SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1242 (8), Friday, February 2, 2007
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TITLE: President Shuns Spy Conspiracy Theories
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected Western criticism he is using his energy policies as a weapon, denounced the deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems in eastern Europe, and said he didn’t believe in conspiracy theories in the poisoning death of a former KGB officer.
Addressing 1,200 reporters at his annual news conference, Putin rejected allegations in the West that price disputes with Ukraine and Belarus — which triggered interruptions of Russian oil and gas deliveries to Western Europe — amounted to using Moscow’s vast energy reserves to achieve political aims.
“The thesis is being thrust on us all the time that Russia is using its old and new economic efforts to attain foreign political goals. It is not so,” Putin said. The price increases, he said, are driven simply by Russia’s desire to get fair prices for its gas and oil after years of providing energy at below-market prices to former Soviet neighbors.
“We’re not obliged to subsidize the economies of other countries,” Putin said. “Nobody does that, so why are they demanding it of us?”
Putin uses the annual news conference, televised live on two nationwide state-run channels, to burnish his image domestically as a competent, caring president in control of a resurgent country with a growing economy and global clout.
But Moscow’s international reputation has been battered by the killings late last year of two critics: investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, who blamed Putin for his radiation poisoning in a deathbed statement.
Asked about Litvinenko, who died after someone slipped him radioactive polonium-210 in London last fall, Putin described him as a figure of little importance.
“Before being fired from the Federal Security Service, Alexander Litvinenko served in the escort troops and had no access to state secrets,” said Putin, himself a former KGB officer.
Litvinenko had accused Putin’s Kremlin of involvement in his poisoning and the death of Politkovskaya — which Russian officials deny. In Russia, officials and journalists seem to favor the theory that the killings were committed as part of a plot to discredit the Kremlin.
Putin endorsed neither theory. “Openly speaking, I don’t believe in the conspiracy thesis,” he said.
He declined to speculate how Litvinenko came to swallow the rare radioactive poison that killed him. “Only the investigation can answer that,” he said.
Putin rejected Washington’s claim that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in central Europe was intended to counter threats posed by Iran and warned that Russia would take countermeasures.
U.S. officials have said that proposed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic would be designed to intercept a missile attack by Iran on Eastern Europe, and would not affect Russia’s security.
But Putin said the Kremlin did not trust that claim.
“Our military experts don’t believe that the missile defense systems to be deployed in eastern Europe are intended to counter the threat from Iran or some terrorists,” Putin said, adding that Tehran currently does not have missiles capable of reaching Europe.
“We consider such claims unfounded, and, naturally, that directly concerns us and will cause a relevant reaction. That reaction will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly efficient,” Putin said.
Putin said that Russia’s latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that more-effective weapons systems are being developed.
“We will have next-generation systems immune to any prospective missile defense,” Putin said. While missile defense systems under development will only be capable of tackling ballistic missiles, he said, the new weapons will be capable of changing the altitude and direction of their flight on their way to target.
“Missile defense systems are helpless against that,” Putin said.
Putin’s second term ends in 2008, and the Russian constitution limits presidents to two terms in succession. Russian politics is dominated by talk of his successor.
The Kremlin is widely believed to be grooming two proteges: First Deputy Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Open support from Putin — who enjoys enormous popularity — for either man would virtually ensure his election.
But Putin remained coy yesterday about whom he will support.
“There will not be a successor, there will be candidates for the presidency,” Putin said, adding that the government must ensure a democratic campaign.
“I reserve the right to express my preference, but this will be done only in the pre-election period,” Putin said.
At the start of the news conference, the Russian president praised his nation’s remarkable economic comeback since the desperate days of the 1990s — the gross domestic product, he said, grew at least 6.7 percent last year. And there is increased spending on education and public health. But he acknowledged the government has much to do to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
“But we still have to do very much in the social sphere, including resolving one of the main tasks that we have in this area — that is, reducing the gap between highly paid groups of the population and the citizens of our country who still live very, very humbly,” Putin said in his opening statement, before taking the first questions from some 1,200 journalists.
Russia’s relations with the West are a perennial topic at the news conference, which gives foreign journalists a rare chance to directly ask a question of Putin — and gives Putin a chance to portray Russia, as he often does, as a country under attack from ill-wishers abroad.

TITLE: Opposition Alliance Brings Protests to City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A political coalition of liberal opposition forces arrived in St. Petersburg this week with bold plans that include a local version of a Dissenters’ March, scheduled for March 3.
The coalition, called Other Russia, held its first public event — a “March of Those Who Disagree,” or Dissenters’ March — in Moscow on Dec. 16, when the rally’s participants, greatly outnumbered by the police, spoke out against what they called the “squashing of liberties” and the “strangling of civil society” in Russia today. 
Other Russia was created with an eye to the 2008 presidential elections when it hopes to put forward a strong alternative to Kremlin-backed candidates.
The umbrella group, that incorporates, among others, Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front, Mikhail Kasyanov’s People’s Democratic Union and Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party, is also planning to hold a conference in St. Petersburg on March 2.
On Wednesday, Kasparov and Limonov attended a protest meeting outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Kasparov said one of the coalition’s major goals is to spread the word about the level of corruption in Russia, especially in the provinces. 
In his opinion, President Vladimir Putin’s high approval rating among the public is based on the level of ignorance that most Russians have about the way their country is governed. Media censorship also protects the authorities, Kasparov said. 
Other Russia’s future list of events includes a Dissenters’ March in Moscow on April 14, followed by a conference on April 15. A series of meetings of protesters are also being planned in the Siberian city of Surgut, where labor unions are reporting growing social unrest.
“One month of honest television debates discussing the true state of corruption in the country, and the concentration of financial resources in the hands of the closest relatives of members of the ruling political elite, would result in the immediate collapse of Putin’s approval rating,” Kasparov said. “Now, we have to take to the streets to get heard, but things may change nearer to the presidential election.” 
“Political clans in the Kremlin hate each other much more forcefully than they hate the opposition, and they know very well that the first thing the winner of the next election will do is to destroy the loser clans,” he added. “If a democrat wins, they can at the very least ensure an honest trial.” 
Limonov is convinced the appeal of Other Russia in St. Petersburg is vast. Its target supporters are underpaid and frustrated members of the “intelligentsia.” 
“We came here with a goal to take over this city — and we mean it in a spiritual, psychological sense,” Limonov said. “I believe that our protests will have great resonance in St. Petersburg, where there are great numbers of poverty-stricken intelligentsia and people who, despite massive brainwashing, are still able to think independently.”
The route for the St. Petersburg Dissenters’ March has not yet been decided and a venue for the meeting remains to be found. 
“We are working on it, keeping in mind all the important factors, from the traffic routes to the attitude of City Hall,” said Sergei Gulyayev, the local coordinator of the event and a Yabloko lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. During the previous event in Moscow, the 2,500 protesters were surrounded by 8,500 police. More than 40 participants of the demonstration were detained.
In July 2006, Governor Valentina Matviyenko, speaking to delegates of the Second Russian Social Forum, a protest gathering of opposition forces intended as a satellite event for the G8 summit, said outdoor demonstrations “disturb local citizens” and therefore should be best avoided.
Olga Kurnosova, a co-chairman of the St. Petersburg Civil Front, foresees further obstacles.
“In 2006, the City Hall did not approve a single public gathering, be it a meeting or a march of protest,” she said. 
“The officials seem to be unable to understand that it is impossible to bring civil society to a complete standstill — unless they opt to destroy everyone physically.”
The politicians spoke to reporters in the headquarters of the local branch of human rights group “Citizen’s Watch” on Ligovsky Prospekt.  Gulyayev said it is becoming increasingly difficult for the critics of the government to find a venue to hold a news conference. 
“This place was the last resort, really,” Gulyayev said. 
“We had tried a string of other places, but when managers heard the names Kasparov and Limonov, they promptly turned us down, with polite apologies.”
Gulyayev said it is crucially important for ordinary people to overcome inertia and join the movement.

TITLE: UNESCO Slams Gazprom Tower Plan
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The huge skyscraper that state energy giant Gazprom is planning to build on a site opposite Smolny Cathedral will ruin St. Petersburg’s historic skyline, UNESCO said on Wednesday.
The director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center Francesco Bandarin called the controversial Gazprom-City tower design “unacceptable” because it is too close to the historic center of the city, Interfax reported Wednesday. 
President Vladimir Putin said he understood the concerns of those against the plan on Thursday during a press conference in Moscow, but added he would leave it to City Hall to decide the project’s future.
“I understand the concerns of those who say [the proposed Gazprom-City building] is too close to the historic center,” Fontanka.ru reported Putin as saying on Thursday. 
“But where [such projects] have to be implemented, the decision should be made on the level of St. Petersburg’s authorities. Such decisions should not be shifted to me, I have enough of my own problems,” Putin said. 
Although Gazprom Neft, a part of Gazprom, which intends to use the building for its headquarters, could not be reached for comment Thursday, architects behind the project referred to UNESCO’s criticism as “unfounded” and said it was too early to discuss the matter.
“Bandarin has not seen the final concept, as it is simply not ready,” said Philip Nikandrov, a representative of RMJM London Limited, the architectural company behind the winning design for Gazprom-City.
“We must wait until May 2007 when the entire project is due to be finalized. Until then the concept is still in development and things like the height and size of the building might change.” 
“Now there is nothing to talk about,” Nikandrov added in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. “There’s a long way from the idea to its realization, and I’m sure they [UNESCO] understand that.” 
“Before any judgments can be passed regarding our project, it is important to find out what effect the tower has on the city’s image… and to demonstrate it to the public,” Nikandrov said.
Meanwhile Petersburgers remain divided over the topic, according to findings from the Agency for Social Information-St. Petersburg, or ASI, researched in December.
“There’s no united opinion. The number of people supporting the idea, the number of people who are against it and the number of people who could not state their position are roughly the same,”  Roman Mogilevsky, ASI’s head told The St. Petersburg Times. 
ASI also found the significant difference between perceptions to the project on the part of young people and representatives of older generations.
“A significant number of the young people questioned were more positive towards the tower as they were more pragmatic and more willing to accept new architectural ideas. They welcome the idea of new jobs [the development may bring] and think the tower might give them additional places for recreation,” Mogilevsky said. 
“A lot of negative responses came from old people as they were afraid to accept change,” Mogilevsky said.

TITLE: Georgian Response Sought
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia has failed to respond in kind to Moscow’s latest steps to improve bilateral relations, Russian Ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko said Wednesday.
“Relations between our countries have to be based on mutual respect and fair play. Russia’s policy in relation to Georgia is exactly that,” Kovalenko told journalists after handing over credentials to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
“But there has to be a response or, better still, an initiative from Tbilisi. So far there has been none.”
Russian officials have said Kovalenko’s return to Tbilisi could be followed by easing economic sanctions imposed against Tbilisi after Russian officers were briefly detained on spying charges. Kovalenko was also recalled at that time.
Also Wednesday, Georgia reiterated its call for direct, unconditional talks between Saakashvili and the leader of the breakaway Abkhazia region, but the separatist leader rejected the call, saying the sides must sign a nonaggression pact.
“The Georgian side is ready to begin a direct business dialogue with the Abkhaz side without any preconditions,” Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili told reporters. 
“But this meeting must be aimed at achieving a concrete result … that is why it must be thoroughly prepared.”

(Reuters, AP)

TITLE: Correction
TEXT: In an article headlined “Local Experts Expect Business to Boom,” on page 9 of Tuesday’s issue, it was incorrectly stated that local company Aditum is affiliated to the Swedish company Ruric. Aditum is in no way affiliated to Ruric.

TITLE: A Posting Lands Internet User in Court for Insult
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former journalist in the Vladimir region could face a year of prison labor for purportedly insulting the governor in an online forum.
The case against Dmitry Tashlykov, now the spokesman for the mayor of Kovrov, is the latest chapter in the government’s fitful effort to regulate cyberspace.
Tashlykov, 34, denies having posted the comments in question on the web site Kovrov.ru on the night of Jan. 19, 2006. He calls the case political retribution by Vladimir Governor Nikolai Vinogradov for critical newspaper articles that Tashlykov wrote for the newspaper Vladimirsky Krai.
A number of cases of online insults, libel and hate speech have reached the courts in recent years, and many have proven tricky to adjudicate.
A court in Khakassia last month ordered the confiscation of a web site where a local journalist had posted articles critical of regional officials.
Earlier this month, the judge in the case puzzled over the issue of how a web site could be confiscated, given that the site’s owner could restore its content from a backup disc.
The case against Tashlykov, however, is the first involving statements posted on an Internet forum, which are filled with anonymous participants and often indecipherable jabber, slang and abbreviations.
In February 2006, Vinogradov filed a complaint with regional authorities accusing five participants in a discussion forum on the web site Kovrov.ru of posting libelous statements about him in a discussion of the possibility of a contract hit being ordered against Kovrov Mayor Irina Tabatskova.
Tabatskova, now Tashlykov’s employer, is a former member of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party. She later joined the Party of Life and served on the Kovrov city council.
She has had several run-ins with local and regional officials in recent years.
The libel allegations went nowhere, but Tashlykov — one of the five accused by Vinogradov — was eventually charged with publicly insulting the governor while posting under the nickname Myshkin.
Tashlykov was accused of calling Vinogradov a “beast” that is “capable of anything,” and has been “harassing the entire region for almost 10 years,” according to a copy of the police report obtained by The Moscow Times.
Tashlykov said by telephone on Wednesday that he “completely denies” posting under the name Myshkin.
“This is a political hit,” Tashlykov said. “It is because of my work with Vladimirsky Krai. Over the years, the newspaper has not been terribly friendly with the regional government.”
Vinogradov’s office, meanwhile, insists that freedom of speech is not at issue.
“This is about words that any self-respecting person would consider insulting,” said Vinogradov’s spokesman, Andrei Rumantsev.
Natalya Chikova, a justice of the peace in Kovrov, the Vladimir region’s second-largest city, is presiding over the case, which stands in recess until Feb. 14.
If convicted, Tashlykov could face a fine of 40,000 rubles ($1,500) or one year of penal labor.
After being convicted on the same charge in October, Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor of the Internet magazine Kursiv, was fined 20,000 rubles ($750) for referring to President Vladimir Putin as “a phallic symbol.”
The case against Tashlykov has certain ominous overtones for Internet users who value protection of their privacy.
Kovrov.ru administrator Mikhail Godovitsin provided authorities with archived files of the site’s forum as well as access to the contents of the private mailboxes and IP address of the five forum participants, Regnum.ru reported.
Godovitsin could not be reached for comment, and an e-mail sent to the Kovrov.ru webmaster had not been answered by late Wednesday evening.
Anton Nosik, founder of web portals Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru, said it was “immoral” for Godovitsin to hand over confidential information about the site’s users without a court order.
“But if someone shows up in a uniform demanding information or else, people in the regions would often rather comply than call a lawyer,” Nosik said.
Large mail-hosting services typically require a stamped original court order before they release such information, Nosik said.
Sergei Mikheyev, a regional analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, said trying to catch and convict someone of insulting an official on the Internet was an unsustainable exercise.
“It would be equivalent to sending spies out in the streets to listen to what drunk people in the gutters say and catch them,” Mikheyev said.

TITLE: FSB Told to Tackle Extremism
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called on the Federal Security Service to combat political extremism and racism in the run-up to the State Duma election in December and next year’s presidential contest.
“It is important not just to ensure the rule of law and order, but also to safeguard society from attempts to introduce extremist and racist ideas,” Putin told senior officers at FSB headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, Gazeta.ru reported.
Putin also called for vigilance in the battle against terrorism and corruption.
As parliamentary campaigns get under way in a number of regions this spring and the Duma campaign heats up in the fall, some candidates are likely to try to capitalize on the growing popularity of nationalism in society.
In his remarks, Putin, who headed the FSB in 1998 and the first half of 1999, praised the agency’s performance in 2006. He mentioned specifically the suppression of the insurgency in Chechnya and the absence of security breaches during the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg and the summit with the European Union in Sochi.
Putin promised hikes in the FSB’s budget and in officers’ wages. The FSB budget, which is classified, increased by 27 percent in 2006 and will rise by a similar amount this year, Putin said.
The president said the agency would receive 20 percent more money for weapons and equipment this year, and that salaries in the agency would jump by 25 percent over last year.
Putin exhorted the agency to increase their efforts to “counter the terrorist threat,” Interfax reported. He said the FSB-led National Anti-Terrorist Committee, created last year, had proven effective in coordinating the government’s response to terrorism.
The president also told officers to step up their efforts to battle corruption. “The business community in this country should be reliably protected from corruption,” he said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Khinsagov Appeal</b>
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — A Georgian court has begun hearing Oleg Khinsagov’s appeal against his conviction for attempted smuggling of highly enriched uranium, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced Wednesday.
Georgia announced last week that it had arrested and imprisoned Khinsagov, a Russian citizen, last year for attempting to sell a small amount of weapons-grade uranium to an agent who was posing as a wealthy foreign buyer.
In September, a Georgian court sentenced Khinsagov to eight years in prison. Georgian officials said Khinsagov told investigators during initial questioning that the radioactive material had originated in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. (AP)

<b>Notary Given 9 Years</b>
MOSCOW (AP) — Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court on Wednesday convicted on forgery and fraud charges a notary who was one of three men acquitted in the 2004 killing of American journalist Paul Klebnikov, a court official said.
The court sentenced Fail Sadretdinov to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of illegally registering an apartment.
Defense lawyer Ruslan Kolev told RIA-Novosti that he would appeal the sentence. 

<b>Litvinenko File</b>
LONDON (AP) — Detectives investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko sent a file of information from their probe to prosecutors Wednesday, a British police spokeswoman said.
London’s Metropolitan Police said it could not say whether the file sent to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service made recommendations that individuals should be charged with criminal offenses over the death. 

<b>Lights Go Out in Sochi</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — A 24-hour blackout hit the Black Sea coast Tuesday and Wednesday, including the resort of Sochi, just weeks before International Olympic Committee officials evaluate the city’s readiness to host the 2014 Winter Games.

TITLE: New Phone Charges to Hit Poor
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Over 28 million land-line telephone users will be required to switch over to a new pay-per-minute billing system from Thursday, ending years of Soviet-style, mainly symbolic flat-rate tariffs.
The outline of the new system is contained in a law on telephone tariffs passed in October 2005 that will allow telephone operators to charge a fixed subscriber fee irrespective of the number of calls made.
Subscribers around the country will be able to choose from one of three options. The first option will allow callers to pay for local calls using the per-minute billing tariff. A second option is for subscribers to pay a fixed monthly fee of up to 400 rubles ($15) for unlimited calls. Under the third system, customers can pay in advance for a fixed number of minutes per month. Anything that exceeds the purchased amount is charged for separately at a per-minute rate.
Subscribers will now be required to sign supplementary agreements that will enable them to choose one of the three options with telephone operators around the country.
In the event of a customer failing to choose a tariff, the default option of a fixed monthly fee for unlimited local calls can be imposed automatically. All incoming calls will continue to remain free of charge, as will calls to the emergency services.
“This scheme will benefit the telephone companies, who are monopolists in their various spheres and make life unbearable for our pensioners, whose only comfort is regular conversation with close friends and family,” Alexei Samokhvalov, an official from the Initiative Group consumer association, said at a news conference Wednesday. 
Telecoms companies, however, have played down the effect that the tariffs could have.
“This is just election-time posturing,” said Oleg Mikhailov, director of communications at Svyazinvest. 
“The new system of tariffs will give subscribers the opportunity to manage their expenses more efficiently,” Mikhailov said.

TITLE: Cabinet Approves New Limits on Foreign Firms
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Cabinet on Wednesday gave tentative approval to a long-delayed bill restricting foreign participation across 40 industries that the government deems strategic, including energy and metals. 
Investors and analysts cautiously welcomed the proposal, which would for the first time establish the rules under which foreigners will be allowed to invest in strategic projects. Some said more details were required to ensure that the rules were clear.
The Federal Security Service will be one of the agencies that will screen foreign bids.
The government has been stuck on which industries and natural resource deposits should be declared strategic since President Vladimir Putin called for legislation restricting foreign investment in 2005, with liberal opponents of the move arguing that projects should be judged on a case-by-case basis and foreign investors holding off on major commitments, citing a lack of clarity.
The bill would allow the government to reject foreign bids for stakes of more than 50 percent in Russian companies across 40 sectors that have “strategic importance for national security,” Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko told the Cabinet, a version of his comments posted on his ministry’s web site said. 
The president would retain the right of veto in certain cases, Khristenko said.
The committee would have to make its decisions within three months, or in six months for exceptional cases, Khristenko said.
In certain instances, investors would have to take upon themselves obligations like retaining a certain number of employees at the enterprises in question. 
A government spokesman said the bill had been approved in principle, but added that “a number of questions” would have to be cleared up in the next month before the bill goes to the State Duma. The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had “plenty of questions” to put to Khristenko, whose ministry drew up the bill. 
The makeup of the government committee that will approve the applications and the procedures for implementing the bill have yet to be hammered out, the spokesman said.
Maria Ushakova, a spokeswoman for the Industry and Energy Ministry, said the committee would comprise representatives of “both the economic and power blocs,” without elaborating. 
Ushakova said she did not have an exact list of the 40 industries.
Khristenko said the industries were in eight categories, related to military, space and “special” equipment, metals and alloys, aviation, nuclear energy, natural monopolies and significant deposits of mineral resources.
Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said his ministry had identified 10 strategic oil deposits and 26 strategic gas deposits. The Sukhoi Log gold deposit and five copper deposits, including one in Udokan, should also be considered strategic, he said.
A government source said Tuesday that the legislation would define deposits as strategic if they held more than 70 million tons of oil, 50 billion cubic meters of gas, 50 tons of gold or 500,000 tons of copper, Interfax reported.
Trutnev on Wednesday said all offshore oil and gas deposits, as well as those resources used in the defense industry, such as uranium, diamonds and quartz, would be strategic regardless of their size. Deposits close to “defense areas” would also be considered strategic, Trutnev said, without elaborating.
Concerns about the bill were raised by Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, who warned fellow ministers that security should not come at the expense of economic growth. 
“If we make barriers for investment and the country’s economy does not grow at a fast pace, we won’t be able to ensure any security,” he said in comments carried on state television news.
In his televised comments, Fradkov conjured up colorful images to illustrate his arguments in favor of the restrictions.
“Why give [these sectors] away? One shouldn’t be a dog in the manger but we need to know our worth,” Fradkov said. “The government will be able to refuse Citizen X, let’s say a British citizen, only when it becomes known that he has acquired a 49 percent stake of such-and-such a company,” he said in another sound bite.
The order to draw up a list of strategic industries came in mid-2005, after the country’s anti-monopoly authorities rejected Siemens’ bid for Power Machines, Russia’s largest turbine maker. 
By the end of 2006, all the key ministries and bodies except the FSB and the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service had signed off on the proposed bill, Ushakova said, adding that the compromise was reached at a meeting led by Sergei Naryshkin, the government’s chief of staff. 
Kommersant said Wednesday that the FSB had insisted on the list of 40 industries. Izvestia said all bids would be screened by the FSB before they went to the government committee. Both the government spokesman and Ushakova said they could not confirm that. 
The FSB declined comment.
Representatives of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council, or FIAC, a group of foreign investors working in Russia, welcomed the step.
Alexei Grigoryev, corporate relations director at Siemens in Russia, who co-chairs the FIAC working group on industry, construction and high tech, said the FIAC had submitted “very thorough” recommendations to the government in June 2005 but declined to say whether the authorities had heeded them. “We are in a constant dialogue,” he said of his group’s relations with the Industry and Energy Ministry.
Konstantin Batunin, an oil and gas analyst at Alfa Bank, welcomed the potential clarity offered by the bill. “It would be more difficult to break them or make up new rules depending on the current political situation,” he said. 
Blanka Kalinova, a senior economist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said the restrictions on foreign investment could not be considered a positive sign.
“It’s never a welcome development in the international scene,” she said by telephone from Paris.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Meat Sums</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — One of Russia’s largest distributors of meat, Meatland Group, increased revenue by 18 percent last year up to 6 billion rubles ($228 million), according to Russian accounting standards, Interfax reported Thursday.
EBITDA increased by 97 percent up to 482 million rubles ($18.2 million). According to Meatland data, the company holds an 18 percent share of the meat market in St. Petersburg and four percent in Moscow.

<b>Filling Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — PTK (Petersburg Fuel Company) invested $30 million into the development of new filling stations last year, almost twice as much as in the previous year, the company said Thursday in a statement.
PTK opened six filling stations in St. Petersburg, four in Murmanskaya Oblast and acquired a chain of 17 filling stations in Novgorodskaya Oblast. This year PTK plans to open 10 to 14 new petrol stations.

<b>Tender Terminal</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Pulkovo airport will announce an international architectural tender for its new terminal by mid-February, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Architects must present plans for the Pulkovo-3 terminal and development of the surrounding territory by May. The winner will be announced in June.

<b>Eastern Assets</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Eastern-European Financial Corporation increased assets by 2.6 times in 2006 up to 50.3 billion rubles ($1.9 billion), Interfax reported Wednesday.
The debt of the corporation’s banks increased 75.6 percent up to 33.6 billion rubles ($1.267 billion). The banks’ capital increased 2.1 times up to 5.3 billion rubles ($199 million), while net profit increased three times up to 923 million rubles ($34.9 million). Clients’ accounts increased three times up to 38.96 billion rubles ($1.5 billion).

<b>Property Funds</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Leningrad Oblast Property Fund reported revenue of 188 million rubles ($7 million) in 2006, Interfax reported Thursday.
The Fund held 17 auctions for land plots and 15 auctions for real estate and shares. The Fund sold 53 hectares of land, earning around 132 million rubles ($5 million). Sales of shares accounted for 24 million rubles ($906,000), while real estate sales accounted for 32 million rubles ($1.2 million).

<b>Lenergo Profits</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Lenenergo reported net profit of 390 million rubles ($14.7 million) in 2006, according to Russian accounting standards, Interfax reported Thursday. In 2005 Lenenergo reported a net loss of 493 million rubles ($18.6 million).
Revenue was reported at 10.6 billion rubles ($400 million). Capitalization increased from 636.2 million rubles ($24 million) to 30.5 billion rubles ($1.15 billion).

<b>Baltic Growth</b>
TALLINN (Bloomberg) — AS Hansapank, the biggest lender in the Baltic states, said economic growth in the region will range from 6.5 percent in Lithuania this year to 9 percent in Estonia and Latvia, driven by strengthening purchasing power.

<b>Aeroflot Subsidiary</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Aeroflot, eastern Europe’s largest airline, approved creating a Far Eastern subsidiary to help it get a larger domestic market share and foster consolidation of the industry.
State-controlled Aeroflot’s board yesterday approved the plan under which the airline will take over a number of government-owned carriers operating in Russia’s Far East, Kirill Budayev, deputy chief executive officer for strategic and corporate development, told reporters Thursday.

<b>Retail Lead</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Deutsche Bank, which managed more than $2 billion in Russian stock offerings last year, predicts retail, consumer and finance companies will lead record stock offerings in the country this year.
About 30 Russian companies may raise $20 billion this year from IPOs, said Ilya Sherbovich, head of investment banking at Deutsche Bank’s Moscow unit.

TITLE: Prokhorov, Potanin to Split Interros Assets
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mikhail Prokhorov will resign as chief executive of Norilsk Nickel and divide his assets in holding company Interros with longtime business partner and Interros president Vladimir Potanin, Interros said Wednesday.
Prokhorov, who should pocket $7.5 billion from his Norilsk shares alone, said he intended to create an electricity holding that would be part of Interros. 
Potanin will buy out Prokhorov’s blocking stake in Norilsk and other assets within Interros to ensure “a new level of freedom in carrying out executive decisions,” Interros said in a statement. The two billionaires founded Interros in 1990.
It was not clear who would replace Prokhorov at Norilsk, but Potanin would be the de facto head with a stake of around 55 percent. The statement said Potanin had been nominated to the company’s board of directors. 
Norilsk shares barely reacted to the news, inching up 1.85 percent to close at $165.50 on the RTS. 
Prokhorov said he “seriously” intended to apply himself to the business of traditional and alternative electricity production. 
For his shares in Norilsk, Prokhorov will get at least $7.5 billion to help get his new venture started, said Vladimir Zhukov, metals and mining analyst at Alfa Bank. 
Unified Energy Systems is putting stakes in 18 power-generating companies on the auction block over the next three years. Prokhorov would be able to invest in 14 of the so-called OGKs and TGKs, whose combined market value is around $42.5 billion, said Dmitry Terekhov, electricity analyst at Antanta Capital. This means Prokhorov would be able to snap up at least 18 percent of Russia’s generating capacity.
Alternative energy assets will also be high on Prokhorov’s shopping list, analysts said. A 35 percent stake in a U.S.-based producer of electric fuel cells, Plug Power Inc., will go to Prokhorov as part of the split, as will Smart Hydrogen, a joint alternative-energy venture between Norilsk and Interros.
Prokhorov said he believed “that hydrogen technologies will allow Russia to establish an innovative economy.”
As for Norilsk Nickel, Zhukov said it hardly mattered who would take the helm. “After Prokhorov, you can think of Norilsk as a train that has been put on rails. It doesn’t matter that much … who is running the train. … The company is set.”
Under Potanin, Norilsk is likely to start making acquisitions abroad, Zhukov said. Prokhorov presided over the consolidation of Norilsk’s gold assets into Polyus Gold, which was spun off in 2006. With a market capitalization of more than $9 billion, it is the largest gold producer in Russia and widely viewed to be Prokhorov’s greatest success in finance and management. Interros will maintain control of the company under Potanin.
Earlier this month, Prokhorov was at the center of an international scandal when French police detained him at a lavish alpine getaway during an investigation into a high-class prostitution ring. He was released after four days of questioning, and no charges were filed.
But Wednesday’s news left some wondering whether the affair had prompted Prokhorov’s split with Potanin. “The move is meant to distance that whole French issue from Interros, which is very concerned with protecting its image in the West,” said Terekhov of Antanta Capital. 
But Sergei Donskoi, analyst at Troika Dialog, said the incident was “one factor among several, but not the main factor that led to the divorce.”

TITLE: Gas Find  Threatens Kovykta
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A little-known company has registered a natural gas field in east Siberia that could threaten TNK-BP’s neighboring Kovykta flagship project, which already faces accusations of environmental damage and failure to fulfill production licenses.
The company, Petromir, estimates that the Angaro-Lunskoye field holds 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Ministry’s subsoil use agency said Wednesday. Proven reserves stand at just 1.5 billion cubic meters, the subsoil agency said in a statement.
If the estimated reserves were confirmed, the find would prove to be one of the largest since the Soviet era.
The field’s borders are located just 100 kilometers from the Kovykta project run by TNK-BP, also in the Irkutsk region.
State-run Gazprom is in negotiations to take a stake in Kovykta, and analysts said it would likely seek ownership of the Angaro-Lunskoye field if the size of the find were to be confirmed.
Petromir is a private Moscow-registered company in which Stroitransgaz — a construction unit in which Gazprom owns a 25 percent stake — holds a minority share, Interfax reported earlier this week. The company does not list its number publicly or maintain a web site.
Petromir has held an exploration license for the Angaro-Lenskoye area since 2000, the subsoil agency spokeswoman said. 
Petromir is also the name of a St. Petersburg holding with interests in casinos and hotels headed by one Mikhail Mirilashvili, who in 2001 was jailed for 12 years on kidnapping charges. 
The Kovykta field, run by TNK-BP subsidiary Rusia Petroleum, is estimated to hold reserves of 1.9 trillion cubic meters. A 1992 license agreement obliges the company to produce 9 billion cubic meters of gas per year, but it has been producing just 2.5 bcm per year to supply local markets since Gazprom has blocked the construction of a pipeline to larger markets in China.
“It will be important to see which of the two fields will be developed first — there is not enough demand out there for that much gas,” said Alexander Burgansky, oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital.
TNK-BP has said it hopes to reach a deal with Gazprom on entry into Kovykta within six months, which analysts say could ease pressure on the project, and clear the way for pipeline construction to begin. 
Petromir only holds an exploration license for Angaro-Lenskoye, and an auction for a production license will be organized, the agency spokeswoman said. She declined to provide a timeline, saying only that it would “not happen soon.”
The company holds exploration and production licenses for two other blocks in the region — Levoberezhnoye and Pravoberezhnoye.

TITLE: The Only Nuclear Option
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Gorbachev
TEXT: A comment titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” published in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 4, was signed by a bipartisan group of four influential Americans — George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn — not known for utopian thinking, and having special experience in shaping the policies of previous U.S. presidential administrations. It raises an issue of crucial importance for world affairs: the need for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
As someone who signed the first treaties on real reductions in nuclear weapons, I feel it is my duty to support their call for urgent action.
The road to this goal began in November 1985, when Ronald Reagan and I met in Geneva. We declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” This came at a time when many people in the military and among the political establishment regarded a war involving weapons of mass destruction as conceivable — even acceptable — and were developing various scenarios of nuclear escalation.
It took political will to transcend the old thinking and attain a new vision. For if a nuclear war is inconceivable, then military doctrines, armed forces development plans and negotiating positions at arms-control talks must change accordingly. This began to happen, particularly after Reagan and I agreed in Reykjavik in October 1986 on the need ultimately to eliminate nuclear weapons. Concurrently, major positive changes were occurring in world affairs: A number of international conflicts were defused and democratic processes in many parts of the world gained momentum, leading to the end of the Cold War.
As U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations got off the ground, a breakthrough was achieved — the treaty on the elimination of medium- and shorter-range missiles, followed by agreement on 50 percent reduction in strategic offensive weapons. If the negotiations had continued in the same vein and at the same pace, the world would have been rid of the greater part of these arsenals of deadly weapons. But this did not happen, and hopes for a new, more democratic world order were not fulfilled. In fact, we have seen a failure of political leadership, which proved incapable of seizing the opportunities opened by the end of the Cold War. This glaring failure has allowed nuclear weapons and their proliferation to pose a continuing, growing threat to mankind.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has been abrogated; the requirements for effective verification and irreversibility of nuclear arms reductions have been weakened; the treaty on comprehensive cessation of nuclear weapons tests has not been ratified by all nuclear powers. The goal of the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons has been essentially forgotten. What is more, the military doctrines of major powers, first the United States and then, to some extent, Russia, have re-emphasized nuclear weapons as an acceptable means of fighting a war, to be used in a first or even in a “pre-emptive” strike.
All this is a blatant violation of the nuclear powers’ commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its Article V is clear and unambiguous: Nations that are capable of making nuclear weapons shall forgo that possibility in exchange for the promise by the members of the nuclear club to reduce and eventually abolish their nuclear arsenals. If this reciprocity is not observed, then the entire structure of the treaty will collapse.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty is already under considerable stress. The emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear weapon states, the North Korean nuclear program and the issue of Iran are just the harbingers of even more dangerous problems that we will have to face unless we overcome the present situation. A new threat, nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, is a challenge to our ability to work together internationally and to our technological ingenuity. But we should not delude ourselves: In the final analysis, this problem can only be solved through the abolition of nuclear weapons. So long as they continue to exist, the danger will be with us, like the famous “rifle on the wall” that will be fired sooner or later.
Last November, the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting in Rome, issued a special statement on this issue. The late Nobel laureate and world-renowned scientist, Joseph Rotblat, initiated a global awareness campaign on the nuclear danger in which I participated. Ted Turner’s Nuclear Threat Initiative provides important support for specific measures to reduce weapons of mass destruction. We are all united by a common understanding of the need to save the Non-Proliferation Treaty and of the primary responsibility of the members of the nuclear club.
We must put the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons back on the agenda, not in a distant future but as soon as possible. It links the moral imperative — the rejection of such weapons from an ethical standpoint — with the imperative of assuring security. It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.
The irony — and a reproach to the current generation of world leaders — is that two decades after the end of the Cold War the world is still burdened with vast arsenals of nuclear weapons of which even a fraction would be enough to destroy civilization. As in the 1980s, we face the problem of political will — the responsibility of the leaders of major powers for bridging the gap between the rhetoric of peace and security and the real threat looming over the world. While agreeing with the Jan. 4 comment piece in the Wall Street Journal that the United States should take the initiative and play an active role on this issue, I believe there is also a need for major efforts on the part of Russian and European leaders and for a responsible position and full involvement of all states that have nuclear weapons.
I am calling for a dialogue to be launched within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, involving both nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states, to cover the full range of issues related to the elimination of those weapons. The goal is to develop a common concept for moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
The key to success is reciprocity of obligations and actions. The members of the nuclear club should formally reiterate their commitment to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons. As a token of their serious intent, they should without delay take two crucial steps: ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty and make changes in their military doctrines, removing nuclear weapons from the Cold War-era high alert status. At the same time, the states that have nuclear-power programs would pledge to terminate all elements of those programs that could have military use.
The participants in the dialogue should report its progress and the results achieved to the United Nations Security Council, which must be given a key role in coordinating this process.
Over the past 15 years, the goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor. It will be a challenge to the current generation of leaders, a test of their maturity and ability to act that they must not fail. It is our duty to help them to meet this challenge.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (the Gorbachev Foundation) and Green Cross International. This comment was published in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: All Alone With the Iraq Dilemma
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: For the people of the United States, Jan. 27 became a day of protest against the war in Iraq. Media commentators compared the anti-war demonstrations in Washington with earlier rallies against the Vietnam War. And with veterans of those 1960s and 1970s demonstrations on hand, the sense of deja vu was heightened. Another parallel with the 1960s was the presence of a youth group called Students for a Democratic Society. During the Vietnam War, a group of the same name was a leading force in the pacifist movement.
But obvious parallels between events in Vietnam and Iraq should not obscure their just-as-significant differences.
First of all, the Vietnam War was imposed upon the United States by the Democratic Party, but it was the Republican Party that ultimately pulled out of the war. And although the conservative Republicans were generally more inclined to solve problems by use of force, internal crises in President Richard Nixon’s administration coupled with increasing problems related to the Vietnam War forced a retreat. The Republicans could not fight a war on both the Asian and domestic fronts. The decision to get out of Vietnam while pursuing detente with the Soviet Union enabled Republicans to consolidate their position at home (although the fallout from Watergate doomed them in the next presidential election).
This time, the U.S. public is demanding that the Democrats stop a war started by the Republicans. This has never happened before: Contrary to common belief, most wars in U.S. history have been initiated by Democratic administrations. Modern Democrats are known for their indecisiveness, which makes it difficult for them to enact radical changes mid-course. Furthermore, no such alternative direction is available to them at present. The decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq will require greater resolution and courage than the choice to start the war. Machiavelli wrote that wars are usually launched by choice, but their end is often the result of external circumstances. To acknowledge a shameful defeat is harder than deciding to attack a small country.
The main problem the United States faces today is, strangely enough, putting an end to the Cold War. By pulling out of Vietnam in the mid-1970s, the United States turned the region over to its geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union. As difficult as this may have been to stomach, at least the United States had a fairly predictable enemy in the Soviet Union and points of conflict could be worked out through negotiation. It was natural for the two countries to pursue detente, given U.S. problems in Asia and the Soviet Union’s slipping influence in the Middle East. The collapse of the Portuguese Empire complicated matters by bringing new instability in Africa, but even here the two superpowers were motivated by a desire to keep the situation under control. In short, it was the beginning of an era of diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Now there is not a single geopolitical rival or partner to which the United States can turn to help settle these international problems. Today, a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is likely to generate chaos, unpredictability and a power vacuum in the region. Accepting such a state of affairs is much more difficult than it would be to hand control of the territory to another superpower.
A U.S. decision to pull out will be dramatic for the people of Iraq as well. But sooner or later such a decision will have to be made. When the U.S. forces leave Baghdad, they will leave behind a catastrophe. Unfortunately, the catastrophe will be even greater if they stay too long.

Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: The collector
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “We have the feeling that we have made history,” Alexander Borovsky emphatically said at the opening of a spectacular show at the Marble Palace of the State Russian Museum last Thursday. 
This feast of Russian contemporary art celebrates the fifteen year anniversary of the prominent Moscow gallery run by collector Marat Guelman, and stands testament to its beneficial collaboration with the Contemporary Art Department of the Russian Museum, which Borovsky heads. 
A series of exhibitions during the last decade organized by the ambitious art collector from Moscow and the brilliant art theorist from St. Petersburg culminated with Guelman’s endowment to the museum in 2001, the first of such size and quality in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
Now one of the oldest and most talked-about galleries in Russia, dozens of festivals and exhibitions, publications, influential cultural Internet sites and the most significant artists of the 90s bear Guelman’s stamp.
Thanks to his notoriety, much contemporary art in Russia is attributed to Guelman’s influence — even when he is not involved. In some ways, Guelman is like a Russian Charles Saatchi, the influential British modern art patron, as far as his significance in the formation of the art scene of the 90s goes. 
As a newsmaker as well as a gallery owner, Guelman puts contemporary art in the public eye, makes it the object of investment and the subject of discussion. His critics — there are a lot of them — are not always motivated by dissent against his artistic taste, but by envy of the man himself. Guelman often gambles on emerging artists, and works extensively in the Russian regions, employing and promoting art in, be it Siberia (from where Blue Noses, Guelman’s latest successful group come), the south of Russia or Kaliningrad. Naturally, controversy regularly accompanies his shows, and sometimes the public knows more about the scandals than the art. Now, the owner of the most representative collection of Russian contemporary art is occupying rooms in the Russian Museum.
A feature of Guelman’s taste is its social sharpness. During the early 1990s, art had a strong political component that was imposed on it by the huge interest of the West in material that dealt with the shedding of the Soviet legacy. As the political climate in Russia changed, Guelman’s stance changed to what he called an “aesthetic participation in life.” 
“Guelman works with the material of hope, the normalization of social existence and the alleviation of sorrows,” Borovsky wrote in the catalog that accompanies Guelman’s show at the Russian Museum. “Such social illusions as … normal collaborations with or positive opposition to the state, the softening of political mores, and raising the cultural profile of the provinces all acquire the status of the possible within the bounds of Guelman’s single project.”
The exhibition is divided by form. While the second floor displays works influenced by Guelman’s endowment to the museum,  including such internationally recognized gems as AES+F’s “Islamic Project,” the third floor is packed with cutting-edge stuff from the collector’s current collection. 
There are photographs of Oleg Kulik’s Man-Dog performances, Alexander Vinogradov & Vladimir Dubossarsky capitalist-realist paintings, works by the fantastic Georgy Ostretsov, the high-tech Aristarkh Chernishov, the poetic Valery Koshlyakov and many other international names and  artistic strategies. Avdei Ter-Oganian deals with official anti-terrorist rhetoric, while the Blue Noses group’s “Kitchen Suprematism” wittily overturns the pathos of Malevich. 
“This is, perhaps, the most simple exhibition I ever organized as the idea was just simply to demonstrate the artists I have been working with during the 15 years,” Guelman said at the opening of the show. 
However, its precisely formulated title, “Thaw,” gives it keen historical perspective. The title emerged thanks to Dmitry Gutov’s bewitching work of the same-name, which features a video of a man (the artist himself) trying to walk along a slushy rural road in April, next to an illuminated reproduction of Fyodor Vasilyev’s “Thaw” (1871), a painting known to every Russian. 
The voice of a bass singer enunciating Shostakovich music and mundane verse cements the piece perfectly, and contains an intriguing series of conversations between nature, culture and history. 
There is reference to the political and social climate in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s regime — the period known as Khrushchev’s “thaw.” Muddy rural roads were also one of the favorite motifs of the Peredvigniki movement (“The Wanderers”), which signaled an aesthetic and social nonconformism during the political thaw of the reign of Tsar Alexander II in the mid-19th Century. 
According to Guelman, we are now witnessing light morning frost after the thaw of the 1990s. This landmark-show embodies much nostalgia for that turbulent decade as well as giving insight into the self-satisfied, glamorous and cynical first years of the 21st century.

“Thaw” runs through Feb. 21 at the Marble Palace of the Russian Museum. Www.rusmuseum.ru, www.guelman.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: <b>Jason Webley</b>, a singer / songwriter / accordion player from Seattle, is returning to St. Petersburg after a two-year absence. Webley, who last performed in the city in May 2005, is on his annual European tour.
“I have been touring a lot, I have been recording some new projects, and musical collaborations with friends,” wrote Webley in a recent email from the Czech Republic about his activities in the past two years.
“Two of them are finished and I am working on two more right now.  (At the moment I am staying in the windmill of my Czech accordion-player friend Jana Vebrova who I am doing a small project with.) One good thing has been my relationship with a group from Boston called the Dresden Dolls. I went to Australia with them last fall and played for thousands of people.  It was really a good trip.”
Webley’s most recent recordings include two collaboration singles.
“They are all different musical friends.  The first, Jay Thompson, is a poet friend from Seattle.  The second, Andru Bemis, is a folk singer from Michigan.  The next one I just finished recording with the Reverend Peyton, a Delta blues player from Indiana.  Now I am working with a Czech accordionist, Jana Vebrova and next will be Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls.  Working with different people helps me to relax the way I work and to try and explore different things than I normally would.”
Webley is likely to perform some new songs in his upcoming concert. Webley’s current tour has been a bit strange so far, he said.
“At the beginning of this trip, I found a loaded gun in my luggage.  Really!  And then the next day my laptop got stolen in the subway.  The thieves are really clever.  Someone was pulling at my jacket and while I was pulling it back, someone else opened my bag on the other side and stole the laptop.”
Speaking about his concert, however, Webley was vague.
“I don’t know.  I know you won’t see a laptop.  Maybe there will be a gun.”
Webley will perform at a bar called XXXXII, located at 34 3-ya Sovetskaya, at 11 p.m. on Saturday. Tables can be reserved by calling 715-2407.
While Webley, who is a frequent visitor to Russia, has translated “Gena the Crocodile’s Song” from a popular Soviet cartoon “Cheburashka,” another Russian favorite, Barcelona-based dark-pop band <b>Brazzaville</b>, performs an English cover of “A Star Called Sun” by Viktor Tsoi, Kino’s late frontman and something of a rock martyr, to excited Russian fans.
The band’s frontman, David Brown, is now busy studying Russian. According to his blog, he can say things like “It’s wonderful to play for you tonight here in the Kremlin” and “Last night I dreamed that I was Alla Pulgachyova,” in Russian. Brazzaville will perform at Maina on Friday.
<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Is St. Petersburg ready?
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The debate about the importance of creating a Contemporary Art Museum in St. Petersburg, in progress since the “cultural capital” prepared to mark its 300th anniversary in 2003, was given a boost last month when Governor Valentina Matviyenko said she supports the idea. 
The governor, whose own artistic effort “Hedgehog under the Christmas Tree” was sold for $75,000 during a local charity auction in January, said “We have many talented artists, who, unfortunately, do not have the possibility to exhibit their works and sell them. They trade in the streets and sell their creations for peanuts.”
While the view might surprise many and provoke controversy regarding what artists can be considered “talented” and what work is good enough to be put in a museum, the message is clear: without the museum, “we are losing the whole layer of culture.”
But are there enough people ready to appreciate this layer? The art community says there are. 

Real People vs. Real Art
“The first occasion when contemporary art reached the general public was during the first Moscow biennale [in 2004], when the entire city was turned into a massive exhibition of today’s art, said Natalia Milovzorova of the Marat Guelman Gallery, one of the leading Moscow art galleries. 
“There were a lot of extremely negative reactions. People were really shocked,” Milovzorova, who is also an editor of a website about contemporary art, told the St. Petersburg Times. 
But, she said, the establishment of a large exhibition venue is positive. 
“The museum is like a window to people. When a person comes to a museum the environment itself helps. It makes people much more ready to apprehend the art.”
Contemporary art may not have mass appeal but Milovzorova said there is a growing audience in Russia.
“Contemporary art represents a certain critical assessment of reality. To try and understand it is a spiritual experience, very difficult at times, especially to us [Russians] as we haven’t had these traditions for more then 70 years,” she said.
Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya, a St. Petersburg-based artist, who is also known as Glyuklya among the art community, said art can be used to improve people’s lives.

Museum as a New Church?
Pershina-Yakimanskaya said that the church is largely forgotten and it’s the museum that can serve peoples’ spiritual needs.
“I think the most important idea here is that contemporary art can serve people as a source that helps to overcome their problems. And to be able to help is one of the main functions of the progressive part of today’s art,” she said. 
Natalia Yershova, the art director of St. Petersburg’s Anna Nova gallery, agreed the Contemporary Art Museum is needed but she cautioned that “You can’t say that [Russia’s] general public is entirely ready for contemporary art.” 
“It’s only been a few years since they started to appreciate something other than, roughly speaking, Shishkin’s ‘Morning in a Pine Forest’,” Yershova added, referring to a popular 19th Century landscape. 
“No matter how many people are already prepared for contemporary art, the sooner the museum opens its doors the more people will be ready as it will educate them by its existence,” she said.
“Contemporary art is different from the classical art in that it is a democratic and an absolutely open system, available for every interpretation,” she said.

TITLE: The British are coming
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A young and aspiring English musician studying orchestral conducting with St. Petersburg’s Philharmonic Society aims to bring English classical music to the city with a new festival this year.
The driving force behind the project is Rudi Eastwood, a London-born pianist-turned-conductor and graduate of U.K.’s prestigious  Royal Academy of Music, who feels that British classical music remains a missing link in the repertoires of many Russian orchestras.
The Festival of British Music, tentatively scheduled for November, is set to showcase “the sheer wealth and diversity of British music,” as Eastwood puts it. The program features music by British composers from the 17th century to contemporary works. Perhaps the youngest name on the playbill will be Eastwood’s brother, composer Michael Eastwood, who has been commissioned a work.
The two week-long event will feature seven performances, including two orchestra concerts, three chamber recitals and a theatrical show. 
“We are also looking into the possibility of inviting a prominent British Ballet company, the Royal Northern Ballet, to give a performance of David Nixon’s ‘The Three Musketeers’ set to the music of Malcolm Arnold,” Eastwood said. 
Before coming to Russia, Eastwood studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London. During this time he performed as soloist and chamber musician at Wigmore Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields church and in various music festivals throughout Europe. But his professional interests shifted after an unfortunate injury.
“I turned to conducting after suffering an injury to my arm, which meant that I could no longer put in the hours of practice required for a concert pianist,” Eastwood recalls. “After the injury, I founded the Karelian Sinfonia, an orchestra comprised of students from the top music colleges in London.”
In 2006, Eastwood’s conducting studies brought him to St. Petersburg. The musician’s teachers at the respected Philharmonic Society include Pyotr Gribanov and Georgy Yerzhemsky. 
The Russian musicians have been very receptive to the idea of the festival, he said. 
“They would be very keen to participate and play this new music,” Eastwood added. 
For example, the State Academic Orchestra that resides at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, has expressed a keen interest in performing [18th century composer] William Boyce’s Symphony No.1, Edward Elgar’s Symphony No.1 and John Ireland’s Piano Concerto at the festival’s opening concert as well as performing other programs during the festival.
The festival aims to give center stage to up-and-coming British performing talent. The organizers have invited the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year, Tom Poster, to play Ireland’s concerto alongside the Russian orchestra with Eastwood conducting. 
The State Academic Cappella Symphony Orchestra has agreed to perform the festival’s final concert — at the Cappella’s home venue — in the program of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica for soprano solo, female chorus and orchestra, and a new work commissioned by the festival.
Williams wrote the original Sinfonia Antartica (“Antarctic Symphony”) as a film score for the movie “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948). The subject inspired the composer to work on the symphony, which incorporated much of the original material. The reworked symphony premiered in 1953 in Manchester with Sir John Barbirolli at the baton of the Halle Orchestra.
Eastwood’s idea is organize a screening of the film as part of the festival.
Some of the festival’s most exciting offerings are intended to be what Eastwood described as “theater productions with incidental music,” such as a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet directed by Elizabeth Bowe and performed by students from London’s Academy of the Science of Acting and Directing (ASAD). 
“The music will be played as interludes and melodramatically, accompanying voices as the music would do in a film,” Eastwood said.  “In the late 19th Century, this genre was very popular, but performances of this kind rarely take place today. Some examples include Grieg’s music to Peer Gynt and Mendelssohn’s music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 
Fundraising for the festival is in full swing, and the organizers — Eastwood along with the festival’s producer Edward Clark and manager Yelena Kostyushenko — have already collected funding for two orchestral concerts. This week, team members are contacting British companies based in St. Petersburg, for further financial support.
“We believe this project to be unique, as there has never been a British Festival of this kind or on this scale in St. Petersburg,” reads a letter prepared by the organizers. “Not only will the Festival provide a much needed concert platform for young British musicians at the outset of their professional careers, but it will also introduce a Russian audience to British culture. All in all, the Festival will exist to showcase the best of British music and we hope that it will eventually possess the capacity to attract music lovers from around the world.” 

For more information and contacts, please visit the festival’s website at www.britishmusicfest.co.uk

TITLE: Very scary movie
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Dead Daughters” (“Myortviye Docheri”), a new Russian horror film that tells the story of the ghosts of three little girls, has critics hailing its PR-savvy young director Pavel Ruminov as a Russian M. Night Shyamalan.
As in the films of the Hollywood-based, India-born director, “Dead Daughters” is a supernatural thriller in which the ghosts of the three girls, who were drowned by their mother years ago, come back to life in contemporary Moscow, first killing the mother, then any witnesses to the crime, then random people who do something wrong within the next three days. 
Early in the film the three girls come across a company of Moscow youngsters, all working in trendy areas such as PR for an oil company, design, advertising, and programming, and who lead careless lifestyles. Setting up the question of what is good or evil, the appearance of the vengeful ghosts in their lives leads to terrifying consequences. 
The moral criteria ranges from “Don’t betray anyone, kill anyone, rob anyone or listen to Russian radio” to printing out the Ten Commandments from the Internet. 
One character chooses to stay at home and do nothing (because “he who does nothing, does nothing bad”), while another actively provokes the ghosts by annoying and harassing strangers.  
Yet another tries to do good and to please everyone while another tries to investigate the case and find out the original reason for murders. 
Ruminov comes from a short-film art-house background, and the film is shot in sepia style, with the camera wandering across the windows of high-rise blocks or watching cars from above. 
Ruminov wisely places scenes of everyday life into the most terrifying suspense scenes. As in many recent Russian films, the camerawork is edgy. 
With slick promotion, including an English language site (http://theddmovie.com/), “Dead Daughters,” although promoted as a “low-budget” flick, has clear international ambitions with talk already of a U.S. remake. 
But one feature of “Dead Daughters” that appeals to Russian audiences is its engagement with eternal “accursed” questions, Dostoevsky-style, such as “What is good? What is bad? How do I live?” The film hardly provides the answers but offers some scary thrills along the way.

TITLE: Larger than life
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Gypsy punk revolution that has already won over the United States and Europe, has made it to Russia at last, if only so far as Moscow. Gogol Bordello, New York’s celebrated underground band which mixes punk rock, Gypsy folk music and cabaret, received rave reviews from the Russian press and bloggers after it made its crazy stage debut in the Russian capital last Sunday.
Formed by charismatic Ukraine-born singer Eugene Hutz in 1999, Gogol Bordello got a boost in 2005 when it released its hugely acclaimed fourth album, “Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike,” and Hutz co-starred opposite Elijah Wood in the film “Everything Is Illuminated.”
Usually, bands formed by ex-Soviet citizens in the United States have a problem finding audiences outside immigrant circles. But Gogol Bordello proved an exception thanks to its mad Gypsy-punk music, the wild energy of its live shows, its cosmopolitan attitude and extensive touring. Now, the multicultural, multilingual collective — which features Ukrainians, Americans, Russians and an Israeli — is reaching out to international audiences.
Speaking by telephone from New York, Hutz (born Yevgeny Nikolayev) said that from the start, he had never really targeted the Russian audience.
“I lived in the Puerto Rican neighborhood, you know, and so my whole context was totally different,” the 34-year-old singer said. “I didn’t really have that much of a Russian connection. So my angle was completely different. I just wanted to play my music that was based on my roots. I wanted to find a very new, aggressive angle for it. Something that makes everybody understand it. Not like Eastern European music for Eastern Europeans. I wanted to make an explosive, fantastic mixture of these things.”
The band — which sings in English, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Romany (the language of the Roma, or Gypsies) — first broke into English-speaking and Spanish-speaking audiences before reaching Italy and Scandinavia. Russian audiences came last, Hutz said.
“I don’t know why the Russian audience … happened to be basically almost the latest, the last one to come in to the table. I think they were just too busy listening to Leningrad [the highly popular ska-punk band from St. Petersburg] or something like that.”
Despite the popularity of Gogol Bordello among New York bohemians — the band got rave reviews in the likes of the Village Voice — Hutz reckons it was the British press that set the ball rolling internationally, ultimately bringing them to the attention of Russian promoters.
“I think it has something to do with the British press that sent an international impact, perhaps two years ago, because the truth is that most people in the world copy the British press,” he said. 
It’s not surprising because the British have a very strong music culture and know something interesting when they see it. Even such bands as Captain Beefheart, seen as underground stalwarts, made the charts in Britain. Gogol Bordello follows the same route in a way. From underground stalwarts into the mainstream through the British press.”
Hutz, who sports a thick mustache and flamboyant clothes, is known for his frenetic stage presence. When asked about it, however, he said he simply does what comes naturally.
“I don’t go on stage and think, ‘I gonna play somebody.’ It’s me, man,” he said. “It just gets louder. Just the music is louder. So I get louder. But it’s basically the same person. It’s just ridiculous for me to watch musicians who have a stage image and, like … not a stage image. It’s not really my school of thought.”
Although often compared to Leningrad, perhaps because of that band’s wild stage antics and explicit lyrics, Hutz claims that the two bands have little in common. “I don’t really know how similar it is, I think it’s not similar at all,” he said. “It’s fucking ska, isn’t it? We don’t even have one goddamn ska song!”
Still, three songs by Leningrad found themselves alongside Gogol Bordello’s own “Start Wearing Purple” on the soundtrack of “Everything Is Illuminated.” 
The film, based on the best-selling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, tells the story of an American (Wood) searching for his Jewish roots in present-day Ukraine. Hutz plays his fast-talking, eccentric Ukrainian guide. 
He was initially approached by director Live Schreiber about composing music for the film. Instead, he ended up co-starring in it. Schreiber — an actor who was making his directing debut —  decided to cast Hutz after their very first conversation.
“We started talking about music and ended up talking about acting. Like within 15 minutes, basically,” Hutz recalled. 
The singer also played a large role in shaping the film’s soundtrack. “Live, the director, he always copied everything from me, all the music that I had. That’s why there’s Gypsy music in the film, that’s why there’s Leningrad,” Hutz said.
In the late 1980s, Hutz was active in Kiev’s burgeoning perestroika rock scene, playing with his band Uksusnik and contributing to the samizdat music magazine Guchnomovets. His father was a musician who played in one of Ukraine’s earliest rock bands in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It was through his record collection that Hutz became acquainted with Western rockers, such as the Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. Later, he started listening to The Clash and Devo. He also admits being influenced by Soviet bands like St. Petersburg’s Nol and Stranniye Igry, and Kiev’s own folk-punk band Vopli Vidoplyasova, or VV.
“Those bands were inspired and they were inspiring,” Hutz said. “They were a big influence on me. … You’ve got to be an idiot not to like these bands. They’re fucking great!”
Much earlier, however, Hutz had fallen in love with Gypsy music and the traditional music of the Hutsul people of the Carpathian Mountains, where his family had once lived. Hutz, who is one-quarter Roma, described it as very different from Ukrainian folk music —  “very extreme and fucking wild,” he said.
“All the kids that I grew up with, they were always thinking I was kind of weird, because they didn’t think it was cool at all,” he recalled.
After his parents qualified as political refugees in 1990, Hutz emigrated, traveling through Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy (“Italy is the best”) before arriving in the United States in 1992. Once there, he played music while taking odd jobs to make a living. His early U.S. bands, The Fags and Flying Fuck, featured ethnic Ukrainians and played what he calls “Eastern European ethno punk metal.”
Besides playing Gypsy-inspired music, Hutz works with the nonprofit organization Voice of Roma, which supports Romany culture and struggles against discrimination.
“Basically, I’m doing what I’ve been doing for a long time,” he said. “I’ve been collecting Gypsy culture and music, [I’ve] been in touch with Gypsy writers all over the world. But after we played in America on [national] television, in like the Jimmy Kimmel show in Los Angeles, and I sang in Romany, in our language, and we had a crazy resonance with Romany from Canada and the States and Europe, I got so many e-mails!
“Believe it or not, but we were the first band who ever sang in Romany on national television! So it was a really big deal, actually, for the Romany community. In a certain respect, as unorthodox as I am — why on earth I was asked to represent it? And I am very proud to represent that.
“There’s much work to be done about that. Discrimination against Roma is very present, it’s a massive issue. It’s very big in Ukraine, it’s actually pretty devastating.”
Although Gogol Bordello is named after the 19th-century author Nikolai Gogol, Hutz said it was originally called Bulgakov Bordello, taking its name from the Kiev-born author of “The Master and Margarita.”
“It was much more really in the spirit of the band than Gogol, but I quickly found out that in the West they have a vague idea about who Gogol is and they don’t know Bulgakov, so I kind of had to go with another compatriot,” he said. “I just wanted a symbol of something that is Western European, but at the same time is not nationalistic — [something that is] very rooted in the culture, yet speaks in a cosmopolitan way. And Gogol is a perfect candidate for that. 
“Ethno avant-garde is the direction here. It’s also like, you know, film director [Sergei] Paradzhanov. It’s also like Bela Bartok in classical music. It’s just an accumulation and reinterpretation of original culture to the level of original artwork. It’s totally void of any actual quotes or playing traditional numbers, it’s not anything like that.”

<i>www.gogolbordello.com</i>

TITLE: Screen test
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The most expensive Russian film ever is to begin filming next week, with investors hoping to reap large rewards from the project.
Eduard Shifrin, the co-owner of Canadian company Midland Group, is to invest $7 million in the production “Inhabited Island,” the new film from director Fyodor Bondarchuk. The total cost for the two-part film, an adaptation of a science fiction novel by St. Petersburg authors the Strugatsky Brothers, will amount to $25 million, say its producers, making it the most expensive film project in Russian history. 
Bondarchuk, son of the eminent Soviet film director Sergei Bondarchuk, has recently scored two major film hits with his Afghan-war based “The Ninth Company,” in which he starred and directed and “Zhara,” a romantic comedy that he produced. 
Midland Group was founded in 1993 by Shifrin and Alex Schneider, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union. The bulk of the firm’s business is in the metals sector, although it also invests in real estate, shipping, electricity and agriculture. The group’s turnover in 2006 was $3 billion. 
“Inhabited Island” begins filming on Feb. 10, and, according to the general director of Art Pictures Studio which is making the film, $15 million will be spent on production costs while another $10 million will be spent on advertising and promotion. As well as the $7 million invested by Shifrin, other financing will come from loans and from the producers’ own financial resources. 
The film is “a project with a history, and to carry it out a group of professionals who are friends have come together,” said producer Alexander Rodnyansky.
Shifrin said that he had long been interested in the film industry but, until now, he has simply been waiting for the right project. 
“I asked [Rodnyansky] to recommend to me a good project and he recommended ‘Inhabited Island’,” said Shifrin. “The Rodnyansky-Bondarchuk team have an impressive record,” Shifrin said. “They’ve already made two commercially successfully films — ‘The Ninth Company’ and ‘Zhara.”
As well as investment, the filmmakers intend to receive credit from a Russian bank and the support of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography. According to Rodnyansky, the state could provide as much as $2 million ($1 million for each part of the two-film series). He said that several offers have already been made by Russian banks, including Expo-Bank, with which Art Pictures worked on “Zhara.” 
“At present, both private investors and Russian banks are approaching firms involved in successful commercial projects in cinema,” Rodnyansky said. The banks loan resources with the rights to the film used as guaranties at interest rates of 16 percent, he said. 
“We enjoy supporting a developing sector,” said Sergei Radchenkov, chairman of Expo-Bank. 
Although working with major businessman has long been standard practice in Russian filmmaking, working with banks is something of a novelty. 
“This is an individual case and not evidence of a broad-based phenomenon,” said Leonid Vereshagin, general director of Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov’s Three T Productions studio. 
Vereshagin said that proposals had been made on the basis of the specific project and the involvement of the Bondarchuk-Rodnyansky team.
According to the St. Petersburg producer Sergei Selyanov, there are banks that are now ready to finance films that are backed by pre-sales agreements for television broadcasting or agreements on state support. He said, however, that such cases are a rarity. 
“As yet, there’s no way to use this instrument systematically because of the high cost of the loan and the low volume of the market,” Selyanov said. 
The high costs planned for the shooting and the promotion of the film have not put Rodnyansky off, however. He said that the film will be released in cinemas in two parts, significantly increasing its chances of making a profit. 
“Theoretically, it’s possible,” said Vereshagin. In addition, the film will be released in two years’ time — by then, the distribution market should have developed sufficiently to be able to cater for such a major Russian project, Vereshagin said.
The Russian cinema distribution market should amount to $650 million per year by 2008 and $800 million per year by 2009, Rodnyansky predicts. 
According to Film Business Today magazine, the annual cinema distribution market in Russia is worth $412 million. The value of rights to DVD distribution and television broadcasting are also due to increase, Rodnyansky predicted. 
(SPT, Vedomosti)

TITLE: A trip to Oxford
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Oxford
105 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel: 611 1101
Open from 11 a.m. until late
All major cards accepted
Dinner for two with beer 1,740 rubles ($65)
Oxford, a new café/bar/club on Nevsky Prospekt, doesn’t have much in common with the English university town after which it is named. It is not a traditional English pub in any sense, but it’s certainly worth a visit for a few drinks (only beer for now since the place doesn’t yet have an alcohol license). 
Rumor has it that Oxford was opened by a young Oxford graduate, but the links to the U.K. are sparing. There are photographss on the walls, depicting, allegedly, British gangsters in the first room and British landscapes in the second, with more to follow.
Despite these connections Oxford remains absolutely unpretentious. The staff don’t harass you with attention, neither do they treat you with a special arrogance or, on the other hand, subservience, which is often to be found in many newly opened (and posh) restaurants in St. Petersburg. 
The food is also simple and decent. There’s no fusion, no sushi, no nouvelle cuisine with traces of undecipherable food smeared around fancy plates. Once again, there’s nothing English about it and is a mixture of Italian, Mexican and French dishes. We tried Italian ham with melon as a starter for 180 rubles, $6.80, (although you may have to cut the inedible edges off the ham). We also had a spicy filling chilli soup with meat and beans (110 rubles, $4.10). 
The average price for a starter is between 100 and 200 rubles, and for the main course, between 200 and 300 rubles: affordable for St. Petersburg, although the portions are not very big.
For the main courses, we chose minced beefsteak (210 rubles, $7.90) and pork medallions (220 rubles, $8.30). A few items on the menu (like the promising lamb in red-wine and rosemary sauce or the salmon steak) were unfotunately unavailable. The minced beefsteak was home-made and fresh, while the pork medallions were excellent. The kind of dishes one makes at home, with fresh, simple ingredients, Oxford serves food you would make for a friend to eat in front of the TV. 
The English dishes suddenly pop up on the dessert menu, including a Mary and Rose pudding (baked slices of apple with chocolate and raspberry sauce with a bit of whipped cream in the middle, 200 rubles, $7.55) and a highly recommended apple pie (140 rubles, $5.30).
The place is still new, so there are no big crowds hanging around, though there were a few young studenty-looking people sitting at the bar. Later, Oxford promises live music, DJs, performances and more photographic exhibitions, so it’s certainly a place to check out. Even if you’ve never been to real Oxford, you won’t miss anything.

TITLE: A whole can of worms
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The blockbusters “Volkodav” and “Zhara” have finally left the screens after a month of dominating the multiplexes around the country to make room for a plethora of new Russian films in the next few weeks. 
Here’s the first big opening: “Konservi” (Canned Meat), a genie that perhaps should’ve been kept in one of those little golden cans abundantly spread all over the movie’s poster. 
The marketing team promoting “Konservi” went out of the way to sell these canned goods as a fresh delicacy when in fact the product is way past expiry date. The otherwise outrageously banal tagline “You never know what’s inside” in the context of this film becomes ironic: indeed it’s not what you expect, only not in a good way.
The trailer suggests that you’ll be treated to an action-packed thriller about two guys and a girl fighting for a massive amount of golden cans which promises “a mind-boggling intersection of detached fates interwoven by a series of unbelievable events and adventures.” The poster boasts three good-looking people with ready-to-rumble looks on their faces, one machinegun and a chopper. In reality there’s some unimaginative action, a far-fetched storyline and no choppers at all. 
Things kick off as they should in a movie of this kind. Successful journalist Davidov (Marat Basharov) finds information that can ruin a conspiracy to sell a few nukes to Al-Qaeda. It happens that the journalist’s best friend is the evil genius behind this deadly game, who also turns out to be madly in love with Davidov’s wife. Davidov comes to his friend seeking advice and is framed and jailed before he knows it. 
While this tragedy unravels, the good guys from the FSB find a witness who can throw some light on the conspiracy. The same evil genius, probably being short of connections in the criminal world and not able to hire a regular hitman, blackmails a Chechen war veteran Usoltsev (Alexei Serebryakov) into killing the threatening witness. The unfortunate killer ends up at the same prison as Davidov. Eventually they put two and two together and quickly become best buddies. 
However, there are complications. Before coming clean to his supposed friend, Davidov makes a copy of the information and hides it. The governor of the jail is given the dirty mission of breaking the journalist in order to discover the location of the copy. It should be added that the jail isn’t just a penitentiary institution but a gold mine where the prisoners pay their dues to society working in inhuman conditions to enrich the country’s reserve funds. There are even further complications when a group of prisoners emerges with an escape plan and Davidov and Usoltsev join them. 
Great premise, isn’t it? The whole story falls apart if you apply even a bit of logic to it — there are easier ways to make the guy talk than to drug him, kill a total stranger, throw the stranger in front of a vehicle and make it look like a murder so that a self-crowned prison king charges $30,000 dollars to get information thousands miles away. Those who come looking for some mindless action agree to ignore such misconnections in favor of explosive fun. Alas, the fun fails to be delivered. 
The plot outlined so far unravels at the start of the movie. Next comes a whole hour of Davidov’s misfortunes in jail: he prays, then he’s beaten by the inmates, then he prays again, then the inmates return — how that makes “Konservi” an action film is an open question. The source of the character’s troubles, the substance abusing prison king (Sergei Veksler) takes up a big chunk of screen time performing a purposeless escapade that has little value for the story. At a certain point, he pulls down his pants and starts jumping around the room chasing a cucumber in a glass container. This worthwhile show is followed by a prison break that at best resembles the cake fight in the 1930s classic comedy “Vesyoliye Rebyata.” Sergei Shakurov delivers a great performance as an imprisoned mafia boss but it doesn’t save the movie and you can’t stop wondering what an actor of his level is doing in a non-comedic film where the fugitives end up eating magic mushrooms at an acid party. 
The main event, as it usually happens, comes at the end. Apparently, the screenwriters used a medium to summon the spirit of Shakespeare and The Bard gave them the inspiration to resolve the conflict between Davidov and his counterpart in a genuinely dramatic fashion. Add to that a pathetic twist that comes in a closing scene and you’ll end up with a mixture of two of the last year’s truly awful movies: Adam Sandler’s “Click” and critically acclaimed “Flash.ka.” 
Unfortunately, “Konservi” isn’t like a box of chocolates: you know exactly what you’re gonna get, and it’s not sweet.

TITLE: French Smokers Divided Over Ban
AUTHOR: By Elaine Ganley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — A ban on smoking in public spaces came into effect Thursday, a change that may alter the image of a country defined in part by its smoky cafes and cigarette-puffing intellectuals.
France’s 15 million smokers will be banned from lighting up in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other “closed and covered” public places. More than 175,000 agents are to enforce the ban, handing out fines of $88 for smokers and $174 for employers who look the other way.
In a year, the ban will extend to cafes and restaurants — sure to be the moment of truth for a certain image of France, where writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre are remembered with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
“A world is collapsing,” writer Philippe Delerm wrote in a front-page ode to the cigarette in Le Monde newspaper, referring to the alluring image of the chain-smoking intellectual. “Those were good times. But nobody thought about the collateral damage.”
Statistics — like 66,000 smoker deaths per year in France — and changing norms are snuffing out the romance along with the cigarette. Italy, Spain, Belgium, Britain and Ireland are all ahead of France in enacting broad smoking bans.
Despite staggered anti-smoking initiatives over more than a decade, French smokers have, so far, held sway as officials turned a blind eye to rule-bending.
Nearly a quarter of French people are smokers. Yet a day before the “no smoking” signs go up, there was no sign of panic in the streets.
A scattered check of pharmacies suggested that, so far, smokers are calm, with no pre-ban rush for smokers’ aids like nicotine patches. However, two companies that make ventilated smoking rooms for offices say they are gearing up for a rush in orders.
Manuel Bussac, 25, who works in real estate and smokes 15 cigarettes a day, is angry because the ban leaves him with no choice.
“It’s the obligation that bothers me,” he said, sitting at a sidewalk cafe with a pack of Marlboros planted squarely on the table.
Bussac said he has done his workplace smoking on his office balcony, allowing him to carry on with business on the telephone. Starting Thursday, he will have to smoke in the street.
At five minutes per cigarette, “I think I’ll lose an hour of work,” he said.
But will the ban incite him to cut down or stop smoking?
“On the contrary, I’ll smoke more now,” he said.
Some people clearly need to have the choice made for them, and Bernard Geoffrey, a 29-year-old firefighter from the southwest city of Nimes, is among them.
“If you have to go outside to smoke, you smoke less,” Geoffrey said. “I’m going to stop in February, using my willpower. That’s all.”
For those lacking sufficient inner strength to break the habit, the government will help by reimbursing up to $65 per person per year for stop-smoking aids. 
The government will also allow companies to invest in strictly regulated special smoking rooms inside the workplace.

TITLE: Aliadiere Fires Young Gunners Into Final
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — French striker Jeremie Aliadiere fired Arsenal to a 3-1 extra-time victory over arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday and a place in next month’s League Cup final against Chelsea.
Arsenal, who drew 2-2 in last week’s semi-final, first leg, completed a 5-3 aggregate win after Aliadiere struck on the stroke of halftime in extra time and a Tomas Rosicky shot found its way in off Spurs defender Pascal Chimbonda.
Togo striker Emmanuel Adebayor looked to have won the north London derby for Arsenal with a 77th-minute strike, only for Egypt striker Mido to head Spurs an 85th-minute equaliser just five minutes after coming off the bench.
Arsenal will meet the Premier League champions for an all-London final at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on February 25.
“When Spurs came back to 1-1 of course we needed to be mentally strong,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said.
“We were wobbling a little bit for a few minutes, then in extra time it was all us,” he told Sky Sports.
“The experience of (substitute midfielder Cesc) Fabregas was the key, he gave us more security to keep the ball.”
The hosts, starting out with another largely second-string side for this competition, were rewarded for an attacking performance at the Emirates Stadium that kept Spurs under pressure for long periods.
Both sides squandered golden early chances, with Spurs striker Robbie Keane put clean through by a long ball but failing to beat the outrushing keeper Manuel Almunia.
Arsenal defender Kolo Toure fluffed an easy follow-up two minutes later after Spurs’ England keeper Paul Robinson could only parry a shot from busy 18-year-old Brazilian midfielder Denilson.
Despite the pressure, Spurs defended with real grit and might have snatched the lead when French midfielder Steed Malbranque rose to meet Hossam Ghaly’s cross from the right with a powerful header that flew just wide.

HIGH TEMPO
There was no let-up in the tempo after the re-start, with Arsenal dominating but teenage winger Theo Walcott failing to make the most of his pace and being replaced on 65 minutes by Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky.
Adebayor broke the deadlock in the 77th minute in the wake of a fine snap shot by Rosicky. Arsenal returned to the attack, Rosicky picked up possession and dinked the ball through for Adebayor to run in and steer past Robinson.
Spurs levelled when Denilson conceded a free kick, England midfielder Jermaine Jenas curled the ball over and Mido rose highest to send a glancing header past a stranded Almunia.
Mido nearly settled it minutes later with a shot from the edge of the area which just missed the left-hand post, but the tie soon headed into extra time.
Spurs had finished strongly but extra time was more balanced and swung Arsenal’s way in the 105th minute.
Spurs substitute defender Ricardo Rocha tried to clear with a diving header, the ball ran for Aliadiere and the Frenchman drilled a low shot past Robinson.
Arsenal finished the job when Rosicky’s turn and shot hit the woodwork and the luckless Chimbonda knocked the ball over the line as he tried to clear.
Victory sealed the hosts’ trip to Cardiff and extended an unbeaten record against Spurs in all competitions since 1999 to 17 games.

TITLE: Police Question Blair Again Over Funding
AUTHOR: By Adrian Croft and Katherine Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — British police have questioned British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a second time in an investigation into political party funding that has cast a shadow over his final months in office.
Blair was questioned as a witness at his Downing Street office last Friday, Blair’s spokesman said.
The expanding police investigation alarmed politicians in Blair’s Labor Party and risks further tainting the legacy of the party’s most successful leader who is due to step down later this year after a decade in office.
In December, he became the first serving British prime minister to be questioned by police in a criminal investigation.
Police are investigating whether the Labor Party and other parties promised lordships — state honors that come with seats in the unelected upper house of parliament — in return for loans.
“The prime minister has been interviewed briefly to clarify points emerging from the ongoing investigation,” a police statement said. “He was interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect, and cooperated fully.”
Blair’s meeting with the police last Friday, just before he left to join business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, was kept confidential until now at the request of police, Blair’s spokesman said.
Blair was not under caution during the interview, which lasted under an hour, the spokesman said. He declined to disclose any details of the meeting.
The police probe began in March, sparked by a complaint by the Scottish National Party (SNP).
“It’s another extraordinary development — we’re in uncharted political waters. It looks as though Blair’s house of cards is coming tumbling down,” SNP leader Alex Salmond said.
The Labor Party’s top fundraiser and a close Blair aide have been arrested in recent weeks on suspicion of obstructing justice, leading opposition politicians to draw parallels with Watergate, the scandal that forced former U.S. President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.
Police have questioned at least 90 people in the inquiry. All those interrogated have denied any wrongdoing.
Labor politicians said they did not expect the inquiry to force Blair from office sooner than planned. Most expect him to hand over power to his presumed successor, finance minister Gordon Brown, in July. That could change, however, if close allies are charged.
One Labor parliamentarian said the expanding probe was “completely horrifying.” “I can’t believe we’ve got to where we are,” said the politician, who declined to be named. “It’s causing enormous damage to the party.”
She said the Labor Party needed a clean-out: “Only a new leadership will actually remove us from this.”
Blair has been tarnished by growing disenchantment with his policies and with the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The police probe compounds his unpopularity.
“It’s not a cataclysmic thing. It’s a long, slow build-up and it just tars the government,” said David Denver, politics professor at Lancaster University.

TITLE: Wilkinson Back For Even Better ‘Part Two’
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BATH, England — Jonny Wilkinson feels his three-year injury nightmare has made him a better player and says he will return for “part two” of his England career with the same physicality that made him the world’s toughest flyhalf.
After landing the drop goal that won the 2003 World Cup Wilkinson missed England’s next 30 games with an extraordinary list of seemingly-unrelated injuries.
Now, after just 42 minutes of his latest comeback following 12 weeks out with a lacerated kidney, he has been included in the first team unveiled by new coach Brian Ashton, for Saturday’s Six Nations clash with Scotland at Twickenham.
Wilkinson has long displayed an almost superhuman resilience when discussing his ailments and subsequent short-lived comebacks and was remarkably upbeat again this week when asked about the long, painful road since that famous night in Sydney.
“It’s not so much the time, it’s more the distance you feel physically from it, seeing people putting themselves on the line every week,” he told reporters at England’s new training base.
“I just felt further away from it when I saw people doing what I really wanted to do.
“Now it’s just so exciting to come back. I was set to play in the A team and was excited about that, I’m not one to doubt myself, I’m not a brash individual, there was a bit of a surprise but if I didn’t believe I could do it there would be more surprise.”
For those unsure if the 27-year-old can rediscover the form that made him such an integral part of England’s all-conquering team under Clive Woodward, he had encouraging news.
“There is no reason why I shouldn’t have expected to be at my best. I’ve got the same two legs, the same hands and I’ve been working hard in training,” he said. 
“There will be no difference in terms of approach mentally or physically from 2003, no difference in terms of physicality. I am a different player, but hopefully for the right reasons.
“With age comes a slightly greater level of composure, I’ve also added a few new strings to the bow.
“The key for me is that every time I play I want to be better, I really don’t care about what people write about me. I’m trying to build ‘part two’ as a different person.”
Wilkinson will, however, have been buoyed by the words of Ashton, who said on Tuesday he also considered his number 10 to be a much better player than three years ago and that his selection was not risky, but logical.
Team mates Jason Robinson, back from retirement, and Andy Farrell, making his debut, also gave him a ringing endorsement.
“His work ethic and enthusiasm is infectious and it is nice to be on the field with him and seeing it with my own eyes,” said Farrell, who will look to form an instant partnership with Wilkinson from inside center.

TITLE: Chavez Gains Free Rein in Venezuela
AUTHOR: By Fabiola Sanchez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez was granted free rein Wednesday to accelerate changes in broad areas of society by presidential decree, a move critics said propels Venezuela toward dictatorship.
Convening in a downtown plaza in a session that resembled a political rally, lawmakers unanimously gave Chavez sweeping powers to legislate by decree and impose his radical vision of a more egalitarian socialist state.
“Long live the sovereign people! Long live President Hugo Chavez! Long live socialism!” said National Assembly President Cilia Flores as she proclaimed the “enabling law” approved by a show of hands. “Fatherland, socialism or death! We will prevail!”
The law gives Chavez, who is beginning a fresh six-year term, more power than he has ever had in eight years as president, and he plans to use it during the next 18 months to transform broad areas of public life, from the economy and the oil industry in particular, to “social matters” and the very structure of the state.
His critics call it a radical lurch toward authoritarianism by a leader with unchecked power — similar to how Fidel Castro monopolized leadership years ago in Cuba.
“If you have all the power, why do you need more power?” said Luis Gonzalez, a high school teacher who paused to watch in the plaza, calling it a “media show” intended to give legitimacy to a repugnant move. “We’re headed toward a dictatorship, disguised as a democracy.”
Hundreds of Chavez supporters wearing ruling-party red gathered in the plaza, waving signs reading “Socialism is democracy,” as lawmakers read out passages of the law giving the president special powers to transform 11 areas of Venezuelan law.
“The people of Venezuela, not just the National Assembly, are giving this enabling power to the president of the republic,” congresswoman Iris Varela told the crowd.
President Bush said Wednesday that he’s “concerned about the Venezuelan people.”
“I am concerned about the undermining of democratic institutions. And we’re working to help prevent that from happening,” Bush said in an interview with Fox News.
But in the square in Caracas, Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Rodriguez publicly ridiculed the idea that the law is an abuse of power, and argued democracy is flourishing.
“What kind of a dictatorship is this?” Rodriguez asked the crowd, saying the law “only serves to sow democracy and peace.”
“Dictatorship is what there used to be,” Rodriguez said. “We want to impose the dictatorship of a true democracy.”
Chavez, a former paratroop commander re-elected with 63 percent of the vote in December, has said he will decree nationalizations of Venezuela’s largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, slap new taxes on the rich, and impose greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries.
The law also allows Chavez to dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and “adapt” legislation to ensure “the equal distribution of wealth” as part of a new “social and economic model.”
Chavez plans to reorganize regional territories and carry out reforms aimed at bringing “power to the people” through thousands of newly formed Communal Councils designed to give Venezuelans a say on spending an increasing flow of state money on projects in their neighborhoods, from public housing to potholes.
Venezuelan historian Ines Quintero said that with the new powers, Chavez will achieve a level of “hegemony” that is unprecedented in the nation’s nearly five decades of democratic history.
Opposition leader Julio Borges called for the 4 million Venezuelans who voted against Chavez not to be left out of decision-making, particularly as he pushes for constitutional changes including scrapping the term limits that would end his presidency in 2013.
“The worst we Venezuelans can do is throw in the towel and become like an ostrich [burying our heads in the sand] and giving up the fight,” Borges told the Venezuelan radio station Union Radio.
Chavez has requested special powers twice before, but for more modest legislative changes.

TITLE: Man U Keeps Momentum
AUTHOR: By Mark Meadows
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Premier League leaders Manchester United outclassed bottom side Watford 4-0 on Wednesday to maintain their six point lead over Chelsea, who beat Blackburn Rovers 3-0.
A Cristiano Ronaldo penalty on 20 minutes, a Lloyd Doyley own goal and strikes from Henrik Larsson and Wayne Rooney gave United a comfortable win despite resting several players.
Chelsea, now on 54 points, did their bit with Didier Drogba notching his 15th league goal of the season on six minutes when he picked up Frank Lampard’s weighted pass and drilled a left-foot shot into the bottom corner.
The impressive Andriy Shevchenko was twice denied but Blackburn also threatened and could easily have grabbed an equaliser against Chelsea’s recently shaky defence.
Benni McCarthy missed a header for the visitors, who also had a penalty appeal turned down, while Ricardo Carvalho was forced to clear Matt Derbyshire’s effort of the line.
Lampard killed off Blackburn’s hopes though midway through the second half when he belted in a trademark 30 metre shot before Salomon Kalou scored late on.
It was not all good news for champions Chelsea. England left back Ashley Cole was stretchered off with what looked like a serious injury after jarring his knee.

OWN GOAL
Ronaldo continued his personal battle with Drogba for the golden boot by bagging his 14th league goal of the season after Ole Gunnar Solksjaer was fouled by Jay DeMerit.
United, who rested Edwin Van der Sar, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, increased the tempo after halftime and forced Doyley to head into his own goal on 61 minutes before Larsson scored his first Premier League goal and Rooney netted a superb lob.
“We’ve got a good squad of lads. There’s a great spirit among them,” Ferguson told Sky Sports News before confirming there would be no late bid for Bayern Munich’s England midfielder Owen Hargreaves.
In other games on Wednesday, Newcastle United beat Aston Villa 3-1 despite Villa having the best of the game for long periods. 
Relegation-threatened Charlton Athletic drew 1-1 at Bolton Wanderers.
On Tuesday, Liverpool put themselves back in the championship picture with a 2-1 win at struggling West Ham United.

TITLE: Els Off to a Flyer in Bid For Fourth Desert Classic Trophy
AUTHOR: By Tony Jimenez
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DUBAI — Ernie Els made a flying start in his bid to claim an unprecedented fourth Dubai Desert Classic trophy, firing a six-under-par 66 in the first round on Thursday.
The 37-year-old South African, starting at the 10th hole on a calm, sunny day at the Emirates Golf Club, set the early pace alongside Spain’s Jose Manuel Lara and Jyoti Randhawa of India.
“I feel comfortable on this course,” Els told reporters. “I love the way they set it up and it is always in perfect shape.
“I feel excited playing here because I enjoy the golf course and feel I can make some birdies. Conditions were perfect this morning.”
At the end of last year, Els said he had formulated a three-year plan to challenge Tiger Woods at the top of the world rankings. On the evidence of Thursday’s showing, he may get there quicker than he predicted.
The world number four suffered a shaky start, almost driving out of bounds at the long 10th and dropping a stroke by three-putting the short 11th.
But Els, champion here in 2005, 2002 and 1994, hit back with an eagle at the par-four 12th when his seven-iron from 167 yards rolled straight into the cup. He followed up with four birdies in a five-hole burst to reach the turn in five-under 32.
The three-times major champion appeared to be targeting his own course record of 61 achieved in 1994 when he added further birdies at the first and third. But he lost momentum by three-putting the short fourth for another bogey.
Lara, playing in the group directly in front of Els, produced immaculate golf.
The 29-year-old from Valencia, who recorded his second European Tour victory when he won the Hong Kong Open in November, matched Els’s first nine of 32 before notching his sixth birdie of the day at the third.
World number one Tiger Woods could only par the front nine but made five birdies and just one bogey on the way in for a 68.

TITLE: Scientists End Ecology Talks in Paris
AUTHOR: By Seth Borenstein
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Running well behind schedule, top global warming experts huddled Thursday for a last day of talks with bureaucrats from more than 100 countries on a closely watched report that could influence government and business policy worldwide.
The scientists and government officials worked behind closed doors until well past midnight Wednesday and planned another late night session Thursday to finish the report in time for its Friday morning release.
Some expressed concern that the 12- to 15-page document would be too cautious, since participants must reach consensus on each word.
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will warn the world that global warming is here and worsening, using its bluntest language yet. It is the fourth such report since 1990.
According to drafts and participants, the document says it is “very likely” — which means at least 90 percent certain — that climate change is caused by humans burning fossil fuels, and will result in a temperature increase of between 2.5-10.4 F by the year 2100.
Some participants apparently want to change that wording to “virtually certain,” which connotes a 99 percent likelihood.
The talks were far behind schedule, held up by debate over nuances of language, delegates said.