The Moscow Times

In July, Medvedev criticized the country’s road safety record, calling the situation “monstrous” after a series of fatal bus and car crashes left dozens dead.

While public opinion on the matter remains mixed, the Kremlin and government have both said they do not want executions to resume, and praise flooded in from human rights groups.

In announcing the violations at Rosagroleasing, the Prosecutor General’s Office did not name Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik or any other executives, but it cast a shadow on her tenure as chief executive of the company.

RusAl plans to raise capital by placing 10 percent of its shares in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The ruling party will look to cement an ideological platform at its congress.

Of 86 companies surveyed in Russia, 71 of them — 82.5 percent — said they had been subjected to at least one major economic crime in the past 12 months, according to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

An unidentified attacker shot priest Daniil Sysoyev at point-blank range late Thursday, prosecutors said.

The Mortgage Lending Agency last week put the average fixed mortgage rate in dollars at 14.8 percent, while the average fixed rate in rubles was 18.1 percent.

Gross domestic product of the world’s biggest energy producer will expand 4.9 percent in 2010, compared with a June forecast for 3.7 percent growth, the OECD said.

Kogogin agreed earlier this year to head a proposed holding company for government stakes in both Kamaz and AvtoVAZ controlled by Russian Technologies — a huge state conglomerate with interests in aviation and defense as well as autos.

Russia was hit in the second half of 2008 by a slump in oil and commodity prices, investor flight from emerging markets and the global credit crunch.

The Captain Khlebnikov icebreaker carrying 101 passengers got stuck in the ice earlier this week near Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica.

Under the worst-case scenario, state-run VTB alone would require a recapitalisation of around 150 billion rubles ($5.23 billion) to keep its capital adequacy ratio at 10 percent, the international group said in a report.

The Kremlin announced the departure of Lesin on Tuesday in a terse statement, saying Lesin left “at his own request.”

Even before they met, the Kremlin snubbed Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who had called for a revision of a gas agreement brokered by the two leaders early this year and it accused Kiev of trying to blackmail Russia and Europe over energy supplies.

VEB head Vladimir Dmitriyev said Saturday that the bank was ready to change its status as ordered by President Dmitry Medvedev but that it needed to raise about 1 trillion rubles in order to make its activity compatible to the banking legislation.

The order to withdraw the license was signed Wednesday after the Central Bank’s supervisory officials were required to cut short a seminar in Anapa to return to Moscow.

Severstal said third-quarter net profit was $66 million, compared with a year-earlier profit of $1.31 billion but well ahead of the $131 million net loss forecast in a poll of analysts.

Russia could consider various “soft” measures to curb inflows, which could include changes in reserve requirements, caps on banks’ open foreign currency positions and also broader regulation on cross-border action such as taxes.

The Federal Tax Service accused the airline of not paying 716,044 rubles ($24,700) in taxes taking into account differences between exchange rate the company used when it converted its income into pounds from 2004 to 2006, and the official Central Bank rate.

RusHydro said Wednesday that RusAl had paid “all but a small portion of its debt” from 2008.

BP and AAR, a consortium representing the billionaire co-owners, said Thursday that Maxim Barsky, currently TNK-BP’s executive vice president for strategy and business development, would become CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2011.

The oil fund is Europe’s largest stock investor and has holdings in about 7,900 companies worldwide.

Fifteen years of mediation have failed to produce a peace deal on the Armenian-populated mountain territory, at the heart of a key transit region for oil and gas to the West.

CTC’s new sitcom — a version of “Everybody Loves Raymond” — went head to head this week with Channel One’s gritty new drama, ‘Dormitory Suburb.’