City authorities have held the first auction in their plan to distribute rental rights to buildings recognized for their historical and cultural significance — at the price of 1 ruble per square meter. City authorities have held the first auction in their plan to distribute rental...

... — a cultural trait that the government seems keen to incorporate into its advertising strategy. The Defense Ministry has announced its readiness to spend 24.5 million rubles ($761,000) on an advertising blitz of its upcoming June military equipment auction. The ads will appear across television, radio, print and online platforms, RIA-Novosti reported. The ministry has not announced what it will sell at the auction, but previous auctions have featured helicopters, armored vehicles and land. Meanwhile...

... Crocus Group website. Also, gold company Russkoye Zoloto contributed to the financing of the construction of an additional exit for the Mayakovskaya metro station. In addition, Moscow Metrostroi, the company that builds and maintains the metro, was auctioned for about 7.6 billion rubles ($255 million) to a company called Tsentrstroi in December 2010, RIA-Novosti reported at the time. Given the Metrostroi privatization, "it isn't such a far-fetched idea" that the whole metro system itself...

... now, at least one city agency is also taking a creative approach to actually help preserve historic properties. In what preservationists are cautiously hailing as a positive step, authorities are attracting private funding for restoring sites through auctions and special leases. On April 25 the city carried out the first auction in a program that was originally suggested by Norwegian preservation expert Terje Nypan. During the auctions, investors bid for 49-year leases to historic mansions, houses...

... Rosneftegaz in 2013-15, paving the way for the sale of stakes in Gazprom and Rosneft. The decree appeared to represent a renewed drive to privatize energy assets, but the president later muddied the waters by stating that Rosneftegaz itself could take part in auctions of state-controlled energy and power companies to prevent them being sold to the private sector on the cheap. "[These companies] are undervalued, and we would not like them to be privatized for peanuts and then to be resold right away for...

... with the documents establishing the land's conservation status," he said. The owners as well as the tenants of Arkhangelskoye are fighting for the land. The Defense Ministry, which previously owned 20.67 hectares of land since 2005, sold it at auction to Gradostroi, owned by businessman Viktor Kiselyov, for 754.5 million rubles ($25 million). A day later, Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev asked Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to halt the sale, since a 1996 government decree transferred Arkhangelskoye...

... Borisov from Nomos Bank. Both estimates are significantly higher than the amount Rotenberg paid for the main companies that make up Stroigazmontazh today. They are five former construction subsidiaries of Gazprom, which sold them to Rotenberg at an auction in the spring of 2008 almost at the starting price of 8.3 billion rubles ($347 million at the exchange rate on the date of sale). After this purchase, Rotenberg — Vladimir Putin's longtime judo partner — began doing construction work...

... local history museum in the Vologda region town of Ustyuzhina. It depicts the appearance of God in the form of three angels to Abraham, with the figures of Abraham and Sarah on either side of them, serving a meal. In March, the icon was discovered at an auction in Germany, where the owner was demanding compensation for it, threatening otherwise to put it up for sale, according to a statement on the website of the Vytegorsk municipal district in Vologda. RIA-Novosti identified the former owner as Mikhail...

... the sole foreign partner in one of Iraq's biggest new oil projects. "Today we are able to implement this project by ourselves," Alekperov told reporters. LUKoil sealed a 20-year deal to develop the untapped West Qurna Phase-2 oilfield in an auction in December 2009, pledging to boost output to a plateau target of 1.8 million barrels per day in six years. Nonstate LUKoil is also active in Central Asia, West Africa and Latin America. But Russia's vast Arctic offshore reserves are off-limits...

... freight rail fleet is now privately owned, Globaltrans said in a presentation. This follows the privatization of rail cargo operator Freight One, which had been controlled by Russia's railway monopoly Russian Railways until tycoon Vladimir Lisin won the auction for 75 percent of the asset last year. A decade ago, cargo owners relied on Russian Railways as the main fleet provider, but this has shifted to a reliance on operators — both independent operators and Russian Railways subsidiaries, Globaltrans'...