SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times DATE: Issue #1176 (42), Friday, June 9, 2006 ************************************************************************** TITLE: 2 Patients Die After Hospital Closure AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: A controversial media report on the shutting down of one the city’s hospitals led officials on Wednesday to address the issue of healthcare for the elderly, which critics have referred to as “horrifying.” “On May 24 the Sofia Perovskaya Hospital (Hospital No. 5) was emptied. The personnel were fired. The patients, helpless and unprotected, had been hurriedly moved out and ‘spread’ among the city’s other hospitals… two elderly people died after the impetuous move,” Chas Pik weekly reported Wednesday in an article titled “The old men in the valley of death.” Stas Demin, president of the Old City charity foundation which worked closely with the hospital in question, confirmed the validity of the report at a news conference on Wednesday. “The information presented in Chas Pik’s article is the absolute truth,” Demin said. According to Demin, the incident is evidence of a crisis in the healthcare system in general. “We went to this hospital and recorded horrifying facts. The patients in Hospital No. 28 [where some of the patients from Hospital No. 5 were admitted] haven’t had any treatment or care whatsoever and their relatives were not informed where they would be moved to. These are the facts, you can’t get away from them.” “These old people in the hospitals I visited personally just wanted to eat — they were asking for food and medicine.” Vladimir Zholobov, first deputy head of City Hall’s Health Committee, speaking at the news conference, admitted that certain problems exist, but said the situation is better than that described by Demin. “I read some really horrible things in the Chas Pik article stating that the patients [of the hospital in question] are being accommodated in corridors with no mattresses on their beds. I would like to report that I paid a surprise visit to the hospital yesterday. “There were two free beds available at the nursing unit, all the patients were in wards, not in corridors, and they had all been provided with bed linen.” “I talked to patients during my visit — the ones that could talk — and they didn’t make any particular complaints,” Zholobov continued. Speaking about the quality of hospital meals, on which government currently spends around 40 rubles ($1.50) per person per day, Zholobov said “Of course hospital meals are not restaurant meals and so there will always be complaints. It’s impossible to please everyone when you cook for a thousand people.” Igor Pyaterechenko, head of the board for medical treatment at the City Hall’s health committee said that to his knowledge the shutting down of the hospital didn’t affect the well-being of the patients in anyway. When asked whether the moving of the patients to new hospitals was “painless” for the patients, Pyaterechenko replied, “Absolutely.” “According to the reports from the government, everything is alright in the city. Every year [the authorities] produce various decrees, acts and statistics on the expansion of the city’s stock of hospital beds, according to which all is well. But, in reality, it’s all bad,” Demin said. “The situation with the elderly is getting worse. We are the oldest city in Russia if you take into account the percentage of elderly citizens in St. Petersburg,” Natalia Yevdokimova, chairwoman of the Legislative Assembly’s committee on social issues said Wednesday. “Moreover, we are getting even older: young people die whereas the elderly manage to hang on into old age. Therefore, the problem of taking care of the elderly is getting more and more urgent,” Yevdokimova said, calling for urgent changes and the creation of a new geriatric program for the city. TITLE: Gorbachev and Lebedev Buy Into Newspaper AUTHOR: By Andrew McChesney and Anatoly Medetsky PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — Two decades after ushering in glasnost, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday that he was trying to do his part to preserve it by acquiring a stake in Novaya Gazeta. Gorbachev, who made the announcement at the end of a lunchtime speech, during which he offered a ringing endorsement of President Vladimir Putin’s policies, said he had purchased 49 percent of the newspaper with Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire and State Duma deputy. The remaining 51 percent stake belongs to the newspaper’s staff, which had previously owned the entire paper. Gorbachev said the paper — known for its investigations into corruption and critical reports on Chechnya and the government — would be relaunched with a new format in January, but promised that its editorial policy would remain independent. Gorbachev helped set up the newspaper in 1993, using part of the money he had received from winning the Nobel Peace Prize three years earlier. Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov said his reporters would continue to investigate corruption and “say what they think.” “Therefore, Mr. Gorbachev has bought himself an enormous headache,” Muratov told a small group of reporters after the lunch. He declined to put a price tag on the deal, saying Lebedev had asked that the amount be kept a “commercial secret.” Gorbachev’s share of the newspaper is 10 percent, he said. The other 39 percent belongs to Lebedev, who has no other media assets. Lebedev, a member of United Russia who controls a bank and has stakes in Aeroflot and an aircraft leasing company, did not return a phone call requesting his comment on the purchase Wednesday. Most national dailies have been, or may soon be, purchased by companies either directly controlled by the Kremlin or loyal to it. Muratov said he had no worries about Lebedev interfering with editorial policy. To a separate question, he replied, “We expect the newspaper to serve society, not the state.” But Vladimir Kara-Murza, a contributor to Novaya Gazeta and a host at the independent satellite TV channel RTVI, warned that the sale could spell the newspaper’s demise. “This was the last island of independent opinion, but now trust in the publication will go down. People will say, ‘Is that Lebedev’s newspaper?’” Kara-Murza said. He said Lebedev had not shown independence in his political decisions and might try to get the paper to toe United Russia’s line. The party is controlled by the Kremlin. Gorbachev will serve as a shield against Kremlin pressure, but not a very strong one, Kara-Murza said, recalling that Gorbachev in 2000 became head of NTV’s public council, a group of influential figures created to defend the television channel against a state takeover. “It didn’t save us and will not save Novaya Gazeta if it comes under pressure,” said Kara-Murza, who was an NTV news anchor at the time. Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, a think tank, predicted that the newspaper would cease its critical coverage of Chechnya, Beslan and businessmen loyal to President Vladimir Putin because Lebedev would not want to be associated with criticism of the Kremlin. Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya has received several international prizes for her coverage of Chechnya. She was unavailable for comment Wednesday. The newspaper itself made headlines in July 2003 when its top anti-corruption journalist, State Duma Deputy Yury Shchekochikhin, died after apparently suffering a severe allergic reaction. The newspaper and his party, Yabloko, suspected he had been poisoned and said he had received threats over his reports. Gorbachev spent part of the $715,000 he received with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 to buy Novaya Gazeta’s first computers, said Sergei Kozheurov, the newspaper’s general director. The paper’s staff agreed to sell the 49 percent in late May, he added. Starting in January, “everything will be changed at the newspaper except the people,” Muratov said. Changes are to include the format, the number of pages and possibly the incorporation of color. The newspaper, which is now published twice per week, will come out three times per week. Novaya Gazeta has a stated circulation of about 523,000, with Moscow accounting for 171,000 of the copies. Gorbachev, during his lunch meeting at a conference of the World Association of Newspapers in the Manezh, called a free press a vital part of Russian society. “The press needs to be objective and independent,” he said. He expressed delight at the tens of thousands of publications that have sprung up since he introduced glasnost in the mid-1980s. He criticized foreign news reports that portrayed Russia in a negative light. “I think the publications that write with an anti-Russian attitude are making a big mistake,” he said. Speaking in a strong, deep baritone that recalled his Politburo speeches as Soviet leader, Gorbachev offered his clearly awed audience a quick review of his final years in power and what has transpired since. Flashbulbs popped as editors and publishers, many of them grinning sheepishly, snapped photographs of him as he spoke. Gorbachev said he stood by all of his decisions, even though “many mistakes were made.” He defended Putin’s policies, including on Chechnya, and said Russians had found stability under Putin. TITLE: Rights Groups Slam Ombudsmen AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Twenty-two regional ombudsmen from various parts of Russia held a conference in St. Petersburg this week amid criticism that the job has become an empty formality in the country. The event was attended by Thomas Hammarberg, who was making his first visit to Russia as the Council of Europe’s new Commissioner for Human Rights. Regional ombudsmen are elected by local assemblies to ensure the protection of citizens’ rights in a range of spheres, from consumer rights to freedom of the press. There are 34 ombudsmen in Russia, although there are 88 subjects in the Russian Federation and each region has the right to elect an ombudsman. The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has been trying unsuccessfully to elect an ombudsman for the past eight years. The city parliament has not yet touched on the issue at all in the 2006 sessions, said Alexander Sungurov, president of the St. Petersburg humanitarian and political science center Strategia, which hosted the ombudsmen conference. Yury Vdovin, deputy head of St. Petersburg’s branch of the international human rights group Citizens’ Watch, says that top-level city authorities have never been interested in having an independently-minded ombudsman in the city, largely because the city administration is itself responsible for many human rights abuses. “The right person for the job must be someone who is unbiased and equally distanced from all structures, be they judicial bodies or the administration,” Vdovin said. “There has always been a very strong pro-governor’s lobby in the city parliament, and such a person would never stand a chance of being elected.” Human rights advocates often complain that it proves difficult for a candidate with a background in non-government organizations to get elected for the job, whereas former state officials, civil servants and law enforcement staff have proved more successful. Galina Matveyeva, the Novgorod region ombudsman, who started her job five months ago, is a former vice-governor of the region. She expressed frustration over the job’s high levels of stress. “Of course, everybody who comes to see you is a person in need; all the time you are facing need, desperation and poverty, and it feels like a never-ending avalanche of negative emotions,” Matveyeva said. “The most difficult thing about this job is bearing this burden and not turning into a heartless monster.” Nadezhda Akhramenko, the Arkhangelsk region ombudsman, had spent over 30 years working for law enforcement before being appointed to her current job. When asked about the high numbers of complaints about alleged excessive use of force by the police, she blamed the absence of strict legislation on the issue. “The existing system is inefficient and is working against both the officers and the people they have to deal with,” Akhramenko said. Ruslan Linkov, the leader of the Democratic Russia non-governmental organization, is critical of this attitude. “I would find it difficult to trust retired police colonels and government inspectors when it comes to protecting human rights, but as long as there are no acting FSB officers here, there is room for growth,” Linkov said. TITLE: Extremists Face Ban AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — The Public Chamber is calling on the State Duma to bar “extremist” candidates from running for office in what appears to be a broader campaign against nationalists. The proposal could be used against the Rodina party and would likely boost United Russia at the polls in 2007, opposition parties warned. Sergei Mitrokhin, a leader of the liberal Yabloko party, called the chamber initiative “yet another move to suppress the opposition.” Mark Urnov, a political scientist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, noted that there was no clear definition of “extremism.” “I guess that their understanding of it would be quite broad so they could ininclude whoever they want,” Urnov said, referring to Kremlin officials. Sergei Markov, a member of the Public Chamber who is close to the Kremlin, countered that the initiative, far from being a political tool, simply aims to prevent ultranationalists from getting into the Duma, particularly in light of the recent spike in extremist violence. “The Kremlin is afraid of growing nationalism in our country,” Markov said. “They are afraid that through the elections, extremist organizations could be legitimized.” President Vladimir Putin called for the creation of the chamber after the September 2004 Beslan school attack and his subsequent abolition of gubernatorial elections. The chamber, which can only make nonbinding recommendations about bills, is meant to serve as a bridge between the state and civil society. Human rights groups and reform leaders have called the chamber window dressing. The chamber’s latest move appears to bolster that assessment, political analysts and opposition leaders said. Sergei Nasonov, a member of the Independent Council of Legal Experts and a professor at Moscow State University, said the lack of consensus about what constituted extremism was especially troubling. Neither the country’s civil nor criminal codes define extremism, Nasonov said. A 2002 anti-extremism law fails to distinguish extremist crimes from others, he said. Markov said legislators would eventually agree on a clear definition of extremism but acknowledged that, “like love, friendship and hate,” the term was difficult to explain. “I’m afraid that if such a bill is approved, there would be a series of repressions against human rights activists, opposition parties and anyone who opposes the government policy,” Nasonov said of the chamber’s proposal. The Kremlin is most concerned about the National Bolshevik Party, which could angle its way onto a party list, or Rodina, which could tap into nationalist sentiment to challenge United Russia, said Stanislav Belkovsky, director of the Council for National Strategy, a think tank. Authorities have increasingly portrayed the National Bolsheviks as an extremist force. The group, whose members wear red, white and black hammer-and-sickle armbands, was banned by the Supreme Court in November. Rodina, known for its nationalist sloganeering, was created with Kremlin support before the 2003 parliamentary elections to siphon off votes from the Communists. The party won a surprising 9 percent of the vote in the elections. But in the past three years the party has gravitated away from the Kremlin’s orbit and emerged as a strong — and potentially independent — political force. The Duma will soon consider stripping the “against all” option from ballots in national elections, a Kremlin-backed initiative. The change would minimize the risk that upcoming elections might be delegitimized or somehow disrupted, opposition figures have said. “Everything is being done with an eye on the upcoming elections,” Mitrokhin said. Communist Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin agreed with Mitrokhin, suggesting the parties targeted by the proposal are not, in fact, extremist by nature. TITLE: City Lags Behind in Internet Use AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: St. Petersburg lags three years behind Moscow in accessibility and affordability of Internet facilities, a press release from the Russia-wide Internet Marathon said last week. St. Petersburg was the fifth city to be visited by the event, which aims to “make Internet technologies popular in Russia’s regions.” According to the data from the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies (RPCIT), the event’s organizer, up to 75 percent of Petersburgers still use slow and outdated dial-up technology to access the Internet. Broadband, a high data transmission rate internet connection, with a rate at least four times the speed of a modem on a standard digital telephone line, is still only just beginning to establish itself in the city, despite its widespread use in the West. Statistics from the St. Petersburg-based think-tank Week of Cell Technologies show that only 3 percent of Internet users in St. Petersburg use broadband technology. Internet illiteracy is another pressing issue. It goes as far as to many people confusing web browsers’ address bars with search engines’ search tools. “The people [of St. Petersburg] don’t understand that addresses should be put in the address bar of the browser,” the technical director of the Trinet web design company Alexei Dovzhikov was quoted as saying on RPCIT’s website. Such users have a search engine’s page set up as their home page and they only enter information into its search bar, Dovzhikov added. RPCIT said that it had identified the same tendencies in the city’s business scene. “Very often, even top managers at leading companies in the north-west of Russia lack basic knowledge about email facilities — they simply don’t know how to receive and send their mail,” said the organization’s website. Anastasia Michailyukova of Integrum IT company, as quoted on InternetMarafon.ru, said that “today, the majority of people in the north-west of Russia use the Internet only as an entertainment and communications tool and not as an effective and necessary tool required by everyone in the workplace. “Compared to St. Petersburg, Moscow has an absolutely different pace of life — both in business and at home. “If the number of organizations operating in Moscow and the number of people living in the city are taken into account, then it becomes clear why every field in Moscow develops quicker,” Denis Kuskov, the head of Week of Cell Technologies said in a telephone interview. “It’s all about money. Muscovites’ buying power is just greater than that in St. Petersburg,” Kuskov said. St. Petersburg, however, is capable of making progress in Internet development and bridging the gap significantly. According to Kuskov, if the local authorities develop a city-wide program to computerize schools and universities and also provide loans allowing people to buy computers cheaply “we could jump this gap in about a year’s time.” TITLE: FSB to Begin Working Abroad AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service will soon have the power to fight terrorists in foreign countries. A State Duma bill, set to be passed in a second reading this month, gives the security service, known as the FSB, the authority to go beyond information-sharing with its foreign counterparts and dispatch commandos to strike terrorist groups and bases. “The amendments provide for special-operations units of the FSB to be used at the discretion of the president against terrorists and bases that are located outside the Russian Federation for the purpose of interdicting threats to the Russian Federation,” Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of the Duma’s Security Committee, was quoted on United Russia’s web site as saying. Grishankov, who formerly served in the FSB, said the recent kidnappings of Russian diplomats in Iraq highlighted the need for the legislation. Grishankov is a member of United Russia. The bill, which is backed by the party, contains amendments to 14 different laws. It is widely expected to sail through the Duma. Gennady Gudkov, also of United Russia and a member of the Duma’s Security Committee, said the FSB measure would simply formalize on paper what had already been taking place. Gudkov, a former counterintelligence officer, said he saw no contradiction in a domestic security service operating internationally. Intelligence operations outside Russia are supposed to fall under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, or GRU. By law, the SVR can use force abroad only to protect embassy personnel and visiting officials. The FSB’s operations abroad are limited mostly to the prevention of recruitment of diplomats by foreign intelligence services. The FSB’s border guard service conducts intelligence operations within a 200-kilometer margin of the Russian border, according to Agentura.ru Studies and Research Center, a security-service watchdog. Turf battles could erupt between the FSB and GRU after the bill passes. Tensions between the FSB and SVR are also possible. Viktor Ilyukhin said the amendments, if passed, must include detailed rules of engagement. He added that the legislation must be accompanied by bilateral agreements with foreign countries. Otherwise, he said, deploying special forces abroad “could lead to an enormous scandal.” Andrei Soldatov, head of Agentura.ru, agreed. While the FSB’s predecessor, the KGB, routinely employed commando units abroad, the FSB might not be able to strike terrorists in foreign countries without causing an international uproar, he said. Some of Russia’s neighbors have already agreed, or are likely to agree, to take part in joint operations with the Russians. But Middle Eastern countries are unlikely to do so, Soldatov added. Russian security agencies have long contended that radical Muslim organizations in the Arab world are providing financial and logistical support to rebels in the North Caucasus. They have also accused Turkey and Azerbaijan of failing to prevent the recruitment and the transit of rebels into the North Caucasus, respectively. TITLE: Duma Moves to Step Up Conscription AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — State Duma deputies agreed in a key second reading Wednesday to cancel nine deferments from military service starting in 2008, when the length of conscription will be reduced from the current two years to one. Doctors and teachers working in rural areas, law enforcement officials and men employed in the defense industry will be called up by the military, according to the bill that the government submitted to the Duma in April. Deferments will no longer be granted to husbands of women pregnant for longer than 26 weeks, fathers of children younger than 3, sons of disabled parents who do not require constant care or students at vocational schools who have graduated from the 11th grade. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Duma on Wednesday that more young men should be made available for service once the length of service is halved. He said reducing the number of waivers would reduce corruption in the annual spring and fall drafts. Reducing the length of service has been presented by the government as part of a reform meant to transform the military into a professional force. However, slashing the number of deferments from the current 25 will boost conscription, which is seen as a continuation of Soviet-era military policies that poorly match contemporary security challenges. The Defense Ministry said in April that reducing deferments would allow the military to call up an additional 90,000 men per year, beginning in 2008. Duma deputies on Wednesday also approved regulations obliging students at military universities to reimburse the government for their education if they refuse to sign a three-year contract with the military after graduation or get expelled for poor academic performance or a lack of discipline. TITLE: Smolny Unveils Tender Plans For City Dwellers AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: By the end of the year, City Hall plans to auction off 3 million square meters of land for the construction of residential buildings. The next offering is scheduled for June 20, St. Petersburg vice governor Alexander Vakhmistrov was quoted by Interfax as saying Monday at a meeting of Smolny’s Committee for Development and Town Planning. Finding new land plots for construction is considered a crucial step in the realization of the national project ‘Affordable housing,’ initiated by President Vladimir Putin. “About 12 million square meters of land, at various stages of construction, is currently being developed in the city. Although it gives us confidence in the future, we still need to offer between 2.5 million and 3 million square meters of land for auction annually,” Interfax cited Vakhmistrov as saying. He indicated that in the near future 1.5 million square meters of land will be used for residential construction in the Primorsky district; 2 million square meters in the Southwest district; 1.5 million square meters in Severnaya Dolina; 1.5 million square meters in Slavyanka; 1 million square meters on Izmailovskaya prospect; and 5 million square meters in other parts of the city. Earlier this year, chairman of the Committee for Construction Roman Philimonov had said that about 2.5 million square meters of residential property would be built in 2006. The city budget will fund the construction of 150,000 square meters of residential and public facilities, he said. Nevertheless, such optimism was challenged by the view of a local real estate expert, who predicts a fall in the amount of new residential buildings. Last year 507 residential buildings totalling around 2.27 million square meters were completed in the city, said Leonid Sandalov, deputy director of Becar agency. The most popular districts were Primorsky (438,000 square meters) and Vyborgsky (272,000 square meters). “This is the area where ‘elite’ buyers are moving to from the ‘Gold Triangle [between Nevsky Prospekt, Fontanka and the Neva]’,” Sandalov said. “At the moment over 10 million square meters of land is being developed for residential buildings in St. Petersburg, but only 22 land plots were sold through tenders last year. Despite the government’s forecast that over 2.5 million square meters would see completion this year, in 2007 the volume constructed will inevitably decrease to 2 million or even to 1.5 million square meters,” Sandalov said. At the moment, prices average between $1,200 and $1,300 per square meter. Price growth is slowing and will only pick up again towards the New Year, Sandalov said. By that time prices will have increased by 20 to 25 percent compared to present levels, he said. Experts suggested several ways of slowing the rise in prices. Minister for Regional Development Vladimir Yakovlev targeted the monopolistic nature of the construction industry. “Without addressing the monopolies of building firms in regional and local markets, without almost completely eliminating administrative barriers, it will be very nearly impossible to double the number of residential buildings by 2010,” Yakovlev was quoted by Interfax as saying. These actions, he said, would also keep prices affordable for 30 percent of the population. Other experts blame the monopoly producers have in the supply of construction materials. According to a statement released Tuesday by the ‘Affordable Housing’ group of experts at the State Duma Committee for Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, over the first four months of this year the production of concrete in Russia increased only 10 percent on the same period last year. Broken brick and gravel production increased by 10.8 percent, gypsum production — by 18.5 percent, brick production decreased by three percent. These trends, clearly, would not allow the doubling of construction over the next four years. TITLE: Rosbank Sells StakeTo SocGen, Cancels IPO AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber and William Mauldin PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov’s Rosbank has called off its planned London shares listing and opted instead to sell a 10 percent stake to France’s Societe Generale for $317 million, a move that has cast doubt on plans for initial public offerings by other Russian banks. The deal values the bank at more than $3 billion, a hefty premium over other Russian banks, based on its estimated book value. Rosbank gave no reason for dropping its IPO plans, but some analysts said it could be due to strict Central Bank rules, which require foreigners buying into Russian banks to submit audits for the past three years, something that can be difficult for hedge funds or pension funds. The French banking group has the option to increase its stake to 20 percent, Potanin and Prokhorov’s holding company, Interros, said late Tuesday in a statement. The sale means that Rosbank, the country’s ninth-biggest lender, will scrap plans to list close to 30 percent of its shares in London “for the foreseeable future,” Interros said. Rosbank and SocGen plan to build up Rosbank’s business further, especially its retail division. A Rosneft IPO will now be “a shared development goal” for the banks, Interros said. The move means bad news for investors looking forward to other planned IPOs by state-controlled Vneshtorgbank and Gazprombank, analysts said. Given Vneshtorgbank’s poor recent financial results and the severity of regulations for buying shares in Russian banks, as enforced by the Central Bank, the country might not see another banking IPO until the second half of 2007, said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank. Yekaterina Trofimova, a banking analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Paris, broadly agreed. “We will see some IPOs, but they will be very limited,” she said. The delay from Russia’s banks sharply contrasts with those in China, which launched its third banking IPO last week. The Bank of China’s $9.7 billion offering was 75 times oversubscribed, and has encouraged Beijing to IPO its largest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for more than $10 billion in Hong Kong, and possibly London, later this year. Another three Chinese banks, China Merchants Bank, Minsheng Bank and Citic Bank, are likely to follow with overseas listings of more than $1 billion each. Similarly, “there’s very strong foreign interest in Russia’s banking sector,” said James Fenkner, a managing partner at Red Star Asset Management, which has $70 million under management. Rosbank’s delay could yet work to its — and the domestic banking sector’s — advantage, bucking the trend of some Russian IPOs being hastily put together and often offering companies that have questionable levels of corporate governance, experts said. “SocGen is a great stamp of approval for Rosbank,” Fenkner said. “[Russian] banks are not in a hurry to do IPOs, but are looking to the future and thinking strategically,” Trofimova said. Despite raising a record $5 billion through IPOs last year, Russian companies have come under increasing scrutiny for their approach to IPOs, which has varied from the noteworthy to the uncertain and even the bizarre. In April, Morgan Stanley and then Troika Dialog pulled out as lead managers for an IPO of the Cherkizovo meat-producing group just two weeks before the placement after failing to agree with company management on the share price offer. The same month, retail chain Magnit fired its CEO, Vladimir Gordeichuk, and installed majority owner Sergei Galitsky in his place just two days prior to its listing. Meanwhile, the chairman of coal producer Kuzbassrazresugol, Andrei Bokarev, said in a Rossia television interview that in conversations with nine managers, he got his way by saying, “Sirs, if you do not want to be shot one by one, you must understand that from today you no longer make the decisions,” Forbes Russia reported last month. A rush to hold IPOs and lax standards of corporate governance have meant that Russian stocks have in recent years received lower valuations due to risk, even if they have not seen any shortage of buyers. “The attractiveness and growth potential of the Russian market are reasons that investors might settle for a relatively lesser degree of corporate governance than ... in more mature markets,” said Peter Vanhecke, director at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Moscow. TITLE: IN BRIEF TEXT: Deconstructing Profit ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Unified Industrial Construction Plants earned $6.2 million last year, decreasing consolidated net profit tenfold compared to the previous year, the company said Tuesday in a statement. Operational profit decreased from $125.3 million in 2004 to $37.7 million last year. The expiring of nuclear contracts was indicated as the main factor negatively affecting performance. Taxing Case ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg Sea Port joint-stock company won its case against the Federal Tax Service, which will return 30.29 million rubles ($1.1 million) of paid taxes, the company said Monday in a statement. By paying off back tax claims, the company incurred net losses of 30.219 million rubles in the first quarter of this year. The claims, which resulted from an investigation in 2002, were found invalid by Moscow Arbitral Court. Planting Finns ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The second largest cellulose producer in Europe, Finnish company Metsa-Botnia, launched a forestry plant in Podporozhsky district in Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing the regional government press service. The 55-million euro ($70.8 million) plant will produce 200,000 cubic meters of dried saw-timber annually. TITLE: Cabinet Finally Backs Chubais on Electricity AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Conor Humphries PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: The Cabinet on Wednesday agreed to liberalize the electricity market and approved a $90 billion investment plan for the sector. The decisions are a major economic and political victory for Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais, and they mark the end of his seven-year struggle to win government approval for the overhaul of the industry. “The fight is over,” Chubais told Reuters after the Cabinet meeting. “I believe there is no chance for any political opponent to stop this program now — no political group, business group or industrial group. “I feel I’ve come to the final part before the end of the tunnel,” he said. “Seven years of preparations have just come to the final stage.” Investors cheered the news, sending UES shares up 4.5 percent to 17.25 rubles on the ruble-denominated MICEX. The shares rose 1.61 percent to $0.632 on the dollar-denominated RTS. But analysts voiced caution that many details had yet to be spelled out and that the plan remained firmly on paper. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, whose ministry is concerned that freeing up electricity prices could spark inflation, criticized the plan. “Why would investors buy generation assets and invest money? Are they stupid?” Gref said during the meeting, Bloomberg reported. The plan sees the creation of a system of electricity supply contracts based on market prices starting on Jan. 1. It also calls for the quick construction of many more power stations, which are needed because a current shortage is hampering economic growth. “There cannot be a free market without a market price, and this was confirmed by today’s government decision,” Chubais told investors during a conference call late Wednesday. He said the number of power stations built from next year through 2010 would be triple the number built between 2000 and 2005. He did not provide precise figures. Also by 2010, Chubais said, the portion of electricity sold at state-regulated prices should not exceed 15 to 20 percent. The first contracts based on market prices are to be signed as of Jan. 1, with the government expecting them to reach 5 percent of all contracts next year. Companies will also be allowed to drop state-regulated contracts if they wish, Chubais said, expressing hope that some would. He said that 5 to 15 percent of electricity consumers were expected to move over to the market-price contracts every year for the next five years. The exact percentage is to be determined by the government ahead of each year. Chubais said the market price was unlikely to exceed state-regulated tariffs by more than 3 percent. Under the plan, regulated tariffs will rise by 10 percent in 2007, 9 percent in 2008 and 8 percent in 2009. Current tariffs fluctuate wildly, depending on the consumer and the region. Also in 2008, Chubais said, UES, which he has headed since 1998, would finally be split — with power stations becoming largely private and the power grid remaining in the state’s hands. The sourcing of the $90 billion investment is to be split, with an expected $75 billion in private investment going toward boosting generation capacity, and $15 billion in state funds being plowed into the grid. “There was plenty of rhetoric from Chubais — and very confident rhetoric — but it was short on detail as to when and how new generating companies will be made into truly independent shareholder companies,” said Derek Weaving, an independent energy analyst. “For me, this is the fundamental question and one that will be a signal of what Russia wants to do with its economy, whether it will follow through on its promise to move away from state control in this area.” TITLE: Oil Prices and Energy To Top St. Petersburg Talks AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: MOSCOW — Oil prices and energy policy are likely to stay at the center of debate this week as finance ministers from the world’s major industrial nations meet in St. Petersburg to consider how soaring energy prices are affecting the global economy. Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said ministers meeting Friday and Saturday would review the effect of the higher costs on poorer nations, as well as the role played by the World Bank and IMF in easing their woes. “Energy poverty in our opinion requires particular attention ... energy infrastructure is the basis of any economy including those we want to support and to help become economically independent,” Kudrin said. The G8 countries — the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia — have called for better data on oil production and reserves to help markets function more efficiently. They also have urged G-8 oil producers to use their surging profits to boost global production. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. As they prepare the agenda for next month’s summit of G8 leaders in St. Petersburg, the ministers are also expected to discuss how the United States is dealing with its huge trade deficit and what policies other countries are pursuing to bolster domestic growth as a way of supporting U.S. exports and helping reduce that trade deficit. In addition, the finance ministers will consider a proposal to support development of new medicines to fight infectious diseases that are ravaging poor nations. “As a rule, the pharmaceutical companies work for the rich, for the middle classes,” Kudrin said. “Our job is to develop a financial instrument that will create medicines for the illnesses that the rich don’t suffer from, that affect the poorest countries.” Under a proposed plan, leading pharmaceutical companies that developed vaccines would receive guaranteed orders paid for from a fund specially created by G8 members. The G8 ministers will be joined for parts of the discussions by finance officials from China, India, Brazil, Australia, Nigeria, South Korea and a representative from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is attending the meetings and will participate in the discussion on how the surge in energy prices is affecting poor nations. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, attending his final G8 meeting after announcing his resignation last week, will be honored by the group. President George W. Bush has picked Henry Paulson Jr., the head of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, to replace him. TITLE: What the People Won’t Get to Hear AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov TEXT: Holding the World Association of Newspapers conference in the capital of Vladimir Putin’s Russia this year was a bold move, rather like holding a pork producers’ convention in a Muslim country. Thus it’s all the more important that those covering Russia in the world media not be duped by official Kremlin propaganda about the flourishing of a free press in this country, the absence of censorship and so on. The fact is that Russia today is not a free country. Its democratic institutions are battered. And freedom of speech is sharply restricted. Above all, the participants in this year’s WAN conference need to understand the way Russians get their information — a process that separates Russia from all developed countries. More Russians get their news about events at home and abroad from television today than during the Soviet era. Minute by minute, day by day, television forges the national consciousness. For several weeks now, Soviet — sorry, Russian — television has been hammering home the image of an unpredictable, aggressive Georgia that is feverishly arming itself for an attack on the defenseless, peaceful enclave of South Ossetia. Television has similarly filled the airwaves with images of “average Crimeans” protesting against the Yushchenko regime’s flirtation with the “anti-Russian” NATO. Television creates domestic and foreign enemies and it destroys them. Television fashions the image of the latest wise and courageous leader guiding Russia toward a new renaissance. The propaganda techniques honed by the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Soviet era are alive and well. All of the national television stations are under the Kremlin’s tight control. Every last independent television journalist has either been strictly censored or driven out of the business altogether. The major television stations have unwritten blacklists of opposition politicians and political parties that have been banned from the airwaves. Pressure on the few remaining regional stations that offer more or less independent news coverage increases by the day. Television, not the law or even the bureaucracy, is now the Kremlin’s main tool for running the country. Newspapers and magazines have far less political importance. Fewer people get their news from the print press in Russia than in almost any other country. The reasons for this small readership include widespread poverty, high subscription rates, slow delivery and the poor quality of the publications themselves. What’s more, the most popular newspapers — Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty i Fakty, Moskovsky Komsomolets and Izvestia — are loyal to the regime. The last authoritative, independent newspapers, such as Kommersant, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta, do not reach enough readers to exert significant influence on public opinion nationwide. And the situation is only getting worse. A number of once-independent publications have been acquired by new owners loyal to the Kremlin, and pressure on the free press in the regions is on the rise. The radio market overall is dominated by stations with a straight entertainment format, while the leading news stations are state-run Radio Rossii and Mayak. Stations with a more independent editorial policy like Ekho Moskvy reach a relatively small audience. The Internet remains free for now, and several news sites have attracted a large audience of devoted readers looking for an alternative to the nauseating propaganda on television. Internet penetration remains limited, however. More than 75 percent of Russians do not have even sporadic access to the Internet. Yet the spread of alternative views on the Internet has led to growing calls for the government to clamp down. Many appeal to the “positive” experience of China in this area. So the introduction of state censorship of the Internet in the near future cannot be ruled out. The ruling elite in this country now enjoys a near-total monopoly on information. It controls de jure or de facto all national television stations and 90 percent of regional and local stations. The regime has de facto control of the overwhelming majority of newspapers and magazines. In sum, the ruling elite and the bureaucracy control roughly 90 percent of all socially significant information in this country. This political opposition and institutions of civil society clearly suffer as a result of this control. It would therefore be naive in the extreme to think that the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections will be free and fair. When the political playing field is this uneven, free and fair elections are impossible in principle, as observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe noted after the 2003 State Duma election. And the situation has only deteriorated since then. The 2007-08 election cycle will be dominated by unscrupulous propaganda and counter-propaganda, all in the service of United Russia — the so-called party of power, which already counts 71 governors among its members — and Putin’s successor. The population will be led to believe this lie, just as it is now being force-fed the lie about the imminent military threat posed by tiny, half-dead Georgia. Meanwhile, the silencing of free speech places the modernization of Russia in question. Corruption has spread so precipitously in recent years that Russia now ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The bureaucracy has grown just as quickly, and is now twice as large as it was in the Soviet era. The investment climate has deteriorated, and property rights have been violated. The quality of governance has diminished, and bureaucrats have become even more brazen than before. Unchecked by a free press and pumped up with billions of petrodollars, the bureaucracy has gone crazy with greed, forgetting both conscience and the law in the process. It would be a good thing if the participants in this year’s WAN conference, who have gathered on the main square of this Put ... (oops) Potemkin village, informed the villagers that modernization is impossible without substantial freedom of press. That there is a direct correlation between the number of newspaper readers in a country and its wealth. That corruption cannot be held in check without a free press. And a host of other useful truths. But where would the average Russian ever read or hear about it if they did? Vladimir Ryzhkov is a State Duma deputy and co-chairman of the Republican Party of Russia. TITLE: Victims of Their Own System AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina TEXT: What do the arrests of Alexei Barinov, the governor of the Nenets autonomous district, and Volgograd Mayor Yevgeny Ishchenko have in common? They were both surgical strikes against LUKoil. Barinov formerly headed LUKoil subsidiary Arkhangelskgeodobycha, while the company’s largest refinery is located in Volgograd. What’s the link between Ishchenko’s arrest and the dismissal of former Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov? They appear to be part of President Vladimir Putin’s reaction against the insatiable appetite of a certain group inside the Kremlin. The rules of the game have changed rapidly since the purge at the Federal Customs Service in May. And it’s worth remembering that the customs shakeup played into the hands of the group identified with Ustinov and Igor Sechin, the chairman of Rosneft and Putin’s deputy chief of staff. The customs resignations also occurred right after the May holidays, much as the dismissal of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov’s was made public right after Defenders of the Fatherland Day. A conspiracy against the president was pinned on Kasyanov behind the scenes. The heads of the customs service must have been charged with something similar. Among the targets of the purge was Alexander Sabadash, a senator from the Nenets autonomous district. Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov tried to remove Sabadash in early May, but the senator — backed by the legislature in his home region — refused to step down. Sabadash was stripped of his seat at the end of May, but his initial rebellion led to the move against Barinov. Barinov was not just the last governor in the country to gain office under the old system of direct elections. He also had the gall to get elected in a region that had attracted Sechin’s attention. What’s more, the candidate who was supposed to win came in a distant fourth. Stunts like this are unforgivable. In just three weeks one of the most powerful groups within the Kremlin transformed an assault on the customs service into an attack against LUKoil. But the attack penetrated too far and affected the president’s inner circle. It may be that rumors of links between Ustinov, Sechin and Mayor Yury Luzhkov played a role in the drama. Sechin, who is widely seen as the leader of the siloviki clan, has a daughter married to Ustinov’s son. Putin may have read some significance into this tactical political alliance, which most likely began as an attempt to deploy Luzhkov against possible presidential candidates unacceptable to the clan, such as First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. The most important factor, however, was simple political arithmetic. The alliance between Sechin, the powerful presidential administration figure, and Ustinov, the powerful chief prosecutor, presented too great a challenge to Putin’s power. Another high-profile arrest or two and it would have started to look like Putin was no longer running the show. Now the siloviki are falling victim to the system they helped create. Call it the Great Terror updated for the age of market capitalism — the victims don’t get executed, but who knows how many pawns will be sacrificed in order to get to the queen. During the original terror in 1937, the Communist Party bore the brunt of the onslaught. Today it will be the base of the Putin regime — the corrupt lumpen-bureaucracy. The victims cannot voice their disagreement or plead innocence. They will be dismissed from their posts by unanimous vote, and their former friends will hasten to disown them. Leon Trotsky still had allies, after all, but Genrikh Yagoda had nothing but lackeys. It remains to be seen if the lumpen-bureaucracy will accept the new rules of the game as the party did in 1937. But one thing is clear: The name of the president is still Putin, not Sechin. Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio. TITLE: No compromises AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: Playwright Ivan Vyrypayev is branching out into film and TV — while trying to remain true to his principles. There was a hectic atmosphere last week in the cluttered fifth-floor office at Moscow film studio Mosfilm where writer-director Ivan Vyrypayev was supervising the final stages of postproduction on his debut film, “Euphoria.” He was facing a tight deadline — the film was due to premiere at Kinotavr, Russia’s leading national film festival, which began last weekend in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vyrypayev, a tall, moon-faced 31-year-old from Siberia who has been best known to date for his work in theater, is at a point in his career that would make others jealous. Not only is “Euphoria” set to debut at Kinotavr, with a general release scheduled for later this fall, but he also has a television series under his belt. “Bunker,” which he scripted, debuted on TNT last month. The only problem is that Vyrypayev isn’t particularly interested in fame, money or big ratings. Which is perhaps not surprising for an artist who made his name with quirky, challenging works that tackle difficult themes like God and violence. After he moved to Moscow from his native Irkutsk in 2001, Vyrypayev’s breakthrough play was “Oxygen.” Loosely structured around the Ten Commandments and delivered in a series of brief, rap-like monologues, the two-person play tells several stories, including one about a man named Sanyok who kills his wife with a shovel. Besides writing the text, Vyrypayev acted in the production of “Oxygen” that continues to run today at the Praktika Theater. “Oxygen” acquired something of a cult following and went on to win a Golden Mask in the Innovation category in 2004. More plays — and further recognition — followed. Vyrypayev’s most recent production is “Genesis No. 2,” whose main character is a schizophrenic woman confined to a mental hospital. Her story parallels the biblical tale of Lot’s wife, who was transformed into a pillar of salt when she turned around to catch a final glimpse of the destruction of Sodom. Other characters in the play include St. John the Apostle and God Himself. Earlier this year, “Genesis No. 2” was nominated for a Golden Mask in the Innovation category. Despite the fact that he peppers his works with biblical themes and musings about God, Vyrypayev is far from being traditionally religious. “I’m an atheist myself,” he said. “Still, I believe in the soul, I see people as spiritual beings and I think that the goal of art — if it has a goal — is to develop people’s spiritual qualities. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but that’s how I see it.” Growing animated, Vyrypaev drew a sharp line between his own beliefs and religious fundamentalism. “I never used to speak about my beliefs and religious loyalties,” he said. “You’re probably the first journalist whom I’m telling this to — even though I get asked about this all the time, I never said anything before because I didn’t feel it was appropriate — but today, I’m extremely upset about how religious movements are behaving themselves, and about the entire situation with religion in Russia. It seems to me they’re crushing our democratic rights and immorally using all sorts of laws and bans. I’m furious about the ban on the gay-pride parade, for example, even though I have a traditional sexual orientation.” Vyryapayev was referring to events that had taken place the preceding weekend, when gay activists had attempted to hold an unsanctioned march in central Moscow, only to be arrested by police and physically attacked by Russian nationalists. Given his uncompromising approach to art, it might seem strange that Vyrypayev’s first foray into television just debuted on TNT, a lowbrow network best known for racy reality shows like “Dom-2.” But Vyrypayev’s series, “Bunker,” still manages to be a showcase for his quirky individualism. Airing Saturdays and Sundays at 11 p.m., “Bunker” focuses on a group of scientists who live in an underground laboratory somewhere in Siberia in the year 2012. In the first episode, a new arrival in the lab arouses the suspicions of his fellow scientists, who think he is a secret agent; one of them injects him with a serum that makes him passionately attracted to women older than 45. In the end, the director of the lab delivers a homily to his staff about the importance of trust, citing, among other things, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Vyrypayev wrote the script for a season’s worth of “Bunker” episodes but was not closely involved in production. He had not seen the finished version until TNT broadcast the first two episodes last weekend. When asked what he thought about the end result, Vyrypayev described the series’ two directors, Alexander Dulerain and Sergei Koryagin, as “incredibly talented” but refused to comment further. It was a different story with “Euphoria,” which he was more than eager to talk about. “To be honest, the film came out better than I thought it would,” he said. “Before, I didn’t think it would come out like this. But nature, the film stock and the cameraman’s eye all played their roles, and we ended up with a result that we weren’t really counting on.” “Euphoria” is set in a small, isolated community on the banks of the Don River amid the steppes of southern Russia. Its heroine, Vera (played by Polina Agureyeva, Vyrypayev’s wife and an actress at the Fomenko Studio), runs off with her lover and finds herself pursued by her vodka-guzzling husband. Blood is spilled throughout the film, starting with an early scene where Vera’s daughter gets bitten by a dog and loses a finger. Asked why senseless violence seems to be a constant factor in his work, Vyrypayev replied that he was simply responding to the world around him. “In today’s world, we react casually to death — very casually,” he said. “When [Chechen rebel leader Aslan] Maskhadov was killed, all the television channels in this country showed his dead body in close-up, all the time, and our children saw this too. In America people turn on CNN or the BBC and watch what’s going on in Iraq, with all the killing there. So many people spend so much time watching death that it’s scary. Thanks to the media, people have gotten used to seeing corpses, and death has become cheap. I think this cheapening of death ought to create a sense of revulsion in people. After all, it’s not that easy to go and kill someone, right? So in my works I try to copy this problem, and draw attention to it.” Vyrypayev got the idea for “Euphoria” while visiting his wife’s relatives in southern Russia. He wrote the script and eventually found partners who were willing to let him direct — a condition he insisted upon. Filming took place last summer in the Volgograd region. According to Vyrypayev, the project’s budget is about $1 million. Although a berth at Kinotavr is a major achievement for any first-time Russian filmmaker, Vyrypayev has even bigger hopes. He said, and producer Alexander Shein confirmed, that they were in talks to have “Euphoria” screened at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival, which announces its selections in late July. Their hopes may not be in vain — in 2003, after all, another tale of brutality in the Russian provinces, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s “The Return,” won the Golden Lion at Venice. But whatever his prospects in film, Vyrypayev has no plans to turn his back on theater, which he still considers his primary calling. “It’s important for me to work in theater,” he said. “Theater has huge meaning for me. Right now I don’t know if I’m going to make another film.” Still, Vyrypayev admitted that he did have one film he’d like to make. And unlike his previous works, which have drawn on the traditions of Judeo-Christian culture, this one would look toward Hinduism for inspiration. “I don’t think anyone will give me money for this, but I have idea to make a film about Krishna — to adapt the Bhagavad Gita,” he said. “But it would take a huge budget, and I absolutely guarantee that the film will lose money.” TITLE: Electronic duo AUTHOR: By Kirill Galetski PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: They met at St. Petersburg State University, formed a band and conquered Britain. Now, Yolochniye Igrushki / EU perform at Platforma. The electronic musicians of Yolochniye Igrushki, or EU as the duo is known in English, have an international reputation that has come full circle. They have traveled to Europe, gained recognition there and come back to Russia to even wider acknowledgement, with a discography spread over a myriad of Russian- and British-based labels. Based in the town of Lomonosov, outside St. Petersburg, EU consists of Alexander Zaitsev and Ilya Baramiya, both 32. Their most widely available release is “Warm Math,” a collection of 13 atmospheric, streamlined, syncopated and jazzy instrumentals, which has been available in Britain since 2002 and was released in Russia in March. They perform at Platforma on Friday, June 16. The members of EU also devote equal time to recording and performing with their side projects, the hybrid Stas Baretsky & Yolochniye Igrushki and the hip-hop outfit 2H Company. Their collaboration with singer Baretsky is slightly better-known than their main manifestation. Baretsky, 33, is a heavyset, bald, scarred guy whom you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. He sings in a style that has been labeled chanson noire, a profanity-ridden variation on Russian chanson. The collaboration is one of jarring contrasts — the affable, cultivated Baramiya and Zaitsev with their refined electronics next to the severe, proletarian growl of Baretsky — and yet there is an intriguing synergy about them that has won approval outside of the circle of electronica aficionados. Their other side project, 2H Company, is a rap group they formed with their friends Mikhail Ilin, 26, and Mikhail Fenichev, 27. The two Mikhails write brooding and nervy texts on subjects summoned by altered states of consciousness. One of their songs, “Vragi” (Enemies), is about the psychological “need” for enemies, while another, “Poloski” (Stripes), deals with a coffeeshop crawl in Amsterdam. EU’s activity revolves around their studio, located in Baramiya’s home in Lomonosov. Zaitsev and Baramiya first met in student circles exchanging music at the dormitory of St. Petersburg State University. Friends of theirs from the St. Petersburg experimental label Perforated Records asked them to record a track for a various-artists compilation. Another track on a different compilation followed in 1999, this time on the Moscow label Art-tek, which was in turn followed by “EU_SOFT,” EU’s first full-length album. That album, also on Art-tek, was released in 2000. Taking cues from the Internet-savvy Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) movement, the two placed their music on mp3.com and were contacted by Tom Betts, the Bristol-based head of the Pause_2 label. In 2001, Betts invited them to Britain, where they played live, released records and received favorable notices in the media. Their single “Wienn/Srez” was even featured by John Peel, the late influential BBC radio presenter, and was named Single of the Week by NME magazine. In 2003, EU returned to Britain, where they performed at the Spring Chill festival in London and went on a tour that took in Bristol, Cambridge, Newcastle, Birmingham and Glasgow. They also made it to continental Europe, performing at the Club Transmediale festival in Berlin and the Seats‘n’Beats fest in Antwerp. “We wanted to do something of our own,” Zaitsev recalled in a recent telephone interview. “So we began to record the music that we were lacking. This was easiest to do with electronics, as we didn’t know how to play any instruments and never learned.” Zaitsev gave the band its moniker, and Baramiya explained the intricacies of the dual name: “We needed to come with a name really fast for that first various-artists recording, so Sasha thought up Yolochniye Igrushki, a soft-sounding name with a hushing sound and cheerful associations.” When the two were getting ready to put their music on mp3.com, they tried to think of a good English translation for the name. Since no English expression conjures up the same associations as in Russian — “Christmas Decorations” didn’t make the grade — they decided to adopt the letters EU, which they in no way associate with the European Union, despite their European travels. “Before our trip to England, we were under the impression that we’re just mucking about here [in Russia] and that the real music scene was over there,” Baramiya said. “Now that we’ve seen how things are there, we’ve understood that the difference is not fundamental.” “We returned and decided that we live in Russia and we need to do Russian projects,” Zaitsev said. “And if they’ll be interesting here, at home, they’ll be interesting everywhere.” Yolochniye Igrushki / EU perform at Platforma on June 16. For more information on the duo, visit www.lorecordings.com, www.cheburec.ru or www.snegiri.ru. TITLE: Chernov’s choice AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov TEXT: The fallout continues. The Rolling Stones confirmed that its St. Petersburg concert on their “A Bigger Bang” European tour, originally due to take place on Tuesday, is “postponed,” not canceled, in its statement last Friday, but did not announce a new date and a venue. The tour will now start in Milan on July 11. The statement also cited Keith Richards, whose head injury —sustained when he reportedly fell out of a coconut tree — disrupted the tour, apologizing to fans: “Excuse me, I fell off of my perch! Sorry to disrupt everyone’s plans but now — It’s FULL STEAM AHEAD! Ouch!!” wrote Richards, 62, in a message dated June 1. Although the concert is not happening, a couple of Rolling Stones parties in local clubs will still go ahead. See gigs. Instead of the Stones, the Kirov Stadium will host a free concert called “Stop Kontrafakt” (Stop Counterfeits) featuring Scorpions, The Cardigans, The Rasmus, Darren Hayes, Kosheen and Zemfira. The only thing that the acts taking part appear to have in common is that all of them are widely available on pirate CDs in the city. Tuseday’s concert, originally scheduled to take place on Palace Square, was moved to the far-away stadium, which might be the result of protests from Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum (who traditionally oposes rock concerts on nearby Palace Square because he thinks that rock music can harm the museum’s art collection), but the promoter claimed the move was made to accomodate more fans than Palace Square can hold. The other big pop concert this week will be by British pop-funk band Jamiroquai at the Ice Palace on Thursday. A series of club gigs called the Nord Beat Festival, dedicated to bands from “northern countries,” comes to an end with a concert by Trabant, an Icelandic electro-rock band, at Platforma on Saturday. Named after the obsolete car produced in the communist East Germany, the band’s style is described by Wikipedia as “a blend of electronic music, a punky flavor of R&B and pop.” Vasily Shumov and Center, one of the most interesting bands from the 1980s Russian rock explosion, returns to Moscow after an eight-year hiatus to perform a one-off concert at the Sixteen Tons on Saturday. Actually, Center, notorious for frequent lineup changes even in its earlier years, is simply Shumov, who has been based in Los Angeles since 1990, and Fast Freddy, the Los Angeles-based guitarist known for his work with Rick James and Spiro Giro. But speaking from his home in Los Angeles this week Shumov stressed that the main thing in the show, called an “Electronic Video Show,” is a collection of video and film projections. Although the band is not coming to St. Petersburg, Shumov, who releases his albums as free downloads (MP3s with high-resolution artwork) on his web site www.centromania.com, can be heard on Ekho Moskvy for an hour starting at midnight on Sunday. TITLE: The Mariinsky’s must-see Ring Cycle AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” the Mariinsky Theater’s artistic director Valery Gergiev’s most ambitious project, is showing in full this week. The four operas, sung in German by the Mariinsky’s distinsguished cast and conducted by Gergiev, will be performed on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday this week. When it premiered in 2003, the internationally praised production marked the first staging of the whole of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the longest operatic work in the repertoire, in Russia since the tsarist era. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ring Cycle, which is loosely based on Germanic legends, was last performed in Russia at the Mariinsky in 1914. With the onset of World War I, German operas disappeared from the country’s stages. By the beginning of World War II in 1939, Wagner’s music was officially banned in the Soviet Union; as one of Hitler’s favorite composers, Wagner was seen as the “voice of Fascism.” This remained the case until Gergiev brought the composer back to Russian stages in the early 1990s, introducing “Lohengrin,” “Parsifal” and “The Flying Dutchman” to the Mariinsky repertoire. Musically, the Mariinsky’s Ring Cycle is a huge success, and the singers perform at the highest level. Typically for the theater’s recent Wagner productions, the rapport between the orchestra, the cast and the conductor is flawless. Georgy Tsypin’s minimalist, highly compelling sets, he says, “aim to reflect our era of clones, genetic experiments and mutations.” The Mariinsky’s Ring Cycle is a must see for anyone who wants to see the theater at its inspired best. The production has become popular abroad. According to the UK’s Classic FM, tickets for the Mariinsky’s take on Wagner’s titanic epic, to be staged in Cardiff in December, were sold out within four hours when they went on sale on March 27. All 1,650 seats in the Wales Millenium Center, with prices ranging from 80 pounds ($148) for a standing place to 750 pounds ($1,392) for a VIP seat including a glamorous champagne receptions with the cast, sold out. Running a total of 19-hours, the Mariinsky’s Ring Cycle, will also be staged at Baden Baden’s Festispielhaus in Germany in July, Orange Country, California, in October and New York’s Metropolitan Opera in July. www.mariinsky.ru TITLE: Richter scale AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: On a tour of Russia, Gerhard Richter, one of the few internationally acknowledged, living figures of post-war German art, was on hand to open an exhibition of his work in the City Sculpture Museum last week. Despite the fact that this is the first retrospective the artist has held in Russia, the format of the show looks more like a travel guide than a serious monograph on the artist’s career, although the artist himself selected the 27 works on display. Richter’s name is first of all associated with photography-based painting and the show includes original scale reproductions of such famous works as “Uncle Rudi” and “Betty.” The retrospective also covers to a great extent the artist’s legacy of abstract works from the 1970s to the 1990s. A few months before the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Richter, then aged 29, had moved from socialist Dresden to capitalist Dßsseldorf. The cultural collision the artist experienced resulted in his unique artistic vision. Richter first started to “use painting as a means to photography” in 1962, in the time when painting wasn’t fashionable among artists. His choice in persuing photorealism was shrewd — now Richter is one of the most highly paid artists in the world. Richter lived “13 years under National Socialism,” the Third Reich, and “16 years under East German Communism,” his web site explains, and this also helped form the artist’s deep aversion to any kind of ideology, including an aesthetic one. “I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction… I like continual uncertainty,” Richter has said. The figurative nature of his best works (an inheritance of the Socialist Realist school he was taught in Dresden) was reinterpreted in his photorealist approach to painting and became powerful instrument for explorating the visual culture of “Capitalist Realism” in the West as well as an occasion to challenge the status of the medium itself. “I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively everyday. Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art... For the first time, there was nothing to it; it was pure picture. That’s why I wanted to have it, to show it,” Richter has said. As in Pop Art, a style with which the artist is usually paralleled, Richter neglects the tension between the art and everyday visual culture in favor of an image without connotations. At the same time, the artist usually avoids directly copying photographs. His conversion of photography into painting contains deliberate losses: the permanent blurring effect of his paintings insists, above all, on the idea of the uncertain and ephemeral nature of any image. Richter is also concerned with the material, physical existence of paint. In “128 photographs of one painting” he collected photographed fragments of a painting’s surface taken from different perspectives and distances, and in different light conditions and focus. The work examines the physical structure of painted strokes. In such recent rhomboid pictures as “Ophelia” and “Guildenstern,” the artist has created color photographs of highly enlarged fragments of dye, finding a certain picturesque quality in their accidental and infinitesimal combination of forms and structures. An unprecedented and, at the same time, integral part of Richter’s oeuvre, is his working archive “Atlas.” The huge and still growing project features thousands images from newspaper cuttings, photographs of family, friends and concentration camps, pornography and landscapes gathered by the artist during his life. This is also sometimes displayed as installation, but, unfortunately, not at this retrospective. Gerhard Richter runs through June 30 at City Sculpture Museum. www.gmgs.spb.ru/arthall.htm TITLE: A time outside time AUTHOR: By Oliver Ready PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: Alexei Yurchak’s book reveals the modest charms of late-Soviet life, which might have been enjoyable enough, if only it hadn’t seemed like things would never change. When the Soviet Union fell apart, its recent past fell away. While the earlier, more catastrophic periods of Soviet history suddenly became starkly illuminated, the twilight years of the 1970s and early 1980s faded from view, to be labeled simply (and simplistically) the Stagnation — the era when time seemed to stop and Leonid Brezhnev’s ruling elite, or “gerontocracy,” never seemed to die. In recent years, however, there have been signs of a widespread desire among writers, scholars and others to reclaim the decades that many still remember as the time of their youth. An acute sense of temporal discontinuity has informed this attempted retrieval of the past. An exhibition of Mikhail Dashevsky’s photographs in Moscow two years ago, for example, bore the title “Sunken Time” to describe Dashevsky’s highly evocative images of ordinary late-Soviet life. The poet Mikhail Aizenberg, meanwhile, has called the 1970s — the years of his own formation in Moscow’s literary underground — a “historical lacuna,” a time outside time when “the noise of history could not be heard.” One gains the impression from Aizenberg’s and others’ accounts that the lively and highly sociable artistic subcultures of the ‘70s afforded their own unique pleasures, but that these were walled by an oppressive silence. “It could all have been cheerful enough,” Aizenberg wrote in the journal Znamya in 1998, “had it not been for the depressing, almost deadly feeling that this is how things would be forever. That this is how you would croak, like a cockroach in a crevice.” As his title suggests, Alexei Yurchak also wishes to recover the disrupted experience of “late socialism.” He has chosen to do so in a scholarly fashion, writing as a professional anthropologist who, for the last 15 years, has been based in the United States. His portrait of what he calls the last Soviet generation focuses on “educated urbanites” born between the 1950s and 1970s. In addition to interview material, Yurchak adduces a great variety of cultural and textual realia, from Komsomol speeches to a fashion for American plastic bags, and from cafe culture to the scandalizing public behaviour of the Leningrad “necrorealists.” The author keeps himself firmly out of view: Only towards the end of the book do we learn that Yurchak was, in the 1980s, manager of the rock group AVIA, whose performances as zealous “young builders of communism” are taken as an example of idiosyncratic late-Soviet irony. Whichever topic he addresses, Yurchak is driven by the laudable ambition to capture the past as it was experienced at the time, and so to challenge the frequently retrospective categories through which life in the Soviet Union has often been interpreted. Above all, he wishes to dispense with the binary approach whereby individuals should be seen as either pro- or anti-Soviet, and whereby an entire culture may be split into “official” and “unofficial.” Some writers and artists may have seen themselves in such terms, but for the vast majority of young citizens, Yurchak argues, the lived reality could not be categorized so plainly. It was not the norm to be a dissident, heroically facing up to the lies of the regime; nor, by contrast, to be an “activist,” following Party protocol to the letter. Activists risked the public’s deep suspicion, even ostracism, while dissidents were widely considered “irrelevant,” or viewed, according to Joseph Brodsky, as “a convenient example of the wrong deportment.” The right deportment, Yurchak suggests, involved a far greater measure of detachment, even for those who worked in the Party hierarchy. Most turned a blind eye to the more superficial aspects of their ideological environment, while also investing heavily in others, among them, Yurchak posits, the communist ethics of creativity, collectivity and non-material values. To capture this complexity, Yurchak begins with the least human part of his account: namely, a close and persuasive examination of the language of ideology, or “authoritative discourse.” The manner in which this discourse became frozen, having previously been beholden to the whim of Josef Stalin, is proposed as an essential feature of late-Soviet culture, if only because of its plain absurdity. Under Brezhnev, the language of political officialese — of slogans, posters and newspapers — was so standardized and so rooted in the past that it often lost all significance in the present. Terrified of departing from canonical communist rhetoric, politicians spouted identical formulations to mean quite different things. It was more important that authoritative discourse should be immutable than that it should be accurate. Yurchak gives a telling example from the annals of Soviet necrology: When, in the 1960s, the top Party brass began to be cremated rather than buried (in order to save space), the media nevertheless persisted with the immemorial cliche, “buried on Red Square by the Kremlin wall.” The effect of this “hypernormalization” of discourse was a broad acknowledgement in society that rituals of Soviet speech and citizenship were there merely to be performed, or to be seen to be performed. What mattered, Yurchak argues (with intermittent success), were the possibilities that these displays of good citizenship enabled. You could be a newspaper editor and encourage your staff to listen to Vladimir Vysotsky and other semi-forbidden singers; or you could be a young Komsomol secretary with a passion for King Crimson and Deep Purple, using your position to promote Western rock while convincing yourself that this enthusiasm was congruent with communism. It is such apparent paradoxes, made possible by the frequent ambivalences and silences of state policy, which interest Yurchak and allow him to trace how society shifted beneath its surface. His educated urbanites are shown to have engaged in a kind of mass internal emigration — into the spheres of science, scholarship, music or the “imaginary West.” Such pursuits, far from being intentionally anti-Soviet, could often be accommodated with the officially promoted values of education, internationalism or critical judgment. Moreover, they were often literally subsidized by the state, and made possible by the relatively secure material conditions of late socialism, when one could subsist on a miserly wage. Yurchak describes how, in the early 1980s, it became increasingly difficult to find work in a boiler room or as an elevator attendant: Such jobs were in great demand among the intelligentsia of the last generation, who willingly accepted low pay in exchange for more free time and the opportunity to pursue the study of ancient languages, amateur careers in music or PhDs in law. From its very innards, Soviet society was being subtly transformed. In such passages, with their vivid cultural detail, “Everything Was Forever” comes alive; in others, it slumbers. Yurchak’s case studies do not always fit his central argument in the way he intends, while his often ponderous and repetitious style risks creating an “authoritative discourse” of its own, encasing a human narrative in a theoretical armory that is likely to deter many readers. The author could, one feels, use his rich material to write a second book, one that takes a more personal and light-footed approach, and builds on the achievements of the first. Oliver Ready’s translation of Yuri Buida’s short-story cycle, “The Prussian Bride,” received the inaugural 2005 Rossica Translation Prize. TITLE: Al Qaeda’s Zarqawi Killed in U.S.-Iraqi Air Attack AUTHOR: By Mariam Karouny PUBLISHER: Reuters TEXT: BAGHDAD — U.S. aircraft killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq blamed for bombings, beheadings and assassinations, and President George W. Bush said on Thursday that American forces had “delivered justice.” In one of the most significant developments in Iraq since the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Jordanian Zarqawi was killed on Wednesday in a U-S.-Iraqi operation helped by tip-offs from Iraqis and Jordanian intelligence, officials said. Vowing to fight on, al Qaeda in Iraq confirmed the death of Zarqawi, who is said to have carried out several beheadings of hostages himself and who appeared in a recent video firing a machine gun in the desert. U.S. forces displayed a picture of the corpse of the bearded Zarqawi with his eyes shut, at a Baghdad news conference. Zarqawi, in his late 30s and whom Osama bin Laden called the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq, had symbolised the radical Islamic insurgency against U.S. occupation, and Prime Minister Tony Blair said he now expected insurgents to seek revenge. “There will be fierce attempts ... with the death of Zarqawi to fight back,” Blair said, adding his death would not end the killing in Iraq but that it was “significant.” Bush said the death of Zarqawi, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was “a severe blow to al Qaeda,” a victory in the war on terrorism, “and it is an opportunity for Iraq’s new government to turn the tide in this struggle.” U.S. special operations forces confirmed Zarqawi’s location based on intelligence from Iraqis and “delivered justice to the most wanted terrorist in Iraq,” Bush said. Followers of Zarqawi, who had declared war on Iraq’s majority Shi’ite Muslims, reinforcing fears that he was out to ignite civil war, pledged to continue their fight. “We tell our prince, Sheikh bin Laden, your soldiers in al Qaeda in Iraq will continue along the same path that you set out for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” said a statement on an Islamist Web site. “The death of our leaders is life for us and only makes us more determined to continue the jihad...” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who had been desperately in need of a success to bolster his authority, said seven Zarqawi aides were also killed in the raid in the city of Baquba 65 kilometers north of the capital. Bush was informed by national security adviser Stephen Hadley at 4:35 p.m. on Wednesday in the Oval Office that it was believed Zarqawi was dead, and Bush replied, “That would be a good thing,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the death of Zarqawi, whom he called the “godfather of sectarian killing in Iraq,” marked a great success. But the ambassador and military officials cautioned that it will not end the violence. Two bombs in Baghdad, which killed a total of 15 people and injured 36 others on Thursday, gave a grim reminder of the bloodshed besetting the country. The announcement of Zarqawi’s death had an impact on oil prices. Crude futures were down more than one dollar to $69.82. Zarqawi had inspired an apparently endless supply of militants from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in suicide missions in Iraq. Some posters of the most wanted man in Iraq show him in glasses, looking like an accountant, others as a tough-looking man in a black skullcap. Zarqawi appeared on a video in April unmasked for the first time, meeting his followers, firing a machine gun in the desert and condemning the entire Iraqi political process. Iraqi and U.S. officials said he had formed a loose alliance with Saddam’s former agents, benefiting from their money, weapons and intelligence assets to press his campaign. “Zarqawi didn’t have a number two. I can’t think of any single person who would succeed Zarqawi,” Rohan Gunaratna from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore said. “In terms of effectiveness, there was no single leader in Iraq who could match his ruthlessness and his determination.” TITLE: Gay Marriage Supporters Celebrate Senate Defeat AUTHOR: By Lisa Leff PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — Supporters of gay marriage celebrated the Senate’s defeat of a constitutional amendment to ban such unions and seized the moment to warn conservatives and President Bush that anti-gay sentiments won’t influence November elections. The Senate rejected the measure by a wide margin, voting 49-48 to limit debate and bring it to a yes-or-no decision. That was 11 votes shy of the 60 necessary. Charles Simpson, 49, a bookstore clerk in Northampton, Mass., called the proposed constitutional amendment “morally bankrupt and politically irresponsible.” “As a gay man watching what’s happening, I carry this anxiety that this kind of manipulation of homophobia can carry severely negative consequences,” he said. “Some politicians take advantage of how easy it is to provoke prejudices and make them worse.” The amendment’s backers announced plans to resurrect the measure in the House next month. “It is clear that most Americans saw this for what it was: base political pandering, skewed priorities and abdicated responsibilities,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Massachusetts’ gay nuptials and San Francisco’s short-lived same-sex wedding spree in 2004 were credited with creating a conservative backlash that fueled Bush’s re-election. Yet gay marriage activists pointed to Tuesday’s primary elections as evidence that sexual orientation is irrelevant in politics. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee funding lesbian and gay candidates, reported that nine of its 51 endorsed candidates either won primaries Tuesday or earned enough votes for a runoff. Winners included a lesbian running for a seat in the Alabama Legislature who made it to a two-person runoff, an Iowa lawmaker who won re-election after coming out as gay during his first term, and a lesbian who could become the first openly gay lawmaker in the Arkansas Legislature. But Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, said it was too soon to celebrate, noting that Alabama voters decided Tuesday to amend their state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Voters in seven other states will be asked to do the same in November. The amendment’s supporters, meanwhile, angrily denounced the Senate for refusing to put the matter to an up-or-down vote. Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America’s Culture and Family Institute, said he was insulted by comments from some senators that gay marriage was not a pressing national issue. “There’s nothing more important than protecting marriage and families, because without them the United States faces a bleak future in which government is daddy and mommy and the state keeps growing to pick up the pieces of the shattered social order,” Knight said in a statement. Patrick Guerriero, president of the gay political group Log Cabin Republicans, said it was “laughable” to say the amendment was gaining support. TITLE: Local Girl to Face Henin-Hardenne in Final PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: PARIS — Once again, Justine Henin-Hardenne rose to the occasion on her favorite stage. The two-time French Open champion earned another berth in the final, taking advantage of Belgian compatriot Kim Clijsters' erratic play to win 6-3, 6-2 on Thursday. Henin-Hardenne won the tournament in 2003 and 2005. Her opponent Saturday will be 2004 U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova of St. Petersburg, who ended 17-year-old Nicole Vaidisova's breakthrough week by rallying to win 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-2. Vaidisova served for the match in the second set and was two points from her first Grand Slam final at 5-all in the tiebreaker, but a wave of errors by the teen turned the tide. "I had my chances, of course. It happens," said Vaidisova, chomping gum in her postmatch news conference. "Of course I'm disappointed. I love to win and I hate to lose. But I can be proud of how I did." Kuznetsova, seeded eighth, drew on her big-match experience and played better as the match progressed. She committed only one unforced error in the final set, winning the first four games and serving well to close out the victory. In the men's semifinals Friday, No. 3-seeded David Nalbandian and No. 4 Ivan Ljubicic was due to try to play spoilers, with top-ranked Roger Federer and defending champion Rafael Nadal one round from a much-anticipated showdown in the final. Nalbandian is a clear threat, taking a 7-6 record against Federer into their semifinal match. By contrast, Ljubicic will be a substantial underdog against the second-seeded Nadal, who is 12-0 at Roland Garros and has won an Open-era record 58 consecutive clay-court matches. "That streak has to finish one day," Ljubicic said. "I hope that's going to be on Friday. He cannot win forever, and everybody knows that." It's the first time since 1985 that the four top-seeded men have reached the semifinals at Roland Garros. The women's semifinals were held under a cloudless sky with temperatures around 80 degrees, and Henin-Hardenne was as good as the weather. She had some help. The Belgians dueled mostly from the baseline and Clijsters had the majority of errors, often overhitting. Playing on her 23rd birthday, reigning U.S. Open champion Clijsters had 29 unforced errors and only nine winners. It was another frustrating finish at Roland Garros for the No. 2-seeded Clijsters, the runner-up in 2001 and 2003. Seeded fifth, Henin-Hardenne earned the first break of the match for a 5-3 lead, then served out the set, hitting a service winner and an ace on the final two points. It was the first set Clijsters had lost in the tournament. Henin-Hardenne broke again when Clijsters double-faulted and went ahead 3-1 in the second set. The lead grew to 4-2 when Clijsters nearly whiffed on an overhead, and Henin-Hardenne closed out the victory two games later with a service winner. It's the fourth consecutive time that Henin-Hardenne has beaten Clijsters in a major event. Vaidisova played the way she did earlier this week in upset victories over top-ranked Amelie Mauresmo and reigning Wimbledon champion Venus Williams. Vaidisova hit aggressively from both wings, served well, seized chances to charge the net and feasted on Kuznetsova's weak second serve. The match offered a contrast in styles: the 16th-seeded Vaidisova's flat shots and little margin of error, versus Kuznetsova's more conservative, less aggressive groundstrokes with heavy topspin. And ultimately, Vaidisova's risky approach backfired. She finished with 54 winners but also 47 unforced errors. Kuznetsova committed 19 errors, 13 in the first set. Kuznetsova was two points from winning the first set at 5-3, 30-15, but Vaidisova rallied by winning 15 of the final 18 points in the set. The Florida-based Czech took a 2-0 lead in the second set and served for the match at 5-4. She lost the first point, then on the second hit a forehand ruled good for a winner. Kuznetsova appealed the call, and the chair umpire ruled the ball long after checking the mark. Vaidisova covered her mouth and staggered in surprise, then proceeded to lose the game, double-faulting on break point to make it 5-all. She managed to smile at the lapse. "At 5-4 serving, you're still a long way from winning," she said. "I don't think I got crazy nervous or started shaking. It was more me just not serving very well." Vaidisova held serve two games later to force the tiebreaker and was two points from the final at 5-all. But she blew a forehand putaway, then yanked a backhand long to lose the set and even the match. TITLE: Hurricanes Wipe Out Edmonton PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: RALEIGH, N.C. — Cam Ward became the first rookie in 20 years to post a shutout in the Stanley Cup finals and the Carolina Hurricanes swept away Edmonton 5-0 in Game 2 Wednesday night, the Edmonton Oilers looking downright miserable without playoff star Dwayne Roloson. Carolina is up 2-0 in the series and off to Alberta, hoping to finish the job against a staggering team. Game 3 is Saturday night in Edmonton. "We're going to try to get a jump in Game 3," said Cory Stillman, who scored a backbreaking goal seconds before the end of the second period. "We've still got to win four games, and we're going to try to do it as quickly as possible." Ward turned aside 25 shots for his second shutout of the playoffs and entered the record books as only the 11th rookie to hold a team scoreless in the finals. Montreal's Patrick Roy was the last to do it in 1986. "That was a reflection of the team," Ward said. "They played great in front of me. There were a lot of instances where we came up with key blocks that probably would have been sure goals." Indeed, he had plenty of help. The Hurricanes prevented 24 shots from even getting to the 22-year-old goalie, hurling themselves in harm's way with their skates, their arms, their legs — anything to send the puck away from the goal. The Oilers didn't reveal their starter in net until Jussi Markkanen led his team onto the ice for the opening faceoff — the first goalie in 45 years to make his first playoff start in the finals. Roloson sustained a series-ending knee injury in Game 1. After vowing to rally around their new goalie, the Oilers didn't play with any sort of passion, especially after Stillman scored with 2.4 seconds left in the second period to make it 3-0. Edmonton finds itself in a huge hole going back to Canada for the next two games. Carolina became the 30th team to sweep the first two games of the best-of-seven series at home; the Chicago Blackhawks in 1971 are the only team to blow such a lead, losing to Montreal in seven games. "A lot of us are trying to do too much," Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish said. "We need a more predictable game from a lot of our players." The Hurricanes poured it on in the final period, getting every break while the frustrated Oilers turned chippy. Doug Weight appeared to kick in a deflected shot early in the third and the referee waved it off immediately. But, after viewing an overhead replay, it was clear that Weight managed to graze the puck with a swipe of his stick as it was on the way to the net — making it a legal goal. The call was overturned, Carolina celebrated and the Oilers fumed. Shortly afterward, Ethan Moreau threw a left-handed punch to the face of Hurricanes defenseman Glen Wesley as the two came together at center ice. Georges Laraque delivered an even more flagrant hit, pummeling Carolina's Andrew Ladd with a blow from behind in the closing minutes to get tossed out of the game. Maybe he was just mad at Ladd. The Carolina forward was the guy involved in a collision with Roloson that left the goalie with a severely sprained knee late in Game 1. Rubbing salt in the wound, Ladd scored the first Carolina goal in Game 2 — the puck deflecting off the skate of Marc-Andre Bergeron, the guy who knocked Ladd into Roloson. Frantisek Kaberle made it 2-0 just past the midway point of the second with a shot through Markkanen's legs, the only goal that MacTavish blamed on his replacement goalie, who had not played since March 1. "I really thought Jussi played a fine game for us," MacTavish said. "You don't win a lot of games, even if you get outstanding goaltending, if you don't score any goals." The clock was winding down in the second when Stillman delivered the crushing blow. After Markkanen blocked a deflected shot, Stillman flipped the rebound over the net, went all the way around to get it himself and lifted his second try under the crossbar. "Was it a backbreaker? Maybe it was," Stillman said. "I'm sure it was hard for them to swallow with two seconds left." The Hurricanes dominated the special teams, scoring three goals on the power play. Edmonton was 0-for-6 with a man advantage. "The five-on-five play is pretty even," MacTavish said. "They're more opportunistic at this point in the series than what we've been." With Moreau in the penalty box, Carolina swarmed in front of Markkanen until Mark Recchi got free in front to deflect the puck past the shellshocked goalie. The Carolina fans spent the rest of the game heckling Markkanen with chants of "You-seee! You-seee!" MacTavish decided he was a better option than Ty Conklin, who took over after Roloson was hurt and botched a play behind the net in the final minute, allowing Rod Brind'Amour to stuff the puck into an open net for the winning goal in Carolina's 5-4 victory. The Hurricanes overcame a 3-0 deficit to win the opener — matching the largest comeback in finals history — and have now outscored Edmonton 10-1 over the last 83 minutes of the series. TITLE: Reds Pull Even With Cards in NL Central PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: CINCINNATI, Ohio — The St. Louis Cardinals have had misery for the last few days. Now they have some company at the top of the NL Central. The Cincinnati Reds beat the Cardinals for the third straight day since the St. Louis first baseman went on the 15-day disabled list, and moved into a tie for first place. Rich Aurilia matched career highs with four hits and five RBIs on Wednesday night, leading the Reds to a 7-4 victory, their season-best seventh straight. "I think a lot of people will probably pick up the paper tomorrow and read it and go, ‘Who the hell is that? What's going on?'" Aurilia said of the Reds sharing first place with a 35-24 record. "We've played really well the last week." And it didn't matter that Albert Pujols, last year's NL MVP who was leading the major leagues in home runs (25) and RBIs (65) this season, has been out since straining a muscle on his right side. There's no definite date for his return and the first baseman wasn't around for the Reds' sweep at the new Busch Stadium. "Honestly, we need to pounce on them no matter who they've got out there, whether they had him or brought Musial back or whoever," said Aurilia, whose three-run homer off Tyler Johnson in the sixth made it 7-0. "Does it hurt their team having him out? Of course it does, but we played well and we beat some pretty good pitching." In other NL games, it was: Houston 1, Chicago 0; Colorado 16, Pittsburgh 9; Florida 8, San Francisco 1; Philadelphia 7, Arizona 3; Washington 5, Atlanta 2; San Diego 6, Milwaukee 5; and New York 9, Los Angeles 7. Scott Hatteberg had two hits, two walks and two RBIs as the Reds completed a 7-2 road trip without Ken Griffey Jr. (left quad) and Edwin Encarnacion (left ankle), who were out with minor injuries. "They've always had hitters, all they needed is pitching," St. Louis' John Rodriguez said. "And now they've got it." Aaron Harang (7-4) allowed eight hits and three runs in 5 2-3 innings with three strikeouts and a walk to win his second straight start. The Cardinals, who had been alone in first place for 23 games, wrapped up a 3-6 homestand and are 1-3 since Pujols went on the disabled list. They snapped a 15-inning scoreless slump, their longest since June 2004, in the sixth on Scott Rolen's two-run double and Jim Edmonds' RBI single. "We didn't play very well, and we ran into a hot team," Edmonds said. "Everything they hit was hard. They could do no wrong." Edmonds added his sixth homer, and first since May 12, in the eighth off David Weathers. Sidney Ponson (4-1) lost for the first time in nine starts with the Cardinals, giving up five runs and eight hits in 5 1-3 innings. At Houston, Chris Sampson (1-0) allowed three hits over seven innings in his first major league start. Dan Wheeler worked a hitless eighth and Brad Lidge pitched a perfect ninth for his 15th save. Brad Ausmus, batting .321 since April 13, led off the third with a long homer off Sean Marshall (3-4), who allowed four hits in seven innings. TITLE: Rooney Rejoins England Squad in Germany AUTHOR: By KRYSTYNA RUDZKI PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: BUEHLERTAL, Germany — Wayne Rooney practiced with England on Thursday, hours after returning to Germany on a late-night flight and being cleared by doctors to play in the World Cup. Rooney casually kicked a ball with David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Neville before taking part in light running, stretching and ball drills. Shortly before the session closed to the media after 15 minutes, Rooney joined a drill where players stood in a circle, trying to avoid passing the ball to a player in the middle. Rooney had been kept out of such drills during England training sessions earlier this week. Even though the 20-year-old Rooney is back on the England squad, he is unlikely to play until after England’s group games. Rooney's Premier League club, Manchester United, said that “the expert independent medical view is that Wayne has a good chance of being fit after the group stage.” “At that point ... his participation in the tournament will require very careful assessment in order to address his suitability, as he will not have had the opportunity to play in less demanding games,” the club said in a statement on its web site. The English Football Association has yet to comment. FIFA’s Web site also reported Rooney was fit to play at his first World Cup after breaking a bone in his right foot on April 29. The decision means standby striker Jermain Defoe will return to England, although he practiced Thursday. The FA had until Friday to decide if Rooney should stay on the squad. England opens in Group B against Paraguay on Saturday. It also plays Trinidad and Tobago on June 15 and Sweden on June 20. If England advances to the round of 16, its match would be on June 24 or 25. Rooney had given a good indication he would be playing. With a broad grin on his face, he stepped out of the private jet that brought him from Manchester back to Baden-Baden late Wednesday. He was immediately whisked into a waiting car and driven away with a police escort to England’s nearby World Cup base. He made no comment. There were also smiles in Manchester after Rooney left the hospital where he spent 2 1/2 hours discussing the results of the scan. England and Manchester United staff were also at the hospital. FA executive director David Davies, who accompanied Rooney, also wore a broad grin, suggesting Rooney would play a part in England’s quest to win the World Cup for the first time since 1966. England midfielder Steven Gerrard says he is only “50-50” to face Paraguay in their World Cup opener on Saturday due to a hip problem. Gerrard, set to be a key figure in England's Group B campaign, missed Wednesday’s training session with what coach Sven-Goran Eriksson described as a stiff back. But Gerrard told reporters on Thursday:” It’s not really a back problem. I got a knock on my hip and it’s just made my back go into spasm a bit. “Overall, I’ve got a good chance of playing on Saturday. I’ve just got to keep working on it, but I’ve got a good chance. “As we speak now it’s probably 50-50. But if it keeps improving the way it has done over the past 24 hours I'll be there.” (Reuters) TITLE: Rio Ropes in Funds To Go Green and Yellow PUBLISHER: Reuters TEXT: RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Residents of soccer crazy Rio de Janeiro are “taxing” motorists to raise funds to decorate their streets in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag for the World Cup. Cars have been stopped by rope barriers in side streets and drivers asked to make contributions. In one recent such incident in Rio's hilltop Santa Teresa district, a young man in T-shirt and shorts approached a halted car. But instead of drawing a gun — as often happens in this crime-plagued city — the man politely asked:”Any change to buy decorations ?” On payment of a couple of reals ($1), the rope was dropped. Across this huge seaside city, locals have been stringing yellow and green tinsel across streets, hanging flags and painting portraits of soccer stars on walls and roads before the big kick-off in Germany on Friday. Brazil’s first game is against Croatia on Tuesday. Giant caricatures of goal scoring ace Ronaldo and world player of the year Ronaldinho stare at passers by while in Santa Teresa there is a mural of Argentine maestro Diego Maradona in a trolley car with Brazilian players. Coca-Cola and the O Globo newspaper, part of Brazil’s biggest media group, are sponsoring a competition to see which street conjures up the brightest decoration. TITLE: IN BRIEF TEXT: Cisse Replaced PARIS (Reuters) — France coach Raymond Domenech called up Sidney Govou of Olympique Lyon on Thursday to replace injured striker Djibril Cisse in his World Cup squad, the French Football Federation said. Govou, 26, will join the squad for their flight to Germany on Thursday afternoon, the federation said on its Web site. Cisse was ruled out of the finals on Wednesday after breaking his right leg in a 3-1 win over China in a friendly match. Like Cisse, Govou can play as an out and out centre forward or play off another striker. He has played 19 times for France and scored three goals for the national team. France play their opening Group G game against Switzerland on Tuesday. Their group also features South Korea and Togo. Ballack Out BERLIN (Reuters) — Germany captain Michael Ballack will miss Friday's World Cup opening match against Costa Rica because of a calf injury, coach Juergen Klinsmann told a news conference on Thursday. "We'll leave him on the sidelines for this game and have him fit for the next one," Klinsmann said. Ballack, who also missed the final match of the last World Cup because of suspension, suffered a slight strain to his right calf during Germany’s 3-0 win over Colombia in a warm-up match on June 2. The 29-year-old midfielder did not believe it to be serious at the time and alarm bells only started ringing when he was unable to train with the squad on Monday. He did return to full training on Wednesday but had to drop out after just 30 minutes. Germany’s second Group A game is against Poland in Dortmund on June 14. They wrap up the opening phase with a match against Ecuador in Berlin on June 20. Hooligan Stopped LIVERPOOL, England — Police arrested a known soccer hooligan at John Lennon Airport on Thursday and stopped him from leaving the country in case he was headed to the World Cup. British police have the power to prevent any convicted hooligans from going to the World Cup in Germany, which begins Friday. The man was arrested under the Football Disorder Act. The man arrested Thursday was identified only as a 35-year-old Wolverhampton Wanderers fan, from Cannock in central England. Police did not release his name. The fan had a ticket to Amsterdam, but the Netherlands borders Germany. England faces Paraguay in its first group game in Frankfurt on Saturday. Blatter to Stand n MUNICH (Reuters) — FIFA president Sepp Blatter confirmed on Thursday that he will stand for re-election again next year. The 70-year-old Swiss was first elected as president of world soccer’s governing body in June, 1998. He was re-elected on the eve of the 2002 World Cup finals after a notably acrimonious campaign. The elections will be held in Zurich next May.