that it would end customs privileges it had hoped would spur the economy of the Kaliningrad region. The customs breaks had been intended to help the lagging economy, spur trade with Europe, and compensate businesses for their distance from mainland Russia. But Trade and Economics Minister German Gref said they hadn't worked. The "special economic zone" in Kaliningrad was capriciously enforced and even canceled "by mistake" at one point by former president Boris Yeltsin. Amber Crackdown MOSCOW (Vedomosti) - The Economic Development and Trade Ministry has asked the government to halt the production of amber for the next two years in an effort to cut down on rampant theft at the state-owned Kaliningrad Amber Plant. |
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 MOSCOW - The Agriculture Ministry on Monday banned all imports of meat, fish, poultry and dairy products from Europe to protect Russian agriculture from the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease now threatening to sweep across the continent. |
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MOSCOW - Russia has formerly launched a "one-stop" agency that it hopes will attract foreign investors by slashing the number of official signatures needed to begin doing business. The new State Investment Agency, which falls under the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, will act as a consulting and support center whose aim is to raise an additional $10 billion in foreign direct investments by the year 2005. |
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MOSCOW - Rampant corruption in Russia costs the country about $15 billion annually, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said Friday. The country's law enforcement bodies have been unable to put a stop to massive money-laundering scams, Ustinov said at a conference of officials from Russia's courts and defense and security agencies, news agencies reported. |
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MOSCOW - Natural gas monopoly Gazprom has sued Ukraine for stealing gas from its pipe network that supplies roughly 25 percent of total European consumption. Gazprom officials want payment for 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas used by Ukraine last year that wasn't covered by existing contracts, business daily Vedomosti reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW - The Economic Development and Trade Ministry on Thursday released its Strategy for Development until 2010, foreseeing a rosy economic outlook and a metamorphosis into a consumer-based society. |
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MOSCOW - Thieves have stolen some $100 million worth of metal, including 8,000 kilometers of wire, from Unified Energy Systems over the last two years to sell abroad, the national power grid said Wednesday. Andrei Trapeznikov, a member of the UES board, said that 1,180 accidents occurred in 1999 and 2000 during attempts to steal wire from the power grid - 834 of those resulting in death. The company registered some 43,000 thefts. The UES announcement came a day before the State Duma was to vote on overturning a presidential veto on a law banning the export of non-ferrous metals, from which wire is made. Details of the vote were unavailable at time of press. |
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 MOSCOW - Express delivery is a very foreign concept in Russia. So foreign, in fact, that there is no set of regulations or laws that govern companies working in the sector. |
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MOSCOW - A U.S. senator has taken a special interest in LUKoil's planned flotation on the New York Stock Exchange, asking two U.S. securities officials to carefully scrutinize the oil company's application. Jesse Helms - a Republican senator from North Carolina and chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee - wrote a letter to NYSE chairman Richard Grasso and to Arthur Levitt, chairman of the U. |
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Who's the real power in St. Petersburg? The city's governor, Vladimir Yakovlev, or the governor general of the Northwest region, Viktor Cherkesov? Much ink has been spilt (not least in this newspaper) on the issue, right from when Cherkesov moved into Wedding Palace No. |
 Viktor Cherkesov, the governor general of the Northwest region, began his new job by making alterations and amendments to regional laws in order to bring them into line with federal legislation. The 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, which will be celebrated in two years' time, may become another stage in the assertion of this new power. |
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MOSCOW - Aeroflot on Monday unveiled its own tourist agency and announced its intention to corner one third of the Russian tourism market. The birth of the new agency, Mir Aeroflota, is the latest in a string of moves the company has made since it adopted an aggressive development strategy last spring. |
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The deadline for filing personal income tax returns in Russia - April 30 - is drawing near, and while the question of whether to pay taxes at all remains for many, those who do plan to file will do so under the old graduated system, where the percentage of income paid in tax depends on the person's income level. While there has been much talk of the institution of the 13 percent flat tax rate for 2001, the tax paid this year is on the old scale and the rate depends on income level. The rate runs from 12 percent in the lowest bracket and up to 30 percent for the highest. While a large number of workers have their taxes withheld automatically by their place of employment, those who do not or have additional income are required to submit a return to the tax inspectorate. |
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 While St. Petersburg's real-estate market lags well behind Moscow's, the good news for prospective home owners in the northern capital is that they are living in one of the few places in the country where it is possible to get a mortgage. |
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The personal banking market in St. Petersburg today provides a wide and growing range of services, including debit and credit cards, ruble and foreign currency accounts, currency exchange, investments and fund management and safety deposit boxes - not to mention heavily guarded rooms for business meetings. |
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MOSCOW - Minority shareholders trying to oust the head of Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank, over a planned share issue said on Monday that they would fight the bank's refusal to hold an extraordinary general meeting (EGM). |
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The Russian government has been making noise over the last few months about revamping the country's pension systems - both state-run and private. But even government officials admit that the reforms presently being discussed are not intended for those who have already reached pension age. "It should change the fortunes of people who are now in their '30s or '40s," says Mikhail Dmitriyev, first deputy minister of economic development and trade. The current state pension system, which has not moved far from the egalitarian system created during Soviet times, has been rocked since the fall of the Soviet Union by the devaluation of the ruble, so that the amount pensioners receive is barely enough to keep them above the subsistence level. |
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 SINGAPORE - Shares in Asia started the week in an upbeat mood on Monday, heartened by Wall Street's Friday recovery and with telecoms spiced up by news of Singapore Telecom's multibillion dollar offer for Cable & Wireless Optus. |
 With one-quarter of its historic downtown housing sector on the verge of collapse, St. Petersburg asked the World Bank in 1995 for a financial lifeline. Six years later, The St. Petersburg Times looks at the progress being made in what Fyodor Dostoevsky called a city filled with nothing but "windows, holes and monuments. |
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentina's new economy minister predicted in interviews published Sunday that the country would bounce back from its economic woes so quickly that creditors will soon be eager to lend it money. |
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SEATTLE, Washington - As Boeing Co. gets ready to skip town, Seattle is grappling with the haunting accusation that its own bad business practices forced its most venerated corporate citizen out the door. Boeing denies it, along with many Washington state politicians and business leaders, but there is little question among free market advocates that the aerospace giant was slowly squeezed out by high taxes, snarled traffic and red tape. |
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More Daewoo Clashes SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - About 500 South Korean workers angry about layoffs at bankrupt Daewoo Motor hurled firebombs on Saturday after riot police drove them onto a university campus. |
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MOSCOW - What do you do when you need to send two tons of condoms from Britain to Omsk, or a planeload of chicken eggs from Belarus to the far eastern island of Sakhalin? It's time for freight forwarding. The condoms and the eggs - which were shipped after a Sakhalin poultry farm was wiped out by disease - are just some of the orders filled over the past 10 years by Armadillo, one of hundreds of freight forwarding companies operating in Russia. |
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THE Kremlin has begun to withdraw combat troops from Chechnya. Trainloads of men and armor of the 74th motorized rifle brigade are on the move through Russia into Siberia. Three other regiments from the Moscow military district are scheduled to be withdrawn in the coming month. |
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JUST over a year ago, Vladimir Putin became post-communist Russia's second president. Since then, many people in the West have been sounding the alarm. |
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HOW is one is to explain the logic of U.S. actions, its pressure on Russia in all directions, including expelling diplomats, receiving Chechen terrorists and refraining from meeting with Vladimir Putin? There may be many explanations, but I prefer the point of view that the new administration simply is demonstrating to Russia that it has the usual status of a large but averagely-developed country. |
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THE other day I caught myself imagining what it would be like if President Vladimir Putin gave a real address to the nation. In my imagination, he begins as usual by stating that he and his government had good intentions but things turned out . |
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ONE year ago today Russians went to the polls and elected Vladimir Putin president. After the checkered reign of Boris Yeltsin, the nation had great expectations for the energetic and determined young heir, even while many harbored fears that his KGB background constitutes poor preparation for the head of a democratic state. |
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AFTER violence broke out around the northern Macedonian town of Tetovo about ten days ago, Macedonian Prime Minister Lubco Georgievski declared bluntly that "Macedonia is under aggression" from armed groups of Albanian extremists. |
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 VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Michelle Kwan silenced her doubters and retained a world title for the first time in her stellar career in an otherwise rough week for title holders at the World Figure Skating Championship. Three of four defending world champions went down to defeat to hungrier rivals and battle lines were drawn for next February's Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. |
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Dove Hit by Pitch TUCSON, Arizona (AP) - A pitch by Randy Johnson hit and killed a dove flying in front of home plate. The lethal pitch came during the seventh inning of the Arizona Diamondbacks' 10-5 victory against the San Francisco Giants on Saturday. |
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Social Democrats Win BERLIN (AP) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats won sharp gains in two German state elections Sunday, but a massive vote hemorrhage by the Greens weakened the national governing coalition. Baden-Wuerttemberg's two-time governor Erwin Teufel fended off a strong challenge by Social Democratic candidate Ute Vogt, who led the party to its best showing in 29 years in Germany's richest state and a conservative stronghold. The Christian Democrats won 45 percent of the vote, a gain of just 3 percent over five years ago, compared with the Social Democrats' surge to about 33 percent from 25 percent five years ago. |
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 MIAMI - American teenager Andy Roddick swept Pete Sampras out of the Ericsson Open in straight sets Sunday. Roddick, 18, defeated fourth-seeded Sampras, three times a winner of this tournament, 7-6, 6-3, in the third round to record his first win over a player ranked in the top 10. |
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LONDON - England kick-started its World Cup campaign with a 2-1 win over Finland, Germany needed a late header to squeak past Albania 2-1 and Italy beat Romania 2-0 in Bucharest as 22 European World Cup qualifiers were played Saturday. The biggest winner of the day was the Netherlands, which got its campaign back on track with a 5-0 win over Andorra in neutral Barcelona; Denmark, which crushed Malta 5-0 in Valletta; and Spain, which trounced Liechtenstein by the same score in Alicante. Group 1. Russia stayed on top despite being held to a 1-1 home draw by Slovenia in Moscow- only the sixth time the home team has drawn in 39 home matches since 1957. |
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 GAJRE, Macedonia - An eerie silence hung over the heights above the northern Macedonian town of Tetovo on Monday, one day after government forces launched a dramatic assault on ethnic Albanian guerrillas dug in there. |
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The undoubted cultural highlight of the coming week will be the "Days of Icelandic Film" at the Avrora Cinema. The festival program, promoting the largely unknown gems of Icelandic cinema, has been sponsored by the Icelandic Embassy in Moscow and the island's consulate here and focuses largely on Icelandic auteur Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's most celebrated films. |
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March 27, 1922: Lenin, giving his evaluation speech at the 11th Party Congress declares: "This has been our first lesson: We do not know how to manage the country, as we have proven this year. |
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Dima, like most of our new children, came to our children's shelter because he'd heard of us through a friend. He lived close by and hardly went to school, so we were an attractive alternative to hanging around on the streets and avoiding being at home. Having just arrived at Caritas myself, I was as intrigued by this newcomer as he was by me. First, he used to knock on the door every time he came - quite unlike the others - and would look bashfully in, popping his head round the door and clearly be happy to see us. He even addressed me in the polite form - too good to be true. Not to say that Dima's background was an exception. He is from as rough a home as the next kid, he smokes, drinks, has tried grass and glue, and has regular run-ins with the police. |
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 The State Russian Museum boasts the world's largest collection of Russian art, with some 400,000 works which represent a comprehensive cross-section of over 1,000 years of Russian art. |
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The cost of dry cleaning in St. Petersburg: Pants Skirt Suit Coat Rinzachi 78 55 175 195 Mai 70 60 155 170 Lantona 75 75 175 160 Garant 78 55 175 195 Superkhimchistka, 85 65 185 190 Grand Hotel Europe 300 360 720 - Rinzachi, 46 Sadovaya Ul. |
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Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg: Address Buy Sell Avto Bank 119 Moskovsky Pr. 28.00 28.85 Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28. |
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The last week of my TV life was marked by something that - how shall I put it - really knocked me out. Yes, it was shock that I felt when I saw St. Petersburg's Channel 6 programming for Monday morning: 9:30 Beverly Hills: 90210; 10:30 Melrose Place. You will probably shrug at my reaction (more serials, big deal...), but I felt as if I'd traveled through a time warp: This is probably the seventh time the first series has been shown on TV - the Walsh kids have started a new year at Beverly Hills High so many times that I wonder that they are not dizzy from so many repeats - and I have said my hearty farewells at least four times to Melrose Place's whimsical Amanda, hard-drinking Alison, Jake the red-neck and other such quirky characters. |
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 Nobody ever really plans to go to court in Russia - least of all foreigners. The legal system is arcane at best and groaning under corruption and overburdened court dockets at its worst. |
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