The Moscow Times

Supporters of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin plan to hold a march Feb. 23 and expect that 200,000 people will come.

President of state-controlled bank VTB Andrei Kostin on Thursday called for business to support the government ahead of next month's presidential election, hinting that entrepreneurs' participation in opposition protests could be hazardous to their health.

A senior Kommersant executive demanded Thursday that the Prosecutor General's Office open a criminal case against officials at the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, accusing the organization of being behind an Internet attack on the paper several years ago.

State-controlled bank VTB will buy back its stock from retail investors at the 2007 issue price of 13.6 kopeks per share over the next two months in a move aimed at preserving the reputation of the country's second-largest lender.

Prominent blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny on Thursday accused the Chechen Interior Ministry of illegally spending millions of rubles in federal money on expensive cars and other goods.

After joining the World Trade Organization, Russia will have to start taxing some agricultural products that are now exempt.

Aeroflot said it will file a countersuit for slander and defamation against a U.S. tour company that has accused the airline of bribery and extortion.

Investigators have uncovered a counterfeit drug factory, along with 20 million rubles ($670,000) worth of bogus pills, at the dacha of a former first deputy head of the Moscow metro police.

Serial murderer Vladimir Mirgorod was given a life sentence for the killings of 15 women and children in the north and northeast regions of Moscow from 2002 to 2004.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin set the bar for Russia's population quite high Thursday, saying the country's goal should be a population of 500 million — more than triple its current size.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday proposed shortening the length of the 10-day New Year holidays and adding extra vacation days later in the year.

A judge has upheld the conviction of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout — also known as the Merchant of Death — but said his prison conditions seemed "harsh" and "brutal."

A United Russia party website was knocked offline Thursday after hackers from the group Anonymous claimed to have directed a denial of service attack on the site.

Opposition protesters announced plans to gather on the Garden Ring Road in central Moscow later this month, in the latest in a series of events calling for political change.

Average food import tariffs in Russia will drop from the current 10 percent to 7.8 percent as soon as Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization is complete, but challenges remain in taking advantage of the new status, industry experts agreed during the Food Business Summit in Moscow on Thursday.

South Ossetian opposition leader Alla Dzhioyeva was hospitalized in a coma late Thursday after suffering an apparent stroke during a raid on her home a day before she planned to declare herself president of the breakaway Georgian region.

Two women have filed a lawsuit against a maternity home in the Orenburg region, claiming that their daughters were switched at birth there 37 years ago, in an echo of a story in Chelyabinsk that made international headlines last year.

One soldier has died and 42 more were hospitalized with pneumonia in the Krasnoyarsk region, prompting speculation that the temperature inside the soldiers' barracks was kept too low.

Immediately after Yury Luzhkov was dismissed from office, his friend and predecessor Gavriil Popov asked him to be dean of the International University in Moscow.

India has decided to buy 126 fighter jets from France, taken delivery of a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia and prepared for its first aircraft carrier in recent weeks as it modernizes its military to match China's.

Russia will find a mutually acceptable system for tax payments on eurobonds.

If scientists find microbes in a frigid lake two miles beneath the thick ice of Antarctica, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has "exhausted himself" as Russia's leader and that his inability to change the Kremlin's political system might prompt more massive protests.