UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. Miners at EVRAZ Holding’s Mezhegeyugol Mine in Tyva proved the first to launch a set of self-advancing prop units in Russia, the holding’s res service reports. The coal is extracted from the mine through chamber-and-pillar/taking-down coal bed stoping. The new equipment will ensure safe mining process at Mezhegeyugol Mine and will also boost labor productivity. The coal extraction coefficient for valuable Zh coal type will rise to as much as 78%. For one, the miners made 35,000,000 kg of coal in June and 10,000,000 kg more in the following month already.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 3, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works/MMK Group’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the IAS) amounted to $671m in the first half of the year, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 24.7%, the financial report on MMK Group’s website states. The Group’s revenues rose by 16% in January-June 2018 compared with one year earlier and reached $4.161bn. According to MMK analysts, the increase has to do with growing sales (+2.1%) as well as bigger average sale prices. The company’s EBITDA came to $1.21bn in the first half of 2018, which exceeded the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) took legal action regarding an advertisement featuring B.N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University, the FAS’s press service reports. Legal proceedings got instituted after a private individual complained about an advertisement they saw on a wall at 119 Malyshev St/32 Mira St in Yekaterinburg on June 21, 2018; the advertisement read, ‘UFU Is Russia’s Best College’. The complainant pointed out the advertisement failed to provide any evidence to support their claim that UFU actually is

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. UralVagonZavod Scientific & Production Corporation (UVZ) declined to comment on Russian Vice Premier Yuri Borissov’s recent announcement that buying the corporation’s Armata platform-based T14 tanks would be inexpedient. This is the answer UrBC received from UVZ press service after inquiring if the company knew the Defense Ministry had changed its mind about purchasing the new-generation, Armata-based tanks, and if the company thought it likely that orders for their vehicles would still get placed by the Russian Government, despite the announcement.

UrBC, Moscow, August 3, 2018. Rectors of Higher School of Economics and Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) Yaroslav Kuzminov and Anatoly Torkunov intend to appeal to Russia’s Vice Premier Tatiana Golikova, who is in charge of all the social issues, asking to have the student loan system reintroduced. The plan was announced during a recent press conference on the results of this year’s college enrollment campaign, RIA Novosti reports. ‘Our tuition fees come to quite a bit, so we need some intermediary mechanisms for this. Ideally, these mechanisms should be provided by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s customers can make card-to-card transfers on the bank’s website free of charge on August 1-31, 2018, the bank’s press service reports. The service is available on www.ubrr.ru and no sign-up/sign-in is necessary. ‘We introduced p2p transfers on our website around a month ago. Since then, the number of such transactions has been rising by 20% every week. Around 40% of these transactions are transfers to UBRD cards from cards issued by other banks. The average transaction amount comes to RUR 9,350; the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 2, 2018. MMK Group’s OOO Ogneupor coordinated an amateur sports tournament among its workers last month. The event’s final stage - triathlon - took place at Veterok Resort, MMK’s press service reports. The sports competition gathered together both the tournament contestants and their supporters as well the plant’s long-service employees. Ogneupor’s Senior Engineer Andrei Anisimov, Chair of the Trade Union Zufar Zyabbarov, and General & Social Issues Manager Denis Roslyakov all welcomed the visitors to the event. The tournament began as early as January and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. The number of MegaFon’s cash-back option #Специи rose by nearly 70% by the middle of summer vacation season, the telecommunications provider’s press service says. The Urals are now the third biggest market for the service, only outstripped by Moscow Region and the Volga Region. People mostly make their purchases on AliExpress, MegaFon.ru, and booking.com. ‘As for the breakdown within Ural Region, customers based in Sverdlovsk Region, Yugra, and Tyumen Region accumulate more cash-back bonuses than any others: 25%, 20%, and 12%, respectively, of the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 2, 2018. Workers of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and MMK Group’s other member enterprises whose children start school this year are going to receive an allowance to help get their children ready for school, MMK press service reports. ‘Families with seven-year-olds will receive RUR 2,000 to RUR 2,500 to buy school supplies between July and September as part of the company’s mother-and-child and pro-natalist programs,’ the press service says. More than 2,000 families are expected to receive the allowance. The money is paid to either one of the parents or

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. Ural Airlines reintroduced its Saint Petersburg-Namangan flights at the end of July, the air carrier’s press service reports. All flights get operated on the modern and comfortable Airbus 320 liners every Wednesday; departure time (Pulkovo Airport): 10:00 PM; arrival time (Namangan Airport): 4:45 AM. ‘Namangan is Uzbekistan’s second largest city, the first one being Tashkent. This is the center of Namangan Region. The city is famous for its ancient history: for one, you can see the ruins of the old Mongolian city of Aksikent there. There’s also Chartak

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 1, 2018. New ticket offices opened in a building next to Arena Metallurg in Magnitogorsk just in time for the new hockey season, reports Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works/MMK (the company that contributed greatly to the stadium (re)construction). Arena Metallurg hosted a junior world hockey championship this year. It was first decided to move the ticket offices to a separate building several years ago; the construction itself started last year and got fully finished this month, shortly before the start of the Continental Hockey League’s eleventh season. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 1, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) now offers mortgage options to customers based in seven more cities: Izhevsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Togliatti, Saint Petersburg, Saratov, and Orenburg. According to the bank’s press service, these cities got selected based on their real estate/mortgage market situation and on the UBRD’s business potential there. As of June 1, 2018, the Central Bank stated that Leningrad Region, Nizhniy Novgorod Region, Samara Region, Orenburg Region, and Saratov Region were all among the country’s top thirty

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 1, 2018. MMK Group’s Metallurg Charity Foundation directed RUR 125.6m to support the South Urals-based children in the first half of 2018, MMK Information & PR Department reports. Metallurg has been coordinating its children’s charity project for seventeen years now, with primary focus on supporting children’s recreational/educational organizations, promoting bigger families, coordinating mother-and-child welfare programs, helping families with three and more children, and investing in state-run clinics and daytime/live-in schools for special-needs children in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 1, 2018. Ural Airlines are going to resume their flights from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to Karshi, Uzbekistan, on August 1, 2018. According to the air carrier’s press service, the flights will be operated every Wednesday and the flight from Karshi back to Moscow every Thursday. Starting October, the flights will also be available up to two times a week. ‘The scheduled flight to Karshi gives our customers better business and recreational travel planning options. Once in Moscow, they can also transit to connecting flights to other locations in Russia and abroad.

UrBC, Moscow, August 1, 2018. TagilBank’s clients will get a total of RUR 852m in deposit insurance money, the Deposit Insurance Agency reports. According to the agency’s data, some 5,600 people are likely to apply for their repayments. There are also 180 businessmen and women who had business accounts with the bank (total amount: RUR 32m). AO TagilBank got registered in Nizhniy Tagil on November 25, 1991. The bank’s license got annulled by the Bank of Russia on July 20, 2018. Based on the bank’s reports, it was Russia’s 409th largest bank in terms of asset volume.

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 31, 2018. MetalloInvest and ChelPipe Group agreed to set up a new research/engineering center together to work on new, innovative steel types and to focus on their steel produce’s quality improvements, ChelPipe Group’s press service reports. The decision to set up the center was taken during the coordination committee meeting at MetalloInvest’s member enterprise Ural Steel. ‘MetalloInvest has, in fact, been doing business with ChelPipe Group for many years now; a new research/engineering center will help take this long-time partnership to a new level: the Group’s

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 31, 2018. MMK Group’s Shlakservis is about to start making a new type of ground-granulated slag mix that is currently unique to Russia and other NIS member states, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. The slag is used in the process of steel-pouring at CC machines. Shlakservis has been making this product since 1992 and has had both the granulated slag and the technology patented by the Russian Patent & Trademark Agency. Last year, the company researchers cooperated with casting labs at G.I. Nosov Moscow State Technical University and Peter the Great

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 31, 2018. MegaFon Ural’s engineers recently completed a large-scale upgrade of the mobile commutator in charge of processing calls within Sverdlovsk Region, the company press service reports. MegaFon’s new equipment has expanded the network’s overall capacity by five times to ensure ever more traffic can get handled even at maximum workload points, that is, during large-scale sports and entertainment events and festivals. Substituting the appliances relating to the company’s mobile commutation center came to be called SWAP, to imply change and replacement. It took

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 31, 2018. Ural Airlines and Belavia are now offering their customers tickets for code-shared connecting flights to and from Minsk. According to Ural Airlines’ press service, Minsk-bound flights will be available from any of the airports where the air carrier is active, with a stopover in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport or Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport starting August 1. ‘Working together with Ural Airlines means our customers can enjoy new travel options. Thanks to these new code-sharing agreements, our Belarus-based passengers can choose among a wide range of

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 31, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) allocated RUR 2.8m to help local schools get overhauled/remodeled in time for the new academic year, MMK Information & PR Department reports. The money was directed to new sanitary fixtures, building materials, and construction work that is currently in full progress at the schools involved. MMK Group’s member enterprises have been supporting local schools for quite a while now. In addition to helping with repairs and improvements, the companies also get engaged in job counseling events, offer guided tours of