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The Moscow Times Moscow Guide – Winter 2008

Since the middle of autumn one of the most important topics of discussion, could only be … no, not the financial crisis… New Year! The winter issue of The Moscow Times Moscow Guide is entirely devoted to New Years celebrations. Seven great ideas for celebrating the “Night of Nights” will help readers finalise their plans and choose how and where to party, give fresh ideas and lots of practical advice.

And don’t forget – problems will come by themselves, but happiness and luck need an invitation. That why the more cheerful and light-hearted your celebration of the coming holiday is, the happier and more successful 2009 will be for you.

The Crisis: Signs of a Kremlin Fearful Of Unrest
Sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher has painted a disturbing picture of what might emerge from the financial crisis, forecasting continued unemployment, huge protests and spreading violence.

Market Matters: Huge Grain Harvest No Boon for Farmers
This year Russia is enjoying the biggest grain harvest it has ever seen -- and farmers couldn't be more worried.



Monday, January 05, 2009 Updated at 31 December 2008 22:36 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » Issue 4033 » News

Beaten Editor Threatened in Hospital

18 November 2008By Svetlana Osadchuk / Staff WriterMikhail Beketov, a newspaper editor and environmental activist in the Moscow suburb of Khimki who was brutally assaulted last week, has been transferred to a Moscow hospital for treatment and for his own safety after a series of threatening phone calls, colleagues said Monday.

Beketov, editor and owner of Khimkinskaya Pravda, a weekly in the town on Moscow's northern outskirts, was discovered Thursday bloodied and unconscious near his home after an attack that his friends say is linked to his criticism of local authorities' deforestation plans.

He was transferred over the weekend from a Khimki hospital to Moscow's Sklifosovsky clinic, where he remained in a coma Monday, said Ludmila Fedosova, an environmental activist who had worked with Beketov on anti-deforestation initiatives.

Beketov told friends and colleagues that he had been receiving threats in the weeks and months before last week's attack, and Fedosova said Monday that he was transferred in part because of menacing phone calls to Khimki's Hospital No. 1, where he was being treated.

"He is still in a coma, but he was receiving telephone threats even as he was being operated on," Fedosova said.

The callers said they would eventually kill Beketov, Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin said Monday, citing conversations with the doctors who received the calls.

The move to the Sklifosovsky clinic was also necessitated by a lack of sophisticated medical equipment at the Khimki hospital, Fedosova said.

Beketov had his leg amputated, but a necessary skull operation has been delayed because of his critical condition, Mitrokhin said.

Khimki police said last week that they had opened a criminal investigation into the attack.

Oleg Mitvol, the outspoken and embattled deputy head of the Federal Inspection Service for Natural Resources Use, said Monday that he had asked President Dmitry Medvedev to "take [the Beketov] situation under his personal control," Interfax reported.