Russian News From Russia…

Court bailiffs have barred Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny from entering the Khamovniki Court in Moscow in order to testify as a witness in the Pussy Riot punk band trial. Defense lawyers said Navalny’s testimony could have helped greatly in the case. Three Pussy Riot members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, all [...]

Fires are spreading across vast Siberian forests in a flashback to the summer of 2010, when the worst drought on record sparked fires that killed dozens of Russians.   The total area of forests gripped by fire in Russia has increased to 11 million-12 million hectares, Grigory Kuksin, head of the Greenpeace Russia fire safety [...]

More than one-third of Russians believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, compared to less than one-third who think the country is going the right way, according to a public survey published by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) pollster on Friday. Thirty-five percent of those polled said they believed the path Russia [...]

Russia’s largest private oil company LUKoil has filed a bid for the Skifskaya oil and gas shelf area located in the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea, Ukrainian Environment and Natural Resources Minister Eduard Stavitsky said on Friday. Ukraine, unhappy with its dependence on Russian gas, is seeking alternative energy sources, including its own oil [...]

Russian fertilizer maker Uralchem posted a first half net profit of $444 million to IFRS, up 67 percent year-on-year, the company said in a statement on Friday. The company’s revenue increased 22 percent in January-June 2012 to $1.261 billion, with adjusted EBITDA up 37 percent in the same period to $462 million. Uralchem’s output rose [...]

One of Russia’s most prominent businessmen, Alexander Lebedev, confirmed on Friday he intends to sell all his assets in Russia and retire, to fend off what he calls “relentless pressure from the authorities.” “I simply have no other choice, because over the past three years, my business was being purposefully and deliberately destroyed by Directorate [...]

Investigators are inquiring as to why an apparently jealous man from the southwestern Krasnodar Region in Russia hurled a grenade into his sister-in-law’s yard, set fire to his son’s house, and then committed suicide, a regional Investigative Committee spokesman said on Friday.   According to preliminary reports, the 61-year-old Armavir resident fought with his wife [...]

Russian investigator Pavel Karpov has filed a defamation lawsuit with the High Court in London against Jamison Firestone, managing partner of the Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan, who has accused the investigator of involvement in the prosecution and death of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Russian daily Vedomosti reported on Friday. Magnitsky was arrested on [...]

Four barrels with hundreds of human embryos, dumped in a Urals forest, belong to the Urals State Medical Academy, a local police spokesman said on Friday. Police spokesman Valery Gorelykh said it was yet unclear who was responsible for the dumping, but their actions will “constitute an administrative offense of violating medical waste disposal rules.” [...]

MOSCOW, August 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will allocate $2 million to the UN agency in charge of providing aid to Palestinian refugees in 2013, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday. “This decision derives from Russia’s understanding of the importance of the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees [...]

Russian Business Ombudsman Boris Titov will carry out a public investigation of the second case of jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky which convicted him of embezzlement, Titov’s press service said on Thursday. Titov said that before he started the examination of the case, Khodorkovsky should send an official request to the Business Against Corruption [...]

Russia should manage domestic demand to avoid overheating the country’s economy and prevent inflation growth in the short-term, the International Monetary Fund’s Senior Resident Representative in Russia Odd Per Brekk said on Friday. “The immediate challenge for the [Russian] government is to manage domestic demand to avoid overheating and to keep underlying inflation on a [...]

Synergy, one of Russia’s leading spirits producers, will start sales of Scotch whiskey under its own brand name in Russia this year, Synergy Board Chairman Alexander Mechetin said late on Thursday. “We plan to enter a new segment with our own whiskey brand. We will launch production of our whiskey under the Fox Dogs trademark [...]