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Soldiers’ Mothers Appeal
Verdict
Lawyers for Soldiers’ Mothers, a Russian human rights group that campaigns against brutality and abuse in the Russian army, has given The St. Petersburg Times special access to evidence it claims shows forced prostitution in the ranks. Soldiers’ Mothers say testimonies by former recruits point to a system in which new recruits were sent to sell sex on the streets of St. Petersburg by older recruits who then extorted the money. “Those who did not have money and failed to give it to the senior recruits on demand were sent to sell themselves on the street at the Catherine Garden,” reads one testimony obtained by Soldiers’ Mothers. “They could either use one of the lists of clients which were always available from the older recruits, or try and pick someone up using their own devices.” The garden surrounding the monument of Catherine the Great overlooking Nevsky Prospekt is a notorious cruising area for those who seek the services of male prostitutes. Soldiers’ Mothers is appealing an order handed down by the city’s Kuibyshevsky Federal Court to pay 22,000 rubles ($892) in compensation to military unit No. 3727 of the Russian Interior Ministry’s signals corps after the human rights groups publicized evidence it says it obtained that alleges forced prostitution in the unit. The unit sued Soldiers’ Mothers for damage to its professional reputation and won the case earlier this month. The case was closed to ... |
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| Spectators watch from the shore of the Neva River as Swedish driver Jonas Andersson speeds past to victory on Saturday in the Sixth Grand Prix of Russia, a stage in the 2008 U.I.M. Formula One Power Boating World Championship. |
TNK-BP Dispute May Be Taken to Court
 MOSCOW — The boardroom battle at TNK-BP descended into outright mudslinging over the long holiday break, with the Russian shareholders threatening to have ... |
Barring ‘Miracle,’ Expat Paper eXile Is ‘Dead’
MOSCOW — The eXile, Moscow’s notorious English-language alternative biweekly, is shutting down after its investors became frightened by a government inspection and withdrew their funding, the newspaper’s editors said. “The paper is dead, unless a miracle happens,” Mark Ames, The eXile’s founder and editor, said by telephone. The newspaper missed an issue this week after its financial backers “got scared away by the government focusing its attention on it,” and now The eXile is very likely to cease publication entirely, Ames said. Ames declined to give details of the newspaper’s finances, although he noted, “The situation sucks.” Underlining the direness of The eXile’s finances, its web site announced an online fundraiser Wednesday in order to keep its server running. The news of The eXile’s apparent demise comes less than one week after its offices were visited by four inspectors from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, who asked about the newspaper’s relationship with writer and opposition leader Eduard Limonov, a Kremlin critic who writes a column for The eXile and appears on its masthead. Although Ames described the inspectors as “civilized” and “polite,” their promise to inspect The eXile for extremist content was apparently enough to scare off the newspaper’s financial backers, Ames and co-editor Yasha Levine said. “News of their visit ... |
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HIV Infection in City Outstrips Rest of Russia
The rate of HIV infection in St. Petersburg is 2.5 times higher than the Russian average, the acting head doctor at the city’s AIDS Prevention and Treatment Center said, Interfax reported on Monday. There are 686 cases for every 100,000 people, figures ... |
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Ivanov Warns Kiev Over NATO
MOSCOW — Ukraine would lose defense industry ties with Russia and suffer reduced trade cooperation if it joined NATO, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Saturday, news agencies reported. Ivanov said visa regulations would also be tightened should Ukraine pursue its ambition to join NATO. The comments, at a ceremony to mark the 225th anniversary of Sevastopol port on the Crimean Peninsula — the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — came on the heels of a string of pronouncements by Russian officials on issues regarding the peninsula and relations with Kiev. “I couldn’t say for whom such a breakup would be more painful — Russia ... |
Spain Claims Tambov Crime Ring Bust
 MOSCOW — Spanish police said they had broken up the local operations of the Tambov and Malyshev organized crime groups, arresting 20 people and seizing ... |
Medvedev Optimistic On U.S. Ties
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev said Last Wednesday that he was “moderately optimistic” about relations with the United States, saying the Kremlin was prepared to work with whoever succeeds U.S. President George W. Bush. Medvedev said Moscow and Washington must cooperate to maintain global stability — even if their views on U.S. plans to install missile-defense sites in Europe and other security issues differ sharply. “Russia and the United States are destined to cooperate on a wide range of international issues,” Medvedev said at a media congress in Moscow. “We will work with any U.S. administration; there is no alternative ... |
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Google’s Brin Signs Up for Space Adventure
 NEW YORK — A company that sends wealthy tourists into space aboard Russian rockets has a new client, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and a new plan for ... |
Watchdog Sees ‘Crisis’ In Elections
VIENNA — Illegal state interference means elections standards are in crisis in areas of Europe, the director of a European election watchdog said. Christian Strohal, head of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, did not criticize any countries by name. Diplomats said he was alluding mainly to Russia and several other former Soviet republics regarded by the West to be backsliding from post-communist commitments to democracy and human rights. “What we have is a crisis of compliance with election standards in some countries,” Strohal said in a speech to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 56-nation parliamentary assembly at the end of five years as head of ODIHR. Many nations boast better legal frameworks and professional election bodies ... |
Scientists Search for Medical Secrets in Himalayas
 A group of St. Petersburg scientists have returned from the Himalayan Mountains after learning the secrets of an almost-extinct form of Tibetan yoga that ... |
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President Praises Freedom, Chirac On Russia Day
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev stressed the importance of democracy and freedom in a speech for Russia Day on Thursday. Medvedev presided over an awards ceremony honoring scientists, scholars and artists held annually in the Kremlin on June 12, as ... |
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Technopark Downsized, Experts Remain Positive
The board of directors of St. Petersburg Technopark, headed by deputy-governor Mikhail Oseyevsky, has approved, resized and refinanced the IT-Technopark project, which is due to be completed by 2015. Designed by HOK International architecture bureau in London, the IT-Technopark will be located on the premises of the Bonch-Bruevich St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications in the Nevsky District near Dybenko metro station. It will be comprised of three buildings of 75,000 square meters each, as well as educational centers, dormitories, offices and parking lots. The park will accommodate about 15,000 programmers and provide some of them with cheap housing. The apartments will belong to the city, along with all of the technopark’s assets. Non-commercial real estate construction and further expenses will be covered by the federal and state budgets, while private investors and developers will be responsible for the commercial objects. Technopolis, ... |
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| St. Petersburg Stock Exchange Director Viktor Nikolaev pictured outside the exchange, which began operating Monday, despite a ruling by the city planning council that the building broke regulations. |
Markets Lose Steam After Leap
MOSCOW — As Russia’s business and political elite wound up their weekend gathering in St. Petersburg, the local markets received a short-term lift, but ... |
OGK-1 Building Tyumen Unit
NOVY URENGOI, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District — Unified Energy System has begun the construction of a new, 450-megawatt production unit at the Novy Urengoi power station to provide much needed electricity for the country’s largest oil- and gas-producing region, although financing for the project remains in doubt. The combined-cycle 450-megawatt unit will cost 22 billion rubles ($929 million) and is scheduled to come on line in 2011, but that may be delayed as its owner, OGK-1, the country’s biggest generating company, has yet to secure the necessary funding. “Electricity is in greater need here in Novy Urengoi than ever before,” UES CEO Anatoly Chubais said at the foundation-pouring ceremony. “We are supporting the growth of our oil and gas companies responsible for most of the production in the region, and we have to build the unit as soon as possible.” Chubais, who has overseen the sell-off of the production assets of the state electricity monopoly, ... |
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Strabag Wins Road Tender
VIENNA — The Austrian builder Strabag has won a 1 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) share of a contract to build an eight-lane highway around St. Petersburg. The ... |
In Brief
Construction Boom ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The arrival of foreign carmakers including Volkswagen AG and PSA Peugeot Citroen in Russia’s Kaluga ... |
Call For Cyrillic Cyberspace
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev called for the country to be assigned an Internet domain name in the Cyrillic script on Wednesday as part of a Kremlin ... |
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Hewlett-Packard Chief Hails Investment
 As Russia’s economy continues to grow, more Western companies are entering the country in search of investment opportunities, including IT firm Hewlett-Packard, ... |
Rising Fuel Costs Threaten Russia’s Smaller Airlines
MOSCOW — The economy and state coffers may be bulging from sky-high oil prices, but the soaring cost of aviation fuel could soon drive some of the country’s smaller airlines to the wall. Over the last 12 months, the price of airplane kerosene in the country has shot up some 125 percent — driving up ticket prices, devouring airline profits and putting dozens of smaller airlines at risk of bankruptcy. In the last six months alone, 24 airlines around the world have gone bankrupt, according to the International Air Transport Association, or IATA. “After enormous efficiency gains since 2001, there is no fat ... |
iPhone On Sale ‘By End Of Year’
MOSCOW — When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced last week that the company would begin selling its high-speed iPhone 3G in 70 countries this summer, Russian fans were enraged that their country was conspicuously absent from the list. But in a televised interview last week, Jobs offered what could be a bit of much-needed relief for iPhone lovers, saying the gadget could officially go on sale in Russia by the end of the year. “We just didn’t have a chance to close [a deal] with Russia. And I think you’ll see [agreements] happen later this year,” Jobs said on CNBC last week. He said not having a distribution ... |
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No Place Like Home
The 12th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that was held from June 6 - 8 attracted about 2,500 guests to the city, including high-ranking officials and businesspeople. Each VIP participant was accompanied by a retinue of associates, press people ... |
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Debunking the Energy Myths
When I became BP chief executive just over a year ago, I warned that the supply and demand balance for energy was very tight. But, like most people, I never expected to see the oil price go quite as high quite as rapidly as it has in the past few months. Unsurprisingly, ... |
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 Immunity From the Oil Curse
Oil is so central to the existence and development of modern economic life that it has inevitably become the focus of global concerns as prices have doubled since 2006. Oil complicates economic decisions, macroeconomic policy, domestic politics and the ... |
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The Perfect Orthodox Wahhabi
On June 5, a Moscow City Court jury acquitted Vladimir Kvachkov, a retired military intelligence colonel, of charges that he attempted to kill Anatoly Chubais, the architect of privatizations in the 1990s and head of Unified Energy System. After being ... |
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EU Fights for Treaty Despite Irish No Vote
 LUXEMBOURG — European Union foreign ministers insisted on Monday that the EU reform treaty was alive despite Ireland’s “No” vote but conceded they had ... |
Marriage For Gays Now Legal In California
SAN FRANCISCO — Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment. On Monday, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become one of the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in California. “It was something you wanted to know, ‘Is it really going to happen?’ And now it’s happened, and maybe it can continue to happen,” Lyon says. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. ... |
China Suffers Floods After Quake
BEIJING — Thousands of victims of China’s earthquake are moving to escape a new threat from rain-triggered landslides, officials said on Monday, while floods battered the nation’s southern trade powerhouse. The May 12 quake centered in the southwest province of Sichuan killed at least 70,000 people and shattered slopes in the mountainous region, parts of which have seen heavy rainfall. With continued tremors jolting hillsides, officials have decided to relocate 50,000 residents at risk of landslides in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the quake. “Continued tremors and multiple strong tremors have ... |
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In Brief
10 Die in Japan Quake TOKYO (Reuters) — The death toll in a powerful earthquake that hit northern Japan at the weekend rose to 10 on Monday as troops and rescue workers searched for survivors in the remote, mountainous area worst hit by the tremor. A ... |
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Nadal Readies for Federer at Wimbledon
 LONDON — Just in case he had not rattled Roger Federer enough, Rafael Nadal showed on Sunday that he would continue to stalk the five-times Wimbledon champion ... |
U.S. Open Goes Down To Playoff
SAN DIEGO, California — Tiger Woods drained a birdie putt at the final hole Sunday to set up a David and Goliath 18-hole playoff with unheralded American Rocco Mediate at the 108th US Open golf championship. Woods completed a two-over 73 to force the Monday showdown with Mediate, who fired an even-par 71 on the Torrey Pines South course for a one-under total of 283. “The green wasn’t very smooth,” Woods said. “I kept telling myself make a pure stroke. If it bounces in or out, so be it, at least I can hold my head up high and hit a pure stroke. I hit it exactly ... |
Czechs Shell-Shocked by Turkish Win
INNSBRUCK — Czech Republic leave Euro 2008 feeling shell-shocked and bemused at how they let a quarter-final place slip through their fingers in a final few minutes of madness. Leading 2-0 with 15 minutes to go, they had a last-eight place firmly within their grasp on Sunday before Turkey stunned them with three quick goals that left their dreams in tatters and their coach lost for an explanation. “The third goal marked a total collapse, which I cannot explain. I will not forget this for a very long time,” Karel Brueckner told a news conference after what was ... |
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Concerns Raised About Live TV From Beijing
BEIJING — Broadcasters still do not know if they will be allowed to transmit live from outside venues or iconic sites like Tiananmen Square during the August Olympics, according to a satellite service provider in Beijing. China has consistently promised ... |
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Russia To Face Rated Sweden
SALZBURG — Russia coach Guus Hiddink has told his players they will need to step up another gear when they face Sweden for a place in the Euro 2008 quarterfinals. By beating Greece 1-0 in their Group D match on Saturday, Russia both eliminated the holders ... |
