SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1156 (22), Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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TITLE: U.S. Alleges Russia-Iraq Spy Link
AUTHOR: By Douglas Daniel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will ask Russia about a report that Moscow turned over information on American troop movements and other military plans to Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. 
“Any implication that there were those from a foreign government who may have been passing information to the Iraqis prior to the invasion would be, of course, very worrying,” Rice said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
“I would think the Russians would want to take that very seriously as well,” she said.
A leading Senate Democrat said if the report is found to be true, the administration should reassess its relationship with Russia and reconsider President Bush’s participation in a July summit meeting in St. Petersburg of the world’s economic powers.
Rice declined to speculate on whether Russia’s actions, as detailed in a Pentagon report based on captured Iraqi documents, resulted in casualties among U.S. troops or what President Vladimir Putin knew about any possible Russian involvement.
“We will certainly raise it with the Russian government. We want to take a real hard look at the documents and then raise it with the Russian government,” Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has dismissed the allegation that Moscow provided information to Saddam, whose government was toppled in the invasion.
“I think we need an entirely new assessment of our relationships with Russia, should this be true,” Senator Edward Kennedy, told CBS television news program “Face the Nation.” 
He questioned whether Bush should attend the G8 meeting. 
“Clearly, we’re not going to have business as usual,” Kennedy said.
The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said “anything is possible in the area of intelligence.” 
Senator Carl Levin said if the report proved true, “it would be obviously plenty discouraging as well as disgusting” and the U.S. should find ways to let the Russians know “that kind of conduct is not going to be acceptable to us.”
A Pentagon report released last week said that two captured Iraqi documents indicate that Russia obtained information from sources “inside the American Central Command” in Qatar. Russia passed battlefield intelligence to Saddam through the former Russian ambassador in Baghdad, Vladimir Titorenko, according to the Pentagon report.
“I will tell you that we take very seriously any suggestion that a foreign government may have passed information to the Iraqis prior to the American invasion that might have put our troops in danger,” Rice told “Fox News Sunday.”
“I do think we owe it to everyone to take a hard look at the reports and to really understand what’s there.”
Rice, who was Bush’s national security adviser at the time of the invasion, said she knew nothing of these reports back then.
“I would not jump to the conclusion that this — if, indeed, the reports are true — that it had to be Moscow-directed,” Rice said.
Calls to the Russian Foreign Minister on Sunday went unanswered. 
A statement posted on the ministry’s web site noted that Rice and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone Friday about Iran and “a series of international problems,” but did not mention the newly released Pentagon report.
n Iraq’s security minister accused U.S. and Iraqi troops on Monday of killing 37 unarmed people in an attack on a mosque complex a day earlier. The military denied entering any mosque. 
Reuters

TITLE: Orange Revolution Rebuffed by Ukrainians
AUTHOR: By Natasha Lisova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Parties that once joined forces to carry out Ukraine’s Orange Revolution were left jockeying for power on Monday as early results showed their one-time nemesis in the lead, a stinging rebuke to President Viktor Yushchenko’s West-leaning administration. 
Official vote tallies were coming in slowly, but initial returns showed the pro-Russia party led by Viktor Yanukovych taking the largest number of votes, followed by the president’s former ally, Yulia Tymoshenko. Yushchenko’s party was a distant third.
Yanukovych, whose ballot-stuffing attempt to win the 2004 presidency triggered the Orange Revolution, declared his Party of the Regions victorious.
“The Party of the Regions has won a convincing victory,” Yanukovych said. “We are ready to undertake responsibility for forming the Cabinet and we are calling on everyone to join us.”
With just over 30 percent of the ballots counted, the Central Election Commission put Yanukovych’s party ahead with about 26.4 percent. The bloc loyal to Tymoshenko had 23.8 percent and Yushchenko’s party had 16.6 percent.
Yanukovych’s party, which has pledged to make Russian a second state language, drop plans to join NATO and restore frayed ties with Moscow, was dominating in the Russian-speaking east and south.
Tymoshenko’s bloc, which was named after her and has accused the government of betraying the Orange Revolution aims of justice and separation of business from power, led in the Ukrainian-speaking west and center. Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party was ahead in only two of Ukraine’s 25 regions.
Election officials said the count would stretch into Tuesday because of the 45 parties on the ballot. About 25 million Ukrainians cast ballots, putting turnout at 67 percent.
The result could force Yushchenko and Tymoshenko — former allies who led the revolution but have since publicly fallen out — to join in a reluctant coalition.
Yushchenko’s job was not at stake in the outcome, but the newly elected parliament will enjoy new powers under reforms that give it the right to name the prime minister and much of the Cabinet. 
With no party getting enough votes to dictate their will — they would need at least 226 of the 450 seats to name the prime minister — the next step will be forming a parliamentary majority.
The top two contenders for the prime minister’s job were Yanukovych and Tymoshenko, the blonde-braided heroine of the Orange Revolution’s mass protests over election fraud in 2004.
Tymoshenko, who was fired as prime minister in September after a bitter dispute with the president, raised the pressure on Yushchenko, saying she was ready to sign a coalition deal immediately — provided she gets the job back.
“We don’t have another path,” Tymoshenko said in televised remarks. “It’s our only option.”
Tymoshenko’s push appeared to vex Yushchenko, who signaled that he wouldn’t be easily pressured by placing his Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov — eager to stay on the job — in charge of coalition talks.
And while several of Yushchenko’s aides signaled their readiness for signing a plan on forming an Orange coalition, the president’s deputy chief of staff Ivan Vasyunik said Yushchenko sees no need for such a document.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe declared the elections “free and fair” and said they strengthened the ex-Soviet nation’s democratic course. The elections “further consolidated the breakthrough in the conduct of a democratic election process,” the OSCE said in a statement.
The trans-Atlantic security organization deployed over 900 observers from 45 countries to observe the vote.
Yushchenko has not spoken publicly since casting his ballot on Sunday, and Tymoshenko noted that she called the president — but did not reach him, instead leaving a message and asking for a meeting. 
Many analysts predicted the Orange Team would sign an initial unity agreement to placate their shared electorate, but that the talks — like past attempts to reunite — would falter once negotiations turned to who gets what position. 
Yushchenko, who retains the right to set the nation’s foreign policy and appoint the foreign and defense ministers, pledged that the nation would continue on its Westward path. Yanukovych has called for closer ties with Moscow and an end to Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, but he supports European Union membership.

TITLE: Schoolgirl Stabbed in Suspected Hate Crime
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A nine-year-old African-Russian girl was hospitalized with stab wounds following an attack by a group of suspected teenagers in downtown St. Petersburg on Saturday, two days after the controversial acquittal of the defendants in the trial for the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl two years ago.
Despite her injuries, the third-grade schoolgirl Liana Sisoko managed to give a brief description of her assailants on the way to the Raukhfaus Children’s Hospital where she was treated in an intensive care unit. She said was ringing the doorbell to her apartment building on Ligovsky Prospekt at around 8 p.m. when she was stabbed twice by “two older boys of about 16 or 17,” Sisoko said.  
“It’s unbelievably terrible, they’ve done it in public, at a place very close to a metro station; yet they had enough time to paint a swastika and graffiti that read, ‘Skinheads...we did it,’ before leaving unnoticed,” Yekaterina Sisoko, the victim’s mother,  said at her daughter’s bedside Sunday evening, a few hours after Liana had undergone surgery on the knife wound.
“Doctors nearly lost hope of saving her life, because she lost a lot of blood from three deep wounds, including on to her throat, but now her condition is stable,” Sisoko’s mother added.
On Monday doctors said Liana’s condition was not life threatening.  Describing the surgery as “minor,” the hospital’s chief doctor Magaretta Zelinkevich said that  Sisoko had “been released from the intensive care unit, is now playing with other children, and may be released from hospital in a week.”
Sisoko’s mother believes the attack on her child had the tacit blessing of the judicial system. 
“[The attackers] have been given a license to attack and kill children because they’re sure they will never be punished even if they are caught,” she said, referring to the last week’s acquittal of nine teenagers charged with attacking and murdering the nine-year-old Tajik girl Khursheda Sultanova in February 2004.
“I don’t have enough guts to tell my child she has been attacked because she is black; she won’t understand anyway,” she said.
The City Court ruling on Thursday caused public outrage with widespread calls for an appeal against the verdict.  According to Professor Tamara Smirnova, a leader of the St. Petersburg ethnic minorities umbrella organization, the House of National Cultures, about a quarter of the city’s residents have xenophobic attitudes.
However, she questioned the widely-believed notion that St. Petersburg is Russia’s leading city for violent hate crimes. 
“Forty-seven percent of Muscovites admit to xenophobic views, but Petersburgers are more open about revealing the reality,” she said.
“Public inaction and a general silence, indicating indifference to the rising extreme nationalism, is tantamount to its justification,” said Aliou Tunkara, head of the St. Petersburg African Union. 
“Had a racist attack on a child happened elsewhere in the West, you would have witnessed an immediate public response, people would go out to protest,” he added.
“Russians are tolerant people, but they don’t have a history and culture of protesting in public, no matter how they feel about an evil act,” said Smirnova.
Meanwhile, the Finnish Foreigners’ Union Against Racism and Anti-Semitism will stage a public demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in Helsinki Tuesday morning in protest against the rising wave of racist attacks on children in St. Petersburg.
“I envy the Finns, they have such an active organization to defend people like us.  I couldn’t sleep the whole night on hearing about the attack on the girl. Now I keep an eye out when out with my child,” said Yekaterina Timokhina, mother of a five-year-old mixed-race girl.
In telephone interviews, several Russian mothers of African-Russian children expressed fear for the safety of their children and dissatisfaction at the way the justice system handled the Khursheda case, describing it as a “judicial litmus test” on racially-motivated crimes.

TITLE: 32,000 Russians Killed by TB As Number of Cases Increases
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tuberculosis deaths in Russia increased in 2005 after a decline in numbers in recent years, the Ministry of Health has announced. 
“TB-related deaths have grown,” Health Ministry official Yekaterina Kakorina was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying in an announcement made to mark World TB Day on Friday. 
“In 2005, almost 32,000 people died. The death rate is 22.1 per 100,000 people, compared to 21.4 per 100,000 in 2004,” Kakorina said. A total of 120,000 TB cases were registered in Russia last year. 
Although the number of tuberculosis cases and TB-related mortality rates in Russia have fallen over the past three years, Russia is ranked 12th on the list of “high burden” countries, the director of the World Health Organization’s tuberculosis program in Russia, Wieslaw Jakubowiak, told Interfax. 
Russia remains among the 22 countries with the largest number of tuberculosis cases, he said. 
In 2004, 26,000 Russians died of tuberculosis with another 110,000 contracting the disease. 
Alexander Chuchalin, Russia’s Pulmonologist General and director of the Research Center for Pulmonology, told Interfax that he believes that the West fears the spread of tuberculosis in Russia. 
“In the 1990s, Russia imported extremely low-quality TB medicines as a result of which patients developed TB that is resistant to these medicines,” Chuchalin said. 
“The West fears these mycobacteria more than it fears the nuclear bomb,” he said. 
With some Russian TB patients treated in German clinics, Western experts are afraid that they may spread the resistant strain, Chuchalin, who is the Russian representative at the WHO, said. 
“The West fears infections that may provoke a new epidemic,” he said. 
Chuchalin said that like anthrax, cholera or smallpox, the genetically modified strain of TB is a disease that could be used in biological terrorism. 
Both the Russian authorities and the international community are doing everything possible to reverse the situation, Jakubowiak said. 
There were 83 tuberculosis patients per 100,000 Russians in 2004, the WHO official said. 
However, his colleague Dr. Risards Zaleskis, regional adviser for tuberculosis control at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, said in an interview with Radio Free Europe that the prevalence in Russia is now 160 cases per 100,000 people. 
The rate is 20 tuberculosis-infected people per 100,000 people in Europe, the WHO official said. According to the 2004 numbers, the 26,000 make up for more than a third of the 69,018 people who died in the WHO region classified as Europe in 2004. 
Worldwide, some 2 million people die from tuberculosis every year. 
The list of “high burden” countries is topped by India, China, Indonesia and Nigeria, Jakubowiak said. Tuberculosis rates are particularly high in Russian prisons and among people carrying the HIV virus, he said. 
But prisons are also an ideal place to combat the disease, Yelena Bogorodskaya, an academic secretary at the Research Institute for Pulmonology, told Radio Free Europe. 
“Prisons [present] a unique opportunity to diagnose and treat the most difficult group of tuberculosis sufferers — those who do not wish to get treatment,” she said.

TITLE: Putin Faces Plagiarism Accusation
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Large parts of an economics thesis written by President Vladimir Putin in the mid-1990s were lifted straight out of a U.S. management textbook published 20 years earlier, The Washington Times reported Saturday, citing researchers at the Brookings Institution.
It was unclear, however, whether Putin had even read the thesis, which might have been intended to impress the Western investors who were flooding into St. Petersburg in the mid-1990s, the report said. Putin oversaw the city’s foreign economic relations at the time.
Clifford Gaddy, a senior fellow at Brookings, said 16 of the 20 pages that open the thesis’ key second section were taken from the Russian translation of the 1978 book “Strategic Planning and Policy” by University of Pittsburgh professors William King and David Cleland, the newspaper reported. 
In addition, six diagrams and tables from the 218-page thesis also mimicked those in the book, which had been translated into Russian by a KGB-related institute in the early 1990s. “It all boils down to plagiarism,” The Washington Times reported Gaddy as saying. “Whether you’re talking about a college-level term paper, not to mention a formal dissertation, there’s no question in my mind that this would be plagiarism.”
Calls to the presidential administration went unanswered Sunday.
The official Kremlin biography says Putin obtained a Ph.D. in economics in 1997 from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. It is unclear when Putin wrote the thesis, which Putin scholars have tried for years to examine and Brookings obtained by subscribing to a Moscow technical library that had a copy in its electronic files.
Putin cited the King-Cleland work among his 47 sources, but he did not indicate paragraphs and pages were being copied. The thesis, titled “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations,” is largely an essay on how a state should manage its natural resources.
“Somebody was cutting corners, whether it was Mr. Putin or whoever cut and pasted the work for him,” said Gaddy, who worked with fellow Brookings researcher Igor Danchenko.
Dubious academic credential-building was common in Eastern Europe and especially in East Germany, where Putin once served as a KGB agent, E. Wayne Merry, senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, told The Washington Times. 
“It was really quite common for an up-and-coming apparatchik to get a ghostwritten work done to obtain a degree,” he said. “It’s probably an open question whether Putin even read his dissertation until shortly before he had to defend it.”
Vladimir Litvinenko, the rector at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute when Putin obtained his degree, is now a key adviser to Putin on energy policy.

TITLE: Police Beat Defiant Belarussian Protesters
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK — Black-clad riot police clubbed demonstrators on the weekend as government opponents marched in defiance of a show of force by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko that drew Western sanctions. 
Nearly a week into protests set off by a disputed election that handed Lukashenko a third term, opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich told a crowd of thousands Saturday that momentum was growing to bring democracy to Belarus.
But he acknowledged that it would take some time, and put an end to immediate tensions by asking his supporters to come to another big rally in a month.
Two days of confrontation and wildly swinging emotions left two huge questions for the country: How much dissent are the authorities willing to allow and how much support does the opposition have?
Milinkevich spoke at an impromptu rally held at a Minsk park after police shoved back protesters from the central city square where they had intended to gather.
Police did not interfere with the park rally that attracted around 7,000 people — raising hopes that security forces’ long history of violence against dissenters was softening.
But authorities showed their tolerance had distinct limits after rally participants tried to march to a jail where some of the hundreds of people arrested over the past week were being held.
 A three-deep phalanx of riot police with shields confronted the marchers at a railroad underpass, then pushed them up the street, beating some bloody with truncheons and arresting about 20. At least four percussion grenades were detonated; Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov later denied the explosions were set off by police but did not say what caused them.
The human rights group International Helsinki Federation said one demonstrator was severely injured with a fractured skull. 
Opposition presidential candidate Alexander Kozulin was detained and beaten in the clash, and his wife said Sunday that his condition was satisfactory.
A Russian journalist, Pavel Sheremet, was detained and beaten earlier in the city center, his father said.
Milinkevich called for the next rally to take place April 26, apparently aiming to end the immediate tensions of daily rallies and to give the opposition time to plot strategy. The day is the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion; Belarus was in the direct path of the radiation and the anniversary is likely to underline discontent over Lukashenko’s moves to repopulate evacuated areas of the contamination zone.
“I am tired of being afraid, and the fear is leaving me,” said Yelena Sokolovskaya, 44, an accountant, at the park rally. 
She said the government’s claims that the economy is thriving were “a lie — Milinkevich speaks the truth.”
Before dawn Friday, police raided an opposition tent camp on Minsk’s main square, arresting hundreds of demonstrators who had been part of unprecedented round-the-clock protests. Opposition supporters returned to Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad at twilight Friday, but police seized some of them and pushed the rest of the small crowd down the street and prevented pedestrians on their way home from work from walking through the square. 
The European Union decided Friday to punish Lukashenko with “restrictions” that will likely include a travel ban from Europe. 
The EU decision puts Lukashenko on the same EU blacklist as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Burma’s military leaders, all of whom have a freeze on their European assets and visa bans against them. 
EU officials said they were drafting plans to expand specific measures, which currently apply only to six top Belarussian officials and had not included Lukashenko. 
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the United States would join the EU in applying targeted travel restrictions and financial sanctions.
The measures, however, seemed unlikely to influence Lukashenko. In a statement late Friday, the Foreign Ministry said the sanctions had “no prospects,” and that Belarus reserved the right to take retaliatory measures.
Meanwhile, about 80 pro-Lukashenko youth activists picketed the U.S. Embassy in Minsk for about an hour on Sunday, shouting “Hands off Belarus.” Protesters also picketed the Polish Embassy.
In Moscow, police broke up an unauthorized protest staged near the Foreign Ministry in support of Belarus’ opposition Sunday. About 10 activists from Russian opposition political parties and youth movements tried to unfurl banners reading “Lukashenko, No! OSCE, Yes” and “Russia, Don’t Support Luka” but were immediately stopped by riot police.

TITLE: Ustinov Targets Corruption
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov on Friday called for the creation of a national program to fight corruption, defended the court that acquitted a teenager charged with slaying a Tajik girl and criticized British courts for not extraditing people wanted in Russia on criminal charges.
Ustinov, who was speaking to the Federation Council, offered few details about how corruption should be fought under a national program, saying only that the adoption of new laws would not “save the situation,” Interfax reported.  He also said prosecutors investigated and sent to court more than 24,000 cases related to abuse of office and corruption among officials last year.
Responding to a question about a St. Petersburg jury’s decision earlier in the week to acquit of murder charges the teenager being tried in the stabbing death of 9-year-old Tajik girl in 2004, Ustinov said, “We do not have any other courts, and they will not fly to us from the Moon.” The jury found the defendant and six of his friends guilty of hooliganism in the attack.
“We don’t hold a discussion on every court verdict,” Ustinov said. “If we begin pressing the courts, it will become even worse.”

TITLE: Ministry Snubs Yukos Summons
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Foreign Ministry on Friday said it was not obliged to respond to a summons served through diplomatic channels earlier this month in an ongoing lawsuit that was filed by U.S.-based shareholders of Yukos.
The ministry said mutual legal assistance in civil and commercial matters between Russia and the United States had been frozen since 2003.
Diplomatic channels “simply cannot be used for the transmission of any judicial documents,” it said in a statement posted on its web site Friday.
The ministry’s comments come after the Russian government was served a summons on March 14 in a lawsuit brought by 12 holders of Yukos’ American Depositary Receipts. The move is part of a suit filed in the United States last fall against the government, a group of senior government officials and four state energy companies.
The suit — which is being funded by Yukos’ parent company, GML, formerly known as Group Menatep — accuses the government of securities fraud in the de facto renationalization of Yukos. Under U.S. law, foreign governments have 60 days to respond to a summons, which is delivered to the respective foreign ministry by the State Department, giving Russia a May 15 deadline. 
The lawsuit states that the 12 plaintiffs, who include former U.S. National Security Adviser Richard Allen, lost a total of $3 million due to the drop in market value of the 115,000 Yukos American Depositary Receipts they had purchased over a three-year period.
According to Thomas Johnson Jr. of the Washington-based law firm Covington & Burling, which is representing the shareholders, the plaintiffs could claim up to $9 million in damages under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which contains a civil component that allows plaintiffs to sue for triple damages if the defendants are found guilty of racketeering.
In a statement received by e-mail Friday, Johnson said the Foreign Ministry’s rejection of the summons was baseless because it was delivered to the ministry “pursuant to provisions of the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.”
“As a matter of American law, Russia has been effectively and legally served,” Johnson said in the statement.
If Russia does not respond to the summons by the May 15 deadline, “the minority shareholders will seek, and will be awarded, a default judgment” in a U.S. court, Johnson said.
The summons follows a series of legal papers served to Russian officials in connection with the lawsuit, which was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington in October.
The 12 minority shareholders say Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were served while visiting Washington in October and January, respectively. Johnson said that Sergei Bogdanchikov, president of state-owned oil producer Rosneft, was also served while he was attending an energy conference in London last month.

TITLE: New Audit Legislation To Remove ‘One-Day’ Firms
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian audit market is set to shrink more than twofold as a result of a new law entrusting control to professional associations. The law, which effectively cancels the licensing process, would reduce the number of active audit companies from 8,000 to 2,500, experts said last week at a round table at the Agency of Business News.
This spring the State Duma is to approve a new law regulating audit services that will cancel the licensing of audit companies and mean only registered members of “self-regulated organizations” will be allowed to provide audit services. Registration in such associations requires strict checking procedures — last year, St. Petersburg Audit Chamber refused half of its total number of applications.
The new law will thus reinforce trends that have been seen in the market recently, experts at the round table said.
According to the draft law, a “self-regulated organization” must have over 1,500 company members or 3,000 individual members. So only the largest associations and their members will remain in the market.
In general, experts spoke positively of the reform, saying it will remove “one-day” companies from the market. However, they spoke out against the strict requirements related to the number of association members and instead proposed granting privileges to the potential members.
Consolidation of the audit market is a global trend. However, experts noted that small audit and consulting companies would operate in parallel with large companies, taking advantage of lower service costs, ABN quoted Tatiana Yermilova, vice president of St. Petersburg Audit Chamber, as saying.
Nor will Russian firms necessarily have to become parts of international chains. Small audit firms could provide high-quality consulting services to small and medium-size clients, suggested Valery Bakhtin, advisor of the firm Chto Delat Consult.
Around 150 audit companies are currently operating in the Northwest, and competition between them is growing. 
“Managers are interested in high-quality services now, also in the regions,” said Dmitry Zheltyakov, vice president of St. Petersburg Audit Chamber.
Russian companies have been steadily increasing their share in the Russian audit market. At the moment they serve about 25 percent of the market, the ABN experts said.
Audit firms based in St. Petersburg are benefiting from a favorable business climate. With increased tax payments, local companies are switching to International Financial Reporting Standards, so audit, consulting and legal advice services are in demand. Prices could increase by 20 percent to 25 percent a year, experts said.
With many business owners stepping aside from the day-to-day management of their businesses, audit companies receive orders to check companies for possible theft from managers, which has created a new segment in the audit market.

TITLE: Transneft’s Pipeline Block
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia’s environmental watchdog has thrown another roadblock in the way of an $11 billion oil pipeline meant to feed energy-hungry Asian markets, rejecting Transneft’s planned terminating point for the pipeline, a spokesman for the watchdog said Friday.
The Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection has rejected the choice of Perevoznaya Bay as the terminus of the planned Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline due to environmental concerns, a service spokesman said by telephone Friday. 
Pipeline monopoly Transneft has faced fierce opposition by environmentalists and government environmental agencies over the planned construction route, which runs as close as 800 meters to Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake.
Confirmation of the refusal comes two weeks after the environmental service controversially overturned its own expert commission’s decision to reject the first half of the route, which is the part that skirts Lake Baikal. The watchdog’s expert commission voted against the route in January, but then approved it in a revote earlier this month after watchdog head Konstantin Pulikovsky delayed the final decision and added additional members to the commission.
Transneft vice president Sergei Grigoriyev said he was unperturbed by the rejection of Perevoznaya Bay, adding that it would neither delay construction nor affect the cost.
“It’s nothing to worry about. We have 2,300 kilometers of the pipeline’s first stage to build before we need to know where it ends,” Grigoriyev said by telephone Friday.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Port bonds
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Ust-Luga managing company will issue three year interest-bearing bonds for $21.6 million, the company said Friday in a statement. Ust-Luga will issue 600,000 bonds of 1,000 rubles nominal cost. The date of offering at Moscow Interbank Stock Exchange has not yet been decided. CIT Finance investment bank will underwrite the issue. Ust-Luga is also planning to get guarantees from the Leningrad Oblast administration. 

Power profit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The net profits of Power Machines industrial holding decreased over fourfold last year to $6.9 million, according to Russian accounting standards, compared to $30.5 million in 2004, the company said Friday in a statement. 
The holding comprises St. Petersburg-based Turbine Plant, Leningrad Metal Plant and Elektrosila plant, and Energomashexport export company.

TITLE: International Bodies Take Initiative on Energy Efficiency
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The country’s worrying levels of energy consumption received a boost recently when the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched a new financial and consulting program aimed at improving levels of energy efficiency. Interestingly, several years ago a similar project was launched by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as attention to the problems grows at both a domestic and international level. 
According to the EBRD, Russia currently uses energy 3.2 times more intensively than the EU-25 average. This may well have a negative impact on the country’s competitiveness in the global economy. International Energy Agency data shows that Russia consumes 10 times more energy than the U.K. and six times more than Canada per unit of GDP. 
Up until now the problem of energy efficiency was felt less acutely because domestic energy prices have been kept relatively low. However, these prices are rising rapidly — energy prices for industry have increased 3.5 times over the last five years — and, together with the demands of growing production, constraints are put on private business and the economy as a whole. 
The problem has been already recognized at a state level. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that Russia will draw its domestic energy prices closer to world levels. With higher energy prices, investment into energy efficient technologies will prove profitable he said earlier this year. 
President Vladimir Putin, speaking in February, called energy efficiency one of the most important tasks for the country’s economy, while the Russian ministry for economic development and trade listed energy efficiency as one of its crucial targets to be achieved by 2010.
The issue of energy efficiency is particularly important for Russia’s Northwest, where many production facilities, including the most energy-consuming ones (like timber and pulp) are located. 
Moreover, according to recent estimates by City Hall’s Energy and Engineering Committee, the depreciation of St. Petersburg’s energy equipment reaches up to 50 percent, so that up to 30 percent of all heat supplied to housing is lost.
Yet it is international organizations who have taken the first steps to combat these problems. In December the Russia Sustainable Energy Finance Program was launched by the IFC (a World Bank organization aimed at supporting developing and transition economies). 
According to the IFC team leader in the Northwest, Maxim Titov, the program involves financing and consultancy to local private businesses willing to modernize power and industrial process equipment. The IFC is crediting Russian partner-banks, such as Absolut bank, who in turn lend to industrial companies for energy efficiency projects. 
Altogether, over five years the IFC is planning to allocate $100 million in financing and $6.25 million in technical assistance. Loans are available for a period of up to five years between $100,000 and $2,000,000.
Speaking in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Titov said that the main task of the program was to find solutions to three main problems: lack of long-term financing for energy efficiency projects; banks’ perception that such projects are technically complicated and risky; and a lack of financial expertise when developing the projects themselves. 
“We want projects funded within the framework of this program to have a demonstrable effect. We want to show the benefits of energy efficiency projects both for financial institutions and end users. We expect our partner financial institutions to acquire expertise in financing energy efficiency projects and hope that other Russian banks and leasing companies will follow their example and enter the energy efficiency finance sector,” Titov said.
The results from investments into energy efficient technologies are obvious enough. Titov cited the example of a large production facility in the region, that spent 50 million rubles ($1,786,000) a month on energy. If the plant invests 50-60 million rubles into installing an infra-red heating system instead of old radiators, then it will pay only 20 million rubles a month. In fact, the project can be realized by an engineering or a service company, who can act as the borrower, and thus, investor.
“This project was founded through those who sold the actual heating equipment. They are experts in the field and for them the program is a good opportunity to find financing for their clients,” Titov said.
Yet another international organization, the EBRD, is also running a program of investment into energy efficiency in Russia. 
According to Kate Dunn from the EBRD’s London office, the bank expects to invest about 200 million euros ($240 million) in projects that will yield energy efficiency benefits in Russia. The bank is aiming to invest in the power sector, industrial projects, small businesses via credit from local banks and district heating. For example, in the Northwest the bank has financed a Lenenergo project worth 40 million euros ($55 million) on a 40 percent energy gain. 
According to Dunn, former command economies are inefficient users of energy for a number of reasons: an inefficient and oversized infrastructure, industry and stock of real estate; subsidized energy prices which don’t encourage energy-saving activities; a lack of consumer control over power consumption; a failure to prioritize energy-saving investments; and a lack of expertise in energy management. 
Energy efficiency projects promise improved competitiveness of Russian firms in world markets, higher revenues from natural gas exports (because of the discrepancy with domestic prices), more environmentally-friendly industry and additional revenues from emission reductions under the Kyoto mechanisms. Russia is potentially the largest beneficiary of the Kyoto Protocol with GHG emissions down by 23 percent between 1990 and 2002. And last, but not least, energy efficiency will stimulate improved social conditions through better quality housing and public space.

TITLE: Shevardnadze the Survivor
AUTHOR: By Paul Quinn-Judge
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Since his ouster in the bloodless Rose Revolution in November 2003, Georgia’s former president, Eduard Shevardnadze, has lived in old-fashioned elegance in the diplomatic quarter above Tbilisi. One recent morning, his house bathed in shadows, he talked to me about his life, reaching back through the murky events of Georgia’s recent past to his role as a reformer during the last years of the Soviet Union.
The estate house was totally silent, except for the low murmur of two women chatting in a far-off room as they set a table for lunch. Apart from his security guards and three housemaids of a certain age, Shevardnadze lives alone. Nanuli, his wife of 54 years, died in October 2004 and is buried in the garden. We sit by a low table set with liquor and fruit in a large living room whose walls are covered with paintings by modern Georgian artists. When I ask about them he stares vaguely at the pictures. “I don’t know much about them,” he explains. “My wife did the collecting.”
I remember a very different Shevardnadze in the late 1980s — a mischievous member of the Soviet elite, jokingly interrupting U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock’s welcoming speech during one reception, then making the rounds of Western journalists who until then considered themselves lucky to see a Kremlin leader at 100 paces. On one such occasion, he leaned unexpectedly into our faces and asked cheekily if we had any questions on the most delicate international issue of the moment — Afghanistan.
He, of course, was the man who masterminded the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1989, the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and sweeping disarmament treaties. In December 1990 he broke with Mikhail Gorbachev, warning of an impending coup and chiding his erstwhile friend for his passivity. During our conversation, he glided over his less glorious post-Soviet career: president of an independent Georgia that slipped into civil war and corruption, a man who was the target of three bloody assassination attempts and who, according to most enemies and some admirers, was by the end unable to control even his own family’s rapacity.
These days, at the age of 78, the former leader is more subdued. He occasionally tripped over dates, then caught himself, but flashes of wit remained. He told me how he and Gorbachev had already been friends for more than 20 years when, shortly after coming to power in 1985, the Soviet leader summoned him from Tbilisi to be foreign minister. “I was mind-blown,” Shevardnadze recalled, pouring a cognac. “I had been abroad three times in my life: Portugal, India and somewhere else. I told them, ‘I don’t even know where the ministry is.’” (Gorbachev sent a driver who knew the way.)
The new foreign minister’s contacts with the United States were rocky: Ronald Reagan made it clear that he was talking to the Soviets out of duty, not pleasure. The relationship warmed, though, as Shevardnadze — a raconteur himself — grew fascinated by the U.S. president’s endless store of jokes. “So at our last meeting before he left office, I asked him where he got them all from,” Shevardnadze related. “Reagan went very quiet, serious, and I thought, What have I said wrong? Finally he answered: ‘You know, something is happening with my mind. I can remember things 30 years ago, but I can’t for the life of me recall what happened yesterday.’”
A couple of years later, Shevardnadze paid a courtesy call on Reagan in California: “He came out looking fit and healthy, but his eyes were empty,” Shevardnadze recalled. “‘He doesn’t recognize you,’ Nancy said. `Don’t be offended: He doesn’t recognize anyone except me.’”
The most vicious battles were fought at home, as Gorbachev and his team struggled to transform the Soviet Union economically and politically, and Shevardnadze engineered the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “When I announced to the generals that we were leaving, there was a tomb-like silence,” he said. “Ordinary soldiers wanted out, but not the generals. They had become millionaires trading in drugs and diamonds.” The generals never forgave him, he said.
In December 1990, Shevardnadze stunned the world by abruptly resigning, warning of an impending counterrevolution. He offered no proof at the time, but he had it, he told me. “Generals — former Afghan commanders — were assembling tanks and troops 100 kilometers from Moscow.” Asked how he knew this, he answered indulgently. “I had between 5,000 and 6,000 people working for me in the Foreign Ministry system,” he said. “A third of them were KGB. I was very well informed.” Gorbachev, however, remained in denial, and just before the real coup was launched in August 1991 he went on vacation. “We all knew they would try something, but he went on vacation,” Shevardnadze said.
During the abortive putsch Shevardnadze supported Boris Yeltsin, but their alliance quickly crumbled. Back in Georgia, Shevardnadze was sympathetic toward the Chechen war of independence, and remembers the Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov — killed in March 2005 — as a “modest, calm man,” someone “you could come to an agreement with.” Aides have long linked all three assassination attempts on Shevardnadze to Moscow’s anger at his independent policies. “The third attempt was the best prepared,” he remarked almost appreciatively. The attackers were pro-Russian Chechens “trained for the job in a Russian base in Chechnya,” he added. Surely that means that Yeltsin was behind the attack, I asked. He smiled, and moved on.
Turning to the present and the young ministers who overthrew him in 2003, Shevardnadze remembered fondly Zurab Zhvania, prime minister under the new dispensation, who died unexpectedly a year ago. Zhvania “used to call from time to time to ask advice,” he said. He dismissed the official government account that Zhvania was accidentally poisoned by a faulty gas heater. “He was murdered,” he said, adding that he does not know by whom. I asked if President Mikheil Saakashvili ever calls, and the former president seemed not to hear. A final toast indicated that time was up. He said he has just finished a 700-page volume of memoirs. It will be published in Germany, France and possibly the United States. The translation from Georgian to Russian will take time, he adds: Some rather frank “formulations” will need to be smoothed a little.
Paul Quinn-Judge is Time magazine’s former Moscow bureau chief. He contributed this piece to The Washington Post.

TITLE: City Tempts Sibneft With Tax Incentives
AUTHOR: By Anna Scherbakova
TEXT: Like the oil giant Sibneft, I would be very much in favor of City Hall paying me back part of my taxes. Well, not in cash, perhaps, but some property, let’s say a loft, would be very desirable. I’ve been a good taxpayer for years and I’d like to get some benefit from it. 
Despite the fact that personal income tax is only 13 percent, compared with a 17.5 percent corporate tax, my salary is nothing compared with the income of Sibneft, the head-quarters of which the city authorities are trying to drag from Omsk to St. Petersburg in order to bump up the city budget. Smolny is ready to provide favorable conditions to Sibneft, which was recently acquired by the state monopoly Gazprom, but I think it’s laying it on a bit thick. 
Tales of large state-owned companies registering their headquarters in the President’s home-city, and as a result paying taxes to the local budget here, at first appeared to be pure fantasy. But then the dream came true, with Vneshtorgbank and Sibur moving up north and Transneft and Rosneft registering their subsidiaries here. Sovkomflot has vowed to move its office here as soon as possible. Gazprom or one of its wealthy daughters is on the way, officials have been telling us for months. 
There are capable business-oriented managers in our local government. They have made very good offers to Gazprom and Sibneft. Two weeks ago, the city government announced the construction of a 300-meter high tower, where the offices of the new major taxpayers could be housed. Smolny said it is ready to finance $2 billion of the $3 billion investment needed for this huge project, the construction of which will take 10 years. The remainder should be provided by private investors that will own the building. Not a bad offer, is it?
The answer is probably “no.” We don’t know for sure, because only St. Petersburg officials know enough to be able to tell us. Sibneft, as well as Gazprom, are keeping silent. But how can we explain Smolny’s latest proposal — to construct a sky-scraper by itself without any private investment at all. Officials say they will use part of the taxes Sibneft will pay in St. Petersburg. The fantastical tales mentioned above have turned out to be a source of shame for the city. Our budget will be used to provide a taxpayer — by no means the poorest — with property.
Do you know what otkat means in Russian? It means that if you ensure that a certain firm makes a profitable deal with your company, that firm will kick back about 10 percent of the value of the contract to you in cash. This is clearly what the authorities are offering Sibneft, although they are doing it quite openly. 
The scheme proposed by Smolny does not violate the law, but it flies in the face of common sense. You shouldn’t be paid for paying taxes. If the scheme works and the city repays taxes to Sibneft, other taxpayers should also start asking for bonuses for merely observing the law. 
Anna Scherbakova is the St. Petersburg bureau chief of business daily Vedomosti.

TITLE: Controlling Consumer Credit
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Modeyeva
TEXT: The initial mistrust with which Russians regarded consumer credit is now largely behind us, as we increasingly take out short term loans to buy whatever takes our fancy, despite the relatively high rates of interest, rather than waiting and saving up. Credit has become part and parcel of our daily lives and, in turn, the credit market has developed to meet this new demand. In recent years, local banks have significantly increased the levels of service that they offer to clients and the state has taken on the task of controlling this fast-developing market — on June 1 of last year, the Federal law “On credit histories” came into force.  
Before the appearance of this law, companies would independently take decisions on the giving of credit to individuals and legal entities, making use of whatever credit history on the potential borrower they could find. If the bank couldn’t find any information of this kind, it could enter into the risky business of independently deciding on the borrower’s ability (or intention) to repay a loan. This resulted in the credit sector being a high risk sector, which meant that the rates of interest on loans were kept high. 
A new type of enterprise, however, has appeared in Russia — the credit history bureau. These bureaus are specialized organizations which gather up and distribute information on the positive and negative activities of individuals and legal entities putting themselves forward for loans. In terms of their legal setup, these firms differ little from the standard OOOs, and ZAOs, which is to say the various limited company formats. They all, however, have the words “credit history bureau” in their titles. 
The law “On credit histories” obliged all credit organizations to give their information on borrowers to at least one of these bureaus by March 1 of this year. The bureaus, in turn, were obliged to enter the state register and receive a license “On the protection of information.” Those enterprises that didn’t register with the state are disqualified from using the words “credit history bureau” in their company’s name. 
How does the loan mechanism interact with these bureaus, then?
The would-be borrower, whether it be an individual or a legal entity, approaches a bank with the aim of taking out a loan. In order to get the borrower’s credit history, and with the borrower’s permission, the bank goes to the credit history bureau with which it has a contract. Thus, for a fee, the bank gets the information it needs in order to take a decision and, in the process, lowers its risk exposure. 
The success of any bureau will be dependant on the volume and accuracy of the information databases that it possesses. The banks, after all, can spread their information between selected bureaus or give it to just one, and borrowers may have a bad credit history with one bank, and an excellent credit history with another. That means that, in order to guarantee an accurate credit report, a bank must get information every single bureau — a lot of hard work and financially out of the question. 
Nevertheless, although the law “On credit histories” is far from perfect and will no doubt be amended, it’s still a step in the right direction, allowing for some order to be brought to Russia’s credit market. As a result, in the not too distant future, we should get a developed banking system that’s somewhat closer to international standards.  

Tatyana Modeyeva is the head of the St. Petersburg branch of InterComp Spb.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Fradkov Critical
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov urged oil companies to hold down prices to curb inflation and help farmers complete the spring sowing campaign.
The situation “is critical,” Fradkov told executives from the country’s biggest oil producers Monday, according to the government’s Web site. The government, which has missed its inflation target for the last two years, wants to curb annual inflation to 8.5 percent this year, in part by stepping up efforts to break up local monopolies.

Diamond Giveaway 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Vneshtorgbank will give its 10 percent stake in Russian diamond monopoly Alrosa to the federal government before its initial public offering, Vedomosti said, citing unidentified people familiar with the plan.
Vneshtorgbank, once the Soviet Union’s foreign trade bank, bought the shares two months ago from Alrosa’s MAK-Bank subsidiary, the newspaper said. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, a member of Alrosa’s board, said Feb. 7 that the government planned to increase its stake in Alrosa to more than 50 percent and end restrictions on exporting and importing diamonds.
The state owns 37 percent of Alrosa, the government of the Yakutia region where Alrosa is based owns 32 percent, employees own 23 percent and eight districts within Yakutia own the remaining 8 percent. Vneshtorgbank plans to sell shares to the public as early as the first quarter of 2007.

Baltic Oil 
LONDON (Bloomberg) — Baltic Oil Terminal, a London company that plans to charge a handling fee for handling other companies’ oil shipments, wants to raise 21 million pounds ($36.6 million) in an initial public offering in April, the London-based Times said.
The company forecasts it will be worth about 50 million pounds when its shares begin to trade on the Alternative Investment Market in late April or early May, the Times said.
Baltic Oil Terminal’s offering centers on its aim of building an oil export facility in the port in Kaliningrad, which is on the Baltic coast between Poland and Lithuania, the Times reported.

Gref Inflation 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Economy Minister German Gref said consumer prices will probably increase in March at half the pace of February, Interfax reported.
The consumer price index probably will advance 0.6 percent this month, after the government curbed gains in prices for state-regulated monopolies and municipal services, the news service said, citing comments by Gref in a meeting of President Vladimir Putin and senior government ministers.
 
Comstar Offer
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Comstar United TeleSystems, a Russian telephone company that sold shares in London last month, offered 490 rubles ($17.63) a share for the stock of Moscow City Telephone Network that it doesn’t already own.
Comstar raised its stake in Moscow City Telephone, or MGTS, to 63.65 percent of outstanding common shares after buying stock in February and March, Comstar said Monday in an e-mailed statement.

TITLE: MTS Profits Rise 39% As Subscriber Base Expands
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mobile TeleSystems, eastern Europe’s largest mobile-phone company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 39 percent, rebounding from the smallest gain in four years, after the company added customers.
Net income advanced to $242.6 million, from $174.3 million a year earlier, Mobile TeleSystems said Monday in a statement distributed at a Moscow press conference. That was lower than the $244 million median estimate from five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Sales increased 23 percent to $1.33 billion.
Mobile TeleSystems and Russian rivals VimpelCom and MegaFon are boosting earnings amid an eight-year economic boom that is boosting incomes and making cellular-phone services more affordable. Russia, a country of 143 million people, now has 130 mobile subscriptions, though some people have more than one phone, according to the Communications Ministry.
“There are a number of regulatory challenges to be faced in 2006,” said Vassily Sidorov, the company’s chief executive officer. These include regulators ordering that mobile operators charge only the caller, number portability and competition from operators that lease time from other companies’ networks, he said.
Mobile TeleSystems shares slid 3 percent to 196.5 rubles on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange as of 4:07 p.m. in Moscow. That’s their biggest decline in more than two weeks.
The caller party pay system will start in Russia on July 1, and the “terms have yet to be determined by the regulator,” Sidorov said. 
“These terms may potentially have a negative effect on our profitability.”
The company’s expansion into poorer regions of Russia and Ukraine has been accompanied by declining revenue per user. 
The average customer’s monthly bill in Russia fell 35 percent in the fourth quarter to $7.3 from $11.2 a year earlier. In Ukraine, Mobile TeleSystems’ second-largest market, it slid 27 percent to $9.1.
 Average revenue per user “is falling, but I think we will see the floor by the end of the year,” Sidorov said.
Mobile TeleSystems raised its subscriber base to 58.2 million at the end of December, from 34.2 million a year earlier. Profit the previous quarter rose 2.7 percent to $347.4 million, the smallest gain in four years, after the company spent more on advertising to attract customers.
 The company’s fourth-quarter operating profit margin before depreciation and amortization, or Oibda margin, was 46 percent.
The Oibda margin is a profitability measurement tracked by analysts.
A plan to cut costs, which includes firing workers, is expected to increase the margin by as much 2 percent a year from when it starts in May, Sidorov said.
The company hasn’t changed its prediction that the margin will be as high as 50 percent in 2006, Sidorov said Monday at a press conference. He said the speed of the company’s cost cutting plan, the growth of the market and regulatory changes would determine the exact level.
The company will “probably” pay about 40 percent of its 2004 net income in dividends, Sidorov said Monday.

TITLE: City Sets Pace as International Freestyle Venue
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “You feel like you’re flying — it’s crazy,” said Irina Arkhapova, a local freestyle skiing enthusiast, speaking about a sport that was practically unknown in Russia 20 years ago. Now, St. Petersburg is set to become a magnet for freestyle skiers across the winter sports world.
Freestyle skiing is a sport that adds sparks to regular skiing as athletes must be able to perform exhilarating jumps to win the disciplines, displaying an array of aerial skills.
Earlier this month, Krasnoye Ozero, a ski resort north of St. Petersburg, created slopes for two large freestyle skiing events that attracted athletes from all over the world.
The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Freestyle Federation hosted both freestyle’s Junior World Championships, which last took place in 2003 in Canada, and the European Cup, which took place one after another at Krasnoye Ozero.
With plenty of goodies for freestyle fans, the committee who arranged the events came up with the name “World Freestyle Week” for the whole shebang. 
“This is very unique for Russia. It is the first time that Russia has hosted such a big event,” Irina Arkhipova, who is also the press-attachÎ of Russian Freestyle Federation, said.
But St. Petersburg’s groundbreaking World Freestyle Week was merely a warm up for the Freestyle Federation, which is looking to take its activities to the “Formula 1” of freestyle skiing, the World Cup.
In order to enter the World Cup, as the committee hopes will be possible in 2007, it was necessary that World Freestyle Week ran as smoothly as possible. Even the weather had to be right in St. Petersburg if the International Ski Federation is to give its thumbs up for the city to host a World Cup event.
So, it was with fingers-crossed that the organizing committee welcomed the 300 participants to the World Freestyle Week. 
Athletes, coaches, judges and workers took part in the two events, the Junior Championship on March 3– 6, and the European Cup on March 8-9.
Athletes from 17 mainly European and North American countries participated. Representatives from the Pyrenean state of Andorra also joined the event. They did not compete, but were there to check out the standard of the Russian organization. Andorra is due to host the next Junior Championship two years from now.
The Junior Championship, open to competitors under the age of 21, is divided into four disciplines: Mogul, dual mogul, aerials and ski cross.
In order to win the mogul and dual mogul events, athletes must master both accurate acrobatic jumping and speed down a bumpy slope. In mogul, skiers race against the clock while in dual mogul two athletes race side by side.
Moguls opened the schedule and Russians won both events with Andrei Volkov and Yekaterina Stolyarova taking gold. 
The dual moguls were held on Day 2 and again Volkov took gold while in the women’s contest, Alizee Boulangeat of France won.
Ski-cross was scheduled for Day 3 and here the competitors were grouped in fours for a 600-meter bumpy race. It is seen as the most dangerous freestyle discipline, because competitors, in their effort to win, sometimes resort to illegal measures including pushing. In order to stop this from happening, 15 judges stand around the course to identify rule-breakers.
The fastest time on the 600-meter course was 38.79 seconds. Andreas Shauer and Julia Manhard both won gold for Germany.
Ski-cross is the only one of the four that is not an Olympic discipline, but it is being considered for the program at the next winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.
The crowd-pleasing event, featuring aerial jumps, took place on the final day of the Junior Championship. The challenge is to make the most artistic and perfect jump from a 5-meter ramp, which hurls the athlete 16 meters up in the air. Maxim Gustik of Belarus made three 360-degree somersaults and ended with a twist before he placed his feet perfectly in the snow to land a gold medal in the men’s event, while Nadezhda Didenko of Ukraine won the women’s.
At the closing ceremony, Russia won the special “Marc Hodler” trophy, as the Russians were placed first in the medal count. At the ceremony an official of the International Skiing federation said that the organizing committee had done a wonderful job hosting the event. The committee said several hundred spectators attended the World Freestyle Week.
Every evening during the event, the captains of each country met to discuss problems such as changes in schedule or courses. But since the weather made life easy for the freestyle athletes, with light snow and wind, only minor changes were made to the schedule to the relief of the St. Petersburg committee.
Arkhipova said that it was of great importance that everything turned out perfectly at the World Freestyle Week. 
The week was a showcase for further, greater freestyle events in St. Petersburg all aiming at one goal, she said.
“We want to develop the sport in Russia and create sportsmen for high-level freestyle skiing, and this is why we need more competitions like the World Cup here.”
Freestyle skiing became a big part of Arkhipova’s life after she was asked to promote the sport ten years ago.
Arkhipova worked in television and cinema before she joined the Russian freestyle world. 
Her son started freestyle skiing at the age of two. He and his mother now spend a lot of time at the Toksovo freestyle school 20 kilometers away from St. Petersburg. He trains while Irina helps to arrange events such as the carnivals, which are traditional for freestylers and their children.
“The freestyle world is one big family. All of us — coaches, athletes — is friends here,” Arkhipova said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Statesman Laid To Rest
TALLINN (AP) — Estonia’s first post-Soviet president, a renowned intellectual who led his nation toward the European Union and NATO, was honored Sunday at a state funeral as a man who “made and shaped history.” 
Baltic heads of state and international dignitaries arrived at the Estonian capital to pay their last respects to Lennart Meri, who died March 14 at age 76 after a long illness.
A charismatic and witty statesman, writer and filmmaker, Meri was president from 1992-2001.

National Strike Ahead
PARIS (Reuters) — Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take part in a national strike in France on Tuesday in a trial of strength for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin over his flagship youth job contract. 
Commuters face travel chaos from late Monday in response to strike calls by unions and students who say the CPE First Job Contract will create a generation of throwaway workers and will fail in its aim of reducing high unemployment among youngsters.
Unions say 135 demonstrations are planned after the failure of attempts to break the deadlock in talks between Villepin and union bosses.

Scandal Over Loan
LONDON (AFP) — Australian billionaire Michael Hintze lent the U.K.’s opposition Conservative party $4.4 million dollars just ahead of last year’s general election, The Times reported.
The revelation of such a loan, while not illegal, drags the Conservatives firmly into a party funding scandal which has already engulfed the Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

TITLE: Zombie Killer Lived a Quiet Life
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEATTLE, Washington — Aaron Kyle Huff lived with his twin brother and delivered pizzas since he moved to Seattle from Montana. An apartment manager said Huff and his brother were ideal tenants, calling them “twin teddy bears.” Others who knew him expressed shock when they learned he was suspected of opening fire in a house full of partygoers dressed like zombies in dark clothing and pale makeup, killing six of them and injuring two. He then turned the gun on himself.
“It’s a total shock,” said Regina Gray, manager of Town & Country Apartments, where the Huff brothers lived. “He and his twin brother are the kindest, sweetest, gentlest people.”
It was a sharp contrast to the man police spokesman Sean Whitcomb described Sunday as “extremely dangerous” who “approached the house shooting and didn’t stop shooting.”
Police say the victims met Huff, 28, at a rave called “Better Off Undead” Friday night and invited him back to an after-party at their home.
Some 500 people attended the rave — parties that attract young people to dance to thumping, bass-laden electronic music. People often dress up in Halloween-like outfits and paint their faces.
Huff left the after-party at about 7 a.m. and returned wearing bandoliers of ammunition and carrying a 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun and a handgun. He fired on the 30 young partygoers gathered in the house before walking out and killing himself when confronted by a police officer.
Police also found an assault rifle, a machete and more rounds of ammunition in Huff’s pickup truck.

TITLE: Ruling May Usher in Medical Marijuana Use
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO, California — Each time the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on medical marijuana, the justices have come down against allowing the sick and dying to use the drug to ease their symptoms and possibly prolong life.	
However, the door has never been fully closed, and now a federal appeals court is set to hear arguments in the latest round of legal wrangling over the issue.
The case, due have been argued Monday before the an appeals court in San Francisco, narrows the matter to the so-called right to life theory: that marijuana should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive or free of excruciating pain.
It would apply only to the sickest patients and their suppliers, regardless of whether they live in one of the 11 states that allow medical marijuana.
“A victory would affect people who are very seriously ill, facing death or great physical suffering,” said Randy Barnett, a Boston University law school professor working on the case.
The case was brought by Angel Raich who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments. She uses marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster her appetite.
“She’d probably be dead without marijuana,” said her doctor, Frank Lucido, who has recommended marijuana for some 3,000 patients. 
The Bush administration says the lawsuit is without merit.
“There is no fundamental right to distribute, cultivate or possess marijuana,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Quinlivan, the government’s lead medical marijuana attorney, wrote to the appeals court.

TITLE: Moussaoui Targeted White House On Sept. 11
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. 
Moussaoui’s testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom. His account was in stark contrast to his previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.
On Dec. 22, 2001, Reid was subdued by passengers when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. There were 197 people on board. The plane was diverted to Boston, where it landed safely.
Moussaoui told the court he knew the World Trade Center attack was coming and that he lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted it to happen.
“You lied because you wanted to conceal that you were a member of al-Qaida?” prosecutor Rob Spencer asked.
“That’s correct,” Moussaoui said.
Spencer: “You lied so the plan could go forward?”
Moussaoui: “That’s correct.”
The exchange was key to the government’s case that the attacks might have been averted if Moussaoui had been more cooperative following his arrest.

TITLE: Real Madrid in 4-0 Thrashing
AUTHOR: By Mark Elkington
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Real Madrid moved up to second place in the Primera Liga behind leaders Barcelona on Sunday as they thrashed Deportivo La Coruna 4-0 at the Bernabeu. 
Real are now 11 points adrift of Barca, whose under-strength team were held to a 0-0 draw at bottom club Malaga on Saturday as they prepare to face Benfica in the Champions League. 
Osasuna are two points further back on 55 after losing 1-0 at Athletic Bilbao on Saturday while Valencia remain on 53 points following their 1-0 defeat away to Sevilla (see story, page 16). 
First-half goals from Pablo Contreras and Fernando Baiano gave Celta Vigo a 2-0 home win over Real Mallorca to put the Galicians sixth on 48 points. 
Malaga prop up the table with 23 points after Saturday’s draw at home to Barca and are four points below Cadiz who drew 1-1 at home to Atletico Madrid. 
Real Sociedad are third from bottom with 28 points after losing 2-1 at Getafe. 
A stroke of luck set Real on their way as David Beckham’s whipped in free kick from wide on the right deflected off Depor’s Hector and into his own net early on. 
It was a confident Real who took the game to the visitors with Robinho at the centre of most of the home side’s dangerous moves in the first half. 
The Brazilian forward, playing wide on the left, ran at Depor at every opportunity, and set the move going for the second goal with a great backheel into the path of his overlapping compatriot Roberto Carlos. 
The full back sent in a low cross from the left that was met by the unmarked Ronaldo who scored his 12th goal of the season eight minutes before the break. 
Ronaldo continued to entertain the home fans, with whom he has had a prickly relationship recently, and had them on their feet just before the break as he burst past four Depor players before being thwarted by Jose Molina in the area. 
Molina went on to deny Ronaldo and Cicinho after the break as Real threatened to cut loose but it was not until the 70th minute that their dominance really told. 
Beckham lined up a free kick as if to shoot from the edge of the area, but instead floated a cross to the far post where the unmarked Ramos rose to power a header into the corner. 
The rout was completed seven minutes from time when Baptista struck a free kick over the wall and in off the underside of the bar.  
n In Italy, Lazio closed in on a place in next season’s UEFA Cup when goals by Massimo Oddo handed them a 2-0 win over Sampdoria on Sunday. 
A second-half strike by the Italy international and a late penalty gave the Rome-based side 45 points from 31 matches and moved them up to seventh in Serie A. 
They are level on points with sixth-placed Chievo Verona, who clung on to Serie A’s second UEFA Cup berth after a stoppage-time goal by Amauri salvaged a 2-2 draw with Ascoli. 
Livorno slipped back to eighth on 44 points after they suffered their fourth defeat in a row, going down 2-1 at relegation-threatened Empoli.
Ninth-placed Palermo (43 points) also remained in contention for European football next season after Stephen Makinwa’s header gave them a 1-0 win over Treviso. 
Reuters

TITLE: Man Wanted Referee To Die
TEXT: Reuters
MOSCOW — A man was handed an 18-month suspended sentence on Monday for threatening to kill a referee in a Russian Premier League match last season. 
A Moscow court handed the sentence to 51-year-old Vadim Grebenkin after he was found to have made threatening calls to FIFA referee Valentin Ivanov and his family on the eve of the decisive derby between Spartak and Lokomotiv in November. 
“This guy [Grebenkin] is only a small fish,” Russian soccer chief Vitaly Mutko told reporters last week. “The police are looking for his accomplice who actually masterminded the whole thing. We have information that the person has left the country and is hiding overseas.” 
Spartak held Lokomotiv 1-1 in the last game of the season to finish second and qualify for the Champions League. Lokomotiv had to settle for third and a place in the UEFA Cup. Ivanov, Russia’s top referee, said at the time that he had received death threats but decided against pulling out of the match. 
“I said to myself ‘either I do this match or I will simply retire’,” Ivanov, one of the candidates to officiate at the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, said then. “And I decided that I’m not ready to call it quits just yet.” 

Yevgeny Sukhina, a goalkeeper with Ukrainian club Simferopol Krymteplitsy, has been found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, Ukrainian media reported on Monday. 
Police found Sukhina’s body and that of his girlfriend in their apartment in Simferopol, the main town in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, the ua-football website said. 
The 23-year-old keeper, viewed as a good future prospect, was on loan from Dynamo Kiev to Krymteplitsky in the Ukrainian second division.

TITLE: Six Runaway Athletes Found
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SYDNEY, Australia — Six athletes missing from Sierra Leone’s Commonwealth Games team were found by police Monday at a house in a beachside suburb, hours after their permission to stay in Australia had expired. 
The three men and three women were reported missing from the Commonwealth Games last week. The games ended Sunday night in Melbourne, which is 530 miles from Sydney. 
New South Wales Police said the athletes want to stay in Australia. They were granted new visas that expire April 13, allowing time for them to make further visa applications. The athletes were released but must periodically check with immigration officials. 
Australia has tough laws against illegal immigrants, who are arrested and often kept in prisonlike camps until their asylum applications are dealt with, a process that can take years. 
Sierra Leone has a violent history that has left it among the world’s poorest countries. The Commonwealth Games paid for the team’s airfare to Australia, and donations paid for uniforms and other equipment.

TITLE: Zenit Awaits Decision Over Racist Taunts
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg is under investigation by the Russian Football Union (RFU) after local soccer fans made monkey calls at the Brazilian captain of a visiting Russian Premier League team, the head of the RFU inspection committee, Alexei Spirin, said Wednesday.
Zenit could receive an official warning in a bid to stamp out racism in the stands, Spirin told The St. Petersburg Times.
The move came after world football body FIFA clarified that it will no longer tolerate racism in football at a special conference in Barcelona in February and again at a meeting of its executive committee in Zurich on March 16.
The RFU has already issued a warning to Torpedo Moscow after it came to the conclusion that Torpedo’s supporters racially abused FC Moscow’s black players in a game between the two sides on March 12, Spirin said.
Torpedo fans were chanting noises that the RFU inspection committee described as “animal noises.” If such abuse occurs in the future Torpedo could lose six points in the league, Spirin said. 
“We will punish [Torpedo] if it happens again — we must,” he said. 
The RFU has asked Torpedo to warn fan club officials that racially abusive behavior is strictly forbidden. 
Zenit could be issued a similar warning if the RFU finds the behavior of the Zenit supporters to have been racially abusive.
After two games in the 2006/07 domestic season Torpedo stand at 14 in the 16-team league with one point. Zenit is third with four points.
The captain of Saturn Moscow was greeted by monkey noises from Zenit fans as he raised the Russian flag to mark the first game of the Premier League season at Petrovsky Stadium on March 19. 
FIFA has recently strengthened “fair play” rules in an effort to battle racism in football. This prompted the RFU to issue a statement saying “the Russian Football Union will rigidly punish clubs for displays of racism by players or fans of a team.”
Racism in football hit the headlines again last month when Spanish side Barcelona’s Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto’o attempted to walk off the pitch during a Primera Liga match after being abused by Real Zaragoza fans. 
To help combat racism in sport, the Spanish government has drafted a law that threatens teams with fines, points deductions and, in serious cases, even relegation, Reuters reported. 
“I hope we never have to use [such measures] but it will be a warning to everyone that they could be applied,” Spanish sports minister Jaime Lissavetzky was quoted as saying in sports daily AS on Sunday.

TITLE: Victories Prep QF Rivals
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sevilla FC and FC Zenit St. Petersburg both won victories in domestic league matches before the first leg of their UEFA Cup quarterfinal encounter on Thursday.
Zenit beat Amkar Perm 3-1 with goals from Alexander Spivak and Radek Sirl in the Russian Premier League and remains unbeaten with four points from two matches. 
“We won thanks to our class today. We could not afford to waste our energy and it was a very tough game,” Zenit coach Vlastimil Petrzela said to Uefa.com.
Petrzela rested defender Erik Hagen and striker Alexander Kerzhakov, who suffered a slight muscle strain against Olympique de Marseille on March 16, but he is expected to play against Sevilla, having scored twice in the 2-0 Russian Cup defeat of FC Torpedo Moscow on Wednesday. Vyacheslav Malafeyev substituted for Kamil Contofalsky, now back in training, in goal.
Petrzela was not at the game himself as he was watching Sevilla beat Valencia 1-0 in Spain.
Sevilla striker Jordi Lopez scored in the 90th minute to lift the team by three points and boost morale ahead of Thursday’s clash in St. Petersburg. 
Roberto Ayala was sent off for bringing down Argentinian Saviola, but Lopez hit the bar from the spot, adding to the two penalties Sevilla missed in the 1-0 win against Club AtlÎtico de Madrid on Wednesday.
Looking ahead to the Zenit game, Sevilla coach Juande Ramos said: “We have to have the same mentality during this coming week. It is very important to be calm and think clearly.”

TITLE: Canadian Uses Ribbons, Balls To Scoop Up Six Gold Medals
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
MELBOURNE — Balancing balls, juggling clubs and twirling brightly-coloured ribbons might not look like sport but they gave Alexandra Orlando a place in Commonwealth Games history. 
The 19-year-old Canadian swept six golds in rhythmic gymnastics and joined Australian swimming stars Ian Thorpe and Susie O’Neill, as well as compatriot swimmer Graham Smith, as the only athletes to win six golds at one Games. 
“I am speechless right now but I’m glad I did it for my country,” said the University of Toronto student.
“This was a goal I set for myself back in March and to have achieved it is unbelievable. I’m speechless.”
She won gold in the team event, clinched victory in the all-around section and then added four individual titles on Sunday in rope, ball, clubs and ribbon.
Where Thorpe secured his moment of history by swimming a dramatic and gruelling final leg of the 4x100m freestyle relay at Manchester in 2002, Orlando’s sixth gold came courtesy of the ribbon.
At a venue named after another Australian sporting legend, Rod Laver, Orlando impressed the judges as well as a packed house with her routines.
“I trained 30 hours a week for this, with extra ballet and cardio sessions on top of that. I hope that this boosts the popularity of rhythmic gymnastics in Canada and people take it more seriously.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair joined in the fun of the Commonwealth Games on the first full day of a trip to Australia. Sporting a dark blue games polo shirt, Blair shared a joke with athletes and officials from the England, Scotland and Northern Ireland teams.
England bowls player Mark Bantock also teased Blair — who supports English Premiership side Newcastle United — by hanging a makeshift banner from his chalet, referring to the Magpies’ 1-0 FA Cup sixth-round exit last week.
That prompted Blair’s wife Cherie to carry out an impromptu room inspection, as the bare-chested Bantock tried in vain to cover up. The prime minister’s wife reemerged to admit the room was tidier than those of any of her four children.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Police Offer ‘Pub-Talk’ 
FRANKFURT (Reuters) — German police are planning to calm nerves among fans at this year’s World Cup by using officers specially trained in pub-speak to communicate through megaphones. 
The authorities in Frankfurt are piloting a scheme where officers explain to fans over a loudspeaker what the police are doing, putting them at ease using colloquial language and humor, albeit mostly in German.  
“In their training, they learn how to describe a situation speaking colloquially — as you would talk in a pub,” said Robert Schaefer, the World Cup police chief. 

Borg Won’t Sell
LONDON (Reuters) — Bjorn Borg has decided not to sell his five replica Wimbledon trophies and two rackets he used during his winning streak at the tournament in the 1970s. 
Borg had said he was putting the items up for sale because he and his family needed long-term financial security. 
 “After great consideration and reasoning, I have decided that I will never sell my Wimbledon trophies and racquets and I have withdrawn them from sale,” the Swede said in a statement on Monday. 
The trophies and two of the racquets he used in that winning streak had been expected to fetch up to $524,000 at a Bonham’s auction of sports memorabilia in London in June. 

IndyCar Driver Dies 
FLORIDA, U.S. (AP) — American driver Paul Dana died after a two-car crash Sunday during the warmup for the season-opening IRL IndyCar Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Florida. The other driver involved, Ed Carpenter, was awake and alert at a Miami hospital, IRL officials said. 
The Toyota Indy 300 race was run as scheduled. Bobby Rahal, co-owner of Rahal Letterman Racing for which Dana was to race this season, pulled the team’s other two cars — driven by Danica Patrick and Buddy Rice — out of the race. 
“Obviously, this is a very black day for us,” Rahal said. “This is a great tragedy.”

TITLE: Ames Cruises To PGA Win
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Canada’s Stephen Ames, ice-cool in difficult final-round conditions, cruised to his second PGA Tour title with a six-shot victory at the Players Championship on Sunday.
Despite lightning-fast greens and thick rough at the Stadium Course, the 41-year-old born in Trinidad and Tobago held off some of the biggest names in golf with a five-under-par 67.
Although Ames made a rare slip-up by double-bogeying the par-four 10th, he reeled off five birdies and an eagle-three at the 16th to finish on 14-under 274.
After narrowly missing a 24-footer for birdie at the last, he tapped in for par and raised his arms in celebration as he secured the winner’s cheque for $1.44 million, the richest purse on the PGA Tour.
“This is big,” a beaming Ames told reporters after earning a five-year Tour exemption.
“I beat the top players in the world this week. The fact that 48 of the top 50 players in the world were playing here, that’s meaningful.
“I think I put myself in another gear that I’ve probably felt a couple of times in my career, but not for four days like I did this week,” added the Canadian, whose first Tour victory came at the 2004 Western Open.
World number three Retief Goosen, four strokes behind overnight, finished second after sinking a 12-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a 69.
Americans Jim Furyk (72) and Pat Perez (71), Swede Henrik Stenson (73) and PGA Tour rookie Camilo Villegas of Colombia (71) tied for third at five under.
Ames, one ahead of a congested leaderboard overnight, opened up a four-shot lead after nine holes as most of the field struggled in bright sunshine at the TPC at Sawgrass.
Ames trumped with a remarkable eagle-three at the 16th. He narrowly cleared water guarding the front right of the green with a five-iron from 201 yards and holed a 25-foot putt from just off the putting surface to forge seven ahead.
Moments later, Goosen birdied the last to trim his advantage to six. 
“I’m disappointed that it wasn’t a little bit closer but I had my chances,” Goosen said.

TITLE: Facing an Employee’s Pyramid of Needs
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a bid to uncover why well-trained employees suddenly resign from a seemingly solid and attractive firm, we confront the principles of Maslow’s pyramid of needs. According to recruiters, when an employee’s needs, both in terms of money and career, are undervalued, loyalty counts for nothing, and they will quickly seek a new challenge.

“If people want to grow professionally but understand that in a particular organization this is impossible, then that becomes the main reason for resigning. For top managers self-fulfillment is very important,” said Olga Chebotkova, partner at Top Hunt International.
But whatever the importance of self-actualization, most people leave when they are paid less than their market price, Chebotkova said.
“Talking to colleagues from other companies a person finds out that they are underpaid. As a rule, it happens within a year of working in a new position,” said Olga Andreyeva, business development manager at Coleman Services in St. Petersburg.
Qualified specialists and managers could leave if they are kept for too long in the same position, even if the working environment is satisfactory and they don’t have conflicts with senior colleagues, Andreyeva said.
More emotional factors like conflicts with colleagues or simply the desire to try something new are rarely indicated as reasons to quit one’s job, Andreyeva said.
She sought to explain such a frustrating lack of loyalty by the fact that “it is thought to be a bad sign to stay in the same position without being promoted for longer than three years. If a person stays, they are considered to be a loser on the labor market.”

The quickest rats
Turnover of personnel is quickest in the positions of office manager, secretary and receptionist, according to Coleman Services.
In the banking sector operators, leading economists and other employees performing simple and strictly regulated tasks often resign because of tiredness, conflicts, stress and because of the abundance of such specialists, said Yury Zelentsov, head of HR department at Rus-Bank.
Administrative personnel working in shifts (receptionists and call-center staff) prove to be the most troublesome employees, said Maria Makarenko, Clientele Network Manager at EuroMed Clinic.
Students see these jobs as temporary solutions then during the summer they leave for something more interesting, she said. After graduating they seek full-time employment with higher salaries according to their professional specialization.
“A new employee needs up to two months of training to perform well. If he leaves after six months, it entails higher spending on education and decreases company efficiency,” Makarenko said.
Several interviews and trial periods are needed to find out if candidates really possess language and communication skills and the ability to work with clients. 
“It obviously becomes a problem when a company’s personnel rotates faster than its ability to find new staff,” Makarenko said.
Alongside administrative workers, sales managers and trade representatives are most unfaithful to their companies.
“Demand for such specialists is high and they could sell practically anything without the need for extensive experience,” Andreyeva said.
Because of the intense competition between new supermarkets, general store managers could easily migrate from one company to another, she said.

How to slow them down
Rus-Bank’s Zelentsov said that to evaluate levels of turnover in personnel one must look at the job position: 10 percent turnover, which is normal for junior positions, causes serious instability in the case of managers.
But managers start to worry not because of the high turnover, Zelentsov said, but because of resulting problems and increased expenses.
As well as the time and money expended on hiring and educating new employees, Zelentsov pointed out that leavers take away corporate culture and valuable knowledge.
Andreyeva of Coleman Services said that in most cases motivating their staff was something employers could manage.
“Russian companies could increase salaries. Sometimes it’s enough to add $300 to retain a valued specialist,” she said.
Andreyeva suggested that companies plan the careers and wage increases of their most valued employees up to five years in advance, making them aware of the possibilities for promotion.
A company should allot resources for wage increases and have reserves of personnel to step in for departing specialists. A direct means of communication will let an employer react quickly to an employee’s demands, Andreyeva said.
“Foreign companies often create staff reserves, educate and move specialists within the company. In such firms personnel turnover is minimal,” Chebotkova said.
In small companies managers could monitor staff satisfaction through face-to-face talks and meetings.
Makarenko of EuroMed commented that a system of bonuses and penalties has proved an effective method of stimulating junior administrative and medical personnel. Regular training, team-building programs and corporate events also have a positive effect.
“To stimulate middle level managers in a relatively small company the system of horizontal career advancement is the most effective — a manager’s responsibility steadily grows in line with wage increases,” Makarenko said.
But it remains difficult to define a motivating force. 
“While one person wants his children to study in England, another could be seduced by a cheap loan, while yet another is eager for challenging and important projects,” Chebotkova said.
Equity options for personnel are becoming more popular in Russia, she added.
With others, medical insurance, a professional education and personal development are routine but crucial motivational factors. (see Non-Material, page iii).
Apart from adjusting wage levels to labor market trends, banks should regularly assess the complexity of tasks being performed by employees and the amount of particular vacancies on the market, Zelentsov said.
Complete satisfaction at work is a myth, he added. Companies and employees make a kind of social agreement. 
“Both parties should understand the benefits of this cooperation and try to observe the terms, and managers will easily find out if an employee’s expectations are being met by applying Maslow’s principles,” Zelentsov said.
“Since they offer higher wages than other companies and are more stable, banks fulfill physiological and safety needs effectively. Banking is a prestigious profession in Russia and it also satisfies the need for affiliation with a social group,” Zelentsov said.
Although in general turnover of personnel is seen as a negative thing,  Zelentsov comments that “sometimes there is a need for renewal, for a change of strategy and in particular a change of team.”
One must relate an employee’s value to what they demand.
Retaining disloyal specialists could be reasonable in the short term, if they have to complete an important project, Makarenko said. 
“In the long run retaining this manager is practically impossible. Regardless of what you offer they will seek interesting positions in other companies,” she said. 
Meant to go
Mikhail Shevelkov, sales director at Alarm-Motors Ford company, explained the small turnover in personnel at his company by the growth of the business, allowing the provision of career opportunities for any employee.
Other crucial factors include the creation of a favorable psychological climate and selecting personnel not only by professional skill but based on their attitude to the corporate spirit and interpersonal relationships within the company, Shevelkov said.
“Professional skills can be taught. But I am quite ready to sacrifice a professional who has a negative effect on team spirit and struggles to fit into the group,” he said.
Shevelkov thought that trying to retain a specialist who is planning to resignanyway was a hopeless exercise.
“If a person wants to leave, all action aimed at motivating him to stay will only have a temporary effect. This person will leave the company sooner or later, while pulling all the stops to persuade him could make other employees ‘try their luck’ at blackmailing the employer,” Shevelkov said.
“We are spending most of our lives at work. Ideally we would spend that time if not amongst friends then at least among people pleasant to be with,” he said.

TITLE: Managing Dismissal: How To Give Them the Boot...
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For the most part, dismissal is a rather unpleasant business, for sacked and sacker alike. Help is at hand, however, because according to the experts, combining a little bit of self-control with strict adhesion to the Labor Code, one can manage with a minimum of fuss.

Legal lay-off
Generally speaking companies try and observe the law.
“Unfair dismissal can not only result in considerable financial losses but also in damage to the company’s reputation,” said Inna Komar, general director of Mega Solution recruiting agency.
“Judges tend to protect the interests of employees, which in court makes it hard to justify a dismissal with insufficient evidence,” she said.
If the court decides there was insufficient grounds for a sacking, an employer is obliged to reinstate the employee and compensate for involuntary absence, said Olga Morozova, HR director at Power Machines industrial construction holding. “The non-observance of disciplinary procedure is one of the most frequent arguments used by employees unfairly given the boot — in most cases they win their cases,” Komar said.
The most common mistake made by employers is an improper disciplinary investigation that confuses the odd mistake with permanent bad performance.
Though regarding dismissal as an extreme penalty, Komar said that the pressure to be competitive forces almost all companies to make some staff redundant. 
And according to Morozova, when simply embarking on cuts a firm should inform its employees two months beforehand (three days in the case of a temporary contract).
In other cases, however, a company will need to have good reason to sack an employee.
With reference to the Labor Code, Komar evoked the suitable grounds for a sacking: being absent from work for over four hours without permission; 
alcohol and drug abuse; the disclosing of valuable information; theft; insufficient qualifications; an inability to carry out one’s professional duties; and the violation of safety standards. But regardless of the reason for dismissal, an employer should always be aware of their legal rights, she added.
To observe procedure an employer should inform the employee about the dismissal within three days of having come to a formal decision.
Some categories of employees are subject to special regulations, Morozova said. For example, top managers are subject to the same Labor Code regulations, but when they get fired they might receive additional compensation, as defined in their contracts.

Creative sacking
Olga Samarina, deputy director at Arbat-Nevsky recruiting agency, said that, as an independent party, recruiters are in a position to hear dismissals honestly explained.
She gave the example of a rather interesting tactic.
“One large logistics company was planning to sack its director of finance — one of the most troublesome tasks in management. They split the finance department into two parts — financial and economic — and hired a director for economics who was directly subordinate to the general director,” Samarina said.
“It was quite reasonable. A future director gradually and without difficulty took up his position, investigated the financial and economic situation and met with the other employees. When he had become familiar, like a ‘friend,’ the former financial director was asked to leave, and the two departments naturally merged,” she said.
Aiming the boot
According to the experts, employers should really try and exhaust every possibility before giving someone the sack. 
Managers could try and fill in the gaps in an employee’s qualifications through extra training or find them more appropriate positions in the company, Komar said.
“When making the decision you should try and consider objective factors. Only professional managers who have seen an employee’s performance over an extended period of time can be guided by intuition. As a rule, the way these managers ‘feel’ matches ‘objective facts,’” Morozova said.
However, she warned, that sometimes “an administrator not possessed of enough professional competence to correctly evaluate an employee’s standard of work may be better at ‘feeling an employee’s contribution,’” Morozova said.
She suggested using modern technologies of personnel attestation to bridge ‘feelings’ and ‘facts.’
Another expert agreed that assessment was important.
“A failure to achieve one’s goals may be the result of bad management or health problems and this needs to be assessed,” Komar said.
Most companies have switched from assessing personal qualities and behavior (like leadership, teamwork and enthusiasm) to assessing work efficiency and practical results, Komar said.
“Using objectives in management is very popular in Russian companies, though not many of them have introduced such schemes effectively, having failed to connect personal tasks with company goals,” she said.
While before it was the boss who assessed the employees, now the opinion of colleagues and clients is often taken into account, Komar said. 
Companies use a ‘360 degree’ method of assessment, by offering formal questionnaires and speaking to colleagues.
“Usually a person is informed about the results of the assessment by an independent party, often an HR manager. I admit that, according to Watson Wyatt, the ‘360 degrees’ method is regarded as a potentially dangerous piece of HR management technology,” Komar said.
Any assessment method should be applied with caution and well timed.
“People are suspicious of new methods of assessment, especially in transition periods. They cynically but often quite correctly consider such innovations as a first step in the hunt for a victim,” Komar said. 
She advised placing emphasis not on assessment but on the needs of company development.
To counter the negative effects of dismissal, Samarina has suggested using “outplacement” — a service provided by many recruiting agencies.
“In addition to helping fired staff find a new job, an agency can solve psychological problems related to the loss so that a person does not feel abandoned in the ‘free labor market.’ They receive professional help and recommendations and are consequently not inclined to blacken the image of the company that dismissed them,” she said.

TITLE: Keeping the Workers Coming...
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A recent review of St. Petersburg salaries again highlights the city’s uneven industrial development,  as well as a continuing  shortage of specialists for whom remuneration is also becoming more specialised.   

Last month the ANCOR recruitment agency released a review of wages at 68 industrial and retail companies. 
According to the report, the most highly-paid specialists, as per reputation, are Financial managers, Chief Accountants, Regional sales manager, software developers, buyers and logistic managers. Low-qualified workers and administrative personnel earned the least.
“Wage growth depends on corporate policy for the most part. According to our research, 94 percent of companies base wage increases on the performance of employees, departments and the company as  a whole, rather than inflation. 
Only a few companies, on top of non-inflation wage revision, practice salary indexation in line with inflation rate,” said Natalya Martikainen, project manager of the Salary Survey group at ANCOR recruiting agency.
However it is open to dispute whether salary increases result more from the performance of a particular specialist than from the deficit of such specialists.
“For example, software development companies are suffering from a considerable deficit in personnel. As a result, we see them competing for potential employees, and high wages are one of their main bargaining tools,” Martikainen said.
According to Begin Group consultancy, in Moscow and St. Petersburg there was a slight increase in salaries, but there is still a significant gap between Moscow and other cities.
“Apart from the region, to a large extent wages depend on the industry and the company’s place in the market,” said Lidia Treivish, head of PR and marketing department at Begin Group.
“Managers are the most valued professionals in the labor market. Almost irrespective of the industry, sales managers earn the highest wages and are in most demand — they bring in the money,” she said.
A deficit in managers capable of selling high-tech products and services, financial services and consumer goods means they are the most valued, Treivish said.
“Employers are also ready to pay more to specialists in areas such as engineering, IT, finance and so on,” she said. 
Vera Minina, editor-in-chief of “Personnel-Mix” monthly magazine, said that the demand for sales and marketing specialists remains unsatisfied, as well as for accountants and financiers — their wages showed the highest growth.
“Also an increased demand for engineering professionals is becoming more and more evident. It seems to indicate the revival of production in our city,” Minina said.
According to the ANCOR report, the structure of payment has not changed significantly compared to previous years. The average employer offers a salary, a wage revision system and compensation for night and holiday work. Bonuses comprise between three percent and 40 percent of the basic wage depending on the industry and position.
Other forms of bonus consist of both traditional and quite unique components. However, ‘carrots’ vary according to the type of specialist.
“For sales managers, commission on sales, a bonus for achieving planned figures and a system of expenses for the use of mobile phone and transportation are very important,” Martikainen said. Company cars are also offered to some employees.
“Of high value to accountants and financiers is education at the expense of the employer, for example ACCA, MBA and other programs,” she said.
On average, local companies have increased expenses on additional medical insurance from $407 to $471 over the last year, the ANCOR report said.
Some employers offered loans of up to $20,000 for up to five years to employees, options to buy shares and non-governmental pension schemes.
About 78 percent of companies provide financial support to employees, 93 percent organize corporate events, 60 percent offer gifts, and 47 percent offer paid sick leave. 
Up to 29 percent of companies sell property to personnel at a discount. A few companies also provide medical insurance to employee relatives and offer paid honeymoons or maternity leave.
“The ANCOR review revealed a number of interesting trends, firstly — that share options are becoming more popular among Russian companies. The second fact of note is increased concern towards an employee’s health, indicated by the inclusion of fitness and sports programs in one’s basic remuneration,” said Minina.
Whether this is because companies are acknowledging the importance of investment into human capital or whether it was inspired by national government programs remains unclear, she said.

TITLE: Gaining an Advantage Through Investment in the Non-Material
AUTHOR: By Professor Vera Minina
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Why do companies need social programs? It is no secret that businesses are created to achieve economic and operating objectives, in other words, to make it a profitable undertaking for all employees of the business.  It is no secret, either, that this undertaking requires the utmost concentration of effort.  Why then do  many companies pay so much attention to social programs geared toward the  solution of social problems, both internal and external to their business?  You would think that this would only be a secondary objective, so why expend time, effort and money if there are social institutions, authorities, and, finally, social service enterprises, specifically created to address social issues and meet public needs?
Yet social programs are being widely used in the management practice of Russian companies.  There are two types of internal social program.  One is geared toward the social security of company staff, and the other toward staff training.
Why do companies spend so much on social programming?  In a certain sense, the answer is obvious.  If we consider both types of programs carefully, we will see that both are economic in their essence.
Take, for instance, the social security programs (complementary medical insurance, retirement insurance, etc.).  On the one hand they serve to retain the company staff, and on the other, attract new employees to vacant positions.  Availability of such programs helps shape the positive image of the company on the labor market and makes it attractive for potential employees; the company’s management are viewed as being socially responsible employers.  Therefore, in such companies there would usually be more contenders for each vacant position than in other companies, and the company will have a better choice of potential valuable employees.
Nadezhda Maximova, Deputy General Director at Pharmacor for Personnel Management, says that the reputation and commercial success of the company allows them to hire the best pharmacology graduates.  But it is still a challenge to retain the new employee, teach them the corporate values and culture and make them an effective employee.
To attract and then retain employees companies increasingly use special coaching tactics, — special complementary medical insurance and pension programs, discount mortgages, better working conditions, etc.
Staff development programs (training, in-service training, career growth workshops) are all intended for investment into the company’s human capital.  These programs are related to improved productiveness and effectiveness and to the formation of corporate identity.
Tamara Mikhailova, HR Director of Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel, said that each member of their staff is expected to acquire company skills and follow corporate standards.  The major vehicle for this training is the social program, included in an employee’s benefit package.  In particular, Nevskij Palace provides lunches for its employees, not simply to take care of their staff, but as a means of forming a corporate ethic. 
There are other examples, as well.  Nevskij Palace works to commend the contribution of their best employees, with one of the rewards being a vacation at a foreign hotel of the same standard.  The vacation is viewed not only as an form of relaxation  but also as a form of training.  
“Professionals would never miss an opportunity to compare various aspects to see whether we are better or not.  Such trips often bring about innovations in our work,” Mikhailova said.
The management of Power Machines said that every year money must be allocated to social programs. 
 “This is like having napkins when you eat,” said Oleg Petrov, HR Director. “You would expect napkins to be available in any classy restaurant.  But social benefits improve the key indicators of company performance only when accompanied by a main dish: various perks and staff development programs.
To improve the economic benefit of social programs, Power Machines uses targeted, client-oriented approaches, aspiring to meet the needs of various staff groups and categories.  The company uses various training programs, family recreation and spa programs, athletic and general healthy lifestyle events as well as other types of social programs.
Developmental programs are getting increasingly popular as non-material company assets become increasingly more important as a strategic resource offering competitive advantages. 

Professor Vera Minina, Doctor of Sociology, is Editor-in-Chief at Personnel Mix Journal

TITLE: Outsourcing – the Hassle-Free Option?
AUTHOR: By Yelena Ryzhkova
TEXT: In recent times, there’s been a trend toward handing over work to companies specializing in the provision of outsourced personnel.
In order to optimize their work, many companies prefer to bring in subcontracting firms, rather than hire full-time specialists. The subcontractor, in turn, hires individuals to do the necessary work. The cleaning of offices and production premises and the guarding of premises, for example, is often contracted out. 
Sometimes, the use of these facilities may be limited to the dispatching of a couple of cleaners from a cleaning firm, or a couple of guards from a security firm. Alternatively, personnel could be sent out to set up new equipment in an office, the equipment having been acquired at the same company. At major companies, and often at large foreign companies operating in Russia, entire departments can be outsourced. 
Outsourcing has a number of clear advantages. All the difficulties concerning the hiring and firing of staff are avoided, as are issues relating to the payment of wages, paid-holidays and the like. As the Russians say, however, every barrel of honey has its own spoonful of tar. Russian legislation doesn’t envisage “the renting of personnel,” so, in the bringing in of outsourced workers, there is a risk that they will be seen as being direct employees of the company. 
Where do these risks come from?
Under Russian legislation, working relations are established between workers and employers when and where “the worker is actually admitted to work.” 
That means that the worker begins work at the instruction of or with the consent of the employer or the latter’s representative. Thus, though there may be no direct contract between the two parties, a contract is assumed to have been concluded when the worker begins work. The work of an “outsourced worker,” like the work of a permanent member of staff, involves the fulfillment by the worker of obligations in a certain field or position and, as a rule, is governed by internal regulations or other local rules. 
Despite the fact that, in the majority of cases, outsourced workers have entered into working or civil-legal relations with the subcontracting firm, they actually do their work at the firm that has subcontracted out the work, obeying the instructions of that firm’s permanent staff.
Thus, the “outsourced” worker appears to have every right to demand the signing of a working agreement and be provided with all the guaranties and benefits envisaged by Russian legislation, including the making of social payments, paid holidays and the like. 
Of course, in each individual case where a conflict arises when an outsourced employee seeks to be acknowledged as a full employee, a commission or the courts will examine all the specific details of that case. Thus, a detailed analysis of the situation with regard to each employee is required. Certain general, practical recommendations can be made, however, in order to lower the risks for a company in such circumstances. 
The signing of legal or civil contracts with individuals should be avoided, although exceptions should be made for individual entrepreneurs. A company subcontracting out work should also make sure that the subcontractor and its employees have an employer-employee relationship. 
Similarly, the company subcontracting out work shouldn’t issue any orders or instructions to the outsourced workers. For example, it should instruct the outsourced workers to follow the orders of permanent employees, or give them assignments. In the same way, the company shouldn’t make subcontracted employees subject to its own internal rules, and the working documentation for permanent employees and subcontracted workers should be kept separate. 
In agreements with the subcontracting firm, there should be conditions allowing a representative of the company to oversee and control the “course and quality of works/services.” This will allow the company’s permanent employees to carry on the day-to-day management of the outsourced employees. 
The carrying out of works or provision of services should be covered by a monthly acceptance certificate. It’s recommended that these certificates should give fairly detailed descriptions of the works or services that have been provided by the subcontractor. 
The company contracting out work should also ensure that the subcontractor doesn’t use or refer to the company’s internal regulations in the drawing up of contracts with outsourced employees, although an exception can be made, whereby the firm can be referred to in the working contract merely as grounds for the contract between the employee and the subcontractor. 

Yelena Ryzhkova is a lawyer with Pepeliaev, Goltsblat and Partners.

TITLE: How to Talk to People Who Suffer From Stress at Work
AUTHOR: By Marie Willis
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: According to a survey by Grant Thornton International consultancy, 48 percent of Russian entrepreneurs reported an increase in stress over the last year. And we all know that stress causes lower productivity, higher rates of staff turnover and higher levels of absence from work due to illness. 
There is a whole range of issues associated with stress at work but possibly the most difficult area is overcoming resistance to talking about the problem, with only 2 percent of staff believing their manager could help if they had a problem. Mental health problems carry a stigma, so it is vital for employers to accept that stress must be addressed seriously and sensibly. Here are my top tips for how to talk to people suffering from stress.
1. Create trust and openness.
• Is it really ‘safe’ for them to talk? Make sure that disclosure is treated sympathetically and positively. Explain why you are talking and ask what they would like to achieve from the conversation. E.g. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been arriving late a couple of times and I was wondering if there was a problem?”
• Listen, show encouragement and focus.  
• Be at ease – don’t rush and don’t interrupt.
• Demonstrate equality and show empathy, try and put yourself in their position and understand how difficult it is. This does not mean you have to agree with their behavior.
• Accept feelings – people who are stressed may well be emotional. 
• Create a helpful physical environment for the talk. Choose the location carefully – go somewhere private, possibly away from the normal working area.
• Find out the extent of the problem.
• Use open questions to find out what’s wrong. Never assume that you know how someone is feeling or what will make them feel better.
• Establish whether it is an individual problem or if other people are involved.
• Find out how long it has been a problem. This will help identify stressors. 
• Understand more about the issues – are there any factors external to work?
3. Focus on what the individual needs to get back on track
• Ask for their ideas of what would help them. E.g. “What do you feel would be a solution?”
• Identify any stressors from earlier in the conversation and work together on how to manage them.
• Establish whether they are aware of the support structures that are in place.
• Set goals and targets – who will do what, by when, how will you know your steps have been successful. 
• Remain realistic about what can be done.
• Check what support the individual needs. 
• Agree on how you will monitor progress and on a review point.

TITLE: Training the Tourism Worker
AUTHOR: By Nikita Savoyarov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia lacks modern pedagogical techniques that prepare workers for the practical reality of the tourism business — this claim made by industry representatives was recently uncovered by an EU-project, “Tourism Development in Northwest Russia,” which itself is attempting to ensure the sustainability of competence in the sector. 
Educational establishments do not deny the problems facing the industry. Instead, they are looking for assistance to develop new methods of learning and to integrate practice with theory. They are looking to the project to help train workers, particularly from small businesses, in everyday, operational skills. This bottom-up approach requires a partnership between business, employee organisations, local vocational institutes, universities and public sector agencies.
An important part of this project was the 10-day training session completed on February 14 in ENGECON in St.Petersburg.  The project’s key protagonist, Peter Saabye Simonsen, selected a range of prominent international lecturers representing both educational and tourist bodies from various countries. 
Training courses were linked to programs such as “Cross Cultural Understanding,” by Assistant Professor John Hird from Aalborg University, Denmark; “Service Policies and Attitudes,” by Falko Nurr, managing director of the consulting company “Falkonsult;” “Product Development: Active and Cultural Tourism,” by Benjamin Carey, director of the consulting firm “Dunira Strategy,” and  “Internet Marketing” by Alastair M. Morrison, Professor at Purdue University, U.S.
This course helped equip around 150 Russian instructors with the tools to train local tourism workers. 
One of the biggest challenges in the training component of the project was to secure the further training of local tourism workers in both the public and private sectors. The challenge of spreading training programs into the regions is key to ensuring a proper quality and sustainability of the transfer of knowledge, and thus improving the competency of the local tourism sector. 
The next stage of the project is currently underway — experts will supervise the dissemination of knowledge in the regions.

TITLE: Registering Foreign Employees in Russia - The Current State of Play
AUTHOR: By Anton Fedotov
TEXT: Any foreigners that have worked in Russia will tell you that there is, to put it very mildly, an element of confusion surrounding the business of getting your visa registered. In what appears to be an ever-changing, unruly bureaucratic environment, what’s the current state of play?
All foreigners entering Russia are required to register within three days of their arrival.  If the foreign national is in Russia on a work visa, the company employing the foreign national will have to submit some or possibly all of the following documents to either the passport and visa service (OVIR) of the district in which the residence is located or the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Department of the Federal Immigration Service, located at 39 Prospekt Rimskogo-Korsakova, St. Petersburg:

1. A completed registration application signed by the employee;
2. The employee’s passport;
3. The employee’s immigration card (the immigration card is received at the border and must have an entry stamp);
4. The lease for the residence where the foreigner is to live;
5. A notarized letter signed by the owner of the residence stating that he or she allows the foreigner to live and be registered in the apartment;
6. Form 9 provided by the Housing Agency (ZhEK) responsible for the area where the residence is located;
7. A power of attorney authorizing the person who is submitting the documents to act on behalf of the company;  
8. A notarized power of attorney authorizing someone to act on behalf of the owner of the apartment; 
9. A receipt confirming that the registration fee has been paid (the current fee is one ruble per day of registration, not exceeding 200 rubles. A one-year registration would therefore be 200 rubles);
10. A medical certificate confirming that the employee is HIV free;
11. The permit allowing the company to employ foreigners issued by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Department of the Federal Immigration Service;
12. The employee’s work permit issued by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Department of the Federal Immigration Service;
13. A receipt confirming that the 400-ruble fee for a multiple entry visa has been paid (if applicable);
14. Three 3x4 cm passport photos of the employee.
If the employee has or is applying for a multiple entry visa, you should submit a request to put the registration stamp in the passport as well as on the immigration card. This will greatly simplify the procedure of re-registration procedure – bear in mind that registration is required every time the foreign national leaves and returns to Russia.
 If the registration stamp is in the passport, only the passport and the new immigration card will need to be submitted to reregister, rather than the above-mentioned list of documents.  
The employee can alternatively be registered in a hotel, in which case the hotel will handle the registration and the employee will only be required to pay for a room.  
Finally, children under 18 years of age must be registered with their parents, in which case information on the children must be included in the registration application.

Anton Fedotov is a lawyer with Capital Legal Services International.

TITLE: Women Work Wonders
AUTHOR: By Elena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: How does one combine being a mother and building a successful career? Some of the city’s top businesswomen offer their advice for handling work and family.
Natalia Kudryavtseva, 
executive director of the St. Petersburg International Business Association for North-Western Russia (SPIBA):

“I’ve always had two important things in my life — my family and my work. Although it has never been easy to find a balance between them, as a perfectionist I’ve tried my best.   
My parents, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year, have always been for me an example of a perfect family. I never doubted that I would have both a loving family and an interesting job. 
Having got married 29 years ago when still at university, my husband and I have overcome all the difficulties associated with family life together. In my opinion, having a family, first of all, means accepting certain obligations, which require one to be responsible and sensible. 
As a mother who gave birth to a son (aged 28) and a daughter (20), I suppose in the Soviet Union we were faced with very different problems at home than we are now. On the one hand, twenty years ago at the time of total deficit, we spent a lot of time trying to buy better food, clothes, find a children’s doctor, and there were not many nurses. On the other hand, at that time a working woman could take time off to care for her sick child or take 24 days of holiday. However, now the internet, computers, mobile phones and other technical appliances make it possible to work at home. 
I believe that human potential is unlimited, and that if you really want to balance work with family then you can. It was a hard job building my family, but it was my family who helped me build a career.”

Ludmila Murgulets, 
vice-president of the Stockholm School 
of Economics:

“It’s always hard for a business woman to balance work with family. The most important thing is to realize what is really important for you at the moment and to choose the right priorities — these tend to change over the course of one’s life. The problem for many women is that they do not know what they really want, and without a proper assessment of your needs and wishes you can’t succeed in any aspect of life. You just need to make a kind of business plan of your life, taking into account one’s ultimate goals and estimating the time and money you will have to invest to fulfill them.  
Now it’s much easier to run a house and solve different domestic problems than it used to be in the Soviet era. There is the option of outsourcing at home as well as at work. However, I like to cook and clean the house myself because it’s a good change of activity and you can immediately see the results of your work. 
In general, I think it is worth following a four-dimensional model of happiness. The first dimension is achievement, the constant achieving of new goals. The second is happiness, the feeling of satisfaction you get from the process. The third is your significance to other people, the ability to make your family and friends happy. And the fourth dimension is your legacy, the creation of something useful that can help your descendants achieve success and happiness. You just need to balance your life according to those four criteria and be happy!”

Natalia Peredelskaya, 
marketing  director of ‘Paktor’ 
boutiques:

“My family has always been the priority for me. My husband and I always had one main purpose — to focus on our family’s interests — and worked hard in order to finance it.
In my opinion, women who devote their life to career building and for years postpone getting married and having children are wrong. They risk staying lonely for the rest of their life, and no successful career can act as a substitute for a happy family.
Although I have three children — a son (15), and two daughters (10 and 3.5 years old) — I took maternity leave only twice. With great support from my parents, who have always helped us a lot, I didn’t take a break when I gave birth to my youngest daughter. One of the advantages of modern life is that having a computer and phone at home you can work at a distance.
After working a lot my husband and I often take the children to the countryside or travel abroad. I just think that women shouldn’t be afraid of the problems they relate to having a child. Having traveled abroad with an eight-month-old baby, I manage to find a solution to every problem.
If you sacrifice your own personal interests for those of the family then you’ll get something really positive that makes it all worthwhile.”

Anna Sharogradskaya, 
director of the Institute of Regional Press:

“I’ve always considered my mother to be a person who managed to work and run the house in much worse living conditions than what we have now. Although there was no hot water, washing machines or any of the comforts we’ve got used to nowadays, she kept our home ‘sterile clean’ even when we were evacuated during the war. 
As for me, I’ve always been a working woman and never taken a day off even to care for a sick child. However, my two children were healthy and had their meals on time. My husband and I managed to devote much time to our sons and spent all our holidays together. 
When they grew up I changed my job and started traveling a lot on business. For the last eighteen years I have run a two-month summer course of lectures in the U.S. as well as given lectures in journalism all over the country and abroad. I have quite a busy schedule with over twenty-six trips a year.
My husband and I never had any arguments about who should run the house and always just shared domestic duties. I like the time I spend at home and relax while cleaning the house or watering flowers but, most of all, I enjoy cooking and always miss it during my long trips away.
I suppose that, in order to balance work with family, you just need to be rational, manage your time and keep in mind any limitations.
My credo is that my family should not suffer from my work and my work should not suffer from my family.”

Nika Strizhak, talk-show host 
of the program ‘The man 
in the city’ at 
St. Petersburg’s Channel Five:

“I’ve never just wanted to be a housewife. In my opinion, everyone can do in life what they want, and I’ve always been focused on professional self-fulfillment. I think that when you enjoy your work, you have time for everything else and enjoy life in general. There is no doubt that it’s the same for all women, and some of them find satisfaction without a successful career. Everything depends on one’s personality and family. I can’t imagine my husband being against me working. He just wouldn’t be my husband then.
I can never stop starting new projects. As well as my work on TV, I am writing and editing books, and giving master classes in journalism. The constant lack of time is, of course, an inevitable problem. 
However, I can say that I have fulfilled all my personal and professional interests at work. If I wanted to learn about something I researched the topic and made a TV program or wrote a book about it.
As for housekeeping, I like to clean the house myself and would never share my kitchen with any other cook. I have a nurse who looks after my three-and-a -half-year-old son Nikita during the day. I like to go straight to work from home and go back home directly from work. In my opinion, that’s the best way to balance work with family.”

TITLE: A New Dawn In Leadership Training
TEXT: It’s the buzzword in the corporate training world, and every aspiring executive is undergoing a course of it: Executive coaching. In fact, a recent survey by the CIPD showed that in the U.K., 67 percent of HR managers believe coaching is ‘more effective’ than any other form of development training, and 88 percent have plans to use coaching within their organizations in the future.   
It first emerged from the States, filtering East to the U.K. and across Western Europe. It’s now come to Russia, and though many see it as a fad, the majority of HR directors would say otherwise.  
So what is it? Executive Coaching is a relatively simple leadership development process. A manager will talk with their coach, normally face-to-face, about their career ambitions, the problems they face, their relationships — in fact, anything that’s stopping them from moving forward to achieve their own managerial and company goals, and fulfilling their potential. Through careful listening, asking powerful questions and a series of coaching exercises — such as visualisations, values clarification and perspectives — a coach will help the manager break bad habits, do away with limiting beliefs and negative thinking. The coach will help the manager think more positively, focus on what’s really important, and empower and motivate them to achieve their goals and reach their full potential.
The obvious question is: Why can’t the manager just go and talk things through with their boss or HR? Marie Willis, CEO of Lequin Executive Coaching, a leading UK-based coaching company, explains:
“It’s precisely because a manager can speak freely with an independent source, who has no agenda but the manager’s success, that coaching works so well. The manager can discuss sensitive issues and use the coach as a sounding board in the knowledge that it’s confidential and the coach’s support is unconditional.”  
And while some say it sounds like counselling, it’s very different — it’s a forward-looking process, which is about using latent skills to improve rather than overcoming mental problems. Nor is it psychotherapy. Coaching can help people overcome deep-rooted psychological problems, but it won’t cure a mental illness.   
Alexei, a well-paid banker from Moscow, can vouch for the success of coaching. He was coached by Natalie Ekberg from LB Coaching, and he’s seen an incredible turnabout in his approach to work. 
In a stressful working environment, often with long hours, Alexei found little time to spend with friends, family and on his hobbies. He turned to coaching to think through his career options and find ways to de-stress.  So a key component to the coaching with Alexei was building an understanding of his own values, which, together with motivations, are the key to decisive action. And to help Alexei overcome stress, ‘de-cluttering’ was important. By identifying his ‘energy drainers’, both in the office and at home, and getting rid of them from his everyday life many processes became far easier. After 12 months’ coaching, Natalie saw a different person emerge: 
“He became more honest with himself and others, and was not holding back anymore. He even started little meditations as part of his daily de-stressing ritual. By the end of our time together I could see a much calmer and more confident individual.”
  Alexei’s positive experiences with coaching are not unique. As people and companies become ever more aware of the value and importance of coaching, and its ability to help people think positively, draw out their latent skills and fulfil their potential, and ultimately fulfil their dreams, so coaching will continue to go from strength to strength. 

If you’d like to find out more, visit www.lequin.co.uk or www.coachfederation.org

TITLE: Online Sites Are Doing The Job
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Twenty million Russians now use the internet and more and more of them are using it to look for employment. According to the statistics, this year the amount of applicants who look for jobs online has by increased by 50 percent. The majority of these live in Moscow (about 40 percent), St. Petersburg (15-17 percent) and other cities with more than one million people (3-7 percent).
“Due to its unique character — not being limited by time, space or any situation —  the internet has become the main job search resource for a large proportion of applicants,” said Natalia Bocharova, director of the recruiting site e-prof.ru. 
“For example, one of the most popular sites www.job.ru, with its 186,000 vacancies and 145 resumes, is visited by over 50,000 people daily. And there are about 1300 recruiting sites on the Russian internet now,” she said.
Recruiters say that it is most effective to use the internet for vacancies aimed middle-level managers, as well as students or university graduates who are just starting their careers.
“The higher the specialist’s qualifications, the less likely they are to put their resumes in the public domain. And top managers would never do such a thing,” said Bocharova. 
According to Yelena Sapogova, consultant at THI Selection, in order to prevent bosses from seeing their employee’s resume on the internet, on some sites, like www.headhunter.ru, there is an option for applicants to “conceal” it. Among other tricks to keep an applicant’s privacy is simply not providing personal information, for instance, not writing one’s full name, said Sapogova. 
The information on the most of recruitment sites is constantly updated. Therefore, recruiters advise applicants to regularly update their resumes on the internet as well — so as not to get lost among the thousands of other resumes. 
“You need to move your resume to another recruitment site every month,” said Anastasia Sedikh, commercial director at EMG Professionals. 
“Each site is usually visited by the same HR managers and recruiters. And if they see the same resume for such a long period of time, they can think that you are not ‘popular’ and it can spoil your image.”
As well as placing one’s resume on a recruitment site, it is worth visiting the corporate pages of different companies where hot vacancies are often posted. 
In order to make job hunting more effective, many recruiters advise applicants to selectively choose the vacancies for which they apply. 
“Those candidates who apply for too many vacancies can’t focus on all of them at once and usually don’t remember what kind of vacancy they applied for when they get a call from the recruiting company,” said Sapogova.
Though searching for jobs on the internet is generally acknowledged as efficient, it does not help in the search for manual positions.
 “Blue-collar vacancies are usually published in special newspapers that are targeted at those particular applicants. In the regions, where less people use the internet, newspapers and personal connections are still the only sources of information about hot vacancies,” said Sapogova.
Though it has many advantages, the internet, as a source of “free information,” also has its weaknesses. 
“Although some recruiting sites have proved themselves, they are still not responsible for the information they post,” said Alexei Zelentsov, regional manager of the Northwest branch at Kelly Services. 
“They are still only a source of information, a bulletin board,” he said.
Although many recruiting sites charge recruiters for access, which helps to filter incoming information, there are still lots of fake job advertisements on the internet, said Irina Yakovleva, head of careers at Stockholm school of Economics.
“A discrepancy between job description with compensation package should be viewed with suspicion,” said Anna Mukhina, senior research associate at Ward Howell International.

TITLE: Personal Branding: The Process of Creating a Memorable Professional Identity
AUTHOR: By Margarita Gokun Silver
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Have you ever wondered what people say about you behind your back? How are you perceived by others? I bet you’ve often asked yourselves such questions only to leave it at that. After all, you thought, I am no longer in high school and being popular isn’t one of my priorities.
True. It’s no longer about popularity or about who you date or how “cool” you seem to be.  But guess what? It’s still about what people say about you behind your back — and now more so than ever. For in today’s crowded marketplace if you do not stand out then you are invisible. Your expertise is no longer enough to differentiate you from others in your field. Your personal brand is.
Most commercial brands out there today are, by nature, no longer commercial. They are now value-based. Successful products are increasingly differentiated by what value they offer, by what they stand for, and what makes them stand out among the competition. The same idea can be applied to people. In order to be noticed, recognized and remembered, people need to brand themselves.  
Creating a personal brand differs, however, from creating a commercial or company brand in that personal brand is not something one invents. Instead, your personal brand is the reflection of what already exists — your unique strengths, qualities, and talents.  The process of personal branding helps you learn, own, and communicate what you have to offer the world and what renders you distinct from everyone else. In other words, it helps you make sure that whatever people say about you behind your back is what you want them to say.
What is necessary to create a strong, personal brand? What does it take to create a personal brand that can set you apart in the international marketplace? A personal branding strategy for your own home market is one thing, one that will help you succeed in the increasingly diverse world market is quite another. So, what steps can one take?
(1) Build awareness of your personal strength and talents. You must learn to really take credit for who you are — to understand what your values are, to apply them to your life, and to make them relevant to the people around you. Your ability to look at yourself openly and honestly is the most powerful skill and the very first step in becoming a good personal brand.  
(2) Control your doubts and fears. At times we all engage in self-limiting behaviors that prevent us from getting what we want.  And often we go through life acting — adjusting ourselves to whatever self-concept we happen to believe in at that particular moment. Most of these acts and self-concepts are results of our deeply-seated fear that we are not good enough the way we are. Yet creating an identity that’s consistent with your core, authentic self is what makes your personal brand shine.
(3) Know how you are perceived by others.  You must be aware of the impact you make on others. This knowledge is essential in recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and in moving towards where you want to be. Just by being self-aware you can dramatically change the way you’re perceived by others and kick your success up a notch. 
(4) Communicate your brand. The ultimate goal of personal branding is to be known for who you are, what you stand for, and what value you bring.  To communicate this efficiently and effectively — particularly on the global market — you need skills in speaking and listening; establishing trust and connecting with your audience’s core values; creating an “elevator” speech and choosing the crowd you associate with.  When you communicate your brand, you take the insights you gained in the three previous steps and convey them to create a memorable identity. 
(5) Update your image. This step isn’t often included in other personal branding strategies but I believe it’s essential when setting forth your brand. Just as you update your internal self-concept, you need to work on your external appearance.  Retaining a qualified image consultant can help adopt the ultimate image that will communicate your brand. 
(6) Learn international protocol.  Again, a frequently overlooked but crucially important step. Good manners and knowledge of protocol are indispensable in presenting yourself and your brand in the global marketplace.
Each one of us has unique gifts and a distinct purpose in life. What makes you different?  Personal Branding can help you find out and influence the perceptions that others have about you.

Margarita Gokun Silver is the President of the Global Coach Center (www.GlobalCoachCenter.com) and the author of Personal Branding for Global Success™ strategy.

TITLE: The Developed Linguist
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As St. Petersburg continues to attract foreign companies, so foreign-language speakers are increasingly in demand. Recruiters point out that now “fluent English” is often a must not only for administrative positions, such as interpreters, translators, secretaries, personal assistants or office managers but, also for different technical specialists, engineers and accountants.
The majority of job descriptions now include foreign language requirements that split Russian society into two parts: people who have a command of foreign languages and those who don’t. 
“Now a candidate’s linguistic competence indicates the level of their development in general, their education and professional competence,” said Irina Yakovleva, head of careers at  Stockholm School of Economics. 
According to the recruiters the language clearly most in demand is English, followed by German, then Finnish, French, Italian, Spanish, Sweden, Turkish, Serbian, Chinese, and Japanese. 
As well as administrative positions, there is a need for specialists who speak business-standard English in manufacturing, auditing and consulting, banking, sales, logistics, HR and finance. Personal Assistants, help desk staff, translators, guides, and personnel working in the tourism sector are often required to speak additional foreign languages, while usually the only requirement for top managers is fluent English. 
“It’s interesting that many Asian companies do not require candidates to speak the company’s native Asian language, and consider it enough for their personnel just to have a decent level of English,” said Alexei Zelentsov, regional manager of the St. Petersburg branch at Kelly Services.
One of the most difficult jobs for recruiters is to find specialists in “non-linguistic” positions, who speak a rare language. 
“We have recruited accountants for the financial department of a large Western company, who needed knowledge of at least two foreign languages — English and something rare, for example, Serbian, Turkish or Ukrainian,” said Yelena Sapogova, consultant at THI Selection. 
“We managed to find people who fitted the requirements and had, at least, some work experience in finance. The company recruited them because of their language competence and then started training them in accountancy.”
Where English is the working language, foreign companies usually only select those applicants who speak it, but other employers have a wider choice of criteria. 
“A good educational background presupposes the knowledge of at least one foreign language,” said Marianna Slivnitskaya, general director at Begin Group. “Therefore, the question becomes how the employers’ expectations correspond with a candidate’s linguistic ability.”
According to recruiters, as a successful candidate should not only speak foreign languages and have a good education but also have relevant work experience. “With demand exceeding supply, it’s much easier for such specialists to find a job than for employers to recruit them,” said Slivnitskaya.
The main problem is lack of specialists who consider English as the main international language, said Anastasia Sedikh, commercial director at EMG Professionals. “It’s a pity when deficiency in English hinders a highly qualified technical specialist from applying for a good position.” 
In resumes, many applicants “exaggerate their language skills hoping that it will be taken for granted without checking,” said Olga Andreyeva, business development manager at Coleman Services. 
“Therefore, we need to explain to foreign employers that at present in Russia only professional linguists have the level of the linguistic competence they are used to when hiring workers abroad.”
However, employers tend to ask for more ability than is actually required to perform one’s duties. 
“It is not that often that technical professionals are required to communicate with Western managers, they usually have just to read online specifications or materials, write reports and exchange emails with their counterparts abroad,” said Yury Mikhailov, director of Consort Petersburg recruiting agency. 
“In my opinion, it’s quite enough for them to speak at a pre-intermediate level, though the employers who demand fluency will limit their range of choice.”
On the other hand, foreign-language graduates, who often speak two or more foreign languages, usually apply for administration positions where they can apply their solid language skills. 
“However, in St. Petersburg such employment is very rare,” said Olga Kapralova, PR manager at InterComp. 
Although international language certificates give the holders some benefits, employers usually prefer to test their oral and written language skills during an interview either at the recruitment agency or at their company’s own HR department. 
“In Russia, the diplomas of European colleges and universities are of some value,” said Sapogova. “However, I had several cases when an applicant couldn’t, when tested, corroborate that ability suggested by their diploma. That is why I recommend evaluating the candidates’ linguistic competence by providing a well thought-out structural interview, not just by asking a few general questions about their future plans in a foreign language.”
As recruiters say, most applicants who speak foreign languages value themselves more and therefore require remuneration for their language skills, though the level of the salary depends on each particular company. 
The difference in salaries between those candidates who speak foreign languages and those who don’t can be between 10 percent to 50 percent but, on average, the gap is about $100 to $300. 
“For example, an English-speaking secretary can get about $700 to $800 — $300 to $400 more than one without fluent English, said Sapogova.
According to Slivnitskaya, a graduate with no work experience but good language skills and a diploma of a prestigious university can immediately expect a starting salary of $1000. 
Some companies use the gap in salary to encourage their personnel to start learning languages. 
“When they had just arrived at one of the big manufacturing companies,  production managers were informed that as English-speakers they will earn several hundreds of dollars more,” said Ludmila Smolina, consultant at Consort Petersburg recruiting agency. 
“So those who didn’t speak English were encouraged to start learning it.”

TITLE: Foreigners in Use
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite increased competition from their local counterparts, demand for the foreign specialist in Russia is by no means set to disappear. On the contrary, analysts say that the amount of foreigners is on the rise in almost all fields of business — from retail, banking and IT, to consulting, manufacturing, and real estate. 
So why are some types of foreigner still more attractive than their native equivalents? Both Russian and foreign companies need workers experienced in the implementation of high-end technologies, with know-how and strong managerial skills, but there is a lack of such qualities locally. 
Workers from Europe, America, Asia and the CIS, are coming to Russia in search of new career opportunities and view the huge potential of local business with relish. 
“Many foreigners arrive here trying for the self-actualizing success that they couldn’t achieve in their home countries,” said Anastasiya Sedikh, commercial director at EMG Professionals. “There are still many unfilled niches and those who discover them become successful businessmen.”
However, it is not only the prospect of a successful and lucrative business that lures foreigners to Russia. 
“Many of the expats I know decided to come to Russia in order to find a smart, beautiful wife who would also look after the home,” said Walter Ragonese, deputy director at Intercomp.
According to the recruiters, many top managers come to Russia as part of a progression through the large transnational corporations where they work. “Experienced managers are often sent to Russia to launch a project, establish working standards, and when the company is set up, they either move on to develop another potential market or stay in Russia and continue to run the same company,” said Yuliya Filatova, general manager of the St. Petersburg branch at Avenir.
Though at the beginning of the 1990s the first foreign companies to come to Russia would hire whole teams of expats, now they prefer to invite just one or two foreign managers, usually in the positions of CEO or CFO. 
“On the one hand, economic growth and globalization have increased demand for Western managers in Russia. On the other hand, foreign specialists are gradually being replaced by their Russian counterparts who have already got relevant knowledge and work experience,” said Marina Rapoport, development director at Boyden.
As Rapoport said, although, on average, the salaries of foreign and Russian top managers’ are the same, expats tend to receive more in the way of benefits, related to the cost of accommodation and trips back home. However, sometimes it is cost-effectiveness, rather than simply competence that makes a foreign specialist of particular value. 
“Depending on market conditions, qualified Russian specialists in developing fields such as retail, are not only very rare, but also expensive. Therefore, it is not surprising that in some cases it’s cheaper for a company to recruit a manager from Europe than from Moscow,” said Olga Chebotkova, managing partner of St. Petersburg branch at TOPHUNT International. 
The foreign specialist’s high-level of expertise is undoubtedly among their strengths, while a lack of cultural awareness and fluent Russian are clear weaknesses. The latter, however, “is an advantage but not a prerequisite for management positions,” said Yury Mikhailov, director of Consort Petersburg recruiting agency. 
As for Ragonese, an American who has lived in Russia for fourteen years, the need for a competent level of Russian depends on the particular position. 
“Theoretically, expats coming to Russia should speak fluent Russian but in fact such people are exceptions to the rule,” he said. “I think that when a foreigner is hired to run a plant, they wouldn’t do so without extensive knowledge of the language. And if they work in the sphere of finance or IT, they will have enough just speaking English. There are many such examples.”
Plenty of Russians who have worked and lived abroad come back to their homeland looking for new career opportunities as well. Combining a Western-style, strategic way of thinking, foreign work experience, cultural awareness and fluency in the local language, such managers often become more effective than foreigners.
As for the Russian managers who work abroad, recruiters say that most of them were transferred from Russian offices within an international company, just like their Western counterparts. 
“Labor market trends reflect the gradual integration of Russia into global economic space,” Rapoport said. 
And the ability to communicate across cultures together with work experience gained abroad are among the personal qualities that help both foreign and Russian managers to climb up the professional ladder quickly.