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 St. Petersburg authorities abruptly ended a previously authorized LGBT protest rally against homophobia and transphobia — described as Russia’s largest in the past few years — for alleged security reasons on Friday.
Called Rainbow Flashmob, the protest was organized by LGBT organization Vykhod (Coming Out) and the Alliance of Straights for LGBT Equality and drew an estimated 200 participants. A similar number of anti-LGBT counterdemonstrators, many of whom acted aggressively and shouted insults and threats, also attended.
Soon after demonstrators arrived at the small site designated on the Fields of Mars, which was enclosed by metal fencing, they were pelted with smoke bombs and stones.
Officers from the OMON riot police, who were present in large numbers, rushed in and formed a line between the two groups while a City Hall official on site presented the organizers with written orders to end the rally, scheduled to be held from 2 p. |
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Nadezhda Belyaeva / spt
Tulips in all their mighty variety were fêted on May 18 at the Central Park of Culture and Leisure on Yelagin Island. Running through May 26, the Tulip Festival is timed to coincide with what experts consider the peak season for the flowers. Flower arranging classes and other events will be held throughout the festival. |
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MOSCOW — Alexei Balabanov, a filmmaker whose rebel-like film character became a role model for thousands of Russians a decade ago, died Saturday in his home in a suburb of St. Petersburg, Russian television reported, citing family members.
He was 54.
Balabanov died after collapsing, his close friends said, RIA Novosti reported Saturday.
The Rosbalt news agency reported Saturday that the cause of death was heart failure.
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Palace Bridge Re-Opens
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Palace Bridge partially re-opened to traffic on Monday after being closed for repairs since April 19.
The bridge closure has caused traffic jams on Vasilievsky Island and throughout the area immediately surrounding the closed bridge. |
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This weekend, St. Petersburg will celebrate its birthday early with citywide festivities on Saturday and Sunday preceding the city’s actual anniversary on Monday, May 27. |
 The annual Korushka Festival was held on the weekend, marking the start of spring in St. Petersburg. Fans of the fish, more commonly known abroad as smelt, headed to the Lenexpo Exhibition Complex on Vasilievsky Island, where thousands of kilograms of the popular fish were prepared for visitors to devour. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW (AP) — The U.S. Embassy employee accused of spying in Moscow has flown out of Russia five days after he was ordered to leave the country, NTV television reported.
The Kremlin-loyal TV station broadcast video footage on Sunday evening showing Ryan Fogle going through passport control and security at Sheremetyevo Airport. |
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MOSCOW — Greater cooperation between tax authorities from 45 countries, including more extensive information sharing to help catch evaders, was the result of an international conference in Moscow that was hosted by the Federal Taxation Service, ending last Friday. |
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MOSCOW – Special forces officers killed two men and detained one more outside Moscow on suspicion that they were plotting a terror attack in the city, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said.
The officers came under fire when they surrounded a house with the suspects on Monday in the city of Orekhovo-Zuyevo, roughly 80 kilometers from Moscow, and demanded that they surrender. |
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MOSCOW — A former bodyguard for President Vladimir Putin took photos of himself sitting in Putin’s office in an effort to attract women, the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid reported Monday. |
 MOSCOW — Russia is facing a renewed barrage of international criticism, led by the European Union, over its human rights record in connection with an ongoing clampdown on non-governmental organizations and a State Duma proposal to ban so-called “homosexual propaganda. |
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An online video that appeared to show teenage girls savagely beating younger pupils at a remote Siberian boarding school for orphans has sparked a criminal investigation and calls for public oversight over the government’s opaque and widely criticized orphanage system. |
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 MOSCOW — Nestle Purina PetCare, a subsidiary of Nestle Russia, opened a $45 million line for pet food production in the Kaluga region last Thursday.
The state-of-the-art robotized production line, located in the Vorsino techno park near the border between the Kaluga and Moscow regions, took under two years to complete. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the threat of another economic crisis in an interview published Monday and urged consumers not to stock up canned meat, salt and matches. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPB) — Among talk of the problem of unpaid gas bills and the possibility of opening a St. Petersburg Gas Museum, participants at last week’s St. Petersburg International Gas Forum broached an issue of rare environmental significance — the use of natural gas to power Russia’s buses, instead of gasoline. |
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MOSCOW — A bribe that Vladimir Golubkov, head of Societe Generale’s Russian unit Rosbank, allegedly received for easing the terms of a multimillion-dollar loan, came from rock musician and former lawmaker Andrei Kovalyov, Business FM radio reported last Friday. |
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 Although many initially thought that the government’s repressive new law aimed at nongovernmental organizations and the so-called “Dima Yakovlev” law, which bans U.S. citizens from adopting Russian orphans, represented a surgical attack against a few undesirable organizations, it has now become clear that the authorities are intent on completely eradicating all remnants of civil society. |
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By Nikolai Petrov
United Russia started primaries last week in most of the regions that will hold elections on Sept. 8.
Primaries have been initiated and are now overseen by presidential deputy chief of staff Vyacheslav Volodin. |
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 Dmitry Konradt, one of the city’s top fine-art photographers, was there with his camera to document most of the historic moments as well as the liberating spirit of St. Petersburg rock music during the Leningrad rock explosion of the 1980s.
Now focusing almost exclusively on abstract and eerily beautiful photographs taken in the courtyards and alleys of old St. Petersburg, Konradt is displaying some of his iconic rock images — featuring Russian rock legends such as DDT, Akvarium, Kino, Alisa, Auctyon, AVIA and Sergei Kuryokhin’s Pop Mechanics — at an exhibition at the Timiryazev Library that opened last weekend. |
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 Some of the world’s best designers and architects, as well as lesser-known yet promising talents, are in town this week as part of the third St. Petersburg Design Week, which began yesterday and continues through May 29. |
 20th century German art brings an illuminating beginning to a five-year run of contemporary art to be exhibited at the newly-renovated General Staff Building of the Hermitage.
The General Staff Building of the Hermitage, which most people know for its grand archway leading on to Palace Square, welcomes visitors to its newly-renovated, ultra-modern wing with the first of a series of exhibitions of 20th and 21st century art. |
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Composers from around the world have arrived in St. Petersburg to take part in the launch of the first St. Petersburg International New Music Festival — reMusik — which began on Tuesday. |
 The 21st annual Stars of the White Nights music festival opens on Friday and will be held for the first time at all three Mariinsky theater venues. The long-awaited stage of Mariinsky II will finally be christened with its first premiere, up-and-coming young director, Vasily Barkhatov, will open the festival with his rendition of Dargomyzhsky’s opera “Rusalka”
“This fabulous facility is a triumph of engineering; the Mariinsky’s new stage is far ahead of any theatrical venue in Russia,” said Barkhatov. |
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Other than a huge greasy breakfast, nothing tames a hangover quite like a dim sum brunch. The combination of sweet, salty and sour cuts through the fog of a muzzy head while providing a boatload of calories in easy to manage, bite-sized bits. |
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 Isaac Sheps, CEO of Russia’s largest brewer Baltika, says that his job is “selling fun.” The fun materializes when a waiter brings over several pints of an amber-colored liquid.
“I never go to places that don’t have our beer,” he says, speaking in a calm, leisurely way and laughing occasionally.
Since there should be moderation even in fun, Baltika is seeking to encourage responsible drinking, Sheps said. |
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 “The damned city of Kishinev” is how Alexander Pushkin described this once-small town in the territory formerly known as Bessarabia. The poet’s outburst is understandable: He was forced to spend three years in exile in a place which was, in his opinion, comparable to Sodom. “Kishinev cannot be compared with that lovely town,” he wrote, with no small degree of sarcasm. |
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