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MOSCOW - The nation is facing a starkly new kind of parliament after election results came in Monday that for the first time in post-Soviet history gave pro-Kremlin and nationalist parties a landslide majority, trounced the Communists and pushed liberal Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces into the political wilderness. |
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The traditional liberal spirit of St. Petersburg voters has moved closer to the conservative nature of the rest of the country and further away from its much-proclaimed role as the nation's window to Europe, Sunday's State Duma elections showed. |
 In a no-holds-barred battle between political heavyweights of the last State Duma, outgoing Speaker Gennady Seleznyov beat out Deputy Speaker Irina Khakamada to win a St. Petersburg single-mandate seat. Seleznyov, whose Russia's Rebirth-Party of Life bloc polled just 1.9 percent nationwide, made it back into the Duma with 47. |
All photos from issue.
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 Controversial Russian TV journalist and right-wing extremist politician Alexander Nevzorov looks set to regain his State Duma seat in the Leningrad Oblast. Once an official advisor on media issues to former governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev, Nevzorov is the northwest's answer to polit-clown and Liberal-Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, though unlike Zhirinovsky, he is better known for his quick wit than his readiness to use his fists. |
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MOSCOW - International observers on Monday issued a stinging indictment of the State Duma election campaign, calling it a step backward in Russia's transition toward democracy. |
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Lyudmila, 54, economist: I voted for United Russia, because I'm for the president - I like Putin. As for the quite significant results of the Liberal Democratic Party, I was a bit surprised, though I think its leader Zhirinovsky often speaks about real things. |
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MOSCOW - While most national newspapers led their front pages Monday with United Russia's runaway victory in the State Duma, Boris Berezovsky's Kommersant splashed out a large report of a boxing match between Vitalii Klitschko and Kirk Johnson - even though the match had finished a day before the elections began. |
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MOSCOW - In a first, the residents of two Ural Mountains regions have overwhelmingly approved in a referendum a plan to merge into a single region. Preliminary results from Sunday's referendum showed that 89.69 percent in Perm and 83.94 percent in neighboring Komi-Permyatsky voted in favor of the merger, Central Elections Commission deputy head Oleg Velyashev said, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW - Bashkortostan's fiercely contested presidential election went into a runoff Monday after the incumbent, Murtaza Rakhimov, failed to win more than half of the vote. |
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MOSCOW - Of the 58 million voters who turned up at polling stations, 4.8 percent chose to cast their ballots against all 23 political parties and blocs in what political analysts saw as a sign of waning trust in politicians. Turnout fell to 56 percent as disillusioned voters avoided participating altogether. |
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Advent Service ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - An English-language Anglican Advent service will be held in the sanctuary of St. Peters' Evangelical Lutheran Church at 22/24 Nevsky Prospekt on Thursday at 6:30 p. |
 MOSCOW - First there were U.S. Army-issued playing cards of top Iraqi officials, then a spoof deck of the Bush administration, and now the Russian power elite is, well, following suit. Kommersant, which created the new deck together with NTV's "Namedni" news program, said it was meant to create a historical record as the curtain closes on President Vladimir Putin's first term and as elections approach, potentially shifting the balance of power. |
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MOSCOW - From suspected vote rigging in Chechnya and alleged stuffed ballot boxes in Kirov to disappearing election committee stamps in Tuva and Communist observers getting beaten in Kaspiisk, observers from opposition parties said a slew of violations tarnished parliamentary elections Sunday. |
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MOSCOW - Not counting some fiery language and a hurled egg, political heavyweights past and present cast their votes in front of the cameras without incident Sunday. Some were bellicose and others sad, but all had a few words for the public. Appearing at a voting station around noon with his entourage, ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky wasted no time creating a ruckus. |
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MOSCOW - Yury Luzhkov's resounding re-election as Moscow mayor, capturing 74.9 percent of the city's electorate after 95 percent of votes were counted, hardly comes as a surprise. |
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SPS co-leader Boris Nemtsov: "I would like to thank millions of our compatriots and fellow citizens for supporting the Union of Right Forces. ... "What is of most significance to me is that there will be a large number of national-socialists in the new Duma, and we have warned about it. |
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MOSCOW - It was founded less than four months ago by diminutive economist Sergei Glazyev, a Communist deputy, together with an unlikely sidekick, presidential envoy for Kaliningrad, Dmitry Rogozin. |
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MOSCOW - Even if state-run television channels weren't aiming to make voters forget that any political parties other than Kremlin-backed United Russia were competing in parliamentary elections, they did little to dispel that impression Sunday. While ballots for the State Duma offer Russians a choice of 23 parties, broadcasts on the main channels featured only one for a large part of the day. |
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MOSCOW - Newscasts on Russia's main television channels generally reflect the Kremlin's position in Sunday's State Duma elections, monitoring conducted over the past week by The St. |
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The Accor French hotel company will attempt to fill the city's need for mid-range hotels by bringing its Novotel and Ibis brands to St. Petersburg. This is not Accor's first look at the St. Petersburg market. In spring of last year the company was engaged in negotiations with the St. Petersburg Hotel, and hotels at 19 Vladimirsky Prospekt and 18 Suvorovsky Prospekt. No contracts resulted. Accor vice president for chain development Daniel Bourgois told Vedomosti that a memorandum of understanding has already been signed with ZAO Ligovsky 54 to build an Ibis three-star hotel on the site at the same address. The agreement should be signed by the end of the year. |
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 British Airways celebrated its 10th anniversary in St. Petersburg Friday, an event that provided an opportunity to announce the airline's future plans. |
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MOSCOW - The Tax Ministry is investigating how oil company Yukos used tax optimization methods to cut its tax bill, a French newspaper quoted Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying on Friday. The report extended a decline by Yukos shares and compounded speculation that an $11 billion merger with rival Sibneft would fall apart and that its licenses were at risk in an all-out attack on the company by the state. |
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MOSCOW - Shopping center floor space in Moscow will more than double by the end of 2005, as international retailers invest up to $2 billion in Russia over the next five years, according to a recent retail market profile by property consultants Stiles & Riabokobylko. |
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MOSCOW - With an appeal to the legendary Russian soul, Aeroflot is launching a new advertising campaign. "Because it's from the soul" is the new slogan of the flagship carrier's slick publicity blitz. A blue-eyed blonde, presumably a flight attendant, will smile down from billboards in Moscow and 12 other cities. |
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KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's president fired his vice prime minister after he made public comments throwing doubt on a multibillion dollar deal to upgrade natural gas pipelines that supply much of Europe's energy needs, an official said Saturday. |
 John Schwarz, president of the Baltic Cranberry Co., stands behind his document-laden desk in his St. Petersburg office, shirtsleeves rolled up, pounding out a Native American rhythm on a drum decorated with the image of a buffalo. "It's a medicine drum from the Blackfoot tribe," he explains. |
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MOSCOW - Russian external debt ended last week in positive territory. The benchmark Russia 30 closed at 95 5/8, adding almost 2 percent, while its yield fell from 7. |
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Suddenly a memo was delivered to Yukos executives sitting in the conference hall. Something about a statement issued jointly by Yukos and Sibneft announcing that their much-ballyhooed merger was off. The memo landed on the table in front of Simon Kukes along with other notes from the hall. |
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The good news about the electoral process in Russia is that everything bad that could have happened already has. Things can only get better. So let's try to look on the bright side. |
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United Russia appears to have won an overwhelming victory in Sunday's election. If it were a proper political party, it could be expected to set the tone and agenda in the next State Duma. We all know it is not. To start with, it has no proper leaders. |
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A few years ago, my Ukrainian-born wife and I were killing time in a waiting room in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. We sat in plastic chairs, which lined three of the walls; the fourth was a row of consular officials behind glass, and while one meekly awaited their summons one couldn't help but listen to everyone else's interviews. |
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Blood Kin Imagine these banner headlines, circa, say, 1998: President's Brother in Biz With Red Chinese! President's Brother Beds Prostitutes as Corporate Perk! President's Brother Hip Deep in War Profiteering: The More Blood His White House Sibling Spills, the Fatter the Family Coffers! Hoo-boy! There would've been a hot time in the old media town with all that, eh? Wall-to-wall coverage, 24/7, Fox News frothing, Washington Post pounding, tabloids screaming - "Oval Evil: Reds, Beds and Milking the Dead!" Earnest clucking in the halls of Congress: "We must get to the bottom of these unsavory connections. |
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ABUJA, Nigeria - A defiant Zimbabwe withdrew from the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies on Sunday, hours after the 54-nation bloc upheld its 18-month suspension of the southern African nation for alleged abuses of civil liberties. "It's quits, and quits it will be," President Robert Mugabe's government said in a statement from Zimbabwe. |
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New Torpedo Coach MOSCOW (Reuters) - Valery Petrakov has been named as coach of Torpedo-Metallurg Moscow, the Russian Premier League side said Saturday. |
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