President Vladimir Putin with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos oil company founder. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of defunct oil giant Yukos, spent his 50th birthday Wednesday behind bars after spending nearly 10 years in prison on charges of fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion in what many see as President Vladimir Putin's revenge for the businessman's political ambitions.

The hut of Baba Yaga, a witch from Slavic folklore, in the Fairy Tale Park. Lena Smirnova KIROV — If there is one social function you can't miss this year, make it Baba Yaga's birthday. First of all it's bound to be a hoot since the old witch lives in a hut that roams the woods on two fabulous chicken legs and reportedly has a fantastic banya. Plus, the Yaga is known to have bouts of bad temper and a questionable diet — which includes humans — so it's best not to upset her.

ST. PETERSBURG — The new chief of the country’s largest research organization, Vladimir Fortov, is holding the recently announced sale of a Russian cancer-blasting device to the Massachusetts General Hospital as a case in point for his push to convert scientific discoveries into currency. The hospital said, however, that the contract was still on the bidding stage.

Punishments for both organizers and participants of financial pyramid schemes might be written into the Criminal and Administrative Codes in accordance with amendments submitted to the Cabinet by the Finance Ministry, Kommersant reported Wednesday. Russia has no specific legislation directed at financial pyramids, schemes in which participants receive income on their investments out of money paid in by others.

A protracted legal dispute between MTS and Altimo, Alfa Group’s telecom arm, over Kyrgyz mobile phone operator Bitel has been settled, Kommersant reported Wednesday. Under the terms of a settlement agreement, MTS, one of Russia’s big three telecom companies, will receive a payment of up to $150 million, including $125 million that it has already received. MTS will also be able to reinstate to its balance sheet $320 million that it was forced to write off in 2006 due to the dispute.

Speculation that Russia's state oil company intends to pursue its buying spree has revived, despite a denial from mid-sized oil firm Bashneft that it is Rosneft's latest target.

NAANTALI, Finland, June 24 (RIA Novosti) — The law obliging non-governmental organizations funded from abroad to register as foreign agents is designed to protect the country's domestic policies from foreign influence, President Vladimir Putin said. The law "concerns only those organizations that receive funding from abroad and are involved in domestic political activity.

The group developing Azerbaijan's vast gas reserves has chosen the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) via Greece to link to Europe — part of a European Union push for alternatives to Russian gas imports, officials said Wednesday. The TAP project defeated the Nabucco West consortium, which had backed a route to Austria. First envisioned more than a decade ago, it is expected to be launched in 2019.

I noted in my last blog that Russia had imprisoned hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and that it finally needed to start trusting its own people. And lo! President Vladimir Putin's speech at the annual St.

Belaya Ploshchad has BREEAM certification and 66,164 square meters of space. Nathan Stowell The number of "green" offices in Moscow will more than double by 2015 when 10 additional buildings get the international certifications to show that they are resource-efficient, according to a study Jones Lang LaSalle released this week.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his country was ready to consider granting asylum to Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor wanted by the U.S. for leaking state secrets. "We would consider it, because asylum is a measure of humanitarian protection and is a mechanism of the international humanitarian law, which is popular in Latin America and was always used to protect the helpless," Maduro said.

Federal investigators on Wednesday announced that they would conduct an inquiry into the growing number of meningitis cases around Russia, as Moscow health officials said three city teenagers had been hospitalized and diagnosed with the illness. Earlier this month, two children in the Rostov region contracted meningitis and died, while more than 30 children who attended a kindergarten in the southern Russian city were hospitalized after receiving the same diagnosis.

French civil engineering company Vinci Construction Grands Projets will build the new Dynamo soccer stadium at Moscow’s Petrovsky Park after signing a contract with the Dynamo Management Company, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing both companies. Construction of the 9 billion ruble ($2.7 billion), 27,000 seat stadium will be partially underwritten by the French credit insurance company Coface and in part financed by a loan from state bank VTB, a spokesman from Dynamo Management Company said.

Protesters defending the dome of Bolkonsky House, the home of the eccentric father in Tolstoy’s lengthy classic. Three activists from the architectural preservation group Arkhnadzor spent Monday night on the roof of the Bolkonsky House, physically defending the building's cupola from an approaching crane. The group is now calling on Sobyanin and the Moscow government to put an end to what they consider to be the illegal destruction of a historic monument.

An Arctic fox, one of many animals that environmentalists seek to protect. NY-AALESUND, Norway — The high Arctic, once the irresistible frontier for oil and gas exploration, is quickly losing its appeal as energy firms grow fearful of the financial and public relations risk of working in the pristine icy wilderness.