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Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has come out in defense of Yukos, criticizing claims by tax authorities that the embattled oil company owes more than $3 billion in taxes for 2000. "If legal activities to optimize tax payments are declared illegal retroactively, then I see this as negative," Kasyanov told Vedomosti in an interview published Monday. |
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The creation of a new faction that will represent the Rodina, or Homeland, bloc's views in the Legislative Assembly is being discussed by city lawmakers. |
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MOSCOW - A Moscow court sentenced two men to life in prison Monday after finding them guilty of building and accompanying shipments of explosives used in 1999 bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk that killed 246 people. The Moscow City Court also determined that Yusuf Krymshamkhalov, 41, and Adam Dekkushev, 42, fled from Russia to Georgia as members of an illegal armed formation, said a lawyer representing bombing victims, Igor Trunov. |
All photos from issue.
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The hearing was adjourned until March 1. City Hall says the museum owes the city budget about $23,000, according to an agreement signed by the museum's management in 1998. The agreement determined the rental at $500 per month for the 345-square meter area occupied by the museum on the ground floor of a building at 57 Bolshaya Morskaya, where Nabokov spent the first 18 years of his life. |
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The Kirov district prosecutor's office has ended the criminal case over the collapse of the nine-story dormitory building at 8/3 Ulitsa Dvinskaya on June 3, 2002. |
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MOSCOW - Five relatives of victims of the 1999 apartment bombings and the Dubrovka hostage crisis have appealed to the 10 candidates running for president to make an investigation into the attacks part of their campaign platforms, Ekho Moskvy radio reported Monday. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Seven people have declared that they will run for the State Duma in St. Petersburg's electoral district No. 207, Interfax quoted the district election commission as saying Friday. |
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 HELSINKI - Russia is a promising market for Finland's Kvaerner Masa-Yards, especially considering increasing oil shipping in the Baltic Sea, said the company's vice president for marketing and sales Mikko Niini at a press conference in Helsinki on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - Foreign direct investment hit a record low in 2003, dropping $3.5 billion year on year, according to Central Bank estimates. Analysts agreed that the aggressive investigations into oil major Yukos, as well as a strong showing of parties hostile to big business in recent State Duma elections, certainly played a role in the drop. |
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MOSCOW - A probe by the Audit Chamber into the often chaotic 1990s privatization program may well result in a large number of criminal charges being brought, Interfax quoted a senior investigator as saying Monday. Vladislav Ignatov, heading the probe, said Audit Chamber investigators would aim to end speculation over shadowy deals that gave a few oligarchs control over much of Russian industry and have fueled increasing public resentment. "Clearly the public is disturbed by this [question]," he was quoted as saying. "Privatization here was accompanied by a huge number of murders and disappearances both of people and documentation. |
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 MOSCOW - Aeroflot has agreed to lease six long-haul Ilyushin planes in a move that could stimulate the domestic aircraft industry and eventually help promote the plane on foreign markets, analysts said. |
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MOSCOW - As its plunge continued on international currency markets, the dollar reached a new low of 28.87 rubles in domestic trading Monday, with analysts predicting the fall would continue at least until mid-year. After ending 2002 at 31.8 rubles to the dollar, the continuing fall means that the U.S. currency has lost almost 10 percent of its value in a year, according to Troika Dialog calculations. Last Friday the dollar dropped below the psychologically important 29 ruble barrier. Expectations that U.S. interest rates will remain at 45-year lows have contributed to the ruble's appreciation. Other factors are a burgeoning oil price and resulting high export revenues, meaning high demand for rubles as exporters repatriate their earnings. |
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 Born 29 years ago of a Russian mother and an African father and abandoned in a Leningrad Oblast village orphanage, Yulia Stepanova had to either survive by braving the cruelty of the village where anyone non-Russian was treated as an outcast, or die to avoid the equally hostile world ahead of her. |
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The new Law on Currency Regulation and Currency Control was signed by President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 10, 2003. There were many disputes and discussions about this law; it was subjected to numerous amendments and additions, which took the bill about 9 months since approval in the first reading by the State Duma to be signed into law by the president. |
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The first trading week after the New Year was eventful with most Russian stocks rising rapidly. The RTS index surpassed 597.3, which is where it had stood when Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003. |
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The public pronouncements by President Vladimir Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov about the Kyoto Protocol on climate change at last bring to the topic the level of attention and debate that it deserves. But it is a pity that he has jumped to conclusions before looking more carefully at the evidence. |
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For years the enduring debate about the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions has brought about many arguments about the correlation between economic growth and harmful CO2 emissions. |
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Washington is bureaucratizing the cause of human rights -- for both good and ill, as one can see in the U.S. State Department's latest annual report on worldwide religious freedom, released in the latter half of December. Bureaucracies can be superb at collecting information, and simply by publishing catalogues of specific abuses they deter abusers and encourage victims. |
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In late September and early October, America's first lady, Laura Bush, took a whirlwind tour through Europe. It was time to mend fences with critics of the war in Iraq. |
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Dark Skies Entertain conjecture of a national leader, in the midst of a ferocious war, plotting to drop tens of thousands of anthrax "superbombs" on the civilian population of his enemy. At his order, his generals draw up a detailed plan for a chemical attack on six major cities: they estimate that millions will die immediately "by inhalation," with millions more succumbing later through skin absorption of the poisons. |
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