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Red Tape Increasing Despite Promises
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 by everyone in the country: Despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s latest pledges to fight for modernization, the country’s infamous bureaucracy continues to grow. “This ... |
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| 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. |
Police Come Out In Force for Unity Day
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev trumpeted ethnic diversity during the People’s Unity Day holiday on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of police officers ... |
Medical Stocks Depleted on Fears of Increase in Swine Flu
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 of the most popular Russian anti-virus medicine Arbidol, as well as Oksolinovaya anti-bacterial ointment. Protective surgical masks could be found in only a small number of the city’s drugstores. The city’s drugstore directory service named a few stores in every district where at least one of those items could be found, but calls to those stores showed that they had fairly limited quantities of the medicine. Yulia Sazhina, marketing director at the Doctor drugstore chain, said the chain was currently out of masks, adult Arbidol and Oksolinovaya ointment. “We have only Arbidol for children left, and as for the other items, we have no information about any forthcoming deliveries of them yet,” Sazhina said on Thursday. Calls to branches of Pharmacor, another popular pharmacy chain in the city, also showed that a number of drugstores had run out of adult Arbidol, Oksolinovaya and masks, while many more had run out ... |
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Two Suspects in Killings Of Lawyer, Journalist Arrested
MOSCOW — Investigators said Thursday they have detained two suspects in the killings of a human rights lawyer and a journalist who were shot in central Moscow in January. Stanislav Markelov, 34, and Anastasia Baburova, 25, were shot after leaving a news conference in a brazen attack by a lone gunman wearing a stocking-style mask. Two suspects were detained this week, said Vladimir Markin, spokesman for federal investigators. He identified ... |
Antifascists Beaten, Then Arrested
 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 ... |
Poll: Generation Gap Exists in Russia, East Europe
WASHINGTON — Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a sharp generational schism has formed in how people in Europe’s former communist countries view the shift to democracy and capitalism, a survey has found. People who were born shortly before or after the Berlin Wall disappeared were markedly more approving of the move to a multiparty political system and a market economy than older generations. The survey conducted by The Pew ... |
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Medvedev Goes After Gangsters
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a tough anti-gangster law under which so-called thieves-in-law, or traditionalist gangster leaders, could be jailed just for admitting their roles. “We are talking about individuals who identify themselves ... |
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Swedes Give Approval to Nord Stream Pipeline Construction
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 ... |
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H&M Opens With Big Ad Spend
 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 ... |
General Motors Ends Opel Talks, Surprises Russia
 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 ... |
AvtoVAZ Gets Extra $2Bln in State Aid
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 debt, most of which is owed to state-owned banks such as Sberbank VTB and Vneshekonombank, Putin said at a meeting on economic issues at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. In addition to its debts, AvtoVAZ needed another 12 billion rubles “to make new cars that could be competitive at the market” and 4.8 billion rubles to create ... |
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Deputy Finance Minister Pankin: Government May Sell Less Debt
MOSCOW — The government may sell “considerably” less debt than the $18 billion that it previously announced, given the current price of oil, Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin said Tuesday. The final figure will “depend on the amount of revenue and ... |
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Naftogaz Says It Plans to Pay Gas Bill for October on Time
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 ... |
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 Missile Defense Could Be the Silver Bullet
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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Hunting Tourists and Pensioners
At their latest training exercises, Russian riot police learned how to disperse a protest staged by disgruntled pensioners. This could come in handy because the new “protest season” has just opened. But it would be very difficult to classify these protests ... |
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Italian Judge Convicts 23 Defendants In CIA Case
MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA’s extraordinary renditions program. Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration’s practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted. The American Civil Liberties Union said the verdicts were the first convictions stemming from the rendition program. The ... |
Israel: Arms Cargo Headed for Hezbollah
 JERUSALEM — Israeli defense officials said hundreds of tons of weapons seized from a commandeered ship could have given Lebanese guerrillas an extra month ... |
Rogue Afghan Policeman Kills 5 Britons
KABUL —The killing of five British troops by a rogue Afghan policeman underlines concerns about training and discipline within the ranks and possible insurgent infiltration of a police force that the U.S. hopes will be its ticket out of Afghanistan someday. The attack caused anguish in Britain, where public support for the war has been waning. Britain is the largest contributor to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the United States, and its continued presence there is central to President Barack Obama’s strategy as he weighs dispatching tens of thousands more U.S. troops. The five British soldiers, ... |
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British Pilot Project Uses Genetic Tests On Immigrants
LONDON — Britain is using genetic tests on some African asylum seekers in an effort to catch those who are lying about their nationality, drawing criticism from scientists and provoking outrage from rights groups. The United Kingdom Border Agency launched ... |
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‘Tsar,’ a Tale of 16th- and 21st-Century Politics
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 an interview. “Ivan the Terrible prevented Russia from moving into the Renaissance by keeping the country in the Middle Ages,” Lungin said. “After his reign, Russia was left behind in the process of progress throughout Europe. We have made no headway since that time.” Pyotr Mamonov, better known as a musician and performer, and the late Oleg Yankovsky, an acting legend who died earlier this year, play the two main characters, Ivan IV and the head of the Russian church, Metropolitan Filipp. “The aim of my film is to make people think ... |
A complex legacy
 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 ... |
chernov’s
choice
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. The most recent, “Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1,” is a two-part effort centered around natural disasters. Although it is a concept album, Congleton said he had tried a different approach on this album. “This album is obviously a concept album, there are concepts behind it,” he told The Aquarian Weekly. “But I didn’t feel any need to tie the songs together with recurring melodies. I wanted to make 10 really good songs that stood on their own. I’ll be the first to admit that on past Paper Chase albums there are some songs ... |
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Moving pictures
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 from the words “music” and “seek,” because its aim is that each spectator will be able to discover ... |
