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MOSCOW — For being just a small strip of gray paper, a foreigner’s registration can become quite a bureaucratic nightmare — especially when you lose it. This is what happened to Austrian businessman Alexander Schachner this summer. He left the country without handing in his registration. When he tried to re-register upon returning in August, his consultancy firm was fined 400,000 rubles ($13,700). Apart from the hefty sum, Schachner said, the biggest hassle for him was the many hours he had to spend at police stations and with Federal Migration Service representatives. “I was forced to fill out incredible amounts of paperwork. I sat with officers who seemed to have little understanding of what they were doing but said there was no way out for me. All for a tiny piece of missing paper. It was so bizarre,” he said in an interview last week. Schachner challenged the fine with an official complaint, and the fine was waived after he received backing from the German Chamber of Commerce. The registration hassle is just one facet of a bigger phenomenon felt ... |
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SETTING SUN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Aircraft vapor trails can be made out in a red-tinged sky over the Neva River at sunset on Tuesday. Weather forecasters are predicting snow over the weekend and into next week, with temperatures set to hover around -2 deg. Celsius. |
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev trumpeted ethnic diversity during the People’s Unity Day holiday on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of police officers hit the streets of major cities to make sure that fights didn’t break out between rallying youths. The only fight erupted in St. Petersburg, where several nationalists attacked a small group of anti-fascist ...
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As the number of confirmed A H1N1 flu cases in St. Petersburg reached more than 150 people on Thursday and seasonal flu and cold viruses continued to spread, feverish purchasing of anti-flu medicine led to a deficit in local drugstores. By Thursday, the majority of drugstores in the city had run out ... |
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 Four antifascist activists were detained by the police after being beaten by nationalists at a “Russian March” rally in St. Petersburg on People’s Unity Day, a recently introduced public holiday, on Wednesday. They were charged with disorderly conduct ... |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a tough anti-gangster law under which so-called thieves-in-law, or traditionalist gangster leaders, could ... |
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STOCKHOLM — Sweden became the second country to grant final approval for Gazprom’s Nord Stream natural- gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, ending almost two years of Swedish opposition and wrangling over the energy project. The country approved the 506-kilometer Swedish stretch of the 1,220-kilometer link ... |
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 H&M retail chain has spent hundreds of thousands of euros promoting its first store in St. Petersburg. The advertising market has not seen campaigns on such a large scale for more than a year. H&M opened its first store in the city on Thursday in premises ... |
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 General Motors abruptly ended negotiations on the sale of its European unit, Opel, to a consortium of Magna and Sberbank, scuttling a deal that the Russian ... |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the government would provide another 55 billion rubles ($2 billion) to support near-bankrupt carmaker AvtoVAZ and to settle its debts. The government plans to pay off the company’s 38 billion ruble ... |
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MOSCOW — The government may sell “considerably” less debt than the $18 billion that it previously announced, given the current price of oil, Deputy Finance ... |
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MOSCOW — Naftogaz Ukrainy will pay a $470 million gas bill to Russia on time, Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Prodan said Wednesday, easing concerns that the state energy company might miss its payment for October supplies. “There’s still time to accumulate the funds, and Naftogaz will make its payment,” ... |
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 In the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “resetting” of U.S.-Russian relations became a reality only six weeks ago, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision to reconfigure U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Putin called Obama’s ... |
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At their latest training exercises, Russian riot police learned how to disperse a protest staged by disgruntled pensioners. This could come in handy because ... |
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The Paper Chase, a Dallas, Texas-based alternative rock band, will perform at A2 on Sunday. Formed in 1998 by producer-engineer John Congleton (vocals, guitar, programming), the band (sometimes spelled “the pAper chAse”) is known for its concept albums. ... |
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 The Days of Knut Hamsun in St. Petersburg are set to enable city residents to get acquainted with the legacy of one of the most controversial writers in ... |
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MOSCOW — “Tsar,” a powerful psychological and philosophical drama about the nature of Russian power, opens in Moscow on Wednesday. The film, about Ivan the Terrible, is one that connects to how the country is ruled today, director Pavel Lungin said in ... |
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The second international MUSEEK music video festival kicks off in the city on Friday and runs through Nov 13. The name of the festival, MUSEEK, is derived ... |
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