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MOSOW - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov assumed the unlikely role of macroeconomic and energy policymaker Monday, suggesting that the state should assume stricter control over the nation's oil reserves. "Unless we start investing significant government resources in exploration in the coming years, we may face dire consequences in the next 10 to 15 years," Ivanov said in an interview with Kommersant newspaper published Monday. Ivanov also reiterated comments by President Vladimir Putin, his former boss in the Leningrad KGB offices that the country's leadership does not intend to revisit 1990s privatizations. "There will be no return to the issue or any revision of the results of privatization. |
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 Notorious Moscow-based sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, patronized by the mayor of Moscow and heavily criticized for his gigantomania, has made an offer to the city of St. |
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St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary may have resonated all over the world, but the initial city budget for tourism development in 2004 has been cut by more than 80 percent, with just $200,000 to be spent promoting the city, which earns a large, but unknown, part of its income from tourists. Despite all the promotion for the 300th anniversary this year and huge numbers of people arriving for the festivities, the city budget is in deficit for next year. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - National power provider Unified Energy Systems is the country's worst polluter, according to a new study of 31 top companies. The annual report, released by the nongovernment Independent Environmental Rating Agency on Monday, ranks the Western Siberian Metallurgical Plant, Norilsk Nickel, Severstal and Russian Aluminum as the next four worst polluters in 2001. |
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MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office began investigating Monday who might have sent out fake summons to several prominent journalists and two senior officials of the private RenTV television station. |
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The European Walkway, a three-hour walking route that takes in 15 points in St. Petersburg associated with each one of the 15 member countries of the European Union, was officially opened Friday. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the anthem of the European Union, rang out from the Petropavlosk cathedral as the walkway was initiated. It was played by Jo Haazen, director of the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium, on a carillon that is Belgium's gift to the cathedral and its site on the walkway. Marco Ricci, Consul General of Italy, which currently holds the EU presidency, said the walkway renews the symbolic connection between the European Union and Russia. |
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 MOSCOW - In her book "Tales of a Kremlin Digger," former Kremlin correspondent Yelena Tregubova shares her experience of dealing with presidential officials, whom she calls "mutants," and lashes out against what she says is a Putin campaign to curb freedom of speech. |
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MOSCOW - Leonid Nevzlin, a Yukos billionaire, resigned Monday as rector of the Russian State Humanities University, or RGGU, perhaps having spotted the writing on the wall for his departure. RGGU press secretary Irakly Bolkvadze said the university's academic council had received a letter from Nevzlin, dated Monday, in which he requested to be released from his duties because he was taking another job. |
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MOSCOW - About 20 masked men carrying clubs swooped down on the disputed headquarters of George Soros' Open Society Institute on Friday night in an attack that injured 10, including the building's owner. |
 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Friday offered the nation's leading executives a new deal that few are likely to refuse: share your wealth or risk losing it. The state, Putin told nearly 800 business leaders from across the nation, will work to strengthen property rights and reduce bureaucracy, but businesses must "fully recognize their social duties" by sharing their wealth and helping to reduce poverty. |
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 MOSCOW - Yukos is not the only major company trying to get its people into parliament. Most big businesses have representatives running on party lists in the Dec. |
 MOSCOW - While the government has taken over the main television networks in recent years, major newspapers have remained in private hands, but despite their ostensible independence, they may be confined by their own set of restrictions in criticizing the state. |
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MOSCOW - Most of Russia's national newspapers have oligarchs behind them, and while some dispute that the ownership has any bearing on editorial policy, the style of coverage often matches the owner's relations with the Kremlin. |
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The St. Petersburg Times The prosecutor general's son intends to marry the daughter of deputy head of the presidential administration Igor Sechin, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Friday. Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov's son Dmitry will tie the knot with Sechin's daughter next Saturday, the newspaper said. |
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 MOSCOW - It's an odd sign of the times, being taught beer-drinking hygiene while sitting in the cinema waiting for the latest blockbuster to begin. But the aluminum industry's public-information-style ad campaign extolling the benefits of disposable cans over beer bottles appears to be working. |
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MOSCOW - Russia received $20.9 billion of foreign investment in the first nine months of 2003, or 61.9 percent more compared to the same period a year ago, the State Statistics Committee said Monday. |
 The Russian beverages industry is still in a stage of economic transition, as the differing beverages markets slowly face consolidation by key players. "Consolidation benefits the consumer," explains Alexei Krivoshapko, consumer goods analyst at investment bank UFG, "because it improves product quality and affordability." And, he argues, there is still much room for consolidation across the markets as they merely begin to approach maturity. |
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 Where you go to get your food and drink in St. Petersburg is changing fast with glistening hypermarkets and supermarkets and well-stocked discounters replacing the produkty and gastronom stores infamous for their often sloppy and inefficient service and narrow choice of consumer goods. |
 The carefully crocodile-clipped bundles of business cards on one side of an otherwise tidy desk are an apt metaphor for Mathew Murray's approach to business in Russia. In both of his main roles here, as founder of management consultancy Sovereign Ventures Inc. |
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Russia Sees 6% Growth MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's economy will grow more than 6 percent this year, as average oil prices were $5 a barrel more than the highest government forecast and consumer spending drove demand for mobile phones, real estate and clothing. |
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BOSTON - Russian oil firm Slavneft will stay independent for at least another year until details such as minority shareholder rights are hammered out, a senior executive of one of its owners, TNK-BP, said on Friday. The contentious issue regarding the company's minority shareholders has been left unresolved since BP and TNK merged earlier this year. |
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MOSCOW - After the enforced calm of the public holiday which began the latest reporting period, the market emerged less volatile, but still sickly. The drama of the period following Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest, when barely a day passed without market-moving events, has given way to chronic and corrosive uncertainty. |
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In his May 16 address to the State Duma, President Vladimir Putin outlined the ambitious goal of doubling the nation's gross domestic product in the next decade. Since then, this goal has become a minor preoccupation for Western analysts, who have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out whether it is feasible. |
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Editor, The present problems surrounding Yukos have put Russia at the center of a potentially major turning point, not only for the nature and structure of the Russian government, but for the economy as well. |
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All one has to do is look back three weeks to the RSPP's reaction to Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest to see how big business since then has been cowed. On Oct. 25, the day of the arrest, the RSPP demanded that Putin clarify his position immediately. "The business community's trust in the authorities is ruined, and the dialogue [between business and the Kremlin] has de facto collapsed," the RSPP said. |
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As a legal concept, can someone explain the difference between President George W. Bush's "enemy combatant" and Josef Stalin's "enemy of the people"? I don't think there is one. |
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The Inhuman StainThere is a horrible scandal eating away at the heart of the American body politic. Among the many corrupted currents loosed upon the nation by the Bush Regime, this scandal is perhaps the worst, for it abets all the others and breeds new pestilence, new perversions at every turn. |
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 LONDON - While British supporters of Chelsea are getting used to the idea of having a Russian oligarch in charge, Russia's own Chelski boys are getting in on the act by setting up a supporters' group of their own. Cheering Chelsea's 4-0 win against Lazio at Metelitsa Sportland on Novy Arbat early this month, Russian fans of Roman Abramovich's Chelsea were nearly as ardent as their blue-shirted counterparts in a West London pub. |
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Raiders Test Positive OAKLAND, California (AP) - Four Oakland Raiders have tested positive for the newly discovered steroid THG and face four-game suspensions, a United States television network reported. |
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Wales' winger Ryan Giggs has declared himself fit for Wednesday's Euro 2004 second leg play-off against Russia in Cardiff. The 29-year-old was furious at the horror tackle by Vadim Yevseyev during the 0-0 draw in Moscow on Saturday which he feels could have ended his season. "That was one of the worst tackles I have ever had to contend with in my career," said the Manchester United player. |
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