SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1340 (4), Friday, January 18, 2008
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TITLE: Russians
To Turn Out In Force For Davos
AUTHOR: By Andrew McChesney and Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — A record number of Russian delegates will attend the World Economic Forum next week, but in sharp contrast to last year their dealings will be largely behind the scenes.
Fifty-one government officials, executives, analysts and journalists will represent Russia at the annual gathering of the world’s most influential business leaders and politicians in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, which opens next Wednesday.
The Russians, however, are not looking for a place in the spotlight after last year, when their 47-member delegation was led by Dmitry Medvedev, the first deputy prime minister who is expected to win the presidential election in March.
The top government official this time is Alexei Kudrin, the deputy prime minister and finance minister. Only two other officials are scheduled to participate, Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina and her deputy, Kirill Androsov.
“It was an extraordinary year in 2007, but due to the elections, they cannot send the whole government again,” said Christophe Weber, a World Economic Forum official who visited Moscow in the fall to extend invitations to government officials.
Kudrin and Nabiullina will have their work cut out for them, Weber said. “I can tell you they will have a tough week in Davos, both of them,” he said Wednesday by telephone from Geneva. “They are going to be extremely busy because they have been extremely requested.”
He said the forum had been flooded with requests from investors to arrange private meetings with the ministers.
Alexei Ivanchenko, a senior official in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, confirmed that ministry officials were planning a flurry of one-on-one meetings with the heads of international companies as well as informal consultations with groups of foreign investors.
Last year’s forum served as Medvedev’s debut on the international stage, and he won over investors with his boyish smile, fluent English and — most important — strong words of support for their activities in Russia. Medvedev presided over a plenary session, while officials such as St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and Gazprom deputy head Alexander Medvedev participated in smaller sessions. In addition, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry threw a glitzy reception with vodka and caviar-stuffed blini served to music by conductor Valery Gergiev and soprano Anna Netrebko.
Government officials and investors said at the time that Russia had expanded its role at Davos in an attempt to undo some of the damage done by a series of embarrassing disputes and missteps, including the shutoff of gas and oil exports amid pricing spats with Ukraine and Belarus. Foreign investors were also worried about the state’s resurgence in the energy sector at their expense.
This year Gazprom does not have any officials signed up, but Alexander Medvedev will try to drop by, said his spokesman, Ilya Kochevrin. He said Medvedev had a prior commitment to attend the opening of a major gas hub in Austria on Jan. 25.
If Medvedev cannot make it, “we’ll send someone I think, but not on the same level,” Kochevrin said.
Business executives from state and private companies make up the bulk of Russia’s delegation. Representing the state are Rosneft president Sergei Bogdanchikov, Unified Energy System head Anatoly Chubais and VTB chief Andrei Kostin and three of his top directors. Former Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, a staple of past forums, will return in his new role as Sberbank CEO. The usual crowd of billionaires will also be present, including Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Yevtushenkov and David Yakobashvili.
VimpelCom CEO Alexander Izosimov said he and a team of four other company executives were going to Davos to look for ideas.
“For me personally and my team, I think Davos will be like every year — an incredible source of inspiration and a very stimulating forum that allows you to cast your eye beyond the horizon to see what’s coming,” Izosimov said.
TITLE: British Council Shut Down, FSB Blamed
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The British Council suspended its activities in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg on Wednesday, and expressed the hope that its Moscow office would be able to continue the work.
Stephen Kinnock, head of the British Council office in St. Petersburg, told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday that there was “very little chance” the St. Petersburg office would reopen in the foreseeable future.
In a statement issued from London earlier Thursday, British Council Chief Executive Martin Davidson said that “the Russian authorities have made it impossible for us to operate in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg so I have taken the decision to suspend operations in both cities.”
Kinnock added, “We had no choice because of all the pressure we had.”
Davidson said the Council was concerned about the “wellbeing of our staff. “
“I feel we cannot continue our work without significant risk to them,” Davidson said, referring to a campaign of intimidation against the Council’s staff he said had been initiated by the Russian government at the beginning of this week.
“On Tuesday Jan. 15, the Russian State Security Services (FSB) summoned over 20 Russian staff to attend individual interviews. Late that night 10 members of staff were visited at home by the Russian tax police and called for further interviews [on Wednesday],” Davidson said on Thursday.
He said the interviews “had little to do with their work and were clearly aimed at exerting undue pressure on innocent individuals.”
Davidson said it was “wrong” to draw cultural relations and the British Council into an international political dispute.
“I’m bitterly disappointed that the Russian authorities have sought to limit our cultural and educational links at the very time when they can be of most value,” he said.
Davidson said that he reiterated that the British Council operates in Russia in full accordance with international and Russian law, adding that the British Council “remains committed to Russia and hopes to continue to work with our one-and-a-quarter million Russian partners and customers from our Moscow office.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s foreign minister David Miliband criticized the actions of Russia.
“Such actions deserve reproach and are not worthy of a great country,” Miliband said in a statement to the British parliament on Thursday, Interfax said.
Miliband said the actions of the Russian authorities caused dissatisfaction from the EU, the U.S., Canada — and Russian people who have received help from the British Council.
He said Britain did not intend to close Russian cultural organizations working in Great Britain in response.
British Ambassador Anthony Brenton said that Russia risks its reputation in the west and called the intimidation campaign a return to Soviet methods.
“Summoning our staff to be interviewed by the FSB and tax police, as happened in the U.S.S.R., gives a bad impression about life in Russia,” Brenton said, Interfax reported.
Brenton disagreed that the British Council was performing intelligence activities in the interests of Great Britain.
“It’s crazy. If the British Council was the center of certain influence in Russia then it was the influence on only the [use and teaching of the] English language,” Brenton told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of Russian Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said on Thursday that the British Council would be able to continue to operate in Russia only after its activities are brought in accordance with Russian legislation, Interfax said.
“We do not demand anything more than that from the British Council,” Kosachyov said.
“As far as I know, the British Council works in France in accordance with French legislation, in Germany into accordance with German legislation. Only in Russia is it trying to act in accordance with British legislation,” he said.
“Russia is not a banana republic. Any foreign organization, independently from property rights and announced aims, should act in accordance with the existing national law. It’s a common democratic civilized norm,” Kosachyov said.
Tensions over the British Council’s operations in Russia escalated Wednesday as the group shut its office in St. Petersburg and Russia’s ambassador to Britiain was summoned to the Foreign Office.
Late on Tuesday, Stephen Kinnock, the head of the group’s St. Petersburg branch, was briefly detained by traffic police late Tuesday, as his Russian subordinates were being summoned for FSB interviews.
The group’s spokeswoman Clare Sears said in the statement that its Russian national staff, in both St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, were summoned for interviews by the FSB at their headquarters and subsequently visited in their homes late on Tuesday night by officials of the Russian Interior Ministry and have been called for interviews Wednesday.
“Our main concern is the safety and security of both our Russian and U.K. staff and we are deeply concerned by both these incidents,” Sears said on Wednesday.
The FSB said in a statement Tuesday that its interviews with Russian citizens employed by the British Council were intended to prevent them from being used by London “in provocative games.”
No Russian British Council staff who were interviewed by the FSB and reached by phone were willing to comment on their visit to the FSB or the police. Kinnock refused to elaborate on details of those conversations either, referring to security reasons.
Stanislav Smirnov, communications manager at the British Council’s St. Petersburg office, said on Thursday that the FSB talked to the Russian staff “politely” and “there were no threats.”
“But you can imagine how people may feel when the police come to visit them at midnight,” Smirnov said.
A spokeswoman for the St. Petersburg branch of the FSB said Wednesday that during the interviews the Russian staff of the British Council were informed that the group works in Russia in violation of the law and that their involvement with the group might be illegal.
Traffic police stopped Kinnock’s Volvo sedan late Tuesday in central St. Petersburg after he drove past a “do not enter” sign, and detected “the strong smell of alcohol” emanating from him, police spokesman Andrei Fominykh said by telephone.
“Kinnock refused to undergo an alcohol test as required by law, so our officers called officials from the British consulate in St. Petersburg and handed over Kinnock and the car to them,” Fominykh said.
Kinnock was followed before he was stopped, the British Council’s headquarters in London said in a statement.
The British consulate also confirmed that before driving, Kinnock, the son of Neil Kinnock, the former British Labour Party leader and current chairman of the British Council, had had a glass of wine but added that it was still wrong to say that Kinnock was drunk because “it was much less than allowed by Russian norms.” The consulate also said that Russian diplomats in London were involved in 167 traffic violations in 2007, RIA Novosti reported.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took a jab at British officials on Tuesday. “We certainly understand that historic memory, possibly related to nostalgia for the colonial age, weighs [on British officials]. But this is not a language to use with Russia,” he told reporters.
Nabi Abdullaev contributed to this report from Moscow.
TITLE: Moscow Warns Kosovo Over Move Towards Independence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Russia warned Kosovo’s leaders Wednesday that if they declare independence the territory will never become a member of the United Nations or other international political institutions.
The United States and Britain countered by reaffirming their support for Kosovo’s drive for independence from Serbia, a close ally of Russia.
The council was supposed to discuss a report on the UN Mission in Kosovo, but instead the two sides replayed their debate last month on independence vs. autonomy for the Serb province, and neither side budged.
With Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders expected to declare independence in late February or early March, the stakes were high and the key players sent top leaders to make their case again to the UN’s most powerful body — Serbian President Boris Tadic and Kosovo’s newly elected Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.
Tadic echoed Russia’s call for further negotiations, saying a solution that would provide self-government guaranteeing all rights to the Kosovo Albanians “is possible and attainable.” He stressed that Serbia is now a peaceful democracy and there is no reason it should be “unjustly punished again” because of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists a decade ago that led to the 1999 NATO bombing campaign.
But Thaci told the council that Kosovo — which has been run by the UN and NATO since 1999 — that Kosovo has laid the foundations to be a democratic state and independence is a “first step to regional success and our integration in the European family,” according to a copy of his speech. Later, he told reporters “very soon we will take a decision, and we hope that very soon [the] international community will recognize us — Washington, Britain and other states.”
After the Dec. 19 Security Council debate, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declared the views of the two sides “irreconcilable,” and said it was time for an independent Kosovo, a stand backed by Britain, France and most members of the European Union.
On Wednesday, Khalilzad told reporters: “We know where we are heading. There is no change with regard to the fact that the council is blocked.”
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that the future of Kosovo is a Security Council issue — not an EU issue — and said council members should prepare a roadmap that would “create dynamics that in our view would lead to a negotiated outcome.”
“We are respectful of the interest of the European Union to enhance its role in Kosovo, but that should not replace an international effort to find a mutually acceptable solution,” he said.
TITLE: Stocks Drop On U.S. Data
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Stocks fell sharply on Wednesday amid a global flight from risk, and the RTS index saw its worst daily losses since May 2006, dropping 4.52 percent.
Analysts blamed the turmoil on U.S. markets, which are reeling this week from Citigroup’s write-down of subprime debt and from poor U.S. retail data.
The most liquid stocks fared worst, as indiscriminate traders sold whatever they could.
The MICEX fell 4.29 percent for the day.
Investors seemed to ignore record earnings from Rosneft, which fell more than 4 percent in line with its peers.
Utilities stocks held up best, with the sector’s bellwether, Unified Energy System, down a moderate 1.57 percent.
TITLE: Freedom Downgraded By US Watchdog From ‘Bad’
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The level of freedom in Russia went “from bad to worse” in 2007, a U.S. democracy watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.
Russians enjoy the same level of freedom as citizens of Angola, Egypt and Tajikistan, according to the latest annual report card from Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization based in New York and Washington.
Freedom House evaluates countries on the political rights and civil liberties enjoyed by their citizens, dividing them into the categories of Free, Partly Free and Not Free.
Although Russia has been deemed Not Free for several years now, it suffered a further setback in 2007, largely because of abuses during the State Duma election campaign, the report says.
Those abuses included overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin coverage in the national media, the intimidation of opposition candidates and a prohibitively high threshold for small parties to enter the Duma, said Christopher Walker, director of studies at Freedom House.
“One can’t ignore the almost blanket inability of alternative voices to find their way into the news media,” Walker said by telephone from Washington. “If they do, it’s often in a jaundiced fashion, with them being portrayed negatively.”
A woman who answered the phone at the Kremlin press service said nobody was available to comment Wednesday.
But Sergei Markov, a Duma deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, called Freedom House a “Russophobic” organization.
“You can listen to everything they say, except when it comes to Russia,” said Markov, a Kremlin-linked political analyst who was elected to the Duma last month. “There are many Russophobes there.”
In recent years, Moscow has repeatedly lashed out at Western NGOs like Freedom House, calling them biased and accusing them of serving U.S. interests.
Walker stressed that Freedom House made its evaluations based on objective criteria explained on the organization’s web site, and he denied that it had a pro-U.S. agenda.
“If you look closely at the 193 countries that we evaluate, you’ll find that we criticize what are often considered strategic allies of the United States,” he said.
One such country that is criticized in the new report is Russia’s neighbor Georgia, which has been led by a pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, since 2003.
In November, Saakashvili ordered a violent crackdown on opposition protesters and shut down the country’s leading independent television channel. After an international outcry, he called for an early presidential election, which he won earlier this month amid accusations of vote rigging.
Freedom House described the November developments as a “substantial reversal” for Georgia’s democratization efforts.
The organization also criticized last month’s parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan, which ended with a near sweep by the ruling coalition. Declines in freedom were also noted in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
The Freedom House report listed Russia as one of several “energy-rich dictatorships,” including Iran and Venezuela, which use their oil wealth to negative effect on smaller neighbors.
It described the former Soviet Union as one region that suffered serious reversals in 2007, along with South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
TITLE: Kasyanov Hands in 2M Signatures
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov submitted to the Central Elections Commission on Wednesday the 2 million signatures required to run for president in the March election.
Speaking as the boxes of signatures were delivered to the commission’s downtown headquarters, Kasyanov vowed to stay in the race at all costs. Earlier Wednesday, a campaign manager in the Marii-El republic was detained on suspicion of faking signatures.
“Many contributed their signatures with the feeling that they were preparing for their last battle,” Kasyanov said.
“People sharing this attitude are urging me to go to the end. This is a great responsibility, and I cannot drop my decision now. Therefore, I will not quit,” he said, Interfax reported.
He said he had doubts over whether he would be registered as a candidate, but did not say why, Interfax said.
Collecting 2 million signatures is a daunting — but not impossible — task, experts said. Complicating matters, no more than 50,000 signatures can come from any one of the country’s 85 regions, and candidates have less than a month to collect them.
Kasyanov appeared to have lost at least 50,000 signatures Wednesday after Marii-El investigators said they had opened an investigation into whether Rustam Abdullin, head of Kasyanov’s local campaign office, had faked signatures. Federal Security Service officers detained Abdullin earlier in the week and found in his bags 50,000 signatures, which they believe were falsified.
TITLE: Russian Candidate Blocked From Taking PACE Presidency
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Senator Mikhail Margelov will not be the next president of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly due to a reform that has been described as aimed at preventing a Russian from chairing Europe’s prominent human rights watchdog.
At a meeting in Paris on Jan. 10, the leaders of the assembly’s five political groups agreed on reforms to the nominating procedures for the rotating presidency that would give the chamber’s largest group, the Socialists, the right to nominate a candidate for the election, scheduled for Monday.
The European Democrat Group, headed by Margelov, had been expected to nominate the next president. Traditionally, a group nominates its chairperson.
Margelov would not comment on the issue, his spokeswoman Varvara Paal said Wednesday. She stressed that a final decision on the matter would only come Sunday, and that it would remain classified.
But Joachim Horster, vice chairman of the European People’s Party and a member of the German Bundestag, suggested that strong reservations about Russia’s stance on human rights would have made it difficult for Margelov to win a majority from the parliament’s more than 300 members.
“The question was raised of what this presidency would mean with respect to the State Duma’s refusal to ratify Protocol 14 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights,” Horster said Wednesday by telephone from Berlin. “We had a very intense debate ... and this played a significant role.”
Russia is the only Council of Europe member state that has not ratified the protocol, which should help speed up the processing of cases at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg.
The issue is on the agenda of the Assembly’s outgoing president, Dutch Senator Rene van der Linden, who was to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in Moscow.
Yet Wolfgang Wodarg, vice chairman of the Socialist Group and a Bundestag deputy, denied the motive was aimed at Moscow or Margelov. The sole reason, he said, was to ensure that each of the five groups could nominate a member for the presidency.
He stressed that Margelov himself had signed the packet of reforms containing the changes as chairman of the European Democrat Group.
But Horster said Margelov had signed under the condition that his group, which is mainly made up of Russian and British Conservative members of the parliament, accepted the changes.
Leonid Slutsky, a Liberal Democratic Party Duma deputy and one of only two Russian members of the Socialist Group, said talk about discrimination against his country was baseless.
“Russia will get the next presidency,” he said, adding that that the new rotation principle made sense because some political groups had not had a chance to nominate a candidate in the past.
TITLE: Arsenal Plans New Business Complex
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Arsenal, one of the oldest industrial enterprises in St. Petersburg, is planning to turn its former factory into a multifunctional business center in a project that will cost between $100 million and $150 million, the company said in a statement.
The four-hectare complex will include a business center, shopping area, mini-hotel and restaurant. The land is located between Ulitsa Komsomola and Arsenalnaya Ulitsa.
“This plot and buildings in proximity to the River Neva are owned by Arsenal. Our production facilities have been being dismantled over the last two years. At present there are only a few tenant companies on this territory,” Yevgenia Krasnova, PR manager at Arsenal, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
“The elimination of redundant production facilities is a result of our strategy to modernize production equipment,” she said.
The company is negotiating with potential investors, though no agreements have yet been made, Krasnova said.
Investors are being offered an off-plan construction scheme, according to which Arsenal will retain a controlling share, despite the fact that the company will supply only the land and the buildings, while construction expenses will be covered by investors, Krasnova said.
“At the moment we are preparing the paperwork and negotiating for permission from supervising bodies. A historical and cultural survey is required, because a number of architectural monuments are located on the plot of land. The documents should be ready within two years. As for investors, we expect to make a decision over the next 12 months,” she said.
“The location is very advantageous. In this area all the premises will be in demand, especially the office center. If the center is large enough, it will guarantee the success of the restaurant,” said Oleg Barkov, general director of Knight Frank St. Petersburg.
A three-star hotel could fit well into this project, according to Barkov, though it would be better to negotiate with a hotel operator first and tailor the hotel concept to specific standards.
Barkov estimated the project would cost at least $500 million to build. He said that when building multifunctional complexes, it is easier to completely demolish old buildings unless they are architectural monuments.
According to Knight Frank, a large number of development projects have been announced in the same area, which will change it dramatically over the next five years.
Maxim Mikhailov, executive director of Maris Properties in association with CB Richard Ellis, considered the office center to be the most rational and potentially successful part of the project. Among its advantages, he named existing power networks, the opportunity for open planning in the building and its proximity to a metro station.
“A mini-hotel will be less efficient and should be constructed after the office center, when the outlook of this area has improved,” he said.
Mikhailov questioned the chances of success for a shopping area in this project. “Shopping areas do well in residential districts or in proximity to highways such as the ring-road, while this plant is located in an industrial district,” he said.
“The restaurant should be part of the office center or hotel. If constructed separately, it will not be successful in this area,” Mikhailov said.
Among other examples of redevelopment, Mikhailov cited Renaissance Plaza, Imperial, Kellerman-Center and Admiral. “Most of the projects were financed by the companies’ own resources and loans taken out using the existing property as security,” he said.
“So far no large plant has been redeveloped, but there are many industrial enterprises in central districts and along the River Neva that could be redeveloped,” Barkov said.
Barkov gave the examples of the Premier Palace residential complex that will replace the former Vulkan plant on Lazareva embankment, Clover Plaza multifunctional complex on Ushakovskaya Embankment, Electric City multifunctional complex that will replace the Electric plant, and the complex that will be constructed on the territory of Zavod Rossiya.
TITLE: Putin’s Trip May Not See Agreement
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Konstantinova
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Bulgaria may delay signing an agreement to operate a pipeline for carrying Russian natural gas under the Black Sea to European Union nations, Energy and Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov said.
Bulgaria and Russia are disputing ownership of the asset, he said in an interview with Bulgarian state television Channel 1 on Wednesday. The pipeline would be laid from Russia and split in Bulgaria into a northern route, going to Austria via Romania and Hungary, and a southern route, crossing the Balkan peninsula to Italy.
The countries had planned to sign the deal during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Bulgaria on Friday.
“It is possible that we might not sign the agreement at the end of the week, and that talks will continue during the Russian president’s visit,” Dimitrov said Wednesday. “We would like to guarantee some economic benefit for the state from this pipeline. The talks are difficult.”
The so-called South Stream pipeline would be built by Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas company, and Eni SpA of Italy. Russia’s Gazprom wants a southern underwater link to cut reliance on transit countries and boost its export capacity.
Officials from Bulgaria and Russia are holding talks with representatives of Gazprom and Bulgarian state-run natural-gas distributor Bulgargaz AD.
Dimitrov outlined two options, which were being negotiated with Gazprom. One option envisages Bulgaria having ownership of the pipelines passing through the country and participating in its profit. The other option would allow Russia to keep ownership of the pipelines and pay transit fees, Dimitrov said.
Gazprom now ships natural gas through Bulgaria to Turkey, Greece and Macedonia through pipelines built during the Soviet era, before 1989. Bulgaria and Russia renegotiated that agreement in 2006, ensuring annual gas supply of 17.8 billion cubic meters until 2030. That amount includes both transit shipments and Bulgaria’s own gas use, which was around 3.6 billion cubic meters of gas in 2007.
The pipeline passing through Bulgarian territory remained the property of Bulgargaz AD, the nation’s dominant distributor.
TITLE: Rosneft Announces Profit Leap
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosneft’s profits jumped by 80 percent following its purchase of assets of the bankrupt Yukos oil firm, the state-owned company said Wednesday in its first statement concerning the effect of the acquisitions.
Net income rose to $1.89 billion in the third quarter of last year, as the new assets enabled the company to more than double its refining output and significantly increasing oil production over the same period the year before, the company said in the statement.
“It was a good set of numbers,” said George Lilis, an oil analyst at MDM Bank. But he added that the company performed largely in line with analysts’ expectations.
Rosneft has described itself as Russia’s top company in terms of both production and refining capacity since it spent $27 billion to buy Yukos assets at bankruptcy auctions in the first half of last year. The latest results, however, show that its refining numbers still trailed behind those of LUKoil.
Rosneft’s seven refineries handled 11.9 tons of oil, up from the 5.7 million tons they took in during the third quarter of 2006, the company said. It bought five refineries from Yukos in May.
LUKoil refined 13.2 million tons at its seven refineries — four in Russia and three in Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania — in the third quarter of last year, according to financial statements.
Rosneft’s investment in refining is now paying off well, Lilis said.
“Refining margins in Russia are very good because of heavy taxes on crude exports,” he said. “It’s more profitable to refine domestically and export oil products.”
Crude export duties will rise from $275.40 per ton to a record $333.80 a ton on Feb. 1, the government announced Wednesday.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: X5 To Buy Out Karusel
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — X5 Retail Group will realize its option to buy-out Karusel retail chain, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs has begun due diligence of Karusel, which is currently owned by Formata, at the request of X5. The deal could be closed by July 1, 2008. The price will depend on Karusel’s total sales, the value of its land plots and total debt in an audited financial report for 2007.
Focus Still the Favorite
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Ford Focus remained the most popular foreign car in Russia for the fifth year in a row, Ford Motor Company said Thursday in a statement.
In 2007, Ford sold 175,793 cars in Russia — a 52 percent increase compared with 2006 figures. Sales of Ford Focus accounted for 90,383 cars, and Ford Fusion for 43,341 cars. Corporate sales amounted to 34,992 cars this year compared to 23,357 cars in 2006.
Yards Set for Clean-Up
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg budget will spend 3.85 billion rubles ($158 million) on the reconstruction and improvement of yards in the city this year, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Reconstruction is planned on a territory of about 5.9 million square meters. From 2005-2007, the city budget and municipal budgets supplied about 9.3 billion rubles ($381.8 million) for this purpose. According to official data, 74 percent of the city’s yards had been renovated by Dec. 1, 2007.
Brick Plant Sees Funds
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — LSR Group, a St. Petersburg construction and development holding, will spend 70,673 million euros ($104.5 million) on equipment for its new brick plant in the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Tuesday.
According to the agreement, in 2008 CERIC S.A. will supply two production lines with respective production capacities of 120 million bricks and 75 million bricks a year. The company is investing $280 million into the plant, which is due to open in 2010.
BNP Plans Local Bank
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — BNP Paribas SA, France’s largest bank, plans to open a branch in St. Petersburg, Kommersant reported, citing BNP’s spokesman in Russia. The bank will open for business in the city in the first half of this year, the Moscow-based newspaper said Tuesday.
BNP previously operated in St. Petersburg between 1993 and 2000 in a joint venture with Germany’s Dresdner Bank AG. Its wholly owned subsidiary Cetelem, which specializes in retail loans, is also present in the city, Kommersant said.
Car Sales To Rise 13%
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian new car sales will probably rise 13 percent this year, with annual deliveries gaining by one-third over the next seven years, an industry group said.
Car sales in the country will increase to 2.6 million vehicles from 2.3 million in 2007, Oskar Akhmedov, head of Volkswagen AG’s local unit, said at an Association of European Businesses in Russia press conference in Moscow on Wednesday. Russians will probably buy 3.5 million cars a year by 2015, he said.
Russians purchased more than 1.6 million foreign-brand cars last year, or 61 percent more than a year earlier, according figures the association released Jan. 14.
Lenta CEO Reinstated
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Shareholders of Lenta, Russia’s third-biggest grocery chain, reinstated Sergei Yushchenko as chief executive officer after he was fired by founder Oleg Zherebtsov.
Yushchenko was restored by a majority vote at a Jan. 15 meeting, according to a statement issued by four shareholders including Zherebtsov’s partner August Meyer, the owner of a 36 percent stake.
TITLE: The word on the street
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It’s midnight in the mirrored changing room of a nightclub on Novy Arbat. A posse of dancers and backing singers waits patiently for Russia’s best-known rapper, Timati, who is due to perform at a corporate Christmas party.
Boys in baggy pants and hoodies practice dance moves, while a girl pouts in front of the mirror in a tiny skirt and patent high heels. When a song by Snoop Dogg starts up in the distance, they all mouth the lyrics.
As Timati makes his entrance, wearing a headband, a black beanie and sunglasses, the mood changes. The group runs up to him, performing a handshake choreography of various clicks, angles and slaps until the rapper feels that he has greeted everyone adequately.
Talking about his career, Timati said his background gives him the edge over his rivals. “In Russia I am the only real hip-hop and R&B performer. I grew up in Los Angeles, I know the culture from inside out, I know the music inside out,” he said.
Timati, whose real name is Timur Yunusov, may be the closest that Russia has to a rap star. He was born in Moscow to a wealthy, ethnically mixed family — his father is a Muslim and his mother is Jewish. His privileged background enabled him to spend three years studying in Los Angeles.
He became famous after appearing on the television talent contest “Star Factory” in 2004, although he didn’t win. He and three other contestants were taken on by influential producer Igor Krutoi who formed a group called Banda. In 2006, he released a solo album and played the role of a rapper in the hit comedy film “Heat.”
Today his MySpace site lists friends including P. Diddy. It posts a video clip of a collaboration with Xzibit, the rapper host of MTV’s “Pimp My Ride,” alongside the required tough, tattooed and topless photos.
And Timati is certain that Russia loves hip-hop. “Just last week, 50 Cent was packed; Beyonce was sold out [in October],” he said. “When Shaggy came here five years ago the seats in the cinema were less than half full. Interest in this music is definitely increasing.”
The 24-year-old singer grew up listening to music by U.S. hip-hop artists Naughty by Nature and rapper MC Hammer and wanted to rap for as long as he could remember. He concedes that he came back to Russia — where he raps in Russian — because the U.S. hip-hop scene was too difficult to break into.
“I wanted to perform, but the market was full,” he said. “At the end of the day, I am Russian and it’s better for me to be in my own country and develop the genre there,”
Like many rap stars in the West, Timati runs a record label for up-and-coming artists, Black Star, and until recently he was a co-owner of a DJ bar called Black October. He puts its closure down to the fickle nature of the local nightlife. “All clubs in Russia have a two-year life span. The project came to a natural end,” he said, adding that he planned to open a bigger club.
Despite the music’s American roots, Timati insists that hip-hop and rap appeal to Russians. “This music is the music of today. Yes, a Russian person likes harmony and melody more than they do beat and rhythm,” he said, “But there is a time for everything and many young people like this music. There’s classical music, there’s jazz, there’s hip-hop — each music has a time, and in Russia it’s a time for hip-hop.”
“The person that told you rap was popular in Russia lied,” said music critic and popular blogger Maxim Kononenko. “Rap culture doesn’t exist in Russia. Russians like a melody, a tune, this is not something they understand.”
When asked about Timati, he retorted, “Who is Timati? He is just a socialite. Can you name one of his songs?”
Timati’s hits include “In the Club,” with its chorus, “Where are the best parties? In our club. Where are the best girls? In our club. Where do people live hip-hop? In our club.”
The video to his catchy single “Dance with Me” features It-girl Ksenia Sobchak grinding against him, spliced with images from what purports to be a sex tape featuring the pair.
Despite his fame, Timati is not an influence on all Russian rappers. Careful not to be too rude about Timati, 26-year-old rapper Set just said, “He is not on my player. If I liked him, he’d be on my player.” He added that, “I am just not that interested in rap about expensive cars and girls.”
Set has a much more modest entourage than Timati. His studio is a room in the basement of Praktika Theater, a small experimental venue near Patriarch’s Ponds. He met for an interview there while preparing for a concert at the theater.
The Krasnodar-born singer has been rapping since he was young. “Even my mother calls me by my stage name,” he said, laughing. He explained that he wanted his stage name to be a strong sound, relevant in English and Russian.
Even though his English isn’t strong enough to catch all the lyrics, Set said that he enjoys Western hip-hop. “I only understand maybe 70 percent of rap songs,” he said, “but it’s the bass and the tone that I love.” He sees rap as an way of expressing himself. “Unlike in songs, you can fit in many more words,” he explained. “I don’t like to write about cars and girls.”
He described one of his songs about a boy meeting his abusive father for the first time in years: “They sit in a cafe, and the boy realizes his dad has not changed and is still the same alcoholic he always was. When the dad asks about the mother the boy replies that she is dead and walks off.”
Set is planning to start a record label with Praktika Theater to promote others like him. His latest song, “Rich Dad,” has had airplay on Next FM, a station specializing in rap and R&B.
While Timati’s lyrics are generally more lightweight, his rap also engages with the world around him to some extent. In a 2006 track called “Questions,” he reflects on the news headlines and asks, “Why are we fighting in Chechnya? Who sponsors this campaign? I can’t understand.”
The song even brings up Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, asking, “Why was Khodorkovsky investigated for two years and why is he now in jail?”
“I love the opportunity to write about things as they are,” Timati said.
“I like to write about politics, life, nightlife, I am not shy to talk about themes like sex the way it is, or like street life the way it is. There is a certain freedom to rap.”
TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: Tequilajazzz is in the studio working on a new album, its first in five years. Frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov, who has recently returned from a holiday in India, revealed some details this week.
“I rode a motorcycle, visited Goa, swam there and met lots of friends there. It was just a vacation,” he said.
“It was a very tense year, a lot of work composing music for films and TV series, and a great deal of concerts, so I decided that I needed to have a rest, I didn’t even take any music there.”
Known as one of the leading Russian alt-rock bands, the band previewed the new material on a four-track CD single called “Berlin” and is close to finishing the work, he said.
“The four songs have been recorded and released, we have recorded a few more songs and are now working on its final, third portion — we’re recording the record in three takes,” said Fyodorov.
Now sold out, “Berlin” was a self-produced release, and Fyodorov asked fans not to distribute the tracks it on the web for a while.
“We needed to sell the copies to break even and pay the people who sold it in bars or clubs,” he said, adding that the band could not sell the CD in shops; since it is not released by a proper company, it did not even have a barcode on the cover.
Tequilajazzz hopes to release the new, as-yet-untitled album late next month.
“We’re afraid of naming the exact date, because we’re working in what’s called ‘the do-it-yourself mode.’ Also we skipped a lot of time, as school students do. We had a rest, and did nothing. Traveled to different countries, did different things. Had nothing to do with music at all.”
Fyodorov said that most of the songs that he composed during the past year do not yet have titles. “As a rule, the song titles are given by fans,” he said.
“When they upload the concert videos on the web, they call it something, so it gets its name. The songs will be shot and uploaded on Youtube and Rutube. We’ll see. We don’t forbid shooting concerts.”
Tequilajazzz, which will perform its first concert this year at Ikra club in Moscow on Friday, and promises to perform most of the new material there, will not perform in its hometown until late February. The band will play two concerts at Zoccolo, the successor of its favorite, now-defunct underground club Moloko, on Feb. 28 and 29.
Fyodorov said the two concerts will be entirely different, one based on the band’s louder, “hardcore” songs, another featuring softer, indie pop songs.
“To put it simply, one will be for boys, one for girls,” said Fyodorov.
This week’s local concerts include sci-fi surf band Messer Chups at Griboyedov and ex-Zvuki Mu frontman Pyotr Mamonov at Orlandina, both on Saturday.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Name game
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Coining a new word can carry a heavy price these days.
A Vladimir television journalist faces a hefty fine or even prison time after referring to a local meeting of supporters of President Vladimir Putin as a “puting” and the supporters as “Putinists.”
Local prosecutors questioned the journalist, Sergei Golovinov, on Monday as part of an investigation into whether his use of the two words on his program on TV-6 Vladimir television had insulted a public official — a crime punishable by a fine of up to 40,000 rubles ($1,600) or a year of forced labor.
The prosecutors are acting on a Dec. 4 complaint filed by Mikhail Babich, a State Duma deputy who headed United Russia’s campaign headquarters in Vladimir, a city about 200 kilometers east of Moscow. They opened the investigation after a Russian language expert at Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University ruled a week ago that the words were indeed offensive.
Mikhail Grachyov, the Russian language professor at Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University who was asked to analyze Golovinov’s program, refused to say why he had decided the words were offensive.
“This is not for a telephone conversation. I don’t have the right to elaborate,” he said by telephone from Nizhny Novgorod.
Golovinov said the words were commonly used on the Internet and in other Russian media. “We were not the first one to use them,” Golovinov said by telephone from Vladimir.
n his introduction of a report about a meeting of Putin supporters held several days before the Dec. 2 Duma elections, Golovinov said the “most memorable pictures of the week” had been taken at a “Vladimir-style puting” — a merger of the words “Putin” and the Russian word for demonstration, miting (meeting).
“Putin’s fans in Vladimir got together ... and with a tremendous ovation backed the thesis that Russia is surrounded by enemies,” Golovinov said on the report.
“The paranoid fear of loyal Putinisty [Putinists] toward a difference of opinion needs no comment,” he said.
Golovinov said by telephone that he had done nothing wrong. “Putin’s supporters have the right to express their feelings toward the president, but we journalists have the right to comment on it,” he said.
The word “puting” has a wide range of meanings in contemporary Russian. It is used by Russian journalists, commentators and bloggers to indicate societal changes brought on by Putin.
Stanislav Belkovsky, a Kremlin spin doctor turned analyst, has often used “puting” to describe economic changes initiated by Putin, while satirist Mikhail Zadornov uses it to underline the restrictions that Putin has introduced to society. Yelena Tregubova, who in 2003 published “Tales of a Kremlin Digger,” a tell-all book of her experience covering the Kremlin, titled one chapter “Light Puting” — which sounds like “Light Petting.”
In recent months, as many demonstrations were held in support of Putin during the Duma campaign, the word has acquired the new meaning of “a big gathering in support of Putin.”
“There is nothing offensive in this word. It is just spoken language, a neologism,” said Marina Korolyova, host of the linguistic program “Let’s Speak Russian” on Ekho Moskvy radio.
There is no entry for “Puting” in Russian dictionaries, but a search on Yandex, the top Russian search engine, returned 24,511 hits. The word got 11,800 hits on Google.
In addition to being called Putinists, supporters of the president are also often referred to as “Putinoidy” (Putinoids).
Three Moscow-based linguists refused to comment for this report, saying they feared trouble from the authorities if they gave their point of view.
Babich will not comment on the issue while it is being investigated, said his spokesman, Alexander Dementyev.
Golovinov said he believed that Babich had disliked the overall report and used the two words as a pretext to punish him. In the report, he alternated scenes from the Putin meeting with snippets of a speech by Andrei Isayev, a Duma deputy with United Russia, in Vladimir in which he warned that “dangerous and strong enemies” opposed “the president’s course.”
The report also showed footage of Jews, Caucasus natives and ethnic Russians performing folk dances.
“It was a video montage commonly used in television,” Golovinov said.
The chief investigator of the case, Yury Yevtukhov, said a copy of the program would be sent to a Moscow commission of linguists who will have the last word in deciding whether the words are insulting, Ekho Moskvy reported.
Other journalists have also found that tinkering with Putin’s name and image can prove risky. A newspaper in Saratov, Saratovsky Reporter, is facing possible closure after the local branch of United Russia complained to prosecutors in September about a photograph it had published that showed Putin’s face pasted onto the body of fictional Soviet spy hero Otto von Stirlitz. In October 2006, Ivanovo journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov was convicted of insulting a public official and fined 20,000 rubles for referring to Putin as the “phallic symbol of the nation” in an opinion piece in the Internet publication Kursiv.
Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said a system of “judicial terrorism” had started against journalists under Putin and that more than 300 criminal cases had been opened against them over the past six years.
“Russia has been criticized by the OSCE and the Council of Europe about the way the law is used to silence journalists, but the criticism has been useless,” he said.
Panfilov said he knew of instances when printers have refused to publish newspapers because they contained caricatures of Putin.
TITLE: French connection
AUTHOR: By John Tagliabue
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: NICE, France — On a February morning in 2006, a group of experts in Russian art approached the onion-domed Russian church here and demanded to be admitted to take an inventory of the building and its contents — icons, liturgical vestments, incense burners, everything.
“We refused them entry,” even though they had an order from a local judge, said the Reverend Jean Gueit, for the last four years the archpriest of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas. “It was a long morning,” he added.
The cathedral, completed in 1912, was built with the “solicitude and generosity” of Tsar Nicholas II, as a stone plaque on the church states, for the Russians who vacationed or settled here.
The court order was obtained by lawyers representing the Russian government. It was a first salvo in a local struggle for the stones and, perhaps, the souls of the Russians living here.
“By obtaining the right to proceed with an inventory of the goods of the church of Nice, first its buildings, then its content,” said Alexis Obolensky, deputy chairman of the parish council, “they presented their request as though they were the normal owners.”
Church leaders like Obolensky, 62, a retired university lecturer whose grandfather immigrated to Nice from St. Petersburg, see the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to consolidate the authority and legitimacy of the present Russian state, an effort close to the heart of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Last spring, leaders of Orthodox churches outside Russia that had broken with the Russian Orthodox Church after the Revolution returned to the fold in services in Moscow that received Putin’s blessing. “The idea is to restore the identity of the Russian church,” Obolensky said, “and to recuperate all of its patrimony in the world, above all churches.”
Putin has not let up. On the eve of Orthodox Christmas, he donated $1 million to restore an Orthodox cemetery in northern Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
But in France and other parts of Europe, some Orthodox church groups refuse to return to a union with the church leadership in Moscow. So what is at stake in Nice is a question not only of property rights, but also of spiritual jurisdiction. Some in the community here remain leery of Soviet vestiges in the Russian church; others suspect that the Russian church’s drive for unity masks a goal of grasping valuable property, like the church in Nice.
“The place of religion in the formation of the Russian identity is essential,” said Father Gueit, 62, a law professor in Aix-en-Provence when he is not serving the parish’s spiritual needs. “After the fall of the Communist identity, they had no other choice but to revive the Orthodox tradition.”
The lawsuit in Nice reflects another in Biarritz, on the Bay of Biscay, in 2004, when the parish council of the Orthodox Church there voted to restore unity with Moscow. But the vote was declared invalid by the courts, which upheld a petition by a group of parishioners who pointed to irregularities in the way the vote was held. Russians from neighboring regions, even Spain, had been brought in to pack the parish council, they said.
Russian diplomats in Paris say the cases are entirely different. In Nice, their lawyers have presented documents showing that the church was originally the property of Tsar Nicholas II, but was given with a 99-year lease to the archbishop of St. Petersburg. The lease expired on Dec. 31, 2007, they say, so the property should revert to the Russian state, the successor to the tsarist regime.
“We consider that the property and the church belong to Russia,” said Sergei Parinov, the Russian Embassy spokesman. But he has sought to reassure the parishioners. “In any case,” Parinov said, “the church must remain a place of prayer, a place of communion for the faithful, who have always considered it their parish.”
Father Gueit and most of his parishioners are unconvinced. “They claim they have the original documents,” said the priest, whose grandfather was a senior officer in the tsar’s army. “We fear that they have fabricated them.”
In the meantime, the parish is seeking local political support. Last year, the Côte d’Azur region, which includes Nice at its center, declared the contents of the church part of the national patrimony, meaning that no part of it may be removed from France without permission of the Ministry of Culture.
But André Chauvet, an adviser to the mayor of Nice, said that while the city viewed the church as a “fundamental part of the local patrimony,” it “serenely” awaited a court decision as an “observer.”
Meanwhile, opportunities for reconciliation have been missed. In October, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow visited France and celebrated Mass in Paris. But he refused to do so in the Orthodox cathedral there because its clergy did not recognize Moscow’s jurisdiction. Instead, he celebrated Mass, for Orthodox and non-Orthodox worshipers alike, in Notre Dame, the Roman Catholic cathedral.
TITLE: Turkish delight?
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Marmaris // 38 Kazanskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 315 7282 // Open 10 a.m. through 11 p.m. // Menu in Russian // Lunch for two 965 rubles ($40)
Named after a port city in western Turkey, Marmaris promises a drop of Mediterranean sunshine in St. Petersburg’s Baltic gloom. What could be more tempting than a feast of köfte, döner, börek and gözleme to bring back memories of Aegean beaches and hot summer nights? With the sophistication of ethnic eateries in contemporary St. Petersburg and Russia’s familiarity with Turkey (it remains a well-loved vacation destination), a certain level of quality was anticipated at Marmaris — a level, sadly, the café does not reach.
A well-appointed but low-key interior featuring wooden furniture and velvet curtains is comfortable enough, and even a flat-screen television showing a Turkish music channel isn’t too much of a distraction. Many of the dishes on the menu were declared unavailable — including, incredibly, shish kebabs. But this was a chance to try something new such as a dish called Chish Bysh (230 rubles, $9.30) and a chicken specialty in an “original sauce” (250 rubles, $10) after a first course of salads.
The Bosporus Salad (140 rubles, 5.70) was a standard pile of lettuce given a maritime touch with a couple of slices of smoked salmon, while a Caesar Salad (150 rubles, $6.10) was a standard pile of lettuce with a couple of slices of cooked chicken and some croutons. The Caesar salad would be quite suitable for a vegetarian as the thin and tiny slices of chicken can be easily ignored. Mean little lepyoshkas (round breads usually associated with Central Asian cuisine for 10 rubles) were fresh enough but microwaved.
Chish Bysh is merely a pile of diced liver and potato, fried in oil and herbs, but although thoroughly mediocre was a triumph compared to the chicken dish which was frankly inedible. There’s nothing original about Heinz tomato ketchup and it shouldn’t be slathered on chicken breasts. A garnish of fired vegetables (85 rubles, $3.50) was made using old oil and a dirty pan.
The whole experience became a depressing flashback to a time when restaurants in Russia could get away with this sort of thing since customers had few choices. Those times have gone and Marmaris, despite its sunny name, is still living in the Dark Ages.
TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This week, Rossia television aired a new drama series about a provincial journalist called “Hold the Front Page.” I was quite interested to see this, since I once worked at a provincial newspaper — a strange place with its own sauna and a permanent lack of toilet paper, which was often lovingly replaced by the newspaper itself. There was definitely plot potential there, but Rossia threw it all away to turn out one of its most shameful, drama-by-numbers efforts.
Sometimes, Rossia comes up with a cracker: A recent series called “Liquidation” starred Vladimir Mashkov as a police investigator in 1920s Odessa. It had an unpredictable plot, good acting and a great lead, and it knocked most of the competition off the screen.
But “Hold the Front Page” was a limp thing that somehow stretched itself over an hour and 50 minutes of prime-time television. To be fair, Channel One was showing the new season of “Lost” at the same time, and maybe there didn’t seem any point in competing with the siren charms of Sawyer and Kate. But they could at least have tried.
The series stars Yaroslav Boiko, a regular in such productions, whose unthreatening dark-haired handsomeness means he is always the hard-working, reliable doctor or architect with a cozy home life. This case was no exception: He played a reporter called Kirill who worked at a magazine called Around the World.
His latest assignment was to shadow the local police for an article. You might question why a magazine with that title would want such an article. You would definitely question why he only got out a notebook once during the whole episode.
Basically the show cast the journalist in the role of an amateur detective. He investigated a double murder with the help of his best chum — a top policeman at the local station. So future episodes look unlikely to expose police corruption in the regions. My favorite scene was when he interviewed some local alcoholics as they knocked back vodka.
One of them mentioned a suspicious estate agent after the deceased parties’ apartment. “You wouldn’t happen to have a business card?” Kirill asked. “Funnily enough,” the jolly alcoholic replied, pulling out a spotlessly white, uncreased card from the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms, where he probably also kept a Filofax and a Blackberry.
For the slower viewers, the series made sure that Kirill’s apartment was decorated with a huge photograph of him right next to the phone where his wife and nagging mother-in-law took his calls. When the journalist looked for someone with a special forces background who could have planted a homemade bomb, why conveniently enough, a suspect’s apartment had a big photo of the owner in a blue beret in the hallway.
I hate to spoil Kirill’s scoop in Around the World, but the plot was dead in the water: The poverty-stricken brother-in-law of a rich man robbed his apartment and then killed two alcoholics who saw him do it, thoughtlessly leaving an initialed lighter on the scene.
When Kirill finally nabbed him, he admitted, “I can’t actually prove that you did the robbery,” but hey, that shouldn’t be a problem for someone who drinks cognac with the head of police. The suspect made for Kirill with an ice ax, but sadly he survived to live another episode.
The reporter barely entered his magazine office, which looked surprisingly glossy and clean, and I suspect there won’t be any scenes where he lingers over the keyboard, trying to think of a synonym for blood-splattered.
Judging by the synopsis on Rossia’s web site, he will be far too busy stumbling over mysterious corpses.
TITLE: Period piece
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Joe Wright’s “Atonement” begins in the endlessly photogenic, thematically pregnant interwar period. The setting is a rambling old British country estate where trim dinner jackets and shimmering silk dresses are worn; cigarettes are smoked with sharp inhalations that create perfect concavities of cheekbone; and the air is thick with class tension and sexual anxiety. Heavy clouds are gathering on the geopolitical horizon, which lends a special poignancy to the domestic comings and goings. This charged, hardly unfamiliar atmosphere provides, in the first section of the film, some decent, suspenseful fun, a rush of incident and implication. Boxy cars rolling up the drive; whispers of scandal and family secrets; coitus interruptus in the library, all set to the implacable rhythm of typewriter keys.
Two characters make significant use of a typewriter — one is an aspiring playwright, the other a yearning rural swain — but the sound of the machine is co-opted by Dario Marianelli, who wrote the movie’s score and who conjoins the clack-clacking of mechanical composition with the steady plink of a repeated piano note. At a climactic moment Brenda Blethyn, who can be as subtle an actress as Marianelli is a composer, leaps screaming from the darkness and begins beating on the hood of a car with an umbrella, a tocsin that joins the plink and the clack in a small symphony of literal-minded irrelevance.
That pretty much describes the rest of “Atonement,” piously rendered by the screenwriter Christopher Hampton from Ian McEwan’s novel. This is not a bad literary adaptation; it is too handsomely shot and Britishly acted to warrant such strong condemnation. “Atonement” is, instead, an almost classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be. The respect that Wright and Hampton show to McEwan is no doubt gratifying to him, but it is fatal to their own project.
Unlike Wright’s brisk, romantic film version of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” “Atonement” fails to be anything more than a decorous, heavily decorated and ultimately superficial reading of the book on which it is based. McEwan’s prose pulls you in immediately and drags you through an intricate, unsettling story, releasing you in a shaken, wrung-out state. The film, after a tantalizing start, sputters to a halt in a welter of grandiose imagery and hurtling montage.
Keira Knightley, who also starred in “Pride and Prejudice,” plays Cecilia Tallis, a rich girl who discovers she is loved by and in love with Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of one of her family’s servants. Their furtive, ardent courtship is observed by Cecilia’s younger sister, Briony, whose combination of precocity and confusion precipitates a household catastrophe.
A bigger one arrives in the form of World War II, and it is here, in the transition from hothouse psychodrama to historical pseudo-epic, that “Atonement” runs aground, losing dramatic coherence and intellectual focus. Romola Garai has taken over the role of Briony (in a coda, she will age gracefully into Vanessa Redgrave), who works as a nurse in London. Cecilia, now estranged from the family, does similar duty, and Robbie stumbles toward the beach at Dunkirk.
There are some powerful images — of scared and tired soldiers in France, of bloody wounds and shattered limbs in London — but the film’s treatment of the war has a detached, secondhand feeling. And even the most impressive sequences have an empty, arty virtuosity. The impression left by a long, complicated battlefield tracking shot is pretty much “Wow, that’s quite a tracking shot,” when it should be “My God, what a horrible experience that must have been.”
The main casualty of the film’s long, murky middle and end sections is the big moral theme — and also the ingenious formal gimmick — that provides the book with some of its intensity and much of its cachet. As the title suggests, “Atonement” is fundamentally about guilt and the attempt to overcome it.
Without giving too much away, I will say that the power of the story depends on its believability, on the audience’s ability to perceive Robbie and Cecilia in wartime as suffering, flesh-and-blood creatures. McAvoy and Knightley sigh and swoon credibly enough, but they are stymied by the inertia of the filmmaking, and by the film’s failure to find a strong connection between the fates of the characters and the ideas and historical events that swirl around them.
TITLE: Safin Defeated, Federer Enthralls in Australian Open
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MELBOURNE — A frustrated Marat Safin exited the Australian Open on Thursday, beaten 6-4 6-4 2-6 3-6 6-2 by Cypriot 15th seed Marcos Baghdatis in an enthralling second-round battle in Melbourne.
In a high quality match, 2006 runner-up Baghdatis dominated the early stages but Safin roared back to level before the Cypriot came out on top in the decider after three hours, 13 minutes
“It was great tennis,” Baghdatis said in a courtside interview. “Marat was playing great tennis, especially in the third and fourth sets, hitting all the lines.
“In the fifth set I tried to stay focused and I served very big. I’m very happy to win.”
When Baghdatis won the first two sets it looked as if Safin would fall away but the former world number one lifted his game at the start of the third, showing the kind of form that took him to the title three years ago.
The Russian ripped through sets three and four but Baghdatis broke in the second game of the final set and again in the eighth to set up a third-round clash with another former world number one, Australian Lleyton Hewitt.
Baghdatis, who lost at the second-round stage last year, began superbly, pulling Safin around the court and forcing the Russian into mistakes as he took the first set.
If he thought Safin would go away, though, he was mistaken.
The Russian recovered an early break to level at 4-4 in the second set, only to drop his serve in the next game, allowing Baghdatis to serve out for a two-sets lead.
Safin had shown his frustration with a familiar throw of his racket on a number of occasions, but he lifted his game again at the start of the third set.
An early break gave him confidence and he took the third set easily before breaking for a 2-0 lead in the fourth.
With his serve and backhand now working to perfection, he saved three break points in the ninth game to level the match.
Baghdatis looked out on his feet at the end of the fourth set but from somewhere he found a second wind and broke Safin in the second game to take control again.
Safin could not fight his way back again and though he battled hard, Baghdatis broke again in the eighth game to clinch victory.
“Marat made a few mistakes and I was a bit lucky,” Baghdatis said.
Also Thursday, Roger Federer’s wizardry entranced the crowds as the Swiss’s sleight of hand totally bamboozled Fabrice Santoro and the top seed produced a center court masterclass to reach round three 6-1 6-2 6-0.
With Federer and Safin acting as the main course, the side dishes were no less appetizing.
In the women’s draw Ana Ivanovic wowed the center court crowd, Venus Williams cruised, Novak Djokovic was on automatic and Lleyton Hewitt thrilled the home crowd.
But the day session belonged to Federer who mesmerised his opponent with artistry and power.
Santoro has long been a wizard of the court. Armed with an arsenal of unconventional shots, wristy groundstrokes and a heavy reliance on slice, his game has confounded the world’s best over the years.
But he had no answer to a dominant Federer whose own heavy spin left the Frenchman flapping at the air.
Santoro, 35, was playing in a record 62nd grand slam singles tournament. Rarely could he have lost so comprehensively as in this 6-1 6-2 6-0 thrashing.
“Everything looks easy to him,” the Frenchman smiled. “There is no space to play. There is no space to hit aces because he’s returning everything.
“I’d love to play him once again. Because it’s so beautiful, what he’s doing.
“At my age, you can be able to play your match and appreciate your opponent, too.”
Federer, bidding for a third successive Australian Open title, downplayed his dominance.
“I played really in a smart way,” the Swiss said. “The scoreline was very one-sided, so that was good for me anyway.”
Third seed Djokovic crushed Italian Simone Bolelli 6-1 6-2 6-2, Hewitt kept the home fans happy with a 7-6 6-3 5-7 6-1 win over Uzbek Denis Istomin and fifth seed David Ferrer was 6-3 6-4 up on Juan Martin Del Potro when the Argentine retired.
Ivanovic underlined that she is much more than the pin-up of the women’s tour by smashing world number 40 Tathiana Garbin 6-0 6-3.
“It’s definitely been great out here,” the 20-year-old smiled. “Even if I was a little nervous, the crowd helped me get over it tonight.”
Earlier in the day, Wimbledon champion Williams hit back from behind in both sets before pricking Camille Pin’s hopes 7-5 6-4. The American’s victory was rather lackluster — she committed 44 unforced errors and dropped her serve four games in a row. Second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova was likewise far from convincing in her 7-6 6-2 victory over Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova.
Other women’s seeded players advancing were Ivanovic and Anna Chakvetadze.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Russian Rowers Banned For Injecting Legal Substances
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Three Russian rowers each received two-year bans Thursday for using prohibited intravenous injections at last year’s World Rowing Championships.
Alexander Litvintchev, Yevgeny Luzyanin and Ivan Podshivalov were banned by the International Rowing Federation (FISA) even though none of the substances they injected were illegal. The ban is retroactive to last Aug. 27.
In August, three of their Russian teammates — Vladimir Varfolomeyev, Denis Moiseyev and Svetlana Fedorova — were banned for using the same doping method.
The six investigations were based on DNA analysis of blood traces on intravenous infusion equipment discovered in a garbage bin outside the Russian team’s hotel in July.
“We hope that this is a clear message that the sport of rowing will not accept use of substances or methods that create unfair conditions and/or threaten the health of our rowers,” FISA chief Matt Smith said.
The Russian men’s eight finished seventh at the 2007 worlds to qualify for this year’s Beijing Olympics. But FISA annulled the result and disqualified the boat.
Russia can still advance to the Olympics at the final qualifying regatta in June.
TITLE: Keegan Returns to Newcastle Utd
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: NEWCASTLE — Kevin Keegan on Thursday insisted he could play the Messiah one more time at Newcastle after making a shock return to the manager’s chair at St. James’ Park.
The 56-year-old is a legend in the eyes of the Magpies’ supporters for his exploits as a player in the 1980s and as a manager during his 1992-97 stint in charge of the club.
And in his first comments since been named as the successor to Sam Allardyce, the former England, Fulham and Manchester City manager voiced confidence that he could work his magic again.
“I know what the fans want and I know what they don’t want as well,” Keegan said. “As long as they are realistic and patient I think we can try again to help them have dreams and possibly win something.”
Keegan’s return to Tyneside has certainly started well with the buzz of excitement his presence generated apparently helping to inspire a team that has been under performing all season to an entertaining 4-1 win over Stoke in an FA Cup replay on Wednesday evening.
The new manager had no direct role in that win but he admitted that sitting in the stand had got his juices flowing again.
“I am just as excited this time as I was when I came to play here at 31 and when I came as a manager at 43 or 44,” said Keegan, who, by his own admission, has not watched a single Premier League match live since quitting Manchester City in 2005.
“I think this is right, I have certainly inherited a strong, talented group of players — which is something I didn’t have when I came last time.
“When I came last time we were wondering whether we could fill the stadium. That is not a problem.
“They will be trying to get a stadium big enough if we can put some football on and get some success here.
“The job in hand is a big job, it is a great club.”
Keegan’s third coming to Tyneside was confirmed on Wednesday in the wake of failed attempts by the Newcastle board to secure the services of Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp and Gerard Houllier, the former Liverpool boss who is now French football’s technical director, following the dismissal of Allardyce.
Snubbed by their first two choices, Newcastle owner Mike Ashley and chairman Chris Mort took the populist option by turning instead to Keegan.
Despite patchy records at City, Fulham and as England manager, the 56-year-old has been given a three and a half year contract and his past record here means he is likely to benefit from more indulgence from the supporters than any other manager could expect.
Having saved Newcastle from relegation to English football’s third tier, he went on to secure promotion to the top flight in 1993 and came close to winning the league title in 1995-96.
The first game of Keegan’s second spell as manager will be Saturday’s Premier League clash at home to Bolton.
By then, it should be clear if, as many have predicted, he will be joined by Alan Shearer, the former club captain who is also the Magpies record goal scorer.
Shearer has admitted he would listen to any offer from the coach who signed him for 15 million pounds when he was the hottest property in English football.
“Kevin is his own man and he’ll make his own decisions,” Shearer said. “It is my club so if he was to ring me up I would certainly speak to him — I would be foolish not to.”
TITLE: Moss Denies Battery Claims
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — Randy Moss was issued a temporary restraining order Monday requiring the Patriots star wide receiver to stay at least 500 feet from a woman who alleged he committed “battery causing serious injury” to her at her Florida home on Jan. 6.
Moss denied the allegation by Rachelle Washington, which he called “this situation of extortion,” and said he was “furious” about it. No criminal charge has been brought.
A hearing on whether to issue a permanent restraining order is scheduled on Jan. 28, six days before the Super Bowl.