SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1270 (36), Friday, May 11, 2007
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TITLE: Putin Begins Weeklong Gas Talks In Central Asia
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Securing gas supplies from Turkmenistan’s new leadership and the construction of a gas pipeline along the Caspian shore are set to dominate President Vladimir Putin’s weeklong trip to Central Asia that started Thursday.
Putin is due to hold talks with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana on Thursday, before the two leaders travel to Turkmenistan for an informal summit with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.
Moscow faces steep competition from the United States, the European Union and China for Turkmenistan’s potentially huge gas reserves, which were mainly closed to foreign companies under the presidency of Saparmurat Niyazov, who died in December.
Putin’s three-day visit to Turkmenistan will start Thursday in Ashgabat, the Kremlin press service said.
Putin, Nazarbayev and Berdymukhammedov are then due to hold talks in the Caspian post of Turkmenbashi, a city known as Krasnovodsk in Soviet times. It was later renamed Turkmenbashi in honor of the eccentric, late Turkmen president who adopted the moniker, meaning “Father of all Turkmen.”
Foreign state and company officials have been flocking to the country since Niyazov’s death, hoping to win a role in developing the country’s energy reserves as the new leadership gives signals it will be more open to outside participation.
State-run Gazprom relies on Turkmen gas to fulfill its supply contracts, as production at home stagnates and energy demand across Europe grows. A Gazprom spokeswoman said a Gazprom official would likely accompany Putin on his trip, but declined to identify them.
Ahead of Putin’s visit, Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko met with Nazarbayev in Astana on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
“Central Asia is one of the most important parts of our energy policy,” Khristenko’s deputy Andrei Reus told a Moscow news conference Tuesday. “Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan play a key role,” he said.
When asked whether the three leaders would discuss a proposed pipeline that would skirt the Caspian Sea to bring Turkmen gas through Kazakhstan to Russia, Reus said, “All sides are ready to discuss this question.”
Yet a pipeline deal with Turkmenistan is far from certain. 
Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Vitaly Savelyov told the same news conference that while Putin and Nazarbayev were due to sign seven agreements during their meetings in Kazakhstan, none were expected during Putin’s visit to Turkmenistan.
“[Turkmenistan] makes its own economic and political decisions,” Reus said. “It has such major resources that it can choose various routes, depending on what is in its best economic interest,” he said.
China, the EU and the United States are all eager to get a slice of Turkmenistan’s gas reserves, estimated at 2.9 trillion cubic meters by the 2006 BP Statistical Review. 
In April 2005, Niyazov blessed the construction of a pipeline to China, with plans to send 30 billion cubic meters of gas to the energy-hungry nation starting in 2009.
The United States and the European Union, meanwhile, still hope that Berdymukhammedov will consider a long-standing proposal to build a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan.

TITLE: President ‘Targets’ Estonia
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin took a swipe at Estonia in an unusually politicized Victory Day speech Wednesday at the Red Square parade.
Addressing around 7,000 troops and a few hundred guests on a cold, drizzly morning, Putin congratulated Russians on the 62nd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany and called May 9 a holiday of “enormous moral significance and unifying force.”
Then, in remarks evidently aimed at Estonia, Putin said disrespecting monuments sours relations between nations.
“Those who today are trying to belittle the invaluable experience, who desecrate monuments to war heroes, offend their own people and sow discord and new distrust between states and people,” Putin told the gathering from a podium next to the Lenin Mausoleum.
Putin did not name any names, but his remarks were clearly aimed at Russia’s small Baltic neighbor, which last month removed a monument to fallen Red Army soldiers in central Tallinn, sparking riots by ethnic Russians and angering Russia.
His remarks were uncharacteristically sharp and politicized for the country’s most revered holiday, where speeches are generally confined to praise for veterans and appeals to the young to remember the sacrifices of their elders.
Putin’s speech also echoed hawkish remarks he made at a security conference in Munich earlier this year, warning of new challenges that, like the bygone threats from Nazi Germany, are based upon a “disdain for human life, on the same claims for global pre-eminence and dictate.”
At the Munich conference, Putin delivered a scathing criticism of the United States, accusing it of unilateralism.
“I am convinced that only common responsibility and full-fledged partnership can counter these challenges,” he said Wednesday.
EU officials Wednesday reiterated their support for Estonia in the monument controversy.
EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU was “in solidarity” with Estonia, while Hans-Gert Pettering, president of the European Parliament, said, “We stand side by side with Estonia because it belongs to the European family.”
The Red Square parade, which was subdued compared with the grandeur of the 60th anniversary of Victory Day two years ago, lasted one hour. Putin was the only head of state present.
Standing in gray ZiL cabriolets, Vladimir Bakin, commander of the Moscow Military District, led the parade, while Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov inspected the 7,000 troops.
It was the first Victory Day parade as defense minister for Serdyukov, a former furniture-store manager who worked his way up to become head of the Federal Tax Service before being named to replace Sergei Ivanov in February.
After the inspection, several soldiers carried a Russian tricolor and the Victory Banner, featuring the Communist hammer and sickle. A few hundred guests, including dozens of decorated war veterans who were seated in the viewing stands near the Kremlin, stood up. Putin and other dignitaries were seated at a separate stand near the Lenin Mausoleum.
The guests stood once again when the troops on the square sang the national anthem a cappella. Several uniformed foreign representatives among the guests saluted.
As the orchestra struck up a triumphant march, the parade started with a procession of cadet drummers and standard bearers wearing the Soviet-era uniform and marching across the cobblestone square. They were followed by tight formations of soldiers with insignias of different military units that fought in the war. Tank crews wearing padded headsets and map holders were followed by infantrymen and sailors, among others.
Toward the end of the parade, nine fighter jets roared overhead, flying in rhombus formation.
Dozens of war veterans were among the guests, and after the parade they, as always, were the center of attention. Some people asked permission to have their pictures taken with them, and Moscow’s usually surly police saluted and congratulated them.
Mikhail Kolomiyets, an 89-year-old veteran with a chest full of gleaming medals, called Victory Day a bittersweet holiday.
“Time passes but this is dear to everybody,” said Kolomiyets, who, at the age of 24, commanded a regiment of Katyusha multiple rocket launchers.
Wearing a black marine beret, Alexei Stepanov, 84, said he was among the 28,000 soldiers who marched across Red Square before going to the front in 1941. Just 97 soldiers from the 1941 march are still alive, Stepanov said.
Stepanov, along with other veterans went to a reception in the Kremlin hosted by Putin following the parade. Those who were not invited scurried home out of the cold.
Meanwhile, Communists, along with members of the Red Youth Vanguard and other opposition groups, marched from Belorussky Station down Tverskaya Ulitsa and on to Lubyanskaya Ploshchad to celebrate the holiday.
Red Youth Vanguard activists jeered the government as they passed the State Duma.
“I am certain that a sickle, a hammer and a star ... will unite us for new victories,” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the crowd.
Some 10,000 activists participated in the march, RIA-Novosti reported. Nobody was detained.

TITLE: Blunt Putin Speech Sets Sights on U.S.
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Who was President Vladimir Putin talking about when he said the world faces threats to peace like those that led to World War II?
Putin’s statement at a Victory Day parade on Red Square on Wednesday was artfully phrased to be both blunt and vague — but political observers have little doubt that one target was the United States. While Putin didn’t name any particular country in the speech marking the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany, the remarks echoed his increasingly strong criticism of the perceived U.S. domination in global affairs.
Political analysts close to the Kremlin say that Putin referred to the United States in his remarks, expressing Russia’s dismay at what it views as U.S. unilateralism in world affairs and disrespect for other countries’ interests.
“Hitler was striving for global domination, and the United States is striving for global domination now,” Sergei Markov, the Kremlin-connected head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research said. 
“Hitler thought he was above the League of Nations, and the United States thinks it is above the United Nations. Their action is similar.”
Relations between Russia and the United States have become 
increasingly tense amid U.S. criticism of the Kremlin for rolling back democracy and Moscow’s complaints against U.S. plans to deploy missile defense sites in Europe close to its western borders. Moscow also frequently accuses Washington of meddling in what it considers its home turf by trying to take other ex-Soviet nations away from its orbit.
Markov said that while Putin sought to soften his remarks by avoiding a direct reference to the United States, he was undoubtedly aiming at Washington. “Only the United States now is claiming global exclusiveness,” Markov said.
Shortly after his speech at the parade, Putin told veterans at a Kremlin reception that World War II showed “where militarist ambitions, ethnic intolerance and any attempts to recarve the globe are leading to.”
Markov saw that as another veiled reference to the United States.
“After the Cold War ended, the United States initiated a new arms race,” fueling the nuclear ambitions of many nations worldwide, he said.
“If a nation doesn’t have nuclear weapons, it risks being bombed like Yugoslavia or Iraq,” he said. “And if it does have nuclear weapons like North Korea, it faces no such threat.”
Gleb Pavlovsky, another political analyst with close Kremlin connections, said that Putin’s remarks reflected his “concern about the spreading of unilateralist approaches to global affairs.”
“The United States is trying to dominate the world ... and Russia takes a stance against such hegemony,” Pavlovsky said.
He added, however, that Putin was not referring exclusively to the United States when he mentioned a contempt for human life and claims at global domination, but also forces behind international terrorism and extremism.
“He was also referring to nations that support Islamic fundamentalism when he talked about claims to global exclusiveness,” Pavlovsky said.
Putin’s remarks reflect an increasingly assertive posture by Russia, which has regained its economic muscle thanks to a rising tide of oil revenue and sought to rebuild its military might eroded in the post-Soviet industrial demise.
Putin shocked Western leaders in February when he spoke at a security conference in Germany, bluntly accusing the U.S. of trying to force other nations to conform to its standards and warned that Russia would strongly retaliate to the deployment of the U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
In a state of the nation address last month, Putin called for a Russian moratorium on the observance of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which limits the number of aircraft, tanks and other non-nuclear heavy weapons around the continent, saying NATO members’ refusal to ratify an amended version of the pact hurt Russia’s interests.
Putin also threatened to pull out of the treaty altogether unless talks with NATO members yielded satisfactory results, and some Russian generals warned that Moscow could also opt out of a Cold War-era treaty with the United States banning intermediate-range missiles.
Russia’s military chief of staff has also said Russia could target elements of the missile defense system if it is deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.
While Putin’s speech Wednesday sounded like another salvo in a new Cold War, Markov insisted that it was merely another attempt by the Russian leader to persuade the United States to reckon with Russia’s interests.
“It’s an attempt to launch a serious dialogue,” Markov said.

TITLE: Car Bomb Defused 
In Moscow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Law enforcement officials found and defused a powerful car bomb in southwestern Moscow on Wednesday, preventing what could have been a deadly attack.
The bomb, which contained 20 kilograms of plastic explosives and an unknown amount of ball bearings, was hidden inside a green Lada sedan parked on Ulitsa Profsoyuznaya, Interfax reported, citing a city law enforcement official.
The explosives were hidden in the back seat, while the steel balls were packed inside the trunk, the source said. Ball bearings are used to drastically increase the deadly force of an explosion.
Interfax said the bomb could have been activated in minutes.
NTV television reported Wednesday that police had also found a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the car.
Further details about the car bomb were unclear.
Law enforcement officials did not say how they learned about the bomb or what the possible target might have been. The sheer quantity of explosives suggested that it might have been meant for a terrorist attack. Car bombs are routinely used in contract hits in Moscow and other cities, but the explosives rarely exceed several kilograms.
Interfax said a manhunt was under way for several people suspected of buying the Lada and building the bomb. The suspects also bought two other cars, the report said. No explosives were found in them.

TITLE: U.S. Says Russia Can’t Alter Plan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — Russia cannot alter a U.S. plan to set up a missile defense system in nearby Poland, a senior U.S. official said in an interview published Wednesday.
Washington has enraged Moscow with a plan to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic that it says would help shield Europe from a possible missile attack by nations such as Iran.
In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Russian fears were unjustified because the project was purely defensive and could not be modified to launch attack missiles.

TITLE: Conscript in Suspected Case of Hazing Buried
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Fellow conscripts on Thursday paid their last respects to Sergei Zavyalov, a 23-year-old recruit who died Saturday at the Military Medical Academy from severe head injuries sustained in a suspected hazing incident, at a ceremony held in his memory.
Also on Thursday, the Sertolovo Military Garrison Prosecutor’s Office, which has been handling an investigation into the recruit’s death, charged a sergeant in the garrison with “deliberate infliction of grave physical injuries” on Zavyalov, said Colonel Yury Klyonov, aide to the chief military commander of the Leningrad Military District. 
Zavyalov’s body will be sent to his home town of Vologda in Northwestern Russia, where he will be laid to rest.
Zavyalov was admitted to the Military Medical Academy’s brain surgery ward in a coma on April 27 and died Saturday without regaining consciousness. Klyonov said the investigation has established Zavyalov’s cause of death as a “head injury, including  several broken cranial bones.” He described the blow to the head as “blunt,” and not having been caused by a sharp or piercing object.
The dead soldier’s mother, Nadezhda Zavyalova, has said she is convinced her son was attacked on purpose. She originally learned about her son’s death from a phone call from his detachment, when a duty officer told the woman that her son had fallen and fatally struck his head.
Ella Polyakova, St. Petersburg chairwoman of pressure group Soldiers’ Mothers, has argued that Zavyalov’s life could have been saved had medical professionals attended to him earlier than she said they did. Klyonov has denied this allegation and insists all necessary steps were taken in a timely manner.
Zavyalov was drafted in June 2005 and his two-year conscription was due to finish at the end of this month.
Valery Varshavsky, chief military commissioner of the Vologda region, told Interfax news agency that Zavyalov’s case has been taken under the personal control of Igor Puzanov, chief military commander of the Leningrad Military District.
“I have spoken to the commander’s deputy, and they vowed to press on with the investigation until the truth is established,” Varshavsky said. “Zavyalov’s case is extraordinary, and utterly appalling. I am convinced the officers will conduct a fair and unbiased investigation.”
Soldiers’ Mothers’ Polyakova said there is a need to thoroughly investigate the entire system of hazing in the Russian army. She stressed the need to investigate the conduct of senior officers, responsible for the prevention of bullying in their detachments.

TITLE: Speaker Mironov Talks Tough  Ahead of Russia-EU Summit
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov sharply criticized the EU Energy Charter and Estonia on Tuesday, in the latest sign that talks will be difficult at a Russia-EU summit next week.
Mironov, who called a news conference to share his vision for the summit on May 17 and 18, said he opposed the Energy Charter Treaty and that Russia should continue to refuse to ratify it.
“Why should we allow a stranger on our territory and hand over our natural resources to him?” Mironov said.
The treaty is a sticking point between the European Union and Russia, which has snubbed it in what observers see as a Kremlin attempt to insulate energy firms from foreign competition and provide state protection for Russia’s energy sector.
Mironov also took a swipe at the EU for raising concerns about democracy under President Vladimir Putin. “We cannot accept others teaching us democracy or how to live our lives,” he said.
Turning to Russia’s indignation over Estonia’s relocation of a Soviet war memorial, Mironov complained that EU members had given tacit support to Estonia by their inaction. “The right thing to do would have been to take an unequivocal position rather than saying it was the internal affairs of Estonia,” he said.
The Federation Council earlier called on Russia to cut off diplomatic ties with Estonia. As Mironov and other senior officials reprimanded Estonia, pro-Kremlin youth activists staged noisy, weeklong protests outside the Estonian Embassy, harassing the ambassador, tearing down an Estonian flag, and attacking the car of the visiting Swedish ambassador.
Mironov scolded the demonstrators Tuesday, saying, “The circus created before the Estonian Embassy was not worthy of a great country.”
The European Union on Wednesday urged Russia to tone down its criticism of Estonia.
“We’re in solidarity with the country which can’t represent a threat to the big power that Russia is,” EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said in Berlin.
One longtime Russia watcher predicted that Russian and EU officials would find the summit in the Volga River resort of Volzhsky Utyos, near Samara, more challenging than any other.
“The May Russia-EU summit is going to be the most difficult since the breakup of the Soviet Union,” said Alexander Rahr, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The agenda is completely overloaded with negative issues, ranging from Estonia to the energy charter, and even though Germany would like to integrate Russia, there is no way [Chancellor] Angela Merkel can walk through this.”

TITLE: Amnesty Says Russia Broke Arms Embargo
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Human rights group Amnesty International accused Russia and China on Tuesday of breaching a UN arms embargo by letting weapons into Sudan, where it said they were used in “grave violations” of international law.
Russia and China quickly rejected the report, and Sudan’s government said it was “not justified.”
Amnesty said it was “deeply dismayed” by the flow of arms allowed by Russia and China, both members of the UN Security Council, and said the weapons were often diverted to be used in conflicts in Darfur and neighboring Chad.
“The authority of the Security Council itself is being greatly undermined as the Sudanese authorities and armed groups in Darfur are allowed to act with such obvious impunity before the eyes of the world, importing and diverting arms to commit flagrant violations of international law,” Amnesty said.
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry denied the allegations, saying, “No Russian weapons have been shipped to Darfur.”
“Russia’s military and technical cooperation with other countries is in line with international rules and norms,” the ministry said in a statement. “Russia has fully abided by the provisions of resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, which ban arms shipments to Darfur.”
In March 2005, the UN Security Council extended an arms embargo already in force for the rebels and the Sudanese Arab janjaweed militia in Darfur to include Sudan’s government.
Amnesty said it was particularly concerned about Russian Mi-24 helicopter gunships acquired by the Sudanese Air Force that were allegedly being used to launch attacks in Darfur.
AP, Reuters

TITLE: New Petersburg-Tallinn Train Link Cancelled
AUTHOR: By Max Delany and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian Railways (RZD), citing economic factors, cancelled its St. Petersburg-Tallinn rail link just weeks after restarting the service.
Coming on the eve of Victory Day celebrations, however, the move was seen as the latest twist in the dispute between Russia and Estonia over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. The spat appears to be spreading to affect trade and transportation links, with a pro-Kremlin youth group agitating for a boycott of Estonian goods by St. Petersburg retailers and consumers.
“From May 26, for commercial reasons, including the extremely low passenger numbers and subsequent losses incurred, we are planning to cancel the running of the train,” RZD said Tuesday in a statement.
The operation, co-run with Estonian partners, lost almost 390,000 rubles ($15,000) in April, RZD said.
Daily rail services between St. Petersburg and Tallinn resumed March 31 after a four-year break. 
There are no plans to end rail services between Moscow and Tallinn. That route carried more than 10,000 passengers in April.
Estonian investors were skeptical Wednesday about RZD’s commercial arguments for ending the St. Petersburg service. 
Tiit Pruuli, a member of the board at GoRail, the Estonian company that operates the service jointly with RZD, told the media the explanations presented by the Russian side appear far-fetched and lacking credibility.
“We reopened the route on March 31 following a four-year break, and the interest towards the revived route has been very substantial and forecasts promising both among the Russian and the Estonian travel agencies,” Pruuli said in a press-release distributed by GoRail on Tuesday. “Numbers of customers have increased during the month of April already, and we do not see any plausible commercial motive behind the cancellation of the route.”
“They cite an economic reason but it is difficult to believe that,” said Alar Pinsel, CEO at GoRail. 
Pinsel said most of the funding for the project had come from the Estonian side and that it would take time to turn a profit. “The high season will only start in the summer, so of course it would start doing better,” he said. 
Despite the setback, GoRail is still hopeful that it can convince RZD to change its mind. “Right now we are hoping that this train will stay,” Pinsel said.
Since the memorial dispute flared up, politicians including First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov have demanded a boycott of Estonian products.
Ene Palmiste, a manager at Tallinn-based travel agent Travel Experts, reacted with dismay to the moves. 
“First of all, I think that the idea from the Russian side is a very regrettable one and I truly hope that this is not going to happen,” she said. 
She brushed off suggestions that the route would not prove economically viable. “There is no business in the world that is profitable from the moment of its opening,” she said. 
Palmiste also said travel between Tallinn and St. Petersburg was restricted due to an air traffic agreement on flights between the cities not being ratified. Asked who used the train link, Palmiste said it was still too early to tell but that French tourists and European package tour operators had shown particular interest.
“I don’t think that this disagreement will have a long-term effect on the tourism between Estonia and Russia. Russian tourists are able to see past the propaganda,” she said.
In the meantime, an increasing number of St. Petersburg retailers continue removing Estonian goods from the shelves of their stores as part of a protest against the relocating of the World War II memorial. 
Okay, one of the city’s largest retailers, announced Thursday it will no longer sell Estonian goods. Earlier this month, local retail chain Nakhodka also said it had stopped distributing Estonian products.
Alexei Tsivilev, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of Young Guard, the youth wing of the pro-presidential United Russia party, said nearly 30 more smaller retailers had joined the boycott of Estonian products.
Last week, the Young Guard produced a Russian-English sticker featuring the slogan “We Do Not Sell The Estonian Goods [sic]” and its activists are campaigning among local retailers and their customers, urging them to reject Estonian goods.  “More than 1000 stickers have been produced and distribution is going well,” Tsivilev said.

TITLE: Rosneft Gets Yukos Samara
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s giant state-controlled oil firm Rosneft won an auction for the Samara assets of bankrupt oil firm Yukos on Thursday with a winning bid of 165.53 billion rubles ($6.4 billion). 
The lot, which had a starting price of 154.1 billion rubles, comprises some of Yukos’ most attractive assets, including three refineries with total processing capacity of 400,000 barrels per day and a 200,000 bpd oil production unit. 
Rosneft beat the only other bidder, a company called Versar, to clinch its widely-expected purchase of the assets. Versar was unheard of until it bid unsuccessfully in a previous Yukos auction for the firm’s electricity assets. 
The breakup of Yukos has hugely benefited Rosneft, which is a Yukos creditor as well as a buyer of its assets. 
A minor player just three years ago, Rosneft is now Russia’s top oil producer and its once puny refining capacity has been transformed: it can now process more than 1 million bpd. 
The series of Yukos sales over the last two months has poured billions of dollars into the receiver’s hands. Almost all of it will go to the tax office or to Rosneft.

TITLE: VTB IPO Oversubscribed
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The initial public offering book of Russia’s second-largest bank VTB has closed, with the global depositary receipts (GDR) issue 10 times oversubscribed, a source close to the offering told Reuters on Thursday. 
The source said there was still uncertainty over how many shares would be placed in Russia and how many abroad. The source said VTB could place 60-70 percent of the float on the London stock exchange and 30-40 percent in Russia. 
The source said the local share issue was 5 times oversubscribed. He said VTB aimed at raising $7.5-8.0 billion. 
VTB’s supervisory council discussed the IPO pricing at a meeting on Thursday. VTB is due to make an official announcement on May 11. 
VTB set the indicative price range for its IPO at between 0.1130 ubles ($0.004) and 0.1390 rubles ($0.005) per share.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Kitted Out</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — CIT Finance investment bank increased assets by 17 percent in the first quarter of 2007, Interfax reported Tuesday.
By the end of March assets amounted to 57.65 billion rubles ($2.2 billion). Clients’ accounts were reported at 31.2 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) — a 10.3 percent increase on the same period of 2006. Profit before taxes increased by 3.3 times up to 3.4 billion rubles ($131.7 million).

<b>Pumped Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Nokian Tyres sales in Russia and the CIS in January-March 2007 increased by 74.1 percent, compared to the same period of 2006, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
Global net sales increased by 33.8 percent up to 199.9 million euros ($270 million). Sales in Finland, Sweden and Norway increased by 20.5 percent, in Eastern Europe — by 125.4 percent.
Operational profit accounted for 39 million euros ($52.8 million) as opposed to 13.4 million euros ($18 million) in January-March 2006. Net profit accounted for 28.1 million euros ($38 million) as opposed to seven million euros ($9.5 million) in the first quarter of 2006.

<b>Unistream Flows</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Unsitream bank, specialized in money transfers, has inked a partnership agreement with the largest Polish payment system Intessit p.z.o.o.ul., the Unistream press-service reported. Intessit covers 80 banks and 1,200 post office branches in Poland.
By signing the agreement, UNIStream gains access to over 7,200 service points in Poland, the press-service stated.
UNIStream currently controls 25 percent of the CIS market. With a $1.85-billion turnover in 2006, the system operates over 30,000 service points world wide. It demonstrated a $496-million amount of transactions in Q1, 2007 and aims to reach a $4-billion volume of transfers in 2007.

<b>Mega Profits</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian cellular operator MegaFon reported US GAAP net profits of $812.8 million last year, which is more than a twofold increase on 2005 figures, RBC reported Thursday.
Revenue increased by 56 percent last year up to $3.733 billion. EBITDA was reported at $1.849 billion – a 66 percent increase on the 2005 figures.

<b>Clothed Melon</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Melon Fashion Group open joint-stock company, which operates the ZARINA and Befree women clothes brands, reported net profits of 45.9 million rubles ($1.78 million) last year, RBC reported Thursday.
EBITDA accounted for 92.9 million rubles ($3.6 million) — an 8.9 percent increase on 2005 figures. Sales increased by 40.7 percent up to 1.049 billion rubles ($40.64 million).

<b>Raspadskaya Guidance</b>
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russian coking coal miner Raspadskaya has set a Eurobond yield guidance at midwaps plus 275 basis points, a market source told Reuters on Thursday. 
The debut Eurobond is arranged by Citigroup and UBS with pricing expected on May 11. The issue, expected at $200-$250 million, is rated “B+” by Fitch Ratings.

TITLE: Basic Element Buys Into Magna
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s Basic Element conglomerate has agreed to pay $1.54 billion for a large stake in auto parts maker Magna International, the companies announced Thursday — a move that could give the Canadian company a bigger role in one of the fastest-growing auto markets in the world.
The deal could also help Magna as it looks to acquire U.S. automaker Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler AG.
In a statement, Basic Element and Magna said the Russian company, through its Russian Machines automotive subsidiary, would buy 20 million new Class A voting shares in Magna. The companies didn’t say what size stake that would give Basic Element, but a calculation by Dow Jones Newswires put the stake at about 18 percent.
Basic Element will gain the right to appoint six directors to a new, 14-member board at Magna, the companies said.
Russia is one of the world’s quickest-growing auto markets and is increasingly being targeted by the giant global manufacturers, looking to offset stagnant markets in the United States and Europe.
Russian Machines already controls Russia’s second-largest automotive company, GAZ, which makes cars, buses, minivans and trucks. Magna has a joint venture with GAZ to produce some car parts.
The Canadian company also has a partnership deal with Russia’s largest carmaker by volume, Avtovaz, that could see the creation of a local joint venture.
The head of state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, which controls Avtovaz, has hinted that a merger with GAZ could be possible in the future.
The partnership with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who owns Basic Element, could give further strength to Magna’s push to buy struggling Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler AG.
Many U.S. analysts have named the Canadian company as the front-runner in the bidding along with partner Onex Corp., a Canadian investment conglomerate.

TITLE: Gazprom in Negotiations To Supply Gas to Nabucco
AUTHOR: By Orhan Coskun and Karin Strohecker
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey — Gazprom is in negotiations to supply natural gas to a pipeline originally intended to reduce Europe’s heavy energy reliance on Moscow, people involved with the proposed link said. 
A senior Turkish Energy Ministry official said Gazprom had been in talks in the past few weeks with the Nabucco project’s Austria-led consortium.
“The consortium is not cold to this idea. No objections are expected from the United States or Europe to the pipeline transporting Russian gas,” the official said on condition of anonymity. 
Nabucco had aimed to carry Caspian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe via Turkey and the Balkans. The project has strong backing from the European Union and the United States, anxious to reduce the continent’s dependence on Russian gas, and several energy majors have expressed interest in joining it. 
But the Turkish official said, “When you think of the gas that Nabucco can carry, Russia could also become part of the project.” 
The pipeline, which will stretch 3,300 kilometers and cost $6.2 billion to build, will be able to carry 31 billion cubic meters per year at full capacity.
OMV, the Austrian state-controlled oil and gas group that leads the Nabucco consortium, said the project had never excluded the possibility of Gazprom involvement.
“We always said that of course there are capacities available in this pipeline for Gazprom because it will be open access,” OMV spokesman Thomas Huemer said in Vienna. 
“It’s important that the operators can book 50 percent of the capacity for their own use, and this is an issue that is still ongoing with the European Union. 
“But otherwise it is open access, so every company that has gas and buys gas can pipe it through the pipeline. Nabucco is not an ideological question, it’s an economic one,” he said, stressing the rising demand for gas in Europe. 
President Vladimir Putin will visit Vienna on May 23 and 24.
Separately, the United States is unhappy about the possibility of Iran becoming involved in Nabucco. Tehran said it signed a major agreement with OMV to help develop its vast gas resources and to build a plant for liquefied natural gas. 
Tehran is at loggerheads with the West, especially Washington, over its nuclear program. 
“Iran wants to be part of Nabucco in some way and is saying so loudly. But this is also one of the biggest problems ... because America is trying to prevent Iran providing gas to Europe,” a source close to the consortium said. 
A second Turkish official, commenting on the strains between Washington and Tehran, said, “It seems that Russian gas must enter Nabucco.”
The Nabucco project has been criticized for delays, the lack of a convincing timetable for when it will come on stream, and apparent wavering by consortium member Hungary.

TITLE: Incentive Scheme Bites Into Golden Telecom Profits
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Teterevleva
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Golden Telecom said first-quarter net profit dropped by one-third because of the costs of a management incentive scheme. 
Management said Tuesday that it was taking steps to eliminate the earnings volatility caused by its so-called stock appreciation rights scheme, known as SAR. 
Net profit to generally accepted accounting principles fell to $12.6 million, down 36 percent from the prior quarter and 33 percent from the same period one year earlier, the company said. 
“The results came in below analysts’ expectations due to the costs of the incentive scheme,” said Anna Kurbatova, a telecoms analyst at Aton, a brokerage. 
Shares in Golden Telecom, the country’s largest independent fixed-line operator, sank on the U.S. Nasdaq market.
Chief executive Jean-Pierre Vandromme said during a conference call that the company planned to switch to an options-based incentive scheme that would have less of a distorting impact on Golden Telecom’s quarterly earnings. 
Stripping out the impact of SAR to give a better picture of underlying profitability, net profit was $23.5 million, still down 28 percent on the fourth quarter of 2006 and below an average forecast of $26.6 million in a Reuters poll of 10 analysts. 
Analysts covering the fast-growing telecoms sector in the region tend to look at results quarter on quarter. Compared with one year earlier, adjusted net profits were down by 15 percent. 
Revenue in the seasonally weak first quarter was up 2 percent quarter on quarter and up 44 percent at $255.7 million from one year earlier, just shy of market expectations. 
Analysts had been looking for a pickup in sales growth after Golden Telecom set up long-distance and international operations in Russia from Jan. 29 and Wi-Fi services in Moscow from Feb. 1. 
But they expressed concern that the costs of rolling out Golden Telecom’s network under its “Fiber to the Building” program to cities with a combined population of 65 million — as well as Wi-Fi services — were higher than expected. 
“These results were a disappointment — especially margins,” said Konstantin Belov, a telecoms analyst at UralSib. 
Golden Telecom’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization were $65.6 million on an adjusted basis, down from $70.4 million in the fourth quarter and below a consensus forecast of $67.9 million. 
The adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 26 percent from 28 percent and compared with a margin forecast of 26.2 percent. 
Golden Telecom reiterated its full-year guidance for revenue growth of 35 percent to 40 percent. It also forecast that capital expenditure would be about 20 percent of revenue and EBITDA would grow 30 percent to 35 percent, after adjusting for stock appreciation rights costs. 
Golden Telecom is 29 percent owned by Alfa Group, 20 percent by Norway’s Telenor and 11 percent by Rostelecom. 
The rest is in free float.

TITLE: Going Out and Earning Their Pay
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: After setting up and manning a kind of blockade around the Estonian Embassy for about a week, pro-Kremlin youth organizations simply packed up and left Thursday without having accomplished anything. To save a little face, they cited the fact that the Estonian ambassador had left the embassy — the official explanation was she had gone on vacation — as a sign of victory, but it was hard to see just what the young activists expected to accomplish by surrounding the building in the first place.
The political pointlessness was clear to the general public, which doesn’t have much sympathy for the Estonian side but had a hard time understanding what the protesters were doing as well. All the activists managed to do was to make it difficult for Russians who wanted to visit relatives or do business in Estonia to get visas. It had very little if any effect on the lives of the rest of the population.
But everything that happened last week in Moscow had a real and definite meaning when it comes to the situation in Estonia itself. It’s hard to see this as anything but a cheap provocation that ultimately harmed the interests of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic states.
This is because politicians in Moscow need bad news from Estonia and Latvia. They need to show that Russians there are being oppressed and discriminated against. As such, the possibility that Russians fighting for their rights in these countries might actually be successful is a real problem for them. This would deny them one of the most important trump cards in their propaganda — both official and unofficial — used to popularize their image as the defenders of the rights of compatriots living outside of the country’s borders.
As soon as events in Tallinn occurred that could potentially auger a radical change in the conditions for the Russian minority there, in the form of calls from moderate Estonian politicians for dialogue, Moscow began calling for reckless measures. The whole point was to make increased dialogue impossible.
To what degree this course was a conscious decision remains a question. My sense is that, as is often the case, what is involved here is a combination of calculated provocation and spontaneous malevolence. The conditions for Estonia’s Russian population, and Estonians in general, are of about the same interest to Russian politicians as events taking place in other galaxies. They only focus on events in these countries for their own political purposes, which explains why their replies are so openly provocative and often clearly illegal. They react in the only way they know. If people are unable to speak coherently, they will just end up swearing at one another. If they can’t come up with any other plan, they will bark and fight.
The Russian-speaking population in Estonia was also forced to bark and fight. But this was because it was the only thing the youths in Tallinn and Narva could use against the police while trying to get the press and politicians to recognize their existence and sit down with them.
But the well-paid, professional functionaries from the official youth organizations, spoiled as they are by attention from the Russian press and government, don’t really have any cause to feel despair or rage. Life is sweet. But they do have to do something to justify their existence and keep the money coming in. They have shown no symptoms of real political activism other than expensive ritual meetings. They have no political program or even their own political agenda. They have nothing besides a generous budget. And all of this money goes to pay for second-rate official organizations that try to pass for civil society.
As a result, the behavior of Russian politicians generates the same acute despair felt by unemployed youths in Tallinn. Nobody has any respect for them, nobody is interested and nobody takes them seriously. And the reason for this lies not in discrimination, an economic crisis or social policy, but in their own activities.
If people are only able to take other people’s money and tell lies, then it’s not surprising that they are considered thieves and liars. Sure, it’s unpleasant, but what can we do? If you want to improve your reputation you don’t spend more money on it — you change the way you behave.
For the Russian-speaking population in Estonia and Latvia, this is only the latest in a string of events that offers up a lesson they would be better off learning now: They can expect no real help from anyone but themselves. Official Russia is currently neither their friend nor their ally. What would you expect from a country with such disdain and indifference for its own citizens? And how can you expect Russians to pay those politicians back any other way than in kind?

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

TITLE: Smooth Operators
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: 8 p.m. was obviously far too late to leave home for tour of St. Petersburg’s sites. Everything closes early and we still needed to get across the city. 
This is what I feared showing my Amercian friends round the city last week. Yet I was to be pleasantly surprised. 
The colonnade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral was open until 11 p.m, then at 10 p.m. we had a brilliant excursion through the Church on Spilled Blood, the most glitzy of St. Petersburg’s churches. 
The lengthening of museum working hours has visibly increased their income — a lot of late arrivals were hurrying to buy tickets.
Several years ago my busy colleague dreamed of theaters, department stores and registrar’s offices that operate 24 hours a day. Many services like stores, restaurants and gyms are already working around the clock. Museums are not as flexible. 
Three years ago on St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary the Hermitage stayed open all night long. 
That was probably the worst night in its history since the war. The halls were filled with tired people who could not leave either because the metro was closed, or because the bridges were open. The bolder visitors tried to sleep on the floor. The experiment was quickly forgotten. 
Now the Hermitage is trying something similar and it seems to be working. I recently studied operational management and admit that, from this point of view, museums are managing well. 
Visitors were served quickly and moved on swiftly from the ticket office to the exhibition. Every employee has his or her own function, which do not overlap. 
By the way, tickets are the same price for Russians and foreigners — normally foreign tourists pay three times as much (such injustice has its own tradition, but that is not the subject of this column.), which, together with expensive hotels and street crime, make our city less attractive to them.
Unfortunately, my American friends had another, less pleasant experience of the city. One of them had their wallet stolen by pickpockets. 
They must haven been quite professional to recognize him as a rich foreigner and then play out a small performance in front of him, forcing him to take his hands from his pockets. In two seconds his wallet — and cash, bankcards and driving license — was taken away. The police asked for details of the crime, such as what the criminals looked like and how much cash was in the wallet. 
Of course the police department where we needed to report the crime was on the other side of the city and was about to close, so we decided to go there next morning.
The cops asked us for our contact phone numbers (you know, sometimes pickpockets throw away the documents of their victims. They do not need incriminating evidence). 
A couple of hours later they called with the good news — the wallet had been found and all the cards and documents were in their place. 
The overall loss was $400, two hours of our time, and a lot of unpleasant emotion. 
I wonder if this is also a part of finely tuned operational management, where every part of the chain fulfills its own purpose. 

Anna Shcherbakova is St. Petersburg bureau chief of business daily Vedomosti.

TITLE: A legacy rediscovered
AUTHOR: By Timo Keinanen
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This is the first article in a two-part series dedicated to the life and work of the only two Finnish architects who owned studios in St. Petersburg before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and designed buildings that can still be seen in the city today.
Published for the first time, the article is by Finnish art historian Timo KeinEnen, head of the Archives of the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki, who has just completed research in a number of the city’s libraries and archives. 

St. Petersburg was the most international metropolis in the whole of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and offered opportunities to all kinds of architects from abroad, including from Finland. One of them was Frithiof Mieritz (1863-1916).
Mieritz is practically unknown in Finland, though he worked in Helsinki for ten years (1885–95) and later in St. Petersburg for twenty years (1896–1916). 
Historians in St. Petersburg know his name better. Mieritz was born in Wasa in Finland in 1863. His father, F. W. Mieritz (1836–83), who worked as a master mason and architect, had come from Germany to Finland that year hoping to get to build a new town. But when he came to Wasa there was little construction work left to do, and in 1865 he moved to Helsinki, sending his son to study in Germany.
Twenty years later Mieritz returned and set up his architectural practice in Helsinki, offering to produce drawings and calculations and also to take care of building work. After two years, in 1887, he established a cement foundry which was reported to be the first of its kind in Finland. The foundry could make entire facades of concrete, tombstones and table tops as well as sewer pipes, well rings, stepping stones, and so on. Mieritz said that he had become familiar with concrete casting during his journey to Germany in the same year. But clearly the foundry was not a success since it is not mentioned in the Helsinki directory of 1890.
Like his father, Frithiof Mieritz designed mainly wooden buildings for Helsinki. In 1892 he designed prefabricated villas for the firm Sandviken. Such villas were in demand by clients who included Tsar Alexander III and his brother Grand Duke Alexei since Finland was at that time a semi-autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire and a popular vacation destination for Russian nobles.
The list of Mieritz’s work in Helsinki is interesting, but compared to the work of his colleagues it is modest. St. Peterburg offered more opportunities for a young architect and in 1898 Mieritz settled in St. Petersburg.
New possibilities awaited in the rapidly growing metropolis of the Baltic Sea. Mieritz already had some footing in the city because the Finlands Angslupeaktiebolag shipping company used him as their architect in Russia. He had worked in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896 to erect the company’s buildings for a large nation-wide exhibition. The company’s passenger terminals in St. Petersburg on the River Neva were also probably his designs. After moving to the city, Mieritz worked first in the firm of I. F. Huuri, who extended his activities to construction and he built, for example, more than three hundred alcohol stands in St. Petersburg.
Around 1900 Mieritz established an architectural office with I. Gerasimov. They made a new start in the concrete foundry business, this time successfully. Within ten years the firm of Mieritz & Gerasimov had grown into an enterprise with 30 office clerks and 750 workers, and was active throughout Russia. In 1908, the company opened a branch office in Helsinki. The firm designed and built apartment houses, villas and industrial buildings in St. Petersburg. They had some important clients: Russia’s “sugar king” Leopold KUnig and the industrial magnate Franz San Galli, who had his factories at 60 Ligovsky Prospekt.
Mieritz & Gerasimov’s cement factory in Pargolovo produced concrete pipes, well rings and stepping stones. The Villa Ammende in PErnu dates to the expansion phase of the office. It is difficult to believe that this handsome, richly detailed building with Central European Art Nouveau influences is the work of the same architect who had drawn wooden buildings in Helsinki fifteen years earlier. The concrete pillars of the fence and the entrance canopy must have been made in the Pargolovo foundry.
In St. Petersburg, Mieritz’s life became settled. He married Mary Junnelius in 1903, and they had three daughters. The Mieritz family rented an apartment in the newly completed Art Nouveau building by G. A. Schulze at 22 Bolshoi Dvoranskaya (now Kuibysheva Ulitsa on the Petrograd Side).
Mieritz is known in St. Petersburg especially for his industrial buildings, where he used the new technique of building with concrete. He designed apartment buldings and villas as well. However, as yet no accurate picture of his work can be presented, for the work of Mieritz & Gerasimov in Russia remains unsurveyed. But Mieritz’s most imposing work in St. Petersburg was the rental complex designed in 1907 for Finnish railway workers next to the Finlandsky Vokzal, at 1 Botkinskaya Ulitsa.
The three-building composition gives a closed, castle-like impression. The faIade is articulated by side projections and the window openings of the central section, and it is divided into horizontal zones by the alternation of plaster and brick surfaces. The castle image is strengthened by turrets. These buildings are Mieritz’s St. Petersburg version of Finnish National Romanticism.
In the previous year Mieritz had designed a villa for Nikolai Krupennikov at 8 Peterburgskaya Naberezhnaya  with an eclectic plaster faIade. The monograms of the client family are still visible in the central projection. At 33 Kuibysheva Ulitsa on the same site, Mieritz designed a five-story apartment building whose plastered faIade has classicist Art Nouveau decorations.
If Mieritz is compared with another Nordic architect in St. Petersburg, the Swede Fredrik Lidvall, on the basis of existing information, the latter was more successful. Lidvall designed several remarkable buildings, such as the Azov Don Bank and Astoria Hotel. He was also used by the Nobel company, which operated in the city. When the Swedish parish of St. Catherine engaged an architect from among its parishioners to design an apartment building, Lidvall was chosen instead of Mieritz.
Mieritz’s architectural work was tied to his concrete firm. The World War I paralysed construction which caused the firm to decline, and the Mieritz family returned to Finland. At the beginning of 1916 they moved to Turku, where Mieritz’s wife’s parents had settled a couple of years earlier. Frithiof Mieritz died in the spring of the same year.
Architectural historians have since largely forgotten Mieritz’s work in St. Petersburg but it is time to rediscover an architect who left a notable mark on the city’s pre-Revolutionary past.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: It has been announced that <b>Elton John</b> will perform on Palace Square on July 6. The concert is promoted by PMI, the company behind the Rolling Stones’ local concert, scheduled to be held at the same location on July 28. 
John was the first genuine international rock performer to tour the Soviet Union in 1979, performing four concerts in Moscow and four in St. Petersburg. 
Arranged as part of a Soviet-British cultural exchange, John appeared mild enough to communist cultural officials not to cause a revolution. 
At that time, after releasing an album called “Single Man,” John performed some of his show alone, some with percussionist Ray Cooper.
He returned to St. Petersburg in 2001 to perform at a strange, Moscow bank-promoted, dinner-jacket-only charity event at a former royal palace in Pushkin, where he played for around 600   celebrities and businessmen.
Although a mainstream pop monster now, John recorded some truly brilliant albums and has always been reputed to have a ear for interesting new music, being an ardent supporter of punk rock in the late 1970s and performing Marc Bolan’s “Children of the Revolution” with former Libertine Pete Doherty at Live 8 in 2005. 
The duet turned out to be perhaps the only lively and entertaining piece at the mostly boring television event, which had the reformed Pink Floyd as its main attraction.
Speaking of punk, the local band <b>PTVP</b>, famous for its bold criticism of President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin policies in its songs, has come to the conclusion that any music can be punk depending on who plays it and how it is played.
“Punk can be played in any style, it can be disco, it can be rap, whatever,” said PTVP’s frontman Alexei Nikonov, who said he had recently played a “psychedelic” concert and an “electronic” concert.
“We played with electronic drums at Mod yesterday,” said Nikonov by phone on Thursday. “It was post-punk D.I.Y. electro, it was cool.
“The idea is like this; we get bored simply playing concerts. We have a lot of songs, around 120, and we want to do not simply a random set of songs, but to base it on my inner concept.”
As a result, PTVP will play two special shows this month, which will even have names. 
The band’s “White” concert will take place at Orlandina on Monday, with the “Red” concert following at Red Club on May 26.
“The White Concert will be mostly lyrical songs, while the Red Concert will be mainly social, left-wing songs,” said Nikonov.
Both concerts will include some songs from “Freedom of  Speech” (Svoboda Slova), the new album that PTVP released earlier this month.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Arctic Muslims
AUTHOR: By Robin Paxton
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NORILSK, Russia — Mukum Sidikov’s grandfather left Norilsk after surviving the labor camps of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 
Sidikov, caretaker of the world’s most northerly mosque, retraced his grandfather’s footsteps in search of well-paid work in the Russian Arctic.
Now he estimates the city is home to about 50,000 Muslims — just under one-quarter of the region’s population of about 210,000. Most are from Azerbaijan and the Russian republic of Dagestan and work as traders or construction workers.
But as pay levels no longer compare so favorably with other Russian cities and Norilsk restricts access for foreigners, Sidikov says fellow Muslims no longer come here.
“The population is getting smaller. People are leaving,” said Sidikov, 40, an ethnic Uzbek born and raised in Kyrgyzstan.
The Nurd Kamal mosque stands exposed on the edge of modern Norilsk, where temperatures drop 50 degrees Celsius below zero (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit). Polar winds whip its golden roof and snowdrifts pile against the turquoise walls in winter.
“People work for pennies. They come here and lose their health. Every second person is ill,” said Sidikov.
A city built on one of the world’s richest metals deposits, Norilsk’s first smelter was built by Gulag prisoners in the 1930s and today three plants send smoke thick with sulphur into the air.
The city was last year named among the world’s 10 most polluted places by independent environmental action group The Blacksmith Institute. Its main employer, Norilsk Nickel, is investing heavily in cutting emissions.
There are over 20 million Muslims in Russia, approximately 14 percent of the country’s 140 million population. The Central Asians and Dagestanis are likely to be Sunni, while those from Azerbaijan are most likely to be Shia. There is no antagonism between the sects in Norilsk and many Soviet Muslims are not among the strictest practitioners of Islam.
“There are many Muslims, but few come to the mosque. They work all day and in the evening they are tired,” Sidikov said.
The mosque, opened in 1998, was built by Mukhtad Bekmeyev, an ethnic Tatar and Norilsk native now residing in the Black Sea city of Sochi, nearly 4,000 kilometers away. He named the mosque after his parents and will pay for its restoration this year.
Sidikov, clean-shaven and wearing a green skullcap, left the Kyrgyz city of Osh to find work. He served in the Soviet army in Moscow and lived in two other Siberian cities before arriving in Norilsk seven years ago.
High wages relative to the rest of the country attracted workers from across the Soviet Union to Norilsk as the city’s mines and smelters grew.
Sidikov says an average monthly wage of 25,000-30,000 rubles ($962-$1,154) is no longer enough to live comfortably. Not only Muslims are leaving: Norilsk’s total population is dropping by about 5,000 people annually. 
Non-Russians, mostly from Azerbaijan and former Soviet republics in Central Asia, have found Norilsk a more difficult place to enter since 2002 after travel restrictions on foreign citizens were restored. They now need special permission to visit Norilsk. 
While Norilsk Nickel and its outgoing Chief Executive Mikhail Prokhorov have unveiled a plan to retain the city’s skilled workers and attract new faces, Sidikov says nothing specific is being done to help Muslims. But Norilsk’s Muslims, he says, have integrated well into the wider community and suffer little discrimination. 
Over generations, some arrivals from Russia’s Caucasus regions have converted to Orthodox Christianity, residents say. 
Sidikov keeps the mosque open late every evening for those still wishing to study the Koran. About 500 to 600 people typically show for Friday prayers. 
“Muslims should come to the mosque at least once a week. We don’t get that here.”

TITLE: The id stays in the picture
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Jonathan Kent’s bold rendition of Richard Strauss’ expressionist opera “Elektra,” which premiered on Sunday at the Mariinsky Theater, fearlessly delves into the subconscious minds of a troubled family engulfed by angst, fear, rage and obsession.
Richard Strauss’ fourth opera, set to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal after Sophocles’ tragedy, “Elektra” revolves around the eponymous heroine, a daughter of ancient Greek king Agamemnon, who contemplates revenge against her mother, Klytemnestra after the latter murdered her husband with her lover Aegisthus.
In Hoffmannsthal’s libretto Freud strongly overpowers Sophocles. So does the psychoanalysis in Jonathan Kent’s production. Instead of following the common approach of setting “Elektra” in antiquity and fiddling with the archetypes of ancient tragedy, the director opts to dive into the depths of human neurosis and visualize the effects of the Elektra Complex, a term invented by Freud’s contemporary Carl Jung to describe “the feminine Oedipus attitude” — a girl’s unhealthy worship of a father figure. 
Wagnerian soprano Larisa Gogolevskaya, well-rehearsed in the roles of Isolde and Senta, was in her element with Strauss’ dramatic score. Visually, the singer cultivated a deliberately repulsive image of Elektra, reminiscent of a degraded homeless vagrant — socially deprived, emotionally devastated and physically neglected.
Dressed in red sporty trousers with white stripes on the side, a loose greenish tunic and her father’s military jacket, Elektra rarely ventures beyond the basement of the palace where the story takes place. By contrast, the other characters, visibly shaken, trembling with terror and probing the ground with extraordinary caution, occasionally descend into the dark underworld — trying to dig into their subconscious selves. 
One of the most compelling scenes is the descent of panic-stricken Klytemnestra (Yelena Vitman). Haunted by fright, the mother clumsily gropes her way and then crawls around her marginalized daughter, whose regal carriage is suddenly exposed as Elektra asks her to tell her more about the ritual sacrifice crucial to the death of Agamemnon. The key to Kent’s staging is the feeling of dispossession and living in a state of internal conflict.
Set designer Paul Brown sliced the stage horizontally into a sandwich. 
The underworld, inhabited solely by Elektra, is a barely lit garbage dump, piled with old rubber tyres, pieces of furniture and heaps of other junk. Amid the ragged and scrubby disarray stands a shabby chair, in which the heroine spends quite some time whiling away her days by worshipping the memory of her dead father. Marginalized and craving the vendetta against her mother, she watches pictures of her late father projected on a white screen using a simple slide show device.
The higher world is an Art Nouveau mansion, home to Klytemnestra, her lover and Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis (Mlada Khudolei), a physically frail and fatally ill creature craving marriage and motherhood. Exuberant sensuality and the decadent opulence of the  interiors sharpen the contrast with the chaotic misery and dirt of Elektra’s home.
The dissection serves to separate the two realities, connected by a hole in the floor, while it also embodies a perception of a borderline between the conscious and the subconscious.
The method of creating parallel worlds on stage is popular with international directors. One of the most successful examples is Robert Carsen’s production of Dvorak’s “Rusalka” at Paris’ Opera Bastille, which premiered in June 2002. The staging — that regularly features Russia’s Olga Guryakova as Rusalka and Larisa Dyadkova as Jezibaba — also featured a horizontal dissection, with the difference being that the two antagonistic worlds, the real and the ethereal, visually mirror each other with crystal clarity, to reflect Rusalka’s illusions and torn personality.
Meanwhile in Elektra’s split world, her brother Orestes (Eduard Tsanga) is striking with the sterile neatness of his looks when he first enters the stage. Called upon by Elektra to carry out the matricide, he visually belongs to the glitzy world of her family, a trick perhaps, to help him find his way through the palace.
Gogolevskaya’s Elektra indulges in her pathological rage, providing the audiences with a detailed clinical picture of her condition. After Orestes completes his bloody mission, his tormented sister, zombified by her sorrow, dances with her father’s military jacket or carries it around like her dearest treasure.
Elektra’s dance in the finale was perhaps Kent’s only failure. What was meant to become a triumphant frenzy resulted in the heroine falling to her knees and and hurling her body around, waving her arms. Like Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” in Strauss’ other opera “Salome,” Elektra’s raptured ecstasy is traditionally seen as one of the greatest challenges for the director, demanding creativity and imagination.
The scene was confusing, lacking coherence and power, and generally did not match the heights of galvanizing tension, profound might and energy created by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev.

“Elektra” is performed at the Mariinsky Theater on May 25. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Inside out
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Anyone who has ever seen the curiously addictive television series “Twin Peaks” or the accomplished and disturbing “Mulholland Drive” knows that David Lynch is to mainstream cinema what punk-rock is to classical opera. He divides opinion as a matter of course and the ongoing debate between those who think he is a certifiable genius and those who find his work an unapproachable enigma doesn’t seem likely to end soon. 
“Inland Empire,” Lynch’s latest tour de force, is a rambling, heartbreaking, glorious mess and quite possibly the most satisfying film he has ever made. Gone is any pretence at multiplex accessibility to be replaced by a more uncompromising rendering of his freewheeling American gothic. At just under 3 hours it is a journey into the void that pursues a relentless course to the center of cinema itself. 
A film about the making of a film that is in turn based on an abandoned Polish production, “Inland Empire” stars Laura Dern in the performance of her career. To keep things bouncing along she is joined by Jeremy Irons and Lynch regulars Justin Theroux, Diane Ladd, Harry Dean Stanton, the incomparable Grace Zabriskie, and a chorus of singing prostitutes. A heady mix of just about every genre and film style, it examines the voyeurism and exhibitionism that attends modern life, filtered through the mechanics of making, distributing and screening films. Seeping off the screen like a cloud of smog from LA, the film is awash in the smudgy, smoky colors and blossoming light of the consumer video camera the director used to make it.
A maze of mirrors reflecting in upon itself to infinity, “Inland Empire” takes as its starting point the trials and tribulations of an actress trying to make her comeback. On one level it is a classic Hollywood melodrama, albeit one updated to include prostitution, spousal abuse, adultery and insanity. Creating a filmic universe that is a catalogue of cinematic conventions, “Inland Empire” is anything but conventional. Lynch’s film noir par excellence, it is “Sunset Boulevard” for a new generation with overtones of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Bergman’s “Persona.”
With action split between continents, time periods and storylines that aren’t easy to reconcile, there is a strange magic that holds the film together in spite of its tendency to run in several directions at once. Even the insertion of vignettes from what must be the oddest television sitcom in the world, acted by human-sized rabbits and complete with canned laughter, fits seamlessly into the unified structure Lynch has fashioned. 
Taking its title from a landlocked area in eastern Los Angeles, “Inland Empire” is a record of Lynch’s research into the ways that watching shapes consciousness. Obliterating traditional notions of continuity he has found an ingenious way of keeping reality at bay to make a film that plays like a conversation with a sleepwalker. Folding time and space he propels his characters along a mobius strip of a narrative that takes in high and low living in LA and Poland, and the disorientation that results when fiction and reality meet in a celluloid funhouse.
Like all great artists, Lynch knows that a film must have a secret at its heart if it is to transcend the quotidian. He uses this knowledge and the manipulation of time to extend the world while illuminating the often complex relationship between the watcher and the watched, the actor and the role, and the movie and the movie-goer. Those who agree to follow him into the darkness of the cinema are rewarded with a film-going experience unlike any other that remains lodged in the mind long after the film has ended.

“Inland Empire” is playing in English at the Avrora cinema, 60 Nevsky Prospekt.

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It’s fair to say that Edith Piaf would not recognize the type of music called Russian shanson. Hefty men decked in gold chains sing mournful songs about hard fate, loving mothers and fickle lovers, all apparently set to the same demo track on an electronic keyboard from the 1980s.
Some people call shanson the Russian answer to hip-hop, the crime-themed music of the underclass. But the cameras sweeping around the Kremlin Palace for a Radio Shanson gala concert televised on NTV the other night showed lots of middle-aged, slightly dumpy people, the men in suits and the women with big hairdos. There wasn’t a tattoo or a pair of brass knuckles in sight.
According to the emcees for the evening, who included the ex-host of a once-notorious talk show about sex, Yelena Khanga, the uncrowned queen of shanson is Lyubov Uspenskaya. A woman who looks as if she might have had the odd nip and tuck, she wore a fur cape to sing about her lover coming home.
Unlike pop stars, shanson singers are allowed to have a bit of wear and tear. In fact they have to, since you can’t really sing about your “young days” and “holding on for a few more years” with a flat stomach and a belly-button ring. The men wear black suits that hide a multitude of sins, and the women look like gangsters’ molls who have seen slightly better days.
The king of shanson, apparently, is Mikhail Shufutinsky. Enormous, with a bald head, beard and dark magnetic eyes, he sang a patriotic song called “Moscow-Vladivostok” that was about how everything you see between those two cities is “my motherland” with “simple, good people.” To emphasize the point, girls in tutus swayed in the background — it’s not really possible to dance to shanson.
Shufutinsky may be the king of shanson now, but he seems to have inherited the title from another performer, Mikhail Krug, who was shot in 2002 in what was thought to be a bungled robbery. Such unpleasant details were a world away from the cozy atmosphere of the Kremlin Palace, however, with its old ladies eagerly handing over bouquets. 
The performers were all winners of Radio Shanson awards, voted for by listeners. These were handed over by such B-list celebrities as soap actor Sergei Astakhov and talk show hostess Oksana Pushkina. Several praised the winners for being “real men.” 
Olympic gymnast Svetlana Khorkina gave an award to Yevgeny Kemerovsky, a singer with bleached teeth who sang a ballad called “Strange Life.” She told him, “Today you touched my soul again.”
Confusingly, some of the performers were not what I thought was shanson. The first song was performed by Alexander Rozenbaum, whom I had filed under contemporary bards — a bit like Vladimir Vysotsky, except he’s a State Duma Deputy from United Russia. Then there were Samotsvety, or Semi-Precious Stones, who seem to have been a kind of Soviet-era ABBA and threatened to ruin the atmosphere with a dangerously upbeat song.
Even though NTV is supposed to be a red-blooded channel specializing in crime series and documentaries, the songs were short on details of the prison and camp experiences that are supposed to be intrinsic to shanson. I guess those songs got lost somewhere on the way to the red velvet seats of the Kremlin Palace.
Although, to be fair, I didn’t watch to the end. As with all televised concerts, the running time ran to the edge of bearable, and then added another half-hour. And no time off for good behavior.

TITLE: Southern comfort
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mozzarella Bar // 153 Moskovsky Prospekt. Tel: 388 1482 // Open daily from noon to 11 p.m. // Major credit cards accepted // Menu in English and Russian // Dinner for two with a glass of wine 2,085 rubles ($81)

The recent arrival of Mozzarella Bar, a new Italian trattoria located on Moskovsky Prospekt in the south of St. Petersburg marks what is hoped will become a long-awaited expansion of good eateries from the historic city center into more recently built districts. 
The owners of city restaurants are yet to venture far beyond the limits of downtown, with the exception of glam suburban venues of the caliber of Chaliapin in Repino and Podvorye in Pavlovsk.
The restaurant was packed and its hosts even had to turn away some customers owing to a shortage of tables on the Saturday night when my dining companion and I visited the place. We praised ourselves for being prudent enough to book a table. Being a resident of the neighborhood, I spotted two friends who live next door having a meal and it is a good indication that Mozzarella Bar is rapidly earning high marks with locals.
Mozzarella Bar is owned by Aram Mnatsakanov, the man behind a string of very successful Italian restaurants, including Il Grappolo, Macaroni, Papa Pomidoro and Ryba.
The restaurant features two spacious rooms painted in soft yellow shades, wicker chairs, subdued lounge music and a relaxed, laid-back atmosphere reminiscent of a dacha. The tables are placed sparingly across the place, and even when it is fully booked, the venue does not get noisy and you do not find that you are hostage to the sound of other people’s conversations.
True to its name, the eatery serves five mozzarella-heavy starters, including, for example Salad Caprese with mozzarella “Di Buffalo” (490 rubles, $19), panfried toast with mozzarella cheese, anchovies and fresh basil (190 rubles, $7.30), a roulade of mozzarella cheese, rucola and ham (290 rubles, $11.30) and Parmiggiana: aubergines baked with mozzarella and tomato coulis (270 rubles, $10.50).
We opted for the panfried toast, which turned out to be the weakest point of our otherwise very pleasant meal. The presence of anchovies in the dish was limited to a slight and uncertain salty overtone, while the toast itself appeared more like a bizarre glutinous mass that was not crunchy in the slightest.
By contrast, the rabbit fricassee with tomatoes and green olives (390 rubles, $15.20), a Ligurian recipe, was a highlight. Not at all overcooked or oily, the juicy, aromatic and mildly piquant dish had a distinct and lingering gamy taste attuned by salty notes of olives and tomatoes.
A chicken breast with cep sauce (345 rubles, $13.40) arrived as a generous portion in the shape of a chop soaked, in a wealth of rich creamy sauce, and proved a rewarding choice. Chicken breasts may sound a boring option, and some people find it too dry to be enjoyable, but the dish received winning marks at Mozzarella Bar. 
The restaurant’s wine list is balanced between high and low-cost options but is rather modest, with only a handful of wines available by the glass.
The restaurant’s chef clearly favors basil, aubergines, spinach, rabbit and ceps and the menu features traditional, simple and substantial dishes.
Mozzarella Bar has a short charter, or set of rules for its guests, printed at the back of the menu. The hosts warn that they do not close their premises for any banquets or birthday parties and ask their clients to leave bodyguards outside. On a less jolly side, the memo says that a 15-percent surcharge will be imposed on your bill, if you are visiting in a large group of eight or more people.

TITLE: He’s back and he’s black
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: If ever a movie had a case of the blues and the blahs, it’s “Spider-Man 3,” the third and what feels like the end of Sam Raimi’s big-screen comic-book adaptations. (Ready or not, the studio is talking about a fourth.) Aesthetically and conceptually wrung out, fizzled rather than fizzy, this latest installment in the spider-bites-boy adventure story shoots high, swings low and every so often hits the sweet spot, but mostly just plods and plods along, as if its heart were pumping tired radioactive blood.
Maybe it’s middle age. In fictional terms Spider-Man aka Peter Parker aka Tobey Maguire looks like he’s pushing 23, but there’s something about the guy that shrieks midlife crisis. Peter is still hitting the books and still snapping photographs for The Daily Bugle, run by the flattop blowhard J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons, in clover, as usual). It’s a living, kind of, enough for an enviably situated dump in Manhattan with artfully peeling walls and a fabulous picture window through which Peter regularly bounds into the air in full superhero drag. (The neighbors in this part of town evidently always keep the blinds drawn.) It’s a calling, sort of, though it’s also started to feel a bit like punching the clock.
The programmatic screenplay credited to Raimi, his brother Ivan Raimi (a third Raimi brother, Ted, plays a tiny role in the picture) and Alvin Sargent certainly feels more like work than play. The big selling point in “Spider-Man 3” is that Spider-Man or Peter or some combination of the two discovers his so-called dark side when an inky extraterrestrial glob (a symbiote in Marvel-speak) spreads its gooey tentacles over his body, turning his suit and soul black. The idea of messing with Spider-Man’s squeaky-clean profile, smearing it with dirt, a touch of naughtiness, seems too good to resist.
It’s also too good to be true. There’s no knowing if the problem is bottom-line reserve, or a lack of imagination or creative nerve, but Spider-Man’s voyage into darkness turns out to be little more than an overnighter. The goo transforms Spider-Man, but the alteration barely registers. There’s some wacky, misguided nonsense involving Peter’s super-inflated ego and Raimi’s apparent desire to direct a musical, as well as fleeting nastiness with a resurrected foe, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), recently escaped from prison. Marko has the makings of a super-antagonist, and Church brings a touching delicacy to the few short scenes in which you can see his face, the skin pulled back so tightly that you fear his jagged cheekbones might pierce right through.
With his hard-body physique and a striped shirt that evokes a 1930s chain gang, Marko also feels and looks like a fugitive from an earlier era, one of the film’s many such nostalgic flourishes. Marko’s earthbound trudge makes it seem as if he’s dragging a literal ball and chain, not just the baggage of a sick daughter and a cranky missus (Theresa Russell, in and out like the Flash). And when he rises from a bed of sand after a “particle atomizer” scrambles his molecules, his newly granulated form shifts and spills apart, then lurches into human form with a heaviness that recalls Boris Karloff staggering into the world as Frankenstein’s monster. There’s poetry in this metamorphosis, not just technological bravura, a glimpse into the glory and agony of transformation.
It’s this combination of exaltation and dread that can come with radical life change that made the first film work as well as it did. The first “Spider-Man” never soared, but there was something very appealing about the image of a skinny, geeky adolescent struggling to rise to the occasion of his newfound powers. Part of the allure of superheroes, of course, is how they serve as wish fulfillments for the faithful, allowing their mild-mannered fans to settle scores and snare the babe by proxy. But nothing seems to put a damper on interesting self-doubt faster than fame, or so this film and its lead character both seem intent on proving.
Success may not have spoiled Raimi as it has Peter Parker, but it seems as if it has zapped his gracious good humor, which was so critical to the first two films. The story this time unfolds as a series of increasingly dreary and teary melodramatic encounters regularly interrupted by special-effects-laden fights. As it happens, the over-all shape does recall a Busby Berkeley musical — snappy story, lavish number, snappy story, lavish number — but without the snap or fun. Peter ignores his girlfriend, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), so she reaches out to her friend and his frenemy, Harry Osborn (James Franco), aka Son of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe, revived in flashback), while Peter turns to his Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), who shovels the manure with grace.
And so it goes as the Sandman cometh and goeth and a twerp named Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) throws a couple of monstrous hissy fits. Dunst looks a bit lost, at times even bereft, but you want to catch hold of her story line and follow her home. When she tramps across the screen, this wispy, sad-eyed beauty turns into Melancholy Girl, able to melt hearts in a single glance.
It’s hard not to think that Raimi would rather follow Dunst to wherever her story might take them too. And while Marko is mainly around to show off the franchise’s snazzy special effects, it feels as if the director has put quite a bit of himself into the Sandman, whose struggle to find a form that suits his talents has the sting of a metaphor. The bittersweet paradox of this franchise is that while the stories have grown progressively less interesting the special effects have improved tremendously, becoming at once more plausible and more spectacular. In Sandman you see the vestiges of Raimi’s personal touch slipping through a nearly empty hourglass.

TITLE: British Prime Minister Announces Resignation Date
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Tony Blair said on Thursday he would step down as prime minister on June 27, more than 10 years after winning power in what was hailed as a new dawn for Britain that has since been darkened by the Iraq war. 
“I tell you one thing: hand on heart, I did what I thought was right,” Blair told Labour Party members on Thursday. “I may have been wrong, that’s your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else I did what I thought was right for our country.
“In this job, in the world of today, I think that’s long enough for me but more especially for the country. Sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down.”
Treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair’s partner in reforming the Labour Party and a sometimes impatient rival in government, was expected to easily win election as the party’s new leader and become the next prime minister.
Blair’s announcement is one that his Labour Party, and the nation, have been expecting for nearly three years, ever since the prime minister said in 2004 that his third term would be his last.
“Today, the beginning of the end,” read the front page of The Guardian newspaper.
Blair met earlier with Cabinet members, who left No. 10 Downing Street without answering questions shouted by reporters swarming outside.
Brown has already declared he will be a candidate; at least one opponent from the party’s left wing was expected to announce his candidacy late Thursday.
“Gordon paid a very full tribute to Tony in there,” Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.
Blair’s election agent John Burton said Blair would continue to represent Sedgefield in Parliament until the next national election, expected in 2009, unless he is offered “a major international or United Nations job.”
The Iraq war, a police investigation of allegations that the government traded honors for political contributions and endless questions about when Blair would step down overshadowed his last term in government, after winning the third term in May 2005.
Blair has stopped short of openly endorsing Brown, a stern Scot who has long coveted the top job, but said last week that Brown would make “a great prime minister.”
“One of the things I very much hope will be part of the legacy of the government is the strongest economy in the Western world which he has been responsible for,” Blair said.
Blair led Labour to two landslide election wins in 1997 and 2001, and a narrower but still comfortable victory in 2005.
The first term was marked by several significant initiatives: the Bank of England was given the freedom to set interest rates, Scotland and Wales were given regional governments, London gained an elected mayor and all but 92 hereditary members were ejected from the House of Lords.
In 1998, Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern led successful negotiations for a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, launching a process which reached its culmination earlier this week as former enemies from the Protestant and Catholic communities joined to form a new regional government.
The Iraq war severely dented Blair’s popularity. Blair’s close alliance with President Bush was unpopular at home, there were mass marches in Britain opposing the U.S.-led invasion before it began, and the government’s claims that Saddam Hussein was building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction proved false. 
For more than a year, Labour has consistently trailed in opinion polls behind a Conservative Party revived by its new leader, David Cameron. 
In local and regional elections earlier this month, Labour lost hundreds of seats in city and county councils, and was beaten into second place in the Scottish Parliament elections by the Scottish National Party, which advocates independence. 
In recent months, Blair’s thoughts have turned to the lessons of his decade in power. 
“When I first started in politics, I wanted to please everyone,” Blair said during a tour of the Middle East in December. “After a time I learned that you can’t please everyone, and you learn that the best thing is to do what you think is right and everyone can make their judgment.” 
Blair is the first British prime minister since Harold Wilson in 1976 to leave at a time of his own choosing, rather than by losing an election or being forced out by the party. 

(Reuters, AP)

TITLE: Aussies Must Still Tour
Zimbabwe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Australian officials say they are obliged to go ahead with their scheduled tour of Zimbabwe despite calls from the government to boycott the trip.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer wants the tour cancelled in protest at Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
Downer was due to meet with Cricket Australia (CA) officials and the Australian Cricketers Association but CA spokesman Peter Young told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio the tour would only be cancelled if the safety of the players was at risk.
“The ICC policy is that it’s obligatory for all ICC nations to visit each other regularly unless it’s not safe or unless it is impossible for some reason beyond the control of the visiting nation,” Young said.
Cricket Australia could be fined up to $2 million if they refuse to go ahead with the tour, although the fine would be wiped out if the government refused to let them go.
Downer said the government would not force the players to abandon the tour but would still pay the fine, despite concerns the money would end up going to Mugabe, who is the patron of Zimbabwe cricket. “[The money] would go to the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, and they would of course be able to do what they wanted with the money,” Downer told reporters on Thursday. “What we can do is try to persuade Cricket Australia that sending the world’s greatest cricket team — not just any cricket team but the world’s greatest cricket team — to Zimbabwe will be seen as a propaganda victory by the Mugabe regime.”
Zimbabwean cricket has been in crisis for the past few years. The country is still recognised by the International Cricket Council, though the sport’s ruling body has currently withdrawn its test status.

TITLE: Russia, Sweden Into Semifinals
AUTHOR: By Erica Bulman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia led the entire way, and Sweden came from behind to secure spots in the semifinals of the hockey world championship on Wednesday.
Yevgeny Malkin scored two goals to help Russia beat the Czech Republic 4-0, and Tony Martensson scored three goals in defending champion Sweden’s 7-4 win over Slovakia.
Russia, undefeated in seven games and bidding for its first title since 1993, will play either the United States or Finland on Saturday. Sweden will face Canada or Switzerland.
“It’s just an unbelievable atmosphere right now. We win the game and everyone supports us,” Russia forward Alexander Ovechkin said. “We feel good and we can’t wait for the next game.”
New Jersey Devils right wing Sergei Brylin joined Russia hours before the game, and the national team is also reportedly trying to convince San Jose goalie Yevgeni Nabokov and New York Rangers defenseman Fyodor Tyutin to join the team for the semifinals.
The Czechs, who won four of the last eight titles, had reached the final at the last two championships, winning gold in 2005.
But Andrei Markov gave Russia the lead for good in the first period when he gathered a backhand pass from Alexander Frolov and wristed it over Roman Cechmanek’s right shoulder on a power play.
After a scoreless second period, Ilya Kovalchuk sent a slap shot from the circle that bounced off the end boards and onto Malkin’s stick. The Pittsburgh Penguins forward put the rebound through an opening to make it 2-0 only 23 seconds into the final period.
Cechmanek later came out of the crease and fell, dropping his stick, and Alexander Radulov sent a slap shot past the goalie to make it 3-0.
Malkin added the fourth goal on a breakaway.

TITLE: Chelsea And United In Goalless Stalemate
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea and Manchester United, league champions old and new, produced a strictly mid-table performance on Wednesday in a goalless showdown that came a month too late.
The game, which should have been one of the highlights of the season, was downgraded to dead rubber status when United secured the title on Sunday by virtue of Chelsea only drawing 1-1 at Arsenal.
It would have been very different if the fixture had been played when originally scheduled for FA Cup semi-final weekend in April, when United were just three points ahead, but with the teams due to meet again in the Cup final on May 19 it became a more of a damage-limitation exercise.
Alex Ferguson put out a virtual second-string team. China forward Fangzhuo Dong donned the red shirt competitively for the first time more than three years after joining the club, full back Kieran Lee made his first league appearance and Chris Eagles his first start. 
Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick were on the bench and Cristiano Ronaldo not involved at all.
Chelsea were much more recognisable, though they too gave a first start to 18-year-old forward Scott Sinclair in the continuing absence of 31-goal striker Didier Drogba and for once were without Frank Lampard, missing for only the second time in 62 games.
The Londoners at least had something to play for as they sought the result that would extend their unbeaten home league record to 63 games dating back to February 2004 and thereby match Liverpool’s all-time top flight mark set between February 1978 and January 1981.
There seemed little danger of them missing out on the landmark in a dreary first half that barely involved the two stand-in goalkeepers, Carlo Cudicini of Chelsea and Tomasz Kuszczak of United.
Things picked up a little after the break as the tackles began to fly in and the respective managers took turns to leap into the technical area to remonstrate.
Eagles might have had a penalty when he was tripped by Michael Essien but then was lucky to escape with a yellow card when he took his frustration out on the shins of Shaun Wright-Phillips.
United’s Alan Smith, hoping for a Cup final berth to cap his comeback from a broken leg, showed plenty of aggressive running in midfield and Wright-Phillips clipped in some inviting crosses for Chelsea but there was precious little quality from the two best teams in the country.
Chelsea eventually began to exert some pressure with Salomon Kalou twice going close, while 17-year-old Israeli international Ben Sahar had a last-minute effort cleared off the line by Lee but nobody seemed that bothered, or surprised, when it ended 0-0.

TITLE: Relegation Battle Takes Center Stage on Last Day
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Arguably the most important game of the Premier League season takes place at Bramall Lane on Sunday when Sheffield United faces Wigan Athletic with each side aware that victory will keep them up for at least another year.
With relegation estimated to cost anything between $60 million and $100 million, staying in the top flight means everything.
One other club, West Ham United, goes into Sunday’s final round of fixtures with fear at its shoulder and it faces buoyant champion-elect Manchester United at Old Trafford. West Ham needs a point to ensure it does not join Watford and Charlton Athletic in the second division next season.
Sheffield United and West Ham have 38 points while Wigan is on 35.
If Sheffield win or draw it will be safe and Wigan will go down while three points for Wigan keeps it safe and would leave Sheffield needing West Ham to lose at Old Trafford. West Ham could still survive in the unlikely scenario of a narrow defeat combined with Sheffield shipping four or more at home.
Wigan manager Paul Jewell must wonder how it has come to this. A season that for so long looked promising has gone horribly wrong as a return of just three points from 24, culminating in last week’s home defeat by Middlesbrough put Wigan into the bottom three for the first time all season.
Jewell has tried to put a positive face on Sunday’s match. “If we win we’re safe, if we lose we go down, you couldn’t really get anything simpler,” he said. “Knowing that you are not depending on any other results is what any manager would want.”
Sheffield United boss Neil Warnock, whose side were favourite to go down after one season, said he was looking forward to the showdown. “We should relish it,” he said. “It’s an adventure I’m enjoying and I’m going to try to enjoy it this weekend.”
Should Warnock’s team fail it will hope that Manchester United is not too distracted by its celebrations and by next week’s FA Cup final against Chelsea to allow West Ham to claim the point or even victory that would see it safe.

REAL HOPE
Sheffield’s impressive 3-1 win over Bolton Wanderers last Saturday was its sixth victory in eight games and gave it real hope of survival after looking down and out a couple of months ago.
There then remains the little matter of a possible legal challenge against the Premier League’s decision not to dock Sheffield any points for breaking rules over the transfers of Carlos Tevez, outstanding in recent weeks, and Javier Mascherano but that will be far from the players’ minds on Sunday.
The only other major issue still to be decided is the UEFA Cup places. Fifth-placed Everton is virtually assured of one of them so can travel in a relaxed frame of mind to take on runner-up Chelsea.
Tottenham Hotspur, which reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup this year, should get a return ticket as it has a home game on Thursday against Blackburn Rovers before Sunday’s home sign-off against Manchester City.
Bolton, in pole position for most of the season, suddenly finds itself up against it and might need to beat in-form Aston Villa to avoid a double dose of depression following the departure of manager Sam Allardyce last week.
Reading boss Steve Coppell says his team is not ready for Europe after a dream first Premier League season and will not want to risk it by winning at Blackburn.
Liverpool and Arsenal, together on 67 points, will each want to snatch third place but the reward is only pride and yet more cash, as both are already assured of slots in the Champions League qualifiers.
Liverpool with a two-superior goal difference, hosts Charlton while Arsenal visit Portsmouth, who still have a shot at a UEFA Cup slot.

TITLE: Woods Seeks Improvement
At Players Championship
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: JACKSONVILLE, United States — Tiger Woods will look for just his fourth title of season and a reversal of recent history at the PGA Players Championship which started Thursday at TPC Sawgrass.
In 10 starts in the prestigious event, Woods has a relatively mediocre record with just one victory.
He also has one runner-up, but has not contended in his other eight starts, perhaps because the course does not necessarily favour the long hitters.
“Anyone can win here,” Woods said. “The beauty of this course is that we’re all playing [second shots] from about the same spot.
“There really is no advantage to taking out driver and bombing it down there, because of the trouble obviously, but also how everything pitches in.”
The course has been stretched by over 100 yards since last year, with six new tees, but that doesn’t mean Woods and the other bombers will be firing away with their drivers any more often than in previous years.
The fairways, with a new drainage system, will be firm barring torrential rain, offering more roll than in most previous years. And many holes just are not suited to a driver.
Woods comes into the event on his usual roll, having won two of his past three starts, with a tie for second at the Masters wedged in between.
He dusted off the field by two strokes at the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina on Sunday even though, by his own admission, his long game was not sharp.
However, he got it done with the putter, a performance that both impressed and frightened his peers.
“Everyone on tour shakes their heads and says, ‘How does he win last week’,” said US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy. “He shows us you can win not hitting it your best. He hit it sideways and still won. And at Augusta he was playing really poorly and he nearly won. It’s inspirational to be around a guy who’s doing that.”
If Woods has a sub-par record here, what can you say about Phil Mickelson, who has just two top-10 finishes in 13 starts, no doubt because of his wayward driving.
Mickelson recently left long-time coach Rick Smith to work with Butch Harmon, specifically to become a more accurate driver.
The early signs have been good. Mickelson has finished third in each of his last two events, although it will likely be some time before the jury rules on the success of the coaching switch.
One thing for sure is that Mickelson did not impress world No. 4 Adam Scott when they played the first two rounds together at last month’s Masters.
“He really wasn’t driving it good,” said Scott, who won here in 2004. 
“I don’t think he knew where it was going, so he could be scary good if he gets that driver in the fairway. It’ll give him a lot of scoring opportunities.”
Mickelson is tight-lipped about the exact changes he is making with Harmon, but he does not expect an overnight miracle.
“There’s no little, quick fix to years or poor driving,” he said. “I think it will take some time to feel comfortable and confident with a couple of changes, but I’m starting to see the difference.
“Statistics don’t show much of a difference right now, but I’m starting to see it, the way the ball is coming off the face. I have a lot of work to get to where I want to be.”
Not that Mickelson has any realistic expectations of ever matching Woods’ record, which is 12 majors and counting.
“If I play another 10 years and I’m fortunate enough to win 20 [US Tour] events and seven more majors, which would be incredible, I would have 50 [US Tour] wins and 10 majors, and I still wouldn’t be where he’s at.
“It’s not that I’m trying to catch up to Tiger. I love that I get to play against probably the best player that ever lived and compete against him in his prime.
“When I do win majors, it adds more credibility to those majors.”

TITLE: Fisher Return Inspires Jazz to Golden Overtime Win
AUTHOR: By Doug Alden
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SALT LAKE CITY — All Derek Fisher needed to do to inspire his teammates was make it to the game. 
He did so much more, capping a dramatic night by scoring all five of his points in overtime in Utah’s 127-117 victory over Golden State on Wednesday night — a game Fisher nearly missed while returning from New York, where his baby daughter underwent cancer surgery. 
“I don’t know how I got through this tonight. I really don’t,” said Fisher, who hit his only shot, a 3-pointer. 
The win and Utah’s 2-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals were overshadowed by what Fisher did Wednesday. He had said Monday that one of his four children was ill, but did not go into detail on how serious it was other than to say he needed to be with his family instead of at the game Monday. 
After the game Wednesday, he told how serious 10-month-old Tatum’s condition was. She has retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer that required a three-hour combination of surgery and chemotherapy at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. 
“My daughter’s doing well,” Fisher said. “We had a successful operation in New York and I flew back and got off the plane and came to the game. I’m speechless.” 
Fisher missed most of the first three quarters, then ran straight from the tunnel onto the court late in the third period to a standing ovation and a few high-fives and hugs from teammates, as well as Golden State’s Baron Davis. 
“He got off the plane. He didn’t warm up. He didn’t stretch. He didn’t shoot a shot,” said Utah’s Deron Williams, who had 17 points and 14 assists. “As soon as he came into the arena, he went straight to the scorers’ table.” 
It was an emotional night for the Jazz, who lost rookie point guard Dee Brown to a neck injury in the first quarter when teammate Mehmet Okur landed on him. 
Physically, the Jazz really needed Fisher. But his psychological impact was much, much greater and is now going to be an indelible part of the Jazz’s season and history. 
“There’s not enough that can be said about him and what he did tonight,” Williams said. 
Utah had to rally to force the overtime after Golden State went on a 12-1 run late in the fourth quarter. The Warriors missed six free throws in the fourth quarter, three after taking the late lead. 
Carlos Boozer had 30 points and 13 rebounds for Utah, while Okur added 23 points and 18 rebounds and Andrei Kirilenko had 20 points, nine rebounds and six blocks. Kirilenko also had to fill in a little at point guard when the Jazz were down to 10 available players. 
Fisher made it 11 and didn’t even get a chance to warm up. 
“I asked him if he was all right and he said he was,” Utah coach Jerry Sloan said. “He’s gone through a lot the last few days and basketball was probably a good opportunity for him.” 
The Jazz left Fisher on the active list, a move that became dicey when Brown went down with five minutes left in the opening quarter. 
“My loyalty is always with family and faith first. I had to get permission from my wife to get here. My coach and teammates welcomed me with open arms,” Fisher said. “They kept me on the active list. They didn’t have to do that.” 
Davis had 36 points and seven assists for Golden State. 
“Oh yeah. That one we gave away,” Davis said. “We gave that away and it hurt. It hurt a lot.” 
The Warriors got the Jazz to play an uptempo game again two days after Utah outlasted Golden State 116-112 in the series opener. 
Game 3 is Friday night at Golden State. 
Jason Richardson scored 27 points and Stephen Jackson had eight for Golden State, which scored only four points in the extra five minutes. The Warriors forced 23 turnovers, but were again badly outrebounded, 60-32. 
The Jazz were also thinking after the game about Brown, the 6-foot rookie who attempted to take a charge from Matt Barnes and had the 6-foot-11 Okur land on him in the lane. He had to be helped from the court and was taken to a hospital as a precaution. The team said neurological tests on Brown were normal. 
Williams got two fouls in a one-minute span the opening quarter and the Jazz were really hamstrung for a lineup to run with the Warriors. 
Utah managed and led by as many as 12 points before the Warriors struck quickly and took over the lead late in the fourth quarter by holding the Jazz without a field goal for 4:17. 
The Warriors had a chance to seal it, but Mickael Pietrus missed two free throws and Okur hit a shot from the corner with 9.8 seconds left to make it 112-111. Fans thought Okur had hit a 3-pointer to tie it, but replays showed his toes were on the line when he took the shot. 
Davis got Fisher to foul him, but also missed a chance to put away the Jazz. He made his first free throw, but missed the second and Boozer grabbed the rebound with 5.8 seconds left. Utah called a timeout and Williams got open for a jumper in the lane that tied it with 2.8 seconds left. 
“The free throw betrayed us,” Golden State coach Don Nelson said. “It was right there. All we had to do was make free throws.”

TITLE: Punters Give Up on Hewitt
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Australian punters have all but given up hope of Lleyton Hewitt winning this month’s French Open, with bookmakers offering the extraordinary odds of 200-1 about the former world number one.
When Hewitt was at the peak of his powers, Australians bet millions of dollars on him winning events but no longer. The 26-year-old has not won a grand slam title in almost five years and has slipped to 20th in the world rankings.
“He was an enormously popular player a few years back,” TAB spokesman Glenn Munsie told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. “But it’s not hard to track the decline in his popularity.”

TITLE: Megafon North-West News
TEXT: You’ve paid? Then don’t worry!
MegaFon North-West has introduced a new service, “SMS-Check,” which allows information to be received quickly in the form of SMS messages regarding payments into personal accounts. As subscribers receive their wage payments, they will receive notification in the form of a text message, telling him or her of the date and amount of the payment and the total amount in the account. The SMS-Check service is provided without a monthly subscription charge. You can turn on the service independently with the command *105#21#, sending a “21” text message to the number 000105, by phoning 01055 or by contacting the subscriber service center.

Unlimited connections across the whole of Russia
MegaFon North-West has begun connecting corporate clients to the “Territory” rate plan with an unlimited number of local, mobile and international calls, including calls employing roaming within the network. The “Territory” rate plan has only one limit — the territory of the Russian Federation. Subscribers to the new tariff, for a monthly subscription fee, can make an unlimited number of calls to mobile phones and landlines in Russia. The unlimited connection remains in operation as he or she journeys around the country — the parameters of the rate plan remain in force through the network’s roaming. The “Territory” rate plan allows you to always be contactable, in any city in Russia, and to set no limits on your phone conversations in the fields listed above. Both federal and city numbers can be connected to the new rate plan.
Corporate Rates for All
MegaFon North-West has announced that it has begun connecting subscribers to corporate rate plans without the formation of corporate groups. Now the “Firmenny Universalny” and “Firmenny Osoby” plans, previously only available to corporate clients, can be accessed by individuals and individual entrepreneurs. And they don’t have to form corporate groups to be accessed — the rate plans, with all their advantages, can now even be accessed by just one subscriber by approaching a subscriber service center or an official dealership. The “Firmenny Universalny” and “Firmenny Osoby” rate plans are a convenient option for business clients. One of the advantages of these plans is that it maintains its parameters even when the subscriber is traveling widely in the North-West region. In addition, they allow for the optimization of expenditure on priority calls for the subscriber — subscribers to these plans have access to rate options for members of a “Priority” group (special conditions for rates on certain calls, the sending of text messages and transfer of data).
Wholesale Is Cheaper
MegaFon North-West has introduced a new tariff option, “MegaFon 200 Package.” The package includes 200 non-tariffed minutes of outgoing calls within the MegaFon North-West network. The monthly subscription payment for this option is 200 rubles. To order this tariff, use the *105#4401# command or contact a subscriber service center. The minutes in the package last for an entire calendar month.

TITLE: Office — Always In Touch
TEXT: Judging by the pace of the development of the corporate market for mobile communications, an office mobile phone will soon be as commonplace among employees as computers or stationary. The use of mobile communications allows enterprises not only to provide managers with a direct, effective link, but is also of great benefit in day-to-day business processes such as logistics, sales and the providing of services to clients.

SMS for Business
The text message services (SMS) offered to subscribers by the MegaFon North-West operator allows for the sending of messages to a wide circle of subscribers on any GSM networks at high speeds and at reduced rates, as well as the organization of advertising and interactive campaigns.
The technical implementation of the SMS-Inform services involves the direct linking of the client’s equipment to the SMS center of the operator through the Internet with the use of an IPSec protocol, or through a dedicated line. Both approaches provide the necessary security levels in the transfer of information. Services involving the sending out of SMS messages to consumers of goods and services is a great resource for long-distance servicing and financial organizations were the first in St. Petersburg to make use of the opportunities that it provides. Baltiisky Bank’s “SMS-Information” services employs MegaFon’s technical base, giving information on financial transactions involving bank cards. In addition, the bank is preparing to launch “SMS-Commerce” services which will allow customers to pay for their mobile telephones with the aid of text messaging. The StarCom company is incorporating a SIM card from MegaFon North-West in its basic car alarm system which will also employ SMS technology. At present, there are already several thousand cars driving round with security systems backed up by the MegaFon network.
You can begin an SMS dialogue with clients by using another MegaFon service — SMS-Otklik (“SMS-Response”). Employing this service, the operator’s corporate clients are given a service number which it can use in advertising and informational materials, not only in order to receive responses to questionnaires, which will provide needed strategic information, but also to be able to reply to any text messages received.
The “SMS-Inform” and “SMS-Otklik” services are provided at discounted rates. In concluding agreements with the operator on the provision of services, corporate clients oblige themselves to follow “opt-in” principles, only including those subscribers in SMS distribution lists who have given their agreement in written form.

Control of Remote Sites
Major banks are developing their networks of ATMs and POS terminals with the transmission of data over radio channels through innovative MegaFon services such as “Management of Remote Sites.” The advantages of using radio channels include: simplicity and speed of hooking up and the technical opportunity to use the service anywhere covered by GPRS signals, which can’t be said of fixed communication links. ATM networks are only one example of the way that services can be provided in this sphere. Different types of meter, such as those for gas, water and electricity, car and building alarm systems and other equipment which must be continually kept under control.

A Pocket Office
Services involving the transfer of data with the opportunity to organize limited, protected access within a corporate network are worthy of special note. MegaFon’s “Pocket Office” service allows personnel, with the aid of their mobile phones, to receive access to all resources on a firm’s internal network from wherever they can receive mobile phone coverage, including through roaming services and abroad. Thus, sales personnel who are permanently on the move can keep in contact with clients thanks to remote access to corporate email and can directly input orders received into the firm’s reporting system. All the member of staff needs in order to do this is a portable or pocket computer that can be hooked up to his or her telephone or a specialized GPRS modem with a MegaFon SIM card.

Convergence
Convergence in mobile and fixed line services — one of the latest trends in the communications market — is offered within the MegaFon product range in the Office in Touch (“Ofis na Svyazi”) service. It comprises the hooking up of large offices to the MegaFon switchboard via a fixed line and provides a reliable, fast and cost-effective link between the mobile and office phones of corporate clients with the added benefit of speed dialing. Traditionally, fixed line services in our country have been provided by fixed line operators. MegaFon North-West, having acquired a license for the provision of local and zonal links, is breaking down that stereotype. MegaFon’s first client for fixed-line Internet access was a major corporate client, the Baltika Brewery, which hooked up its rural health center in the Leningrad Oblast to the world wide web. The next key client, ZAO TK Eksis, two months after Baltika, has already begun to use its full range of fixed link services in the Leningrad Oblast (telephone line, a data transmission channel, Internet access).

TITLE: The Future Depends on Them
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Zapolskaya
TEXT: The Second Mini-Football Championship for teams from children’s homes and hostels in the North-West of Russia for the “The Future Depends on You” Cup has been completed.

Forward, Russia!
I don’t understand anything about football. I’ve never understood what all the fuss around this game is about. Or why millions of adult, intelligent and entirely rational people allow their mood to be dependant on the efforts of a bunch of strangers in T-shirts and shorts. But even I can understand one thing. At the beginning of June, in Zagreb, an event of great emotional intensity (that’s the way those in the know see it) will be taking place — the qualifying match for Euro-2008 between Croatia and Russia. It’s an event that millions of Russian fans dream of attending. Among the spectators in the stands of the Zagreb stadium will be dozens of boys from the children’s homes of Petersburg and Arkhangelsk, winners of the Second Mini-Football Championship “The Future Depends on You” cup. I imagined the powerful roar coming from the fans in the stand, chanting “Forward, Russia!”, and the voices of these short-haired children, their eyes blazing with passion, also lending their support. And for the first time in my life I thought: Football is great.

Why football?
The trip to the match in Zagreb is the main prize but not the main idea behind the recently held championship. Its aim is to create a memorable event for the kids whose lives have been so difficult. And, perhaps, to make sport part of their lives, a reliable way to give them some belief in themselves and their futures. Football championships for orphaned children are popular around the globe, being held annually in the USA, England, Germany, France and many other countries. The championship’s organizers believe that football develops a will to victory, team spirit and tactical thinking. It teaches the setting of goals and how to find the best way of achieving them. On top of that, 
football is the 
most democratic of sports. Neither the collapse of the sports industry for the general public nor the catastrophe that is the building over of sports areas and yards in the city are capable of preventing boys from kicking a ball round from dawn till dusk. All that’s needed is a thin scrap of land and a few rucksacks or coats placed on the ground and you already have a pitch with goals.

The Way It Was
The Second “The Future Depends on You” Mini-Football Championship began in November, 2006. Over the course of half a year, teams from 20 children’s homes in St. Petersburg played for the top spot in two age categories. In 2007, the championship spread beyond the confines of the city, reaching a regional scale. As a result, in regional selection games in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Vologda, Cherepovets, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Kaliningrad and Veliky Novgorod, over 400 boys aged from 12 to 16 competed for the title. The prize for the top eight teams was a trip to St. Petersburg, where they played for the main prize in the tournament and the chance to be the leading lights at the awards ceremony, which took place on May 3 at the Winter Stadium. And during the five days that the boys spent in Petersburg, they had the chance to go on excursions in the city, to the cinema and to the Divo-Ostrov amusement park. Master classes by USSR champions Mikhail Biryukov, Yuri Zheludkov, Sergei Dmitriev and the Zenit-player Alexander Gorshkov were held for them. And every participant in the championship received a football strip identical to those of the professional players.

The Victors
The jury deemed the best players in the tournament to be the goalkeeper Viktor Yushmanov (Children’s Home No. 27) and the forward Dmitri Novikov (Children’s Home No. 14), while the best striker, with 93 goals, was named Vanya Kostychev (Children’s Home No. 53).
The top three teams — Petersburg’s children’s homes No. 9 and No. 14, and the Children’s Home-School No. 6 from Arkhangelsk — will be going to Zagreb at the beginning of June for the Euro-2008 qualifying match between Croatia and Russia. Together with the young footballers, four girls will be going to give their support to the Russian side — winners of an arts competition involving drawing and painting on sports themes.

Yelena Nalobina, Commercial Director of MegaFon North-West:
The “The Future Depends on You” Cup Tournament is just one of the company’s social projects, but I can tell you that it’s one of our favorites. It’s targeted, having been developed especially for children’s from children’s homes and the resources invested in the organization of the Championship make a difference. We can see how these kids’ eyes blaze, how they strive to take part in the games, get into the teams, struggle for victory and the main prize! This year we invested around $200,000 in the tournament — the budget went up compared with last year as the championship reached a new level, going beyond the boundaries of St. Petersburg and reaching out into the whole of the North-West. Fifty-three children’s homes and over 700 children took part. Another 80 children took part in an arts competition within the championship — a drawing competition dedicated to sport that was held for the first time this year. As a result, the four winners (all of them girls) will go in June together with the football players to Zagreb. The tournament will definitely be held again next year (it’s already been included in the company’s plans) and it’s our dream that it should become a Russia-wide football championship among teams from children’s homes.