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Valentina Matviyenko announced on Wednesday that she was taking a voluntary leave of absence from her duties as presidential representative in the Northwest Region, in accordance with local election law. But televised reports on a meeting she held the next day in her office with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and comments from a number of analysts raised questions of how far from the post and the publicity it offers her the candidate for St. |
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MOSCOW - Prosecutors locked in a vicious, politically charged battle with the Yukos oil major played hardball on Wednesday and emerged victorious from court when judges ruled to keep core Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev in prison while the fraud investigations against him roll on. |
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Not so long ago, the suggestion that Russian museums should sell coffee mugs bearing images of paintings from their collections would have been treated by many of the museums' directors as something just short of blasphemy. But the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic upheavals that followed had the effect of convincing even the most conservative members of the group that a degree of business sense was vital to the maintenance of any cultural institution. |
All photos from issue.
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After sitting in jail for almost 2 1/2 years on charges of kidnapping and forming a criminal organization, Mikhail Mirilashvili finally got to make his closing statements to the St. Petersburg military court that is hearing the case. It was clear that, since his arrest in January 2001, the local businessman and owner of the Conti casino chain had used the time in Kresty prison to put together something to say, as his statements lasted from 10:30 a. |
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MOSCOW - A reshuffle is looming in the top ranks of the armed forces, with three commanders facing mandatory retirement due to their ages. Colonel General Georgy Shpak, the commander of the elite airborne troops, and Colonel General Pyotr Klimuk, the head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, will both retire within the next several months, while Air Force commander Anatoly Mikhailov will only stay on if ordered to do so by the president, a Defense Ministry official said on Thursday. |
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United Russia Tops Poll MOSCOW (AP) - The pro-Kremlin United Russia party edged out the Communists for the first time this year in a monthly opinion survey conducted by a respected polling agency that is measuring support for political parties as December parliamentary elections approach. |
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MOSCOW - Each year more than 100,000 Russian soldiers file civil suits in military courts over anything from back wages to the right to wear a tracksuit in their barracks, a top judge says. |
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While the Russian stock market plummets, the St Petersburg sector has been rocked by the largest bankruptcy of any single investment company since the financial crisis of August 1998 - a bankruptcy that has led in turn to financial difficulties for a number of other investment companies. |
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MOSCOW - The combined pretax profit of all large and medium-sized companies in Russia in the first five months of the year jumped 64 percent year on year to 527. |
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Since July 2, a campaign has been pursued against Yukos, Russia's biggest private enterprise and one of its best managed. Several facts are evident. First, it is a concerted and long-planned action. Second, all the culprits are from the St. Petersburg FSB group - led by Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, President Vladimir Putin's closest collaborators in the Kremlin. |
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A "velvet revolution" swept through the Russian mass media in the summer of 2002, launched in part by presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. |
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 Paprika Korps, one of the very few Polish bands to have toured Russia recently, plays reggae, if not in a pure style - they describe their music as "heavy reggae," and claim that it owes as much to punk as to Jamaican rhythm. Having toured this country twice last year, the five-piece will arrive again to perform three concerts in Moscow and two in St. |
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Sweden's electronica crooner Jay-Jay Johanson will perform this Saturday in what promises to be the main event of Stereoleto electronic/dance festival, which runs every Saturday through Aug. |
 Greblya, a new name on the local club scene, is, in reality, the high-energy garage-rock four-piece Chufella Marzufella, plus some additional members and new songs by its frontman Pavel Ryabukhin. Formed in January 1994 by fans of The Rolling Stones and The Who, Chufella Marzufella performs original material in Russian, but also delights in belting out covers of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "I Can't Explain. |
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Following in the wake of Moscow, St. Petersburg's selection of sushi bars and restaurants continues to expand at a dramatic pace. Only the meteoric rise in the number of beauty salons and mobile-phone dealerships can compete with the steep hike in the number of sushi eateries opening up, and on a recent trip out to the dacha I discovered that fast-food Sushi bars at gas stations on the way out of town have now arrived. |
 Some describe them all as a bunch of cast iron dolls and cemetery-style platforms, and some see them as symbolic and ceremonial, but nevertheless, one of them is very likely to be erected in St. Petersburg in the very near future. The seven designs for a monument to the late Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, which have made it to the third - and the last - round of the architectural contest, are currently on public display until Aug. |
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Ya vas umolyayu: Oh, please! Don't be silly! Give me a break! Get off it! Give it a rest! Russian gives us a plethora of ways to ask for something, from the straightforward prosit (to ask), to every shading of entreaty, polite or impolite. |
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During the Cold War, it was no easy matter for a Russian to volunteer to spy for the CIA. Take the case of Adolf Tolkachev, an aircraft designer in Moscow. Risking his life, Tolkachev tried half a dozen times to approach the agency. He left notes in the cars of two successive CIA station chiefs in Moscow. He got nowhere. The CIA, it seemed, yawned at the prospect of recruiting an agent at the very heart of the Soviet aviation industry, a scientist who could reveal vital information about the state of Moscow's research into stealth technology. Poor Tolkachev had to do everything but dance the kazachok naked in Red Square to attract the attention of the CIA. |
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 The "Save as ..." exhibition currently running at the D-137 gallery is closely linked to the notion of a sentimental journey to the past that also dominates at "Garden of Eden" project currently viewing at the Anna Akhmatova Museum. |
 Nigerian-born Okwe, an immigrant cabdriver hustling for customers at a London airport, knows just how to chat up potential fares abandoned by their car services. "I am here," he says with elegance and precision, "to rescue those who have been let down by the system." It is, however, one of the many ironies of the superb "Dirty Pretty Things" and its gripping examination of dislocation and uncertainty among that city's refugees that no one is more let down by the system than Okwe himself. |
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Too Pricey MOSCOW (Reuters) - Anaheim Mighty Ducks center Sergei Fedorov, on vacation in his native Russia, has found Moscow too expensive even for an NHL multi-millionaire. The former Detroit Red Wings player, who signed a five-year, $40 million contract with Anaheim on Saturday, said that Moscow had surprised him with its heavy traffic, badly polluted air and soaring prices. |
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