The Russian government has nominated the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Alexey Ulyukaev, to the VTB Supervisory Board, according to an order signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and published on the government website. Former Deputy Minister of Economic Development and former Deputy Mayor of Moscow Andrei Sharonov (currently Rector of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo) is also named as state representatives on the list of candidates for the VTB Supervisory Board.

The Kremlin has received a letter from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for the release of Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who is currently in a Moscow pre-trial detention center, and is preparing a response to it, press secretary of the Russian head of state Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. “The letter has been received, a response will be formulated,” the TASS agency quotes him as saying.

Free application “Forbes. Topic of the week" is already available for download The death of Boris Nemtsov has become the most important topic this week. A well-known opposition politician, former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, was killed on the night of February 28 in the center of Moscow. Our new issue of the free weekly magazine for iPad contains memories of friends, a chronicle of the political rise of Boris Nemtsov, versions of the crime, expert opinions and photo reports.

CTC Media does not exclude the sale of the company as part of adaptation to the media law adopted in October, limiting the share of foreigners in capital at 20%, reported on Thursday, March 5.

First Deputy Head of the Moscow Metro Yuri Degtyarev said on Thursday, March 5, that now passengers of the capital's metro can buy a travel pass using a bank card, RIA Novosti reports . “A pilot project has started, which we have been working on for a long time, to pay for trains with bank cards... The first pilot project started on Leninsky Prospekt,” said Degtyarev.

The signal of television and radio programs may temporarily disappear in Russian regions on Sunday, March 8, due to activity on the Sun, TASS reported on Thursday citing the press service of the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network (RTRS). The press service explained that on March 8, the Sun, the communications satellite and the receiving antenna of the ground repeater will line up on the same line and the “spring interference period” will begin.

The board of directors of Uralkali on Thursday, March 5, decided to build a new mine on the site of the emergency Solikamsk-2 mine, the reports . company’s press service The project for the construction of a new mine is part of Uralkali’s development strategy for the period from 2015 to 2020, approved at a meeting of the board of directors.

photo TASS Russia needs a flexible energy strategy that takes into account the long-term decline in real oil prices The Russian oil and gas industry today faces a number of serious internal and external challenges. External ones include an increase in the level of competition in world markets due to technological breakthroughs in the production of unconventional hydrocarbons. North America is experiencing dramatic growth in the production of tar sands, tight oil, shale gas and condensate.

Discussion of the draft updated budget for 2015 at a government meeting on Thursday “was quite heated,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a briefing. Siluanov noted that many at the meeting spoke out against optimizing costs, Interfax reports . “You know that we proposed a 10% reduction in major expenditure items, in major government programs. Of course, not everyone likes this,” said the Minister of Finance.

Diomedia Shuffle Reader startup founder Ramil Khairullin on how to turn a school project into a business The buildings of Kazan University occupy several blocks in the city center. It was in one of them, the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Information Technologies, that Shuffle Reader was born. It started out as a class project, and was largely due to the laziness of the students. Before each academic year, students are given literature.

Olga Shorina, the closest assistant to opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was killed on the night of February 28 on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin, showed Reuters a note that the oppositionist wrote to her the day before his death. “Several paratroopers from Ivanovo contacted me. (They said that) 17 paratroopers were killed, they did not receive their money, but now they are afraid to speak,” handwritten on a regular A4 sheet of paper.

The exchange rate of the euro on Thursday, March 5, for the first time since December 29, 2014, fell below 67 rubles against the backdrop of a statement by the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, about the start of bond purchases from March 9, the website Finanz.ru reports . As of 17:30 Moscow time, the euro exchange rate with settlements tomorrow fell by 1.71 rubles - to 66.96 rubles. Before this, the euro dropped to 66.9 rubles, which was the minimum since December 29.

RIA Novosti The injection of money does not stimulate the economy, said First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Dmitry Tulin Economic problems cannot be solved by turning on the “printing press”; pouring money into the economy does not stimulate it, First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Dmitry Tulin, who oversees monetary policy, told Interfax on Thursday, March 5.

Net worth: $15.4 billion In all the years of calculation of the Russian Forbes rating, the president of Interros only once dropped out of the top ten list of the richest. It was in 2009, when his former partner Mikhail Prokhorov was enjoying a well-timed deal to sell a blocking stake in Norilsk Nickel to Oleg Deripaska .

photo by Yuri Chichkov for Forbes Woman First Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Tatyana Nesterenko in an interview with Forbes Woman - about how to manage in a crisis On the eve of the March 8 holiday, Forbes Woman continues to publish a series of interviews and materials about women managing Russian finance, the oil and gas industry and other strategic industries. This time our heroine is First Deputy Minister of Finance Tatyana Nesterenko.