Today we are going to show you some more unique works of a great photographer Prokudin-Gorsky dated early twentieth century. The pictures you can see below depict the old Russian city of Zlatoust, its suburbs and people. There is a feeling we are losing so much through the years…
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These wedding pictures were taken some two years in a park of Yekaterinburg, Russia. Nothing so much special. Just an ordinary Russian wedding and corresponding decorations…
Location: Yekaterinburg
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Such a cool tank Abrams M1A1 was made by Russian airsoft players. Inside the post you may see the process of its creation in photos and videos.
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MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – Sixteen students from Nigeria studying in Moscow have been arrested for thrashing a conference hall in their country’s embassy in the Russian capital after an apparent dispute over financial aid issues, a Moscow police source said Tuesday.
According to the source, police received a fax message late Monday from the Nigerian embassy downtown Moscow asking for assistance in dealing with a crowd of enraged students who refused to leave the embassy building after a discussion of financial issues, broke the furniture in the conference hall and threatened further destruction in other sections of the embassy.
Police arrested 16 Nigerian students on charges of hooliganism, the source said, adding that their administrative cases will be sent to a Moscow court for processing.
Moscow police officials later confirmed the incident without providing further details.
MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – The Kremlin is not considering the possibility of offering a position in the echelons of power to opposition leader Alexei Navalny until he proves himself as a capable politician, the head of the presidential administration said.
“Why, on Earth, the authorities should discuss something like this? On what grounds?” Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published Tuesday by four Russian media outlets, including the Rossiskaya Gazeta newspaper.
“For that, one has to prove that he is capable of doing something. And, for starters, one has to win something, at least the elections of the head of a municipal council…but nothing like that happened,” Ivanov said referring to Navalny’s lack of political experience and his recent loss in the race for Moscow mayor.
Navalny, a politically ambitious anti-corruption blogger who helped organize large-scale anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow in 2011-2012, came in second place in September 8 elections receiving an impressive 27.2 percent of the vote versus the 51.3 percent had by former Kremlin administration head and incumbent Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
The Kremlin chief of staff acknowledged the effectiveness of Navalny’s election campaign but downplayed its significance citing low electoral turnout caused by the “stable political climate in the country.”
“I agree that Navalny has very effectively mobilized his electorate and the protest electorate in general,” Ivanov said. “But you have to understand that 27 percent of those who came to polling stations – it’s all relative.”
“Almost 70 percent of Muscovites simply ignored the elections, but I repeat – its normal and we should not make a tragedy out of this,” the Kremlin official said.
“On the contrary, I believe it’s a positive rather that a negative signal, meaning the society is more or less stable,” Ivanov concluded.
WASHINGTON, September 30 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) - Russia earns low marks on a global index that rates countries by the quality of life and wellbeing of their old folk, ranking 78th out of 91 countries in the first-ever Global AgeWatch Index released Monday.
The index, which lists Sweden at number one and Afghanistan at rock bottom, ranks countries’ performances in the domains of income security; health status, including psychological wellbeing and life expectancy; employment and education; and what’s called the “enabling environment,” which measures how socially connected older people feel, whether they have easy access to transportation, how safe they feel, and their level of civic freedoms.
It was on the enabling environment that Russia stumbled badly, ranking 90th out of 91 countries, with only Pakistan scoring worse, Silvia Stefanoni, chief executive of senior citizens’ advocacy group HelpAge International, which put together the index with support from the United Nations Fund for Population and Development (UNFPA), told RIA Novosti.
In particular, social connections – whether older people felt they could rely on a friend or relative, for example, if they had a problem – “scored very low in Russia,” Stefanoni said, adding that Russia also received below-average marks for health status, ranking 78th out of 91.
The poor health ranking was due largely to the fact that life expectancy in Russia is only 69, or 15 years less than what the index calls “the current norm,” and healthy life expectancy, or the number of years a person can expect to live without disability or severe illness, is only 58 years in Russia.
Even though Russia’s economy is growing, older Russians are also “poor compared to other members of the population,” Stefanoni said as she explained why Russia ranked only 69th in income security.
But all was not doom and gloom for Russia’s elderly, she said.
“There have been very encouraging signs recently, like an increase in the value of the pension” paid to older Russians by the state, she said.
And in the employment and education criterion, Russia ranked 21st “because many older people in Russia are highly educated,” Stefanoni said.
HealthAge International used internationally comparable data gathered by organizations including the World Bank and Gallup polling agency to compile the Global AgeWatch Index, which the advocacy group hopes will spur debate about the needs of the world’s ageing population and give countries benchmarks to compare themselves to as they devise policies for their seniors.
Russia needs to pay attention to its old folk, Stefanoni said, noting that the proportion of older people in the Russian population is expected to jump from 19 percent today to nearly 31 percent by 2050.
Countries for Russia to emulate include Sweden, which sits at the top of the index because of “its social policy across life, which means older people get into later life with health and other social policies, like a universal pension, that help them to age better,” Stefanoni said.
The United States, which ranked eighth overall, was also a good model, ranking second behind Norway for education and employment, and 16th for its enabling environment (the Netherlands was top of the list in that category).
But Americans did not do so well on income security, where they ranked a comparatively poor 36th, “which for a very wealth country is not that high,” Stefanoni said.
WASHINGTON, September 30 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) - Russia earns low marks on a global index that rates countries by the quality of life and wellbeing of their old folk, ranking 78th out of 91 countries in the first-ever Global AgeWatch Index released Monday.
The index, which lists Sweden at number one and Afghanistan at rock bottom, ranks countries’ performances in the domains of income security; health status, including psychological wellbeing and life expectancy; employment and education; and what’s called the “enabling environment,” which measures how socially connected older people feel, whether they have easy access to transportation, how safe they feel, and their level of civic freedoms.
It was on the enabling environment that Russia stumbled badly, ranking 90th out of 91 countries, with only Pakistan scoring worse, Silvia Stefanoni, chief executive of senior citizens’ advocacy group HelpAge International, which put together the index with support from the United Nations Fund for Population and Development (UNFPA), told RIA Novosti.
In particular, social connections – whether older people felt they could rely on a friend or relative, for example, if they had a problem – “scored very low in Russia,” Stefanoni said, adding that Russia also received below-average marks for health status, ranking 78th out of 91.
The poor health ranking was due largely to the fact that life expectancy in Russia is only 69, or 15 years less than what the index calls “the current norm,” and healthy life expectancy, or the number of years a person can expect to live without disability or severe illness, is only 58 years in Russia.
Even though Russia’s economy is growing, older Russians are also “poor compared to other members of the population,” Stefanoni said as she explained why Russia ranked only 69th in income security.
But all was not doom and gloom for Russia’s elderly, she said.
“There have been very encouraging signs recently, like an increase in the value of the pension” paid to older Russians by the state, she said.
And in the employment and education criterion, Russia ranked 21st “because many older people in Russia are highly educated,” Stefanoni said.
HealthAge International used internationally comparable data gathered by organizations including the World Bank and Gallup polling agency to compile the Global AgeWatch Index, which the advocacy group hopes will spur debate about the needs of the world’s ageing population and give countries benchmarks to compare themselves to as they devise policies for their seniors.
Russia needs to pay attention to its old folk, Stefanoni said, noting that the proportion of older people in the Russian population is expected to jump from 19 percent today to nearly 31 percent by 2050.
Countries for Russia to emulate include Sweden, which sits at the top of the index because of “its social policy across life, which means older people get into later life with health and other social policies, like a universal pension, that help them to age better,” Stefanoni said.
The United States, which ranked eighth overall, was also a good model, ranking second behind Norway for education and employment, and 16th for its enabling environment (the Netherlands was top of the list in that category).
But Americans did not do so well on income security, where they ranked a comparatively poor 36th, “which for a very wealth country is not that high,” Stefanoni said.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Migration Service officials on Monday detained 20 illegal migrant workers at a construction site in northeast Moscow and 13 more at a market in the city’s south, the service told RIA Novosti.
“Out of 20 nationals from former Soviet republics involved in construction and finishing work, none was able to produce a work permit,” the migration service said, adding that the workers’ employer was being determined.
The service said regarding 13 others that “nationals of Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan” who “sold fruit, vegetables and dairy products” at a southern Moscow market knew that they needed to have work permits but disregarded the regulation.
Police have conducted a series of sweeps and mass checks of markets and other locations with large concentrations of immigrant workers in recent months, after a policeman was injured by a mob at a Moscow market while trying to detain a man suspected of rape at the end of July.
Economic growth driven by revenues from oil exports and a dwindling domestic labor force have attracted millions of labor migrants, many of them the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Some 11.3 million foreigners entered Russia this year, of whom 3 million work illegally, the Federal Migration Service said in late July.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Four people have been detained over a grassroots attempt to hunt for illegal migrants in Moscow and flush them out of a dormitory in a raid that ended in a shootout, city police said Monday.
The suspects face hooliganism charges, punishable with up to seven years in prison, police said in an online statement. A 45-year-old Ukrainian woman was separately charged with organizing illegal migration, which carries up to five years behind bars, the report added.
Between 30 and 60 people, according to various media estimates, descended on a dormitory in the Kapotnya district of southeastern Moscow on Friday night, accusing inhabitants of selling illegal drugs and violating migrant legislation and ordering them to come out for a document check.
The attackers wielded baseball bats, mace sprays and stun guns and bombarded the building with smoke grenades to force the residents out, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported Sunday.
A video of the raid, available on YouTube, showed a crowd of young men, many in surgical masks, kicking down doors and ordering the people inside to get out.
The residents resisted, locking themselves in their rooms; one eventually opened fire from an air gun, injuring a woman visiting her sister in the dorm, NTV television reported Saturday. A resident of the southern Russian republic of Dagestan was detained over the shootout, police said.
A co-organizer of the raid, Alexei Khudyakov of the Moscow Shield group, which tracks illegal migrants, pledged after the incident to apologize to the dorm’s residents, Rusnovosti.ru said Saturday.
Twenty residents were in fact detained as illegal migrants and face deportation, the Federal Migration Service said, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. Another 19 residents were also detained but later released after being cleared as legal migrants following a brief stint at the police precinct, the report said.
Grassroots anti-migrant raids are gaining popularity with Russian nationalists, though activists usually coordinate their actions with the Federal Migration Service and act as volunteer helpers.
The trend got a major boost from a July incident at a Moscow marketplace where a policeman was injured trying to detain an alleged rapist. The clash was blamed on residents of Russia’s North Caucasus, whom many Russians outside their home turf see as migrants, and triggered a spate of raids like in Kapotnya, most notably in the city of St. Petersburg, where organizers were eventually detained amid accusations that they, wielding baseball bats, attacked fruit stands run by migrants.
Russia, which has a population of 141 million, hosts about 3 million illegal migrants, according to governmental statistics, though critics say the official figure is significantly understated.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – A senior Russian official suspected of involvement in a corruption scandal has been sacked, the federal land registration agency confirmed Monday, amid media reports that the man had already fled the country.
Sergei Sapelnikov, former deputy head of the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadaster and Cartography (Rosreestr), which maintains the country’s real estate registry, was fired on September 26, almost three weeks after having reportedly fled to Ukraine or the United States, according to a report by the Izvestia daily.
Sapelnikov’s dismissal is a new development in the corruption scandal at Roseestr, where checks by Federal Security Service officers and Russia’s Audit Chamber in July found financial irregularities amounting to 23.9 billion rubles ($735 million). Investigators suspect that some 2.5 billion rubles ($75 million) was misappropriated during the implementation of the agency’s ambitious project to unify Russian real estate and cadastral databases, a process supervised by Sapelnikov.
Investigators are considering charges of inappropriate spending, fraud and negligence against Sapelnikov, who primarily oversaw the information technology sector. If a criminal case is opened, Sapelnikov, who also had access to state secrets and had no permission to leave the country, could be put on an international wanted list.
Sources in Russia’s Economic Development Ministry told Izvestia that Sapelnikov had crossed the Russian border near the western Bryansk Region on September 7 and went to Ukraine. Other sources, close to Roseestr, told the daily that the official was now in the United States and would not return to Russia while facing criminal charges.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – A former paratrooper jailed for butchering Central Asian migrant workers in a gruesome vendetta was detained Monday after spending four months on the run from a maximum security prison in eastern Siberia, officials said.
Though Vladimir Avdeyev was nicknamed “Rambo of the Taiga” by Russian media, the 38-year-old was overtaken too fast to offer any resistance, the Irkutsk Region branch of the Federal Prison Service said on its website.
Avdeyev said he spent the entire time in the forest, had no contact with other people and subsided on whatever nourishment he could forage in the wilderness, the region’s police said. The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said he might have been turned in to police by local foresters for whom he worked as a logger.
Avdeyev was said to possess enormous physical strength – his favorite pastime during parties was reportedly breaking bricks and champagne bottles on his forehead – as well as survival skills that enabled him “to hold out in the taiga for a month with a knife and a single match,” according to a prosecutor cited by the local news site Vsp.ru.
“He can kill any number of people with his bare hands … and will not be taken alive,” a former comrade-in-arms was cited as saying by Vsp.ru after Avdeyev’s escape in May, when the ex-serviceman and three other inmates fled the prison through a 30-meter-long tunnel. The other three were all back behind bars by August.
Avdeyev was serving a 25-year prison sentence he was given in 2006 for spearheading an attack on migrant workers in his home village in the Irkutsk Region. Two victims were decapitated with spades, and four others were locked in a shed that was set on fire. However, those four survived the burning but were disfigured, local media reported at the time.
Locals alleged that the Tajik migrants were killing local youth by drugging them and staging their suicides, and asserted that Avdeyev and his accomplices were rightful vigilantes, Baikalpress.ru reported in 2006.
However, most victims of the vendetta were recently arrived Uzbeks whom the attackers confused with Tajiks, investigators said at the time, insisting that the suicides were real, not staged.
The ex-serviceman now faces five more years in prison for his escape, which has also prompted criminal cases against the prison’s administration for neglecting duties.
MOSCOW, September 30 (Alexey Eremenko, RIA Novosti) – A Dutchman who was awarded the veritable Oscar of photojournalism for a compilation juxtaposing the construction of the most expensive Olympics with poverty and insurgency in the neighboring region said Monday that he been denied a Russian visa ahead of an exhibition in Moscow.
Rob Hornstra, whose collaborative “Sochi Project” won last year’s World Press Photo prize, told RIA Novosti that he was denied a visa in July and that, ever since, Dutch officials had been unsuccessfully trying to get Russian diplomats to explain why.
“It would be most interesting to know why they did this,” Hornstra, 38, said by telephone. He said the rejection might have been related to his coverage of Russia’s North Caucasus, a volatile and impoverished region where state forces battle insurgents almost daily.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not return a faxed request for comment in time for publication. Nobody could be reached by phone at the Russian consulate in the Netherlands on Monday afternoon.
Hornstra’s “The Sochi Project,” which combines text, photos and video footage, is slated to be exhibited at Moscow’s Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art in mid-October as part of the Dutch-Russian year of cultural exchange, co-sponsored by the Russian government.
Hornstra’s partner on the project, writer Arnold van Bruggen, currently has a visa application pending. The two spent four years repeatedly visiting Sochi and the surrounding area, meticulously documenting the life of the mountainous Black Sea coast that will host the Winter Games from February 7 to 24.
“Up in the mountains of the Caucasus there’s not only snow but an ongoing war against separatist rebels,” says a video for the project. “On the other side of the mountains lies Russia’s poorest region.”
The Sochi Olympics have been seen as President Vladimir Putin’s pet project, and “The Sochi Project” video juxtaposes criticism of Russia’s political climate with Putin graciously accepting the selection of Sochi as Russia’s first Winter Olympic venue.
The Sochi Olympics have seen much domestic hype, including as a regional development opportunity. However, the organizers have also faced harsh criticism for alleged rights abuse of workers and environmental damage, as well as the record-breaking price tag of $50 billion.
Hornstra’s visa rejection came three months after he and Van Bruggen published a book about a woman from the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia whose husband went missing, allegedly as a victim of an extrajudicial killing by Russian state forces, according to “The Sochi Project” Facebook page.
The organizers of the Dutch-Russian year of cultural exchange could not immediately comment about the visa rejection. Winzavod’s press service refused any comment, including on whether the exhibit would proceed with Hornstra barred from Russia.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a federal law granting tax and customs benefits for oil and gas production on the country’s continental shelf, the Kremlin site said Monday.
It sets out stimulus measures for companies involved in oil and gas production on Russia’s continental shelf of in the Russian section of the Caspian Sea, such as zero VAT on the sale and transportation of hydrocarbon raw materials and derivatives.
It was adopted by the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, on Sept. 11, and approved by the Federation Council, the upper house, on Sept. 25.
WASHINGTON, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Anna Chapman, the red-haired Russian secret agent expelled from the United States in 2010, abruptly walked out of an interview with NBC television after being asked her about her marriage proposal to fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the network reported Monday.
“OK, the interview is finished. I’m sorry,” Chapman told correspondent Richard Engel after he asked her about the proposal she made on Twitter in July to Snowden, who is wanted in the United States on espionage charges and has received temporary asylum in Russia, NBC News reported.
Chapman’s glamorous looks and racy photos made her the center of a global media frenzy after she was arrested in 2010 along with nine other individuals who admitted to secretly conspiring to work as Russian agents in the United States.
In a Cold War-style spy swap on a Vienna airport tarmac, the United States subsequently exchanged the so-called “sleeper agents,” which included married couples posing as Americans leading quiet suburban lives, for several individuals convicted of espionage in Russia.
Once back home, Chapman became something of a celebrity, modeling for men’s magazines, hosting a television show and becoming involved in charity work.
She agreed to give the interview to NBC to promote her Russian “Mysteries of the World” television program, which focuses on stories about ghosts and aliens, NBC reported. The theme of the show echoes the name of the multiyear US Federal Bureau of Investigation operation that led to her arrest, Operation Ghost Stories.
In the NBC interview, Chapman said she is a “very private, discreet person” who does not give many interviews because “I just don’t like to share.”
“I don’t believe that people would be interested in knowing about somebody’s life,” she said.
She did, however, reveal that she is not married. “If I was married, everybody would know,” she told NBC.
The abrupt end to the interview, NBC reported, came after Engel asked about a July 3 post to Chapman’s Twitter feed in which she wrote: “Snowden, will you marry me?!”
Snowden, a computer specialist and former US National Security Agency contractor, was living at the time in a transit zone in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport because his US passport had been revoked after he leaked classified information about widespread US government surveillance programs to the media.
Despite repeated US requests that Russia expel Snowden to face espionage charges at home over the leaks, Russia granted him temporary asylum nearly a month after Chapman’s proposal.
It remains unclear whether Chapman was serious or made the offer of marriage in jest.
“I don’t want to discuss America. I’m sorry,” Chapman told NBC when asked about the Snowden proposal, breaking off the interview shortly thereafter, the US network reported.
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MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russian police have detained the head of a Urals city administration for his alleged role in the killings of business rivals carried out by local crime gang members, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Monday.
Viktor Ardabievsky, head of the city administration in Miass, a city in the Chelyabinsk Region, is suspected of having masterminded the killings of two local businessmen in 2005 and 2008, the statement said. The businessmen, Andrei Paduchin and Pavel Sidorov, were killed by members of the notorious Turbazovskiye gang, investigators said.
Ardabievsky arranged the murders and knew that the crimes were to be carried out by the gang members, and therefore he is also suspected of being a gang accomplice, investigators said.
Chelyabinsk.ru news agency reported Monday that Ardabievsky previously had business ties with the Turbazovskiye gang leader, Sergei Chashchin, who was charged with heading the criminal gang in November 2012.
The Turbazovskiye gang, which police say carried out 30 contract killings between 1999 and 2011, took its name, which means “holiday village” in Russian, from the Kedr holiday village in the Chelyabinsk Region where the gang members used to gather. The complex was opened jointly by Chashchin and Ardabievsky, the Chelyabinsk.ru report said.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Rosneft said Monday that its board of directors had approved a share buyback from former minority shareholders in TNK-BP, a transaction that is expected to cost the state-owned oil giant about $1.5 billion.
Rosneft said in a statement on its website that it will offer 67 rubles ($2.07) per ordinary share and 55 rubles ($1.70) for preferred shares in RN Holding, the new name for TNK-BP Holding through which minority shareholders held stock in joint oil venture TNK-BP.
About 5 percent of TNK-BP was owned by minority shareholders when it was taken over by Rosneft in a $55 billion deal completed earlier this year that made Rosneft the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company.
Former minority shareholders in TNK-BP, who have watched the value of their equity plummet since the announcement of the deal after Rosneft's reluctance to proceed with a buyback became clear, have been bitterly critical of Rosneft’s standards of corporate governance. Rosneft head Igor Sechin said Friday that the buyback would go ahead after the move was publicly proposed to him by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at an investment conference.
But some analysts said Monday that the buyback share price offered to investors in RN Holding was much lower than the price that Rosneft originally paid to British oil major BP and the consortium of Soviet-born billionaires to buy their stakes in TNK-BP.
“Minority shareholders who accept the offer will receive just half of the price for their shares that the oligarchs and the big foreign major got for theirs. The only shareholders who will benefit from this are speculators who bought the shares on the cheap during the long period of uncertainty – precisely the people whom Sechin said he wanted to punish,” analysts from Sberbank CIB said in a research note Monday. They estimated that the buyback would cost Rosneft up to $1.5 billion.
Shares in RN Holding jumped 5.9 percent to almost 64 rubles in the opening minutes of trading in Moscow on Monday after Rosneft issued its statement about the pricing of the buyout.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – The government’s 2014 budget, which Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has described as “very harsh,” was submitted to Russia’s State Duma on Monday.
According to the document, which also includes projections for 2015 and 2016, Russia is set to record a budget deficit of 391 billion rubles ($12 billion) in 2014, rising to 817 billion rubles ($25 billion) the following year.
Financial planning in recent months has taken place against a backdrop of slowing economic growth, which the government expects to fall to 1.8 percent this year, its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis.
Medvedev warned that budget cuts between 2014 and 2016 could amount to 5 percent in some areas and described the upcoming budget as “very harsh” when it was approved by the Cabinet earlier this month. President Vladimir Putin has said that budget expenditure will have to be lowered to account for reduced growth forecasts, but that a sequester – a series of automatic budget cuts – is not on the table.
The budget document weighs 15 kilograms, and runs to 11,000 pages, 1,500 pages longer than last year, according to the head of the Duma’s budget committee Andrei Makarov, RBC news agency reported.
“We can already see that budget income will be less than previously forecast figures, which means expenditures will have to be optimized as much as possible,” Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the State Duma – the Russian parliament’s lower chamber – told reporters Monday. “A lively and interested business discussion stands before the Duma.”
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told Putin during a government meeting Monday that more than 2.1 trillion rubles ($64.8 billion) has been earmarked to honor a series of social spending commitments – the so-called May decrees – made by Putin immediately after his 2012 inauguration for a third presidential term, the Prime news agency reported.
And Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the budget would not mean any reduction in Defense Ministry planning. “We drew up all the state’s armament programs through 2020 quite carefully,” said Shoigu, according to Prime, “[and] both the quantities and timeframes remain unchanged.”
While social spending and defense are among protected parts of the budget, areas such as health, education and culture will face cuts, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who has been critical of current spending plans, said earlier this month.
“This is not a [budget] structure that will lead to economic growth,” Kudrin told an international conference at Valdai in northwest Russia on September 19.
Government expenditure in the budget is set to rise from 14 trillion rubles ($432 billion) in 2014 to 15.4 trillion ($474 billion) in 2015, and 16.4 trillion rubles ($506 billion) in 2016. The budget is based upon an average oil price of $93 a barrel in 2014 and $95 a barrel in 2015 and 2016, as well as average annual inflation of 5 percent in 2014 and 4.5 percent in 2015 and 2016.
The budget is likely to receive its first reading by deputies on October 25, Makarov said, Prime reported. The Duma is legally obliged to consider the budget within 60 days of its submission.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Investigative Committee said Monday that Greenpeace’s attempt to scale a Russian oil rig in the Arctic in protest against drilling in the region earlier this month had posed a threat to the platform’s staff and constituted a crime.
The environmental organization's icebreaker, the Arctic Sunrise, violated the 500-meter safety zone around the rig, and the crew committed “unlawful activity” by trying to scale the platform, ignoring orders to desist and ramming a border guard boat, the committee said.
Greenpeace denied the accusations in the press release, saying the ship did not violate the safety zone and that the group’s inflatable boats had posed no threat to the platform, which is made to withstand icebergs.
The environmental group also reiterated that its attempt to scale the rig was a peaceful protest, like last year, when six protesters spent 15 hours suspended from the platform and eventually left without either side of the standoff complaining of any damage sustained.
However, the investigators said in an online statement that they “viewed these actions as a real threat to the personal safety of the platform staff and property, as well as constituting resistance to law enforcement officers.”
The committee did not specify the charges that could be pressed against the multinational crew of 30, all of whom are in Russian custody while an investigation is underway, but added that “allegedly peaceful aims” were no justification for “such criminal offenses.” The committee said earlier it was investigating the activists for piracy, punishable by up to 15 years behind bars in Russia.
On Monday, Greenpeace began appealing the detentions of the Arctic Sunrise crew members, a group spokesman told RIA Novosti. The crew comprises nationals of 19 countries, including Argentina, Finland, Sweden, UK, Ukraine and the United States.
The Arctic Sunrise was stormed by Russian border guards on Sept. 19 in the wake of the protest at the platform, owned by a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, in the Pechora Sea. All those on board – including a Ukrainian cook and a Russian freelance photographer covering the protest for Russian media – have been ordered by courts to be kept in custody until late November. Ukraine said Monday it will hand a diplomatic note to Russia to oppose the arrest of its citizen.
Greenpeace claimed Monday that Finnish crew member Sini Saarela, who has no thyroid gland, was running out of medicine for her condition, but the Russian prison service denied the claim.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable without state subsidies.
MINSK, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – The CEO of Russian fertilizer giant Uralkali has no complaints about the conditions of his house arrest in Belarus and will be able to meet with Russian foreign service officials every two months, the Russian consul in Minsk said Monday.
Vladislav Baumgertner was arrested in Belarus in August and transferred to house arrest on Thursday.
“He has not complained about his health or anything else. He has not made any requests,” Igor Koryakin, head of the consular service, said after a meeting with Baumgertner.
Uralkali, the world’s biggest producer of potash, has been embroiled in a dispute with its Belarusian counterpart, Belaruskali, since July when Uralkali dissolved an international cartel within which the two companies were cooperating.
The move sent international fertilizer prices tumbling. In an apparent act of revenge by Minsk, Baumgertner was charged with abuse of power and taken into custody pending trial.
His lawyer Alexei Basistov told RIA Novosti last week that Baumgertner currently lives under round-the-clock surveillance in an apartment picked for him by Belarusian security service officers. Baumgertner’s mother, who flew to Minsk on Wednesday, has reportedly been allowed to visit him.
Minsk is also pressing Russia to extradite billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, Uralkali’s largest shareholder, to Belarus, where he also faces charges of abuse of power.
In a possible path to resolving the conflict, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said last week that Baumgertner could be allowed to return to Russia if that country’s authorities investigate Belarus’ claims against him.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – A jailed Pussy Riot rocker who was hospitalized Sunday amid a hunger strike over prison conditions is being held in isolation and not allowed to meet with lawyers or receive phone calls, her supporters said Monday.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the anti-Kremlin punk group Pussy Riot, is undergoing medical screening to monitor her health after she declared a hunger strike last Monday, according to the Gruppa Voina Twitter account that is believed to be authored by her husband, Pyotr Verzilov.
Hospital officials will not allow her to see or speak to anyone, and her family hasn’t been given any information about her condition in over 90 hours, according to entries posted on the Twitter page.
“The FSIN [Federal Penitentiary Service] has declared a complete blockade of Nadia [Tolokonnikova],” Gruppa Voina tweeted. “There has been no information from her in 90 hours. The lawyers are being denied visits. Calls aren’t answered.”
The Gruppa Voina Twitter account’s author posted a photo of a seemingly official document in which hospital officials banned Tolokonnikova from having visitors because of her “poor condition.”
Doctors classified her condition as “satisfactory” on Sunday after she was transferred to a local hospital from the medical ward of her prison, according to a spokesman for the local penitentiary service department.
Gennady Morozov, the ombudsman for Russia's republic of Mordovia, where the jailed activist's prison colony is located, told RIA Novosti Monday that he would visit Tolokonnikova on Wednesday. He described her condition as “OK” and said she was continuing her hunger strike in the hospital.
The Gruppa Voina account called the hospital’s policy an act of revenge for a letter written by Tolokonnikova, published last Monday by news site Lenta.ru, in which she alleged shockingly inhumane labor and sanitary conditions at her women’s penal colony in Mordovia.
In the letter, Tolokonnikova, 23, who is serving a two-year jail term for a so-called punk prayer performance in a Moscow cathedral in February 2012, also claimed that a deputy warden at the colony had threatened her life, and announced a hunger strike.
Prison authorities say the strike is an attempt at blackmail after they denied Tolokonnikova privileged treatment.
A member of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, Ilya Shablinsky, visited the prison and met with Tolokonnikova and seven other inmates in the days after the letter was published. Shablinsky verified Tolokonnikova’s allegations in comments to the media after the interviews, telling Russian news outlet Gazeta.ru that the conversations he had had with the inmates “made his hair stand on end.”
On Monday, the penal colony announced on its website that it had hosted an open doors day, where inmates' families could take a tour of the prison and ask the jail authorities questions.
“After the official part of the event, tea was served in the canteen, where convicts and their relatives were able to mingle in an informal setting,” the penal colony’s statement said.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Two militants believed to be members of an international terrorist organization were killed by security forces in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) said Monday.
Three people were traveling in a car when they were stopped for a check Sunday evening, and offered resistance, the committee said in a statement. Two were killed by return fire at the scene while the third was injured but managed to escape.
The two militants killed were “active members of the local cell of an international terrorist organization, the Caucasus Emirate,” the NAC said in a statement, adding that they had been involved in a number of attacks on police and security officers.
The Caucasus Emirate group is headed by Chechen militant Doku Umarov and has declared its allegiance to the global jihadi movement.
Attacks on security forces, police and civilians occur regularly in the North Caucasus, generated by ethnic, religious and political rivalries, as well as poverty and corruption. The violence is also fed by an Islamist insurgency, which has been especially resilient in Dagestan and fueled a series of bloody post-Soviet separatist wars in the neighboring republic of Chechnya.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s first successful launch of a Proton-M carrier rocket since a July disaster has successfully put a European telecom satellite into orbit, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) said.
“The separation of the spacecraft from the Briz-M booster has taken place. Control of the satellite has been handed over to the customer – the operator SES Astra,” the spokesman said.
The six-ton Astra 2E, manufactured in France for the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES S.A., will provide television and radio broadcasts, as well as mobile and Internet communications for users in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The launch of the Proton-M from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan was the first since a Proton-M rocket carrying three satellites for the Glonass positioning system, Russia’s answer to GPS, crashed in a ball of flames seconds after blasting off on July 2. The reason for the accident was that three sensors in the rocket had been installed upside down, an investigation revealed.
The July disaster strengthened the Russian government’s resolve to revamp the country’s space industry, which has seen a string of failed launches in recent years. A draft of the reform, which proposes to consolidate the 100-plus state-run space industry enterprises into one corporation or half a dozen holdings, was recently filed with the Cabinet and is now under review.
MOSCOW, September 30 (Kristen Blyth, RIA Novosti) – A roving horde of the living dead – followers of an evil cult headed by Russian mystic Rasputin – attack a press conference and target Russian President Vladimir Putin for termination. With the help of an American sidekick, alcoholic and aggressive American tough-guy Mike, the Russian politician battles the infinite host of zombies with wit, style – and a pen.
Putin plays the superhero in a new mobile phone game, “You Don’t Mess With Putin,” due to be released around Halloween this year. The role is perfect for the steely Russian president, the game’s developer – Belgian programmer Michele Rocco Smeets – told RIA Novosti.
“Putin has this tough guy image and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Smeets said in a phone interview. “He hunts, he rides, he shoots. A leader should be strong, and in my opinion Putin is the only world leader that really fulfills this image.”
Putin also fights for the light in the battle against darkness in a Russian comic strip series, Smeets noted, so he’s not the only person who envisions the president as a superhero.
While Putin plays the good guy in “You Don’t Mess With Putin,” though, the game doesn't reflect any serious political views, he said. “I’m not supporting socialism – I just like the guy [Putin], as a person and as a leader.”
In the game, Putin holds a press conference to demand the Westernization of Russia’s video game industry. An army of zombies attacks the meeting and kills everyone but the president and an American video game expert, Mike, who’s the second character if gamers choose to fight the undead in two-player mode.
The game’s dialogue is full of one-liners based on things the Russian president has said in real life, Smeets explained.
After Putin stabs a zombie with a blunt writing instrument, he says, “Give me back my pen!” – an echo of the leader’s similarly blunt dressing-down of oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2009, when Putin visited the struggling Russian town of Pikalyovo and famously tossed a pen over to billionaire factory owner Deripaska and ordered him to sign an agreement to restart the plant’s activities, before reminding the tycoon to return the pen to him.
Putin had a cameo appearance in Smeets’s last mobile game (“Run Snowden Run,” another endless runner where gamers playing fugitive former US security contractor Edward Snowden collect USB sticks and laptops while avoiding National Security Agent Jake) that players found funny, he said, which is one reason that the politician and martial arts enthusiast made a return as the main character in the new game.
In “Run Snowden Run,” Snowden’s character – whose real-life archetype was granted political asylum earlier this year by Russia – can call “Uncle Putin” on a cell phone to drop a USSR hydrogen bomb on the game map, effectively ridding it of obstacles.
Smeets likes to base his games loosely on current events – a tactic that helps boost download numbers, he said. The initial idea for “You Don’t Mess With Putin” was originally supposed to star US President Barack Obama in a showdown against his political opponent Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election in America. Romney, in league with the devil and angry that he was losing the election, would attack Obama with the zombie horde in revenge.
Unfortunately, Smeets ran out of time before the election to finish the game, so it’s now been reborn, Russian-style.
This version – a first-person shooter/endless runner-style game – is a parody based on another hugely popular video game, “Call of Duty: Black Ops: Zombies,” which first came out in 2011 and has recently been brought back to life in a mobile platform version.
While “Call of Duty: Black Ops: Zombies” costs 220 rubles ($6.80), “You Don’t Mess With Putin” will be free. The game will be available around October 31 on iOS and Android.
MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russian police are offering a 1 million ruble ($30,000) reward for information on the whereabouts of a key member of an international drug ring suspected of smuggling “hundreds of kilograms of cocaine” from Colombia to Europe and Africa via Russia.
“The Russian Interior Ministry is offering a 1 million ruble reward for assistance in locating the suspected organizer of a drug ring, Oleg Titov, who according to investigators is hiding in the Republic of Ukraine,” police said in a statement Monday.
Titov, a former citizen of the Soviet Union who is on the Interpol wanted list, was “for a long time” hiding in the village of Makeyevka in eastern Ukraine using a forged passport in the name of Sergei Mikhailichenko, Russian police said.
The suspected drug baron faces up to 25 years in jail in Russia.
Police from Russia, the UK and Panama earlier participated in an operation to nab the members of the drug ring, who have been sentenced to between 18 and 22 years in jail. The drug trafficking gang's leader, Leo Francis Morgan, is serving a 24-year sentence in Panama.
Russia's Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) said last week that seizures of cocaine on Russia’s borders had risen tenfold this year, adding that the increase seemed to be connected to a general increase in trans-Atlantic imports of drugs.
© RIA Novosti.
Global Drug Trafficking
Yes, we are going to cook eggs. And we are going to do it on the fifth highest point of the Crimea, Ukraine, on the improvised stove.
What we need:
- mountains, beautiful sky and many clouds;
- backpack – 1 pc.
- burner with a gas cylinder – 1 pc.
- eggs – their amount depends on your appetite;
- tomatoes, greens, salt and pepper to your taste;
- smoked brisket, bread.
The place we are going to cook at is located 1527 meters above sea level. When you finally climb the height you definitely feel hungry. So it’s high time to prepare the burner and a fire.
Some butter.
Eggs, salt and pepper go next.
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There is an interesting astrophysical observatory in Karachay-Cherkessia that owns the world’s largest radio telescope RATAN-600 (“600″ – means the diameter – 600 meters), and the largest in Eurasia reflecting telescope with the main mirror whose diameter is equal to six meters. We thought it could be a nice idea to visit this place.
“RATAN-600″.
In Russian “RATAN” means “a radioaastronomical telescope of the Academy of Sciences”. It was put into operation in July, 1974 and is still functioning.
There is a “Pillar of Peace” nearby once set by the UN, such pillars can be seen in more than 120 countries of the world today.
Antenna of the radio telescope consists of metal shileds which form its huge diameter of 600 meters. It resembles a circular stadium or an amphitheater.
This three-storey structure serves to climb the height and maintain the shields.
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