Word: petersburgs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Last month, officials in St. Petersburg approved the construction of a 400-m-tall skyscraper in the historic center of the city. The city's beautiful baroque and neoclassical architecture, much of it built in the 18th and 19th centuries when St. Petersburg was Russia's capital, will soon be dwarfed by the Okhta Center, which will house an arm of the state gas monopoly Gazprom. (See pictures of Moscow...
...decision to build this thing cannot be called corrupt in any regular sense," says Sergei Malkov, a city councilor and one of the three members of the St. Petersburg land-use committee to vote against the plan. (Eleven voted in favor and one abstained.) "Gazprom is not the kind of organization that bribes or corrupts people from the bottom. It pushes through its initiatives from the very top," Malkov tells TIME. (Read "Russia-Europe Gas Spat Ends...
...While locals are up in arms about the project, it has also resonated overseas, in part because the historic center of St. Petersburg - once home to Empress Catherine the Great, poet Alexander Pushkin and novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky - has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, the cultural arm of the U.N., since 1990. If the tower is built, the body has said it may revoke the city's status, as its "outstanding universal value" would be under threat. (See pictures of the natural sites nominated for the World Heritage List...
...Europe, as a symbol of the Russian leaders' blatant disregard for the public good as they continue to solidify their grip on power. On Sept. 28, a public opinion poll conducted by the EKOM Center, a nongovernmental organization that promotes civil rights in Russia, showed that 66% of St. Petersburg residents oppose the project. A month ago, a packed town-hall meeting ended in acrimony after four hours of heated debate over the tower; security guards confiscated tear gas, knives and brass knuckles from the crowd - a sign that the controversy could even lead to violence. The Okhta Center...
...that's (sort of) equipped to handle a delegation of Moscow bigwigs, there were hordes of militia and security-service agents hanging out in the lobby and outside the hotel. (Wi-fi, fine dining and down comforters, among other amenities, are not common in Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.) At night, the almighty descended on the bar in the first floor of the Parus for a spot of vodka or black tea. The bartender, who declined to give his name for fear of losing his job, quipped: "They ate, they drank, they did nothing...