A monument to Emperor Alexander II will appear in the town of Shakhty of Rostov region.

The eminent Russian singer Anna Netrebko has been recognized one of the best opera singers of today and awarded with the Musician of the Year Prize in New York.

The Russian Folk Arts and Crafts Foundation (Moscow) has opened the exhibition of glamorous valenki (felt boots), with over a hundred of them of every possible colour and size.

The exhibition Faith and Power. Epoch of Ivan the Terrible opened yesterday at the Patriarch Palace of the Moscow Kremlin, presents icons and pieces of art of the 16th century.

A monument to the prominent Moldovan prince Dmitri Kantemir will be set up in Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova, while its replica will be installed in the Tsaritsyno museum-reserve in Moscow.

The Russian actress Tatyana Lyutayeva has been awarded with the prize of Cairo International Film Festival 2007 for her role in melodrama Polnoe Dykhanie (Full Scope) by Valeri Pendrakovsky.

Ilya Muromets and Solovei Razboinik - the final part of the animation trilogy about Russian epic heroes, which is also referred to as the Russian Shrek goes on general release on December 28.

The outstanding Russian dissident author and public figure Alexandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn turns 89 today. In the beginning of the next year his first biography will be issued by the Molodaya Gvardia publishing house.

The Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup is going to stage a one-act ballet set to Sergey Prokofievs music that was composed in 1936 for the never released film Queen of Spades by Mikhail Romm.

Nizhni Novgorod has set the record in the category The Longest Round Dance inside One Premise in Russia.