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 Restorers have begun an extensive examination of the Alexander Column on Palace Square as the first stage of a complete restoration of the monument that may take as long as two years. According to Vladimir Timofeyev, director of the St. Petersburg City Sculpture Museum, preliminary research carried out by helicopter earlier this year provided an overview of the column's condition. That study revealed that the sculpture of the angel on top of the column has multiple cracks and stains, leading restorers to believe that water has filtered down into the monument. |
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 TOSNO, Leningrad Oblast - On the Grigoriev family farm in the sleepy village community of Novolisino, near the Leningrad Oblast town of Tosno, a revolution is brewing. |
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Governor Vladimir Yakovlev has given his Security Department new authority to root out corruption in City Hall, according to a decree signed last month. According to the decree, which Yakovlev signed on July 2, the Security Department is now "obliged to provide full and official investigations about the facts of abuses of power committed by [City Hall] officials. |
All photos from issue.
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Wrapping up official talks with Russian leaders, North Korea's Kim Jong Il arrived Monday morning for a two-day visit in St. Petersburg on the 11th day of his train travels across Russia. Prior to his departure from Moscow, Kim and President Vladimir Putin signed a strategic alliance called the Moscow Declaration. |
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MOSCOW - North Korea is paying off its Soviet-era debt to Russia by sending indentured servants to work unpaid in labor camps across Siberia, an official from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Friday. |
 TAVAIVAAM, Far East - To many Russians, Roman Abramovich is a billionaire "oligarch" and an influential insider in the courts of both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The 34-year-old Abramovich controls Sibneft, a major oil producer, through subsidiary companies. |
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Development Delayed ST. PETERSBURG - (SPT) Europe-Hotel, the parent company of the Grand Hotel Europe, may have to wait a bit longer before it begins construction on its proposed plan to build a series of elite cottage-hotels on Kamenny Island. |
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Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov last week officially granted Aeroflot an exemption on between $600 million and $800 million in penalties it owed from the late 1990s. Aeroflot failed to make good on a deal it had with the government to purchase domestic aircraft in exchange for receiving customs breaks on foreign-made planes it imported. |
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MOSCOW - U.S. oil major Chevron said Friday an agreement had been reached on the terms of transporting crude through a new Kazakhstan-to-Russia pipeline, removing a final hurdle to bringing the 1,510-kilometer pipe on stream soon. |
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MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov over the weekend signed off on the first-stage of the planned overhaul of Unified Energy Systems, finally ending months of fierce debate over how to reform the world's largest power grid. The plan, published Saturday on www. |
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MOSCOW - An international consortium developing two oilfields off Russia's Sakhalin Island said Friday it had invited three international groups to bid for a $1 billion contract to build the world's largest liquefied-natural-gas plant. |
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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has reached and agreement with the Russian Transport Ministry to finance an upgrade for St. Petersburg's port and for the construction of new port facilities in Ust-Luga, about 150 kilometers to the west of the city on the southern cost of Gulf of Finland, and Kaliningrad. |
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MOSCOW - Two of the country's most powerful officials gave conflicting statements last week over governmental policy on one of the linchpins of the economy: tariffs on the so-called natural monopolies. |
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China Trade Up 28% MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia is No. 8 on the list of China's main trading partners, with bilateral trade up 28 percent to $4.5 billion over the first five months of the year, Itar-Tass quoted the Chinese customs service as saying Monday. |
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AN unusual aspect of Russian corporate law is the concept of the "major transaction." According to Article 78 of the Law "On Joint-Stock Companies", a major transaction is defined as any transaction connected with the acquisition or alienation (sale or transferring) of property, the value of which is more than 25 percent of the balance value of a company's assets, or connected with the placement of common stock with a value exceeding 25 percent of the joint-stock company's common stock, which has already been placed. |
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PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin will soon have the opportunity to sign draft legislation now making its way through the legislature to reduce corporate profit tax from the current 35 percent to 24 percent. This would reduce the tax burden on Russian enterprises and clarify the Tax Code. |
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LINKING workers' rights to international trade is an idea whose time has come and stayed, despite the best efforts of free-trade ideologues to chase it away. |
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Japanese Drop TOKYO (AP) - Japan's index of economic indicators in June suggests that the country's 11-year economic slowdown will continue in coming months, the government said Monday. The so-called "leading indicators''-which compare various aspects of the economy with three months ago - stood at 37. |
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 In response to "Visas Denied to NGO Employees," July 31. Editor, In this important article nothing was said about the refusal of Western governments to issue visas to Russians in similar circumstances. The latest case was in July when a delegation of Russian youth and trade-union activists applied to the Belgian Embassy for visas to attend a summer school in Belgium. Those who applied included the organizers of June's anti-Chechen-war meeting in Pushkin Square and activists from campaigns against the new Labor Code, the new law restricting political parties and against racism and discrimination against women. |
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 If you happened to see a modestly dressed, soft-spoken, bespectacled man boarding the midnight express train to Moscow Sunday night, you probably wouldn't have guessed that he is the second-ranking U. |
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AS Russia's market economy approaches its 10th birthday, the debate over corporate governance continues to rage just as intensely as in previous years. Yet it is often forgotten that the issues now being debated by investors, company executives, government officials and a host of others are far from being unique to Russia. |
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IT would be pretty hard to count up the anti-corruption efforts that have been launched since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both on the federal and the local levels. |
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THE Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not like Estonia. It is always finding some reason or another to blame that country's officials for violating the rights of their Russian-speaking citizens. Of course, it would be wrong to say that no such problems exist in Estonia. |
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THERE is a little doubt that President Vladimir Putin, more than any other top-ranking politician of the last decade, is motivated by the idea of the country's national interests. |
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EVER since perestroika, the problem of building a viable and vibrant civil society has been discussed, although not with the degree of energy and seriousness that the matter plainly deserves. The Russian government and Western assistance agencies regularly pay lip service to the notion of an independent, diversified civilsociety, but they equally regularly adopt policies that trivialize the issue or even undermine whatever beginnings may be achieved. |
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Castro Lauds Protests HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday praised the large protests at meetings of world leaders in recent years and joked that the heads of rich countries may soon have to meet on the International Space Station to avoid them. |
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Zenit Remains 2nd MOSCOW (Reuters) - Zenit St. Petersburg beat Dinamo Moscow 3-1 on Sunday to move within a point of the Russian Premier Division leaders Spartak Moscow. |
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Issues Archive