SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1354 (18), Friday, March 7, 2008
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TITLE: Politician To Be Held For Months In Fight Probe
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The leader of the Yabloko opposition party in St. Petersburg has been remanded in custody for two months amid claims that the case being brought against him has been fabricated. 
Maxim Reznik has been charged with insulting and physically assaulting a state representative, a crime that carries a term of up to five years in prison. But the politician, his allies and his lawyer maintain he is innocent and emphasize the murky circumstances surrounding his arrest. 
Reznik is being held at the notorious Kresty remand center where he held a hunger strike from Monday through Thursday to protest against his detention.
Reznik said that in the early hours of Monday he was leaving Yabloko headquarters on Ulitsa Mayakovskogo when he saw a street fight a few meters away. A former member of Yabloko, Sergei Inchyonok, was involved, Reznik said, and he intervened to try to stop the fight. He said that the police arrived at the scene and seized both him and Inchyonok. The men who had started the fight managed to escape.
“I think my arrest is directly linked to my political activities,” Reznik told reporters at the Dzerzhinsky Federal Court on Tuesday. “I see the incident as a deliberate attack on me with an eye to preventing me from taking part in the March 3 Dissenters’ March and the Conference of Russia’s Liberal Forces on April 6.”
The police said that Reznik offered physical resistance and assaulted a policeman both verbally and physically. They also said the politician had been drinking.
Reznik insists he is innocent, and fellow Yabloko members argue the case is deeply suspicious.
“It happened in the dead of night right outside Yabloko headquarters, and the police jumped in as if they had been waiting around the corner,” said Natalya Yevdokimova, an advisor to Sergei Mironov, head of the Federation Council. “The police siezed Reznik but those who had started the fight got away.”
Yevdokimova accused the police of intimidating Reznik during his detention. “He was moved from one police station to another without being able to contact his lawyer or his mother,” Yevdokimova said. 
Reznik said: “I was not immediately allowed to get in touch with my lawyer. The police would not let me use or charge my phone for a while, or let me contact my relatives.” 
Reznik’s lawyer Boris Gruzd stressed that there is no proof that Reznik was drunk because no breathalizer tests were conducted. 
Yabloko’s national leader Grigory Yavlinsky traveled to St. Petersburg on Thursday to support Reznik.
Yavlinsky suggested the incident was “either a misunderstanding or a provocation.” Yavlinsky also offered his personal guarantees and mentioned the opportunity of bail so that Reznik could be released from custody.
Some St. Petersburg politicians argue that the street fight was staged.
Judge Olga Andreyeva ordered in a closed session at the court Tuesday that Reznik be detained for two months, or the duration of the police investigation. Gruzd said he would appeal the decision in the St. Petersburg City Court this week.
“The defense had collected a series of bail agreements from St. Petersburg politicians and human rights advocates who gave their personal guarantees that Reznik would not flee or try to obstruct the course of the investigation,” Gruzd said. “But the judge refused to take the guarantees into account.”
Bail agreements were signed by some of the city’s most respected politicians, including Mikhail Amosov of Yabloko, Yury Kaprenko of the Communist Party of Russia and Yevdokimova. 
Four State Duma deputies — Just Russia’s Oksana Dmitriyeva, Ivan Grachyov and Galina Khovanskaya, and the Communist Party’s  Oleg Smolin — signed a bail agreement on Wednesday and sent it to the St. Petersburg court. In a joint statement released Thursday the parliamentarians called Reznik’s pre-trial imprisonment “a gesture of unprecedented cruelty.”
Reznik, one of the most uncompromising and vocal critics of Governor Valentina Matviyenko, irked the pro-Kremlin authorities by staging an experiment at a local polling station during the presidential election on Sunday. 
Yabloko activists approached a clerk at the station and asked for extra ballots claiming they were going to vote for President Vladimir Putin’s preferred candidate Dmitry Medvedev. The request was granted, and Reznik later showed the ballots to reporters and told the story on a live talk show on local television channel Telekanal 100.
Yuly Rybakov, a prominent human rights advocate with the Memorial human rights group and head of the human rights faction of the local branch of Yabloko, said he senses a strong political motive behind the Reznik case.
“I very much doubt the criminal element of Reznik’s participation in the incident; this arrest looks very much like a carefully planned provocation to me and I anticipate it will be a struggle winning the case in court,” Rybakov said. “I have known Reznik since 1994 and he is a very balanced person and an experienced politician; he is one of the core organizers of the forthcoming conference of Russia’s liberal forces [that is due to take place in St. Petersburg on April 6], and his active role in setting up the congress may have been a factor behind this — utterly nonsensical yet very dangerous — campaign against him.”
Yabloko activists said their party headquarters are regularly put under police surveillance before Dissenters’ Marches and political meetings.
Reznik had previously complained about being tailed by the police, especially on days when a political meeting, demonstration or conference was held.
Opposition politicians see the arrest as a warning for other outspoken critics of the government. 
“Clearly, the authorities are flexing their muscles,” Rybakov said. “The message behind the Reznik case is transparent and adamant: if you do not restrain yourselves, we won’t hesitate to jail you.”
Yury Vdovin, deputy head of human rights group Citizens’ Watch stressed that while opportunities for legal political activity for opposition forces have been rapidly shrinking under Putin, many politicians who challenge the authorities find themselves facing a witch-hunt. 
“Unlike in the Soviet era when dissidents were imprisoned or persecuted with the use of politically charged articles, these days politically motivated cases are disguised as administrative crimes or felonies,” Vdovin said.
In the meantime, liberal politicians and human rights advocates are picketing the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office urging freedom for Reznik. Russia’s ombudsman Vladimir Lukin — one of the co-founders of the Yabloko party, along with Yavlinsky and Yury Boldyrev — has promised to investigate the situation.

TITLE: Medvedev-Putin Duo Set to Buck a Trend
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dmitry Medvedev won the presidential election last weekend on a promise that he would govern hand in hand with Vladimir Putin in the interest of stability.
If the Medvedev-Putin duo succeeds, it will buck the trend in Russian history in which power-sharing deals have often led to intrigue and conflict.
One such period of collective leadership began 55 years ago Wednesday, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died of a stroke after nearly three decades of undisputed rule.
Several top officials stepped into the ensuing power vacuum, including the dreaded security chief, Lavrenty Beria, who gained the title of deputy prime minister, and Nikita Khrushchev, who became the top Communist Party official.
Their working relationship came to a dramatic end in June 1953 when Khrushchev called troops into a meeting of the Party leadership and had Beria arrested. Six months later, Beria was executed. Nobody expects the Putin-Medvedev partnership to end as poorly.
But their arrangement contains the seeds of instability because of the sweeping powers the president holds under the Constitution, reinforced by the country’s long tradition of one-man rule, according to analysts interviewed for this report.
“Putin’s plan of the president plus the prime minister is wishful thinking,” said Alexei Sidorenko, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Sidorenko predicted that Medvedev would work seamlessly with Putin for two or three years, in the same way that Putin retained many key officials and policies from the Yeltsin administration at the beginning of his own presidency.
But once Medvedev gets comfortable with the powers he enjoys in the post, he might turn on Putin if influential interest groups can persuade him to do so, Sidorenko said.
“The question here revolves around his personal integrity,” Sidorenko said. “Will he honor his private agreements with Putin? After all, he will have the authority simply to fire the prime minister.”
Perhaps that is why Medvedev and Putin repeatedly stressed their friendship in the run-up to last Sunday’s election.
They have also promised to divide power according to Russia’s 1993 Constitution, using language that has sometimes sounded like a civics lesson.
“The president has his powers; the prime minister has his,” Medvedev said at a news conference Monday. “These powers come from the Constitution and current legislation, and nobody is planning to change this.”
Last month, Putin said the Constitution gave significant powers to the prime minister, which was perceived as a sign that he planned to play a strong role under a Medvedev presidency.
“The president is the guarantor of the Constitution and sets the main directions of domestic and foreign policy,” Putin said. “But the highest executive authority in the country is the government, which is led by the prime minister.”
The Constitution gives the president broad authority over foreign, defense and security policy, while putting the prime minister in charge of day-to-day implementation, especially on economic and social policy.
The president serves as commander in chief of the armed forces and head of the Security Council, which oversees defense and security policies.
That is why the so-called power ministries and intelligence agencies report directly to the president, said Oleg Rumyantsev, one of the authors of the Constitution. These include the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service, the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the Emergency Situations Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry also report directly to the president.
While the Constitution, ushered in by Boris Yeltsin in 1993, is often described as “superpresidential,” giving the head of state much more power than the prime minister, it clearly delineates the powers of the two positions, Rumyantsev said.
“We did everything possible to prevent collisions between the president and the prime minister,” he recalled in a telephone interview.
In practice, though, the effectiveness of the Putin-Medvedev power-sharing deal will depend on their personal agreements and on informal powers that have never been written into law, Rumyantsev said.
“We have a written constitution and an unwritten constitution,” he said. “What we are seeing now is the formation of a new entity called the ‘national leader,’ which is not written into the Constitution.”
Furthermore, the president has been granted some powers not spelled out in the Constitution as a result of other laws.
Perhaps the most notable of these is the ability to appoint governors, a prerogative Putin gained in 2004. After the Beslan hostage crisis, Putin said he needed to appoint governors in order to combat terrorism, and a bill granting him that power sailed easily through the United Russia-dominated State Duma.
The president also exercises a great deal of informal power through the presidential administration, an entity that has grown in size and influence during the Putin years and now wields more influence than the government, overseen by the prime minister.
This could be a recipe for friction.
“One of the main potential problems is competition between their two administrations,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
State Duma Deputy Sergei Markov, a member of United Russia, conceded that turf wars could erupt, but downplayed the likelihood of such conflicts.
“There is, without a doubt, the risk of instability,” Markov said. “But Putin and Medvedev understand this perfectly, and they are doing everything possible to minimize it.”
One area where Putin may have strong behind-the-scenes influence is foreign policy, which was not part of Medvedev’s portfolio as first deputy prime minister.
“Medvedev, as president, will exercise his authority on matters of foreign policy,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. “But in terms of influence over foreign policy, Putin’s opinion will matter, of course, simply because he is a very major political figure and one of the most visible and influential politicians on the world stage.”
The general trend will be away from Putin’s one-man show and toward a more collective style of leadership, said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former independent Duma deputy who now hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy.
Power will “be more distributed and more collective,” Ryzhkov said in a telephone interview. “For the last few years, it has been very personified.”
Ryzhkov said the elite were unlikely to split into feuding Putin and Medvedev camps, but other opposition politicians have predicted conflict.

TITLE: Draft Law Calls for Limits on Foreign Ownership
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky and Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has drafted legislation to limit foreign investment in publishing houses, the Internet and fishing, expanding the list of industries in which foreigners are forbidden from acquiring companies without state permission.
The government added the industries after recalling legislation containing the original list from the State Duma last fall.
It also added subsoil surveys and the extraction of resources at fields designated as having “federal significance,” the Duma’s Construction and Land Policy Committee said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement.
Energy and Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko has said the bill was withdrawn specifically to include the sectors dealing with subsoil resources. The bill, which regulates foreign investment into strategic sectors deemed critical to national security, passed a first reading in the Duma before being recalled.
But the legislation has now grown to cover fishing, television, radio and Internet service providers, the Duma committee said. In addition, printing companies and publishing houses, which include newspapers, would be considered strategic if they dominated the market, it said.
The bill sets new conditions for foreign investors who want to own more than 50 percent of a company, including new rules on how to seek permission for deals and on how a government commission should rule on the requests, the committee said without elaborating.
Existing rules bar foreigners from controlling a national television channel. But the bill appears to open the door to the possibility that foreigners could acquire a controlling stake with special approval.
Under the bill, a foreigner seeking to acquire more than a 50 percent stake in a strategic company would have to win approval from a commission headed by the prime minister.
A company partially or wholly owned by a foreign government would have to apply for permission to acquire more than 25 percent.
Potential investors would have to wait three to six months for a decision.
The current law says printing and publishing companies, like any firms, are dominant if they control the supply of more than half of the goods or services on the market. As an exception, however, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service can classify a company as dominant even if its market share is 35 percent.
Timofei Nizhegorodtsev, a senior anti-monopoly service official familiar with the bill, said there were no foreign-owned printing and publishing companies whose market share could be described as dominant at present.
In any case, the bill will not be retroactive and apply to done deals if it becomes law, he said.
The bill will require current owners of more than 5 percent in strategic companies to report to the government, Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
Leonid Makaron, publisher of the popular classifieds newspaper Iz Ruk V Ruki, shrugged off the bill, saying Russia was following the lead of countries like the United States and Britain, which restrict foreign ownership in the industries added to the bill.
“It’s like the diplomats do. They expel us and we expel them,” he said. “I wouldn’t look for anything here except an effort to defend [Russia’s] economic interests.”
He predicted that Russian industries would develop even if foreign investors balked at the new rules. “Oil is expensive. We have plenty of money,” he said.
But Rambler Media, one of the country’s biggest Internet service providers, said the bill was an attempt to impose government control on big Internet providers.
“The idea is to place all major Internet providers as well as broadband communication facilities under state control,” said Alexander Kovalyov, a spokesman for Rambler Media.
Kovalyov said the measure would hurt the capitalization and development strategies of Internet providers by making it difficult for them to attract foreign capital.
Many European countries, however, have similar restrictions on foreign investment, he said. The country has around a dozen major Internet service providers, including Rambler, Yandex and Google. In all, there are 88 providers in Russia, according to MavicaNET, a high-tech news portal.
It was the idea of Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov to include printing and publishing companies and Internet service providers in the legislation, Vedomosti said. Government officials approved the amendments at a meeting chaired by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin last week, the report said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov could not be reached for comment because he was out of his office and his cell phone was switched off Wednesday afternoon.
The bill will most likely go before the Duma for a crucial second reading on March 19, said Yekaterina Yefremova, spokeswoman for the Construction and Land Policy Committee.
The expansion of the list of strategic sectors raises concerns that that it will never end, said Chris Weafer, chief equity strategist at UralSib. “It’s getting to the point where you not only need the government to say, ‘These are the strategic industries,’ but they also need to say ‘These ones are not,’” he said.
He was particularly puzzled by the connection between fishing and national security. “It’s a hard one to figure,” he said. “There doesn’t appear to be any obvious strategic reason for it to be on the list.”

TITLE: Thai Police Arrest Russian Suspected of Arms Dealing
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — A Russian accused of breaking United Nations arms embargoes has been arrested by Thai police in Bangkok at the request of the U.S.
Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, was arrested in connection with a warrant issued by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Thai police Lieutenant Pongpat Chayapan said Thursday in a telephone interview. 
Police colonel Petcharat Sengchai said Bout was wanted on charges of supplying arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary group that has fought Colombia’s authorities for more than 40 years, the Associated Press reported. Colombia last week carrying out a cross border air strike on FARC rebels based in Ecuador, killing one of their leaders and prompting Venezuela to send troops to the Colombian border. 
Bout runs a network of cargo companies that specialize in transporting arms to conflict zones. He was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in July 2004 on allegations of war profiteering after allegedly supplying former Liberian President Charles Taylor with weapons. 
The Treasury later froze assets of 30 companies and four people linked to Bout in 2006. He travels on at least five different passports, according to UN reports. 
Russia will probably decide whether to seek Bout’s extradition after receiving documents confirming Bout’s detention in two or three days, the Russia’s RIA Novosti news service said today, citing an unidentified law-enforcement official.

TITLE: Aleksenyan to Stay in Custody
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Moscow City Court on Wednesday refused to release former Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanyan from custody while he receives treatment for AIDS-related lymphoma.
Lawyers for Aleksanyan, 36, had appealed a lower court’s ruling last month ordering their client to remain jailed while he awaits trial on embezzlement and money laundering charges.
After an emotional speech by Aleksanyan’s lawyer, Yelena Lvova, and brief arguments from the prosecution, judges Yevgeny Naidyonnov, Natalya Smirnova and Yelena Panarina ordered Aleksanyan to remain under guard while being treated at a local clinic.
“This court has deliberately and repeatedly refused to admit evidence that would provide grounds to free Aleksanyan so he can receive proper treatment,” Lvova told the court.
Aleksanyan was not in the courtroom Wednesday because of his deteriorating health, and the ruling means he will likely die before his case comes to trial, Lvova said.
Lead prosecutor Nikolai Vlasov said after the hearing that he was “satisfied” with the decision.
“The defense has been playing on the emotions of the court, but the law has won. That’s all,” Vlasov said.
Aleksanyan has said he was denied AIDS treatment while in detention because he had refused to testify against his former Yukos bosses, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who face new fraud and tax-evasion charges on top of the eight-year prison sentences they are already serving.
The European Court of Human Rights had repeatedly called on Russian authorities to transfer Aleksanyan to a specialized AIDS clinic.
Prosecutors argued Wednesday that Aleksanyan is a flight risk and that he could tamper with evidence or influence the proceedings if he were released from custody.
Lvova argued that the investigation into Aleksanyan’s purported embezzlement crimes was already completed, meaning that there was no one for him to influence and no new evidence to tamper with.
“This is a person whose primary concern is to fight for his life,” she said.
In a telephone interview Wednesday evening, Lvova said she had visited Aleksanyan in the hospital and that he took the news of Wednesday’s ruling “very badly.”
“He is very upset, but he is courageous,” she said, adding that her client wanted to appeal to the Supreme Court to secure his release.
One guard is stationed next to Aleksanyan’s bed and another outside his room, Lvova said. A third guard in an adjacent room is monitoring Aleksanyan via closed-circuit television, and his door is locked when he is left alone, she said.
Doctors say Aleksanyan is not responding well to medication that would allow him to recover enough to undergo much-needed therapy, Lvova said.
Aleksanyan was detained in April 2006 and had been held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention facility before being moved to the unidentified clinic on Feb. 8.
A week after his transfer his lawyers said they were shocked to find him handcuffed to his bed. A Federal Prison Service spokesman, Valery Zaitsev, said regular clinics lacked proper security to handle prisoners, hence Aleksanyan’s handcuffing.
His lawyers say he is no longer chained to his bed.

TITLE: Zyuganov: Medvedev Faces Woe From Putin
AUTHOR: By Guy Faulconbridge
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s communist leader, heavily beaten in Sunday’s election, on Thursday saw rocky times ahead for president-elect Dmitry Medvedev and predicted he would have difficulty handling his mentor, Vladimir Putin.
Gennady Zyuganov slammed the March 2 election for president, in which Medvedev officially won more than 70 percent of the vote, as a rigged, “special operation where falsification flowered to levels never seen before.”
“The country is ruled by a criminal police state which cannot hold fair, truthful and democratic elections,” he told a news briefing.
Medvedev, a 42-year-old former lawyer, is set to be sworn in as president in May and has offered Putin the job of prime minister, provoking speculation about how the duo will rule.
Some investors say Putin will keep the upper hand. Others say Putin will ease Medvedev into the top Kremlin job and defend him against infighting among Kremlin clans.
But Zyuganov predicted Medvedev would have trouble asserting himself over his old patron.
When asked what sort of president Medvedev would be, Zyuganov said: “There must be a prime minister who is ready to answer for the results of his work and Mr. Medvedev will have to keep him to that.”
“But I really do not understand how Mr. Medvedev will be able to ask Mr. Putin why the land has not been tilled and the cows are not milked,” Zyuganov said, using a typically folksy image.
Zyuganov said Medvedev would have to deal with soaring corporate debt, ageing infrastructure, rising inflation and endemic corruption.
“This state, which serves the oligarchs, cannot defend the social interests of its citizens,” he said.

TITLE: Breakaway Regions Push For Independence, Citing Kosovo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SUKHUMI, Georgia — Abkhazia, a region that broke away from Georgian government control in the 1990s, intends to seek international recognition as an independent nation, citing Kosovo as a precedent, a lawmaker said Thursday.
Another breakaway region, South Ossetia appealed on Wednesday for similar recognition, adding to simmering tensions in Georgia and throughout the strategic South Caucasus region.
Guram Gumba, head of the legislature’s foreign affairs committee, said Abkhazia’s legislature will pass a resolution Friday asking the world “to recognize our independence and to establish official relations.”
“Kosovo is in fact a precedent for all unrecognized states,” he said.
Since Kosovo’s declaration of independence last month, Russian and other officials have warned that it could fuel other separatist movements around the world. Nations that recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia say its situation was unique.
South Ossetia’s legislature passed a resolution Wednesday that appealed to the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and a loose grouping of former Soviet republics: “The 17-year period of South Ossetia’s independent existence confirms the viability of the republic and demands that its sovereignty be legitimized in accordance with the U.N. Charter.”
Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have had de-facto independence since the wars of the 1990s. No country recognizes the two region’s governments, though Russia has tacitly supported their autonomy — granting their citizens Russian passports, maintaining trade ties and stationing peacekeepers there.
Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has vowed to restore government control over both regions, and sporadic violence occasionally breaks out between separatist forces and Georgia-backed militias. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Kosovo declaration was “a terrifying precedent,” and warned the West that the decision would “come back to knock them on the head.”

TITLE: Putin Thanks U.S. Diplomat
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s relationship with the United States is strained by plenty of disagreements, but the former Cold War rivals share common ground on some key global security issues, President Vladimir Putin told the outgoing U.S. ambassador Wednesday.
“The period during which you worked here was not the simplest of times,” Putin told Ambassador William Burns as they met at the Russian leader’s residence outside Moscow.
“We have quite a few problems. But there was always the most important thing — and I’d like to thank you for precisely this approach — there was always desire to seek mutually acceptable decisions, compromises,” Putin said.
Burns, speaking in Russian, stressed the need for cooperation.

TITLE: Russia, Ukraine Agree Over Gas Supplies
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A three-day standoff that saw gas shipments to Ukraine cut in half ended Wednesday when Russia reached an agreement with the important energy-transit state. 
While Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz Ukrainy and Russia’s Gazprom both said the conflict over payments for past shipments had been resolved, analysts said the deal brought no guarantee that supplies would not be interrupted again in the near future. 
The companies said the agreement followed a telephone conversation between President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko. 
“The transport of Russian gas to European consumers across the territory of Ukraine is being carried out in full,” the companies said. “Restrictions on the deliveries to Ukrainian consumers have been removed.” 
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Naftogaz chairman Oleh Dubyna agreed that Naftogaz would pay for gas deliveries made from Jan. 1 to March 1, in accordance with the “arrangements already in place for early 2008,” the companies said, without providing any more information. 
The announcement came hours after Gazprom warned European customers that Ukraine was getting ready to cut supplies to Europe. 
Earlier Wednesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Ukraine wouldn’t disrupt gas flows to Europe. 
Yushchenko, who has generally taken a more conciliatory stance in dealings with Gazprom than his prime minister, congratulated the companies on the agreement Wednesday evening. 
“I am not a proponent of a gas war. I am a proponent of dialog,” Yushchenko said in a statement posted on his web site. “I am convinced that we have to be less emotional and should abide by pragmatic national interests.” 
While a cut in supply to Europe no longer seemed an imminent danger, details as to how the impasse had been resolved were in short supply. 
Gazprom spokeswoman Tatyana Golubovich said Wednesday that the company had agreed to a price of $179.50 for gas delivered from Jan. 1 to March 1 but that negotiations over pricing with Naftogaz would continue. Kupriyanov and Naftogaz spokesman Valentin Zemlyansky were not available for additional comment Wednesday night. 
“Gazprom has apparently agreed to consider the 1.9 billion cubic meters of gas sold to Ukraine in January as originating in Turkmenistan,” Mikhail Korchemkin, executive director at Pennsylvania-based consultancy East European Gas Analysis, said in e-mailed comments.

TITLE: Enel Buys Stake In OGK-5
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Italy’s Enel is offering Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom a minority stake in an Italian power plant as reciprocity for gas supplies to OGK-5, Enel’s chief executive said. 
Italy’s biggest utility said earlier on Thursday it held 59.8 percent of the Russian power generator OGK-5 after a public buyout offer, paying 2.6 billion euros ($4 billion) for the stake. 
Enel CEO Fulvio Conti said Enel had given Gazprom a choice between five power stations, which he declined to name, for the minority stake offered. Gazprom would pay $200 million to $250 million for it. 
The takeover cements Enel’s role as a major player in the Russian power sector, and has also been seen as a milestone for sector reforms, the only large-scale liberalization under President Putin. 
Enel, Italy’s biggest utility, had 37.15 percent of OGK-5 before launching the mandatory buyout offer last November. It paid about 972 million euros for another 22.65 percent of shares in the tender, offering 4.4275 roubles a share, Enel said in a statement.

TITLE: EBRD Saw Profits Fall And Investments Increase in 2007
AUTHOR: By Aaron Eglitis and Meera Louis
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said 2007 net income fell 21 percent because of the sale of equity investments.
The EBRD, created in 1991 to invest in former communist countries, said profit fell to 1.9 billion euros ($2.9 billion) from 2.4 billion euros in 2006, the company said in an e-mailed statement. The bank said investments increased 14 percent to 5.6 billion euros last year.
The London-based lender said last year’s global financial turbulence could continue and affect investment in eastern Europe, cutting revenue for 2008 and reducing the value of its equity investments. The lender called on nations in the region to continue market and economic reforms.
“The EBRD is equipped and more than ready to support this process, especially as the prevailing economic uncertainty could lead to some reluctance to invest on the part of the international private sector banks and investors,” said Manfred Schepers, the EBRD’s vice president for finance, in the statement.
The EBRD is focusing its attention on countries in the former Soviet Union, and away from Croatia and the eight former communist countries that joined the European Union in 2004.
About 90 percent of the bank’s loans last year went to Bulgaria, Romania, which joined the EU last year, as well as Russia and other former communist countries outside of the EU, the bank said.
European Union finance ministers discussed a paper outlining the future of the EBRD, including closing the bank, which was set up to finance developing economies from central Europe to central Asia, according to people familiar with the paper.
The paper also suggests merging the operations of the EBRD with the “external operations” of the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank. Most of the EIB’s business is conducted in the EU and about 10 percent of its operations are in countries outside the EU like Turkey and Serbia.
The paper is a “discussion paper for European governments. The bank is owned by European and non-European shareholders. Its not for me to comment on a discussion paper for European shareholders,” Anthony Williams, an EBRD spokesperson said by phone Thursday.
The EBRD would not make any new investments in the Czech Republic this year due to its “successful transition,” and plans to end lending in the eight eastern European countries, excluding Romania and Bulgaria, by 2010, said Schepers at a press conference in London.
“The role of the EBRD will change over time according to the political situation and the financial situation,” Schepers said. “The option to enter Turkey has been discussed by our shareholders.”
The lender issued a global bond in Russian rubles to continue to fund its investments, the lender said.

TITLE: City Prepares to Show Itself Off at Exhibition
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A delegation of St. Petersburg officials and businessmen will demonstrate the city’s largest development projects at the MIPIM international forum for real estate professionals and investors, which opens March 11 and continues through March 14 in Cannes, France.
Over the last two years the number of delegates attending MIPIM has increased by 43 percent, hitting a record 26,210 participants in 2007. This year over 28,000 key players are expected, according to MIPIM’s web site.
“Over the last 11 years we have gradually increased our presence at MIPIM. We started with a small stand on the ground floor of the exhibition center. Last year the Russian delegation occupied a separate pavilion, and we were able to demonstrate our investment potential adequately,” Maxim Sokolov, chairman of City Hall’s Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects, said Wednesday at a briefing at Interfax press center.
This year the St. Petersburg delegation will occupy the same area as last year — a 166-square meter area in the Lerins hall. The largest projects will be exhibited, including the land reclamation and development underway on Vasilievsky island, the Baltic Pearl multifunctional complex, the reconstruction of New Holland island and the new campus of the Graduate School of Management.
“Two new projects will be included in our exposition this year — the reconstruction of Apraksin Dvor and the construction of the new passenger terminal of Pulkovo airport,” Sokolov said. 
Traditionally, the focus is on investment opportunities in the tourism and hospitality industries. Sokolov also expects that golf club projects will raise considerable interest among investors.
In addition to the projects supported by the St. Petersburg government, the largest private projects will also be exhibited. Glavstroi-Spb will display its Yuntolovo residential complex, drawing special attention to its eco-friendly approach to construction. The company is building three million square meters of housing — equivalent to the annual volume of new housing in the city.
Other private projects to be exhibited include the Nevskaya Ratusha office and administrative center, Morskiye Bashni multifunctional complex, Petrovsky Arsenal complex and New England multifunctional center (over one million square meters of housing). The projects being displayed this year are worth a total $11 billion, Sokolov said.
“We want to show St. Petersburg as an open city, a city which is developing but at the same time preserves the most valuable parts of its heritage. For that purpose, we will use high-tech equipment and innovations on our stand,” said Andrei Rudashevsky, general director of the Agency for Direct Investment.
“Usually models are demonstrated on a horizontal plane, but we will display our projects on a vertical plane so that exhibition guests can easily see the models in detail without bending down,” Rudashevsky said.
One high-tech model will show a cross-section view of Pulkovo terminal, while a model of the Sea Passenger Terminal and its bordering multifunctional complex will be reflected onto a windowpane, creating the impression of a three-dimension picture hanging in the air.
“This 3D-model of our project was created by Tranzas company,” said Alexander Shimberg, director for public relations at Sea Facade managing company.
While working on the exposition, officials consulted the British creative agency Button. The officials estimated that participating in MIPIM cost about 20 million rubles ($0.8 million), 10.9 million rubles ($0.5 million) of which was provided by the city budget while the rest came from private companies. The main sponsors were Glavstroi-Spb, Okhta-group and Sea Facade.
“At the exhibition we plan to show the Nevskaya Ratusha complex to potential investors and tenants. They will have the opportunity to see the interior of the future complex,” said Konstantin Kovalyov, director for the Nevskaya Ratusha project at Okhta-group.
Sokolov drew attention to the dramatic increase in development in St. Petersburg over the last year.
“I don’t believe in the immediate effects of events like international exhibitions. But the scale, number and quality of projects being realized in the city prove that we have managed to attract considerable interest in the city, partly through events such as MIPIM,” he said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Swedbank Slows Down</b>
STOCKHOLM (Bloomberg) — Swedbank AB, the largest bank in the Baltic region, plans to expand more slowly in Russia than originally planned, Chief Executive Officer Jan Liden said.
The Stockholm-based bank plans to open “a few” new Russian branches this year, where it currently operates in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, Liden said at a conference in Kiev on Wednesday. The lender needs to learn more about the country and its financial markets, he said.
Swedbank’s plan to open six or seven new Russian offices in 2007 stalled when the central bank barred the company from certain banking activities for allegedly violating money laundering regulations. The restrictions were lifted in September.

<b>BBH Deal Reviewed</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will review Carlsberg A/S’s application to fully control Baltic Beverages Holding AB, owner of the country’s Baltika Breweries, by May 5, Interfax reported.
The purchase of the 50 percent of BBH that Carlsberg doesn’t own may give the Danish brewer a dominant position in Russia’s beer market and the Antimonopoly Service needs more time to consider the application, Interfax said, citing the service’s documents.
Carlsberg, the largest Nordic brewer, is taking over Scottish & Newcastle Plc with Heineken NV to gain full control of BBH, which owns about nine-tenths of Baltika, Russia’s largest brewer.  

<b>Oil Producers Warned</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s antitrust authority warned the country’s five largest oil producers, including Rosneft and Lukoil, against colluding to create a shortfall of products such as gasoline that could inflate prices.
The competition watchdog asked the producers and the Energy Ministry for refinery maintenance plans in March and April, the Federal Monopoly Service said Wednesday on its web site.
“Unjustified repair (reconstruction, maintenance) of production capacity that reduces oil-product output, creating a deficit and higher prices, may be viewed as abuse,” the Federal Monopoly Service said in a statement. The service also sent the request to BP Plc’s Russian venture TNK-BP, Surgutneftegaz and Gazprom.

<b>Drugstore Sales Soar</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Pharmacy Chain 36.6, Russia’s largest drugstore company, said sales rose 65 percent in 2007 after increased wealth fueled purchases of personal-care products.
Sales increased to $872 million from $529 million in 2006, the Moscow-based company said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. Revenue climbed by a fifth at stores open before Jan. 1, 2006, and the value of the average transaction in stores open at least a year increased 24 percent.
36.6 added 93 stores last year as higher wages enabled Russians to buy more personal-care products. 

<b>Wheat Duty to Remain</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will extend duties on wheat exports until July 1 to keep more grain in the country, Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeyev said on Vesti-24 television channel Thursday.
Russia increased the wheat duty almost fivefold between Jan. 29 and April 30 and halted exports to neighboring Belarus and Kazakhstan, eliminating a loophole that allowed Russian grain to be sold through those countries.

TITLE: Investors Don’t Like Surprises
AUTHOR: By Neil Cooper
TEXT: Dmitry Medvedev’s accession to the presidency has been variously described in the Western media as predictable, boring, managed and rigged. The transition of the presidential mantle from Vladimir Putin to his chosen successor was, indeed, as managed as could be expected from Russia’s new democracy.
But while the result of the election was never in any doubt, it is important to remember that the outcome provides welcome confirmation of Russia’s political and economic stability and continuity, devoid of any unsettling fallout or tremors. For foreign businesses the most positive message to come out of last weekend’s contest was that it was predictable. Investors don’t like surprises.
Just as the presidential election was stereotyped, so the personality of the winning candidate was presented in the Western media as a malleable puppet, portrayed in several newspaper cartoons as a marionette, with the gray cardinal Putin manipulating the strings. The Financial Times published a photo of Medvedev’s likeness painted on a matryoshka, with the alter ego Putin figure on the inner doll nestling beneath.
Despite these stereotypes, there is still room to believe that Medvedev’s credentials offer us some reason to expect a shift of direction toward improved democratic institutions and free-market reform. Even though he has been at pains to underscore Putin’s Plan, along with a commitment to adhere to it, we have seen a certain independence of opinion in a number of statements over the past year. As head of the Russian delegation to Davos for the World Economic Forum in January 2007, Medvedvev impressed Western observers by his accomplished professionalism, his commitment to democratic and free-market principles and his comments suggesting that state involvement in industry should be minimized.
His subsequent remarks concerning the need for change within state-owned corporations from control by political figureheads to being managed exclusively by independent business directors are a positive indicator that his tenure as president may see more improvements to promote investor confidence. In addition, his support for a clearly recognizable and independent judiciary has addressed some underlying concerns from foreign investors that the rule of law should be transparently and uniformly applied.
Medvedev served as chairman of Gazprom, a post he will relinquish before his inauguration as head of state. He was further primed for the presidency by being entrusted with responsibility for the national projects covering the key social problems of housing, health care, agriculture and education. As president, he will also engage in massive infrastructure projects worth more than $1 trillion that will encompass roads, railways, airports, ports and the reconstruction of the national power grid and distribution system across the largest country in the world. Britain aims to continue its pre-eminence as a foreign investor by being at the forefront of this vast national reconstruction program.
Foreign direct investment doubled to $27.8 billion last year, with Britain playing a leading role as a key contributor to this country’s economy. The continued growth of trade and investment stands in stark contrast with the deterioration over the past 18 months in political relations, which have been inextricably mired in arguments on extradition procedures, the relative state of development of our two democracies and the respective state of the rule of law.
History has demonstrated that successful trade statistics have not always correlated with harmonious political relations between Russia and Britain, particularly during the Soviet period. It would therefore be possible, though hardly desirable, for the current unsatisfactory situation to continue along these lines. Statistics over the past two years have shown that, while the political and diplomatic relationship has cooled, the curve of trade and investment continues in a diametrically opposite trajectory. From Margaret Thatcher’s accession in 1979, Britain’s first female prime minister was bitterly opposed to Soviet ideology, but as a free marketeer, she promoted trade with Russia and never countenanced any interruption of the commercial relationship, even following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which precipitated U.S. withdrawal of trade resources among a range of retaliatory measures. It was only after Mikhail Gorbachev’s emergence as general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 that a true warming of political relations took place, despite continued ideological opposition. Even though Communist ideals had not been relinquished on the Russian side, a fundamental change took place in relations as the result of the advent of one man.
A change of personalities at the top of the Kremlin leadership may now have a similar influence and provide a shift in outlook and relations to help resolve the significant difference of opinion that has adversely affected the Russian-British diplomatic relationship. At a post-election news conference treated with understandable media skepticism, Medvedev was quite adamant that foreign policy is to rest with the president’s office, which will be his direct responsibility from May.
It is therefore to be hoped that a Medvedev presidency, while dependent on the tandem relationship with incoming Prime Minister Putin, will demonstrate sufficient independence to enable a more open dialogue and a favorable framework in which any diplomatic disagreements with foreign states may be resolved in a more emotionally restrained and constructive manner. Similarly, in Medvedev’s espousal of continued democratization for the management processes of state industries and in his promotion of true independence of the judicial system to provide better guarantees of the rule of law, the corporate governance and transparency fundamental to a healthy business environment for investors stand to be greatly enhanced.
The $1 trillion-plus infrastructure program will require enormous resources of financing, management and time. It will also demand more innovative forms of cooperation, such as public-private partnerships, in which Britain is a world leader and has a great deal to offer Russia in cooperation beyond the scope of more traditional investments in natural resources, retail and manufacturing industries.
The best news for Britain following the no-surprises election in Russia would be demonstrable signs of an independence of spirit from the new president and a genuine and sustainable improvement in political cooperation between our countries to parallel our business relationship.

Neil Cooper is the Russia director of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce.

TITLE: A Powerful President With Little Power
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: There was never any serious discussion about whether Dmitry Medvedev would win or lose in Sunday’s election. The only topic that was discussed was whether Medvedev would be able to take the power away from President Vladimir Putin.
But I think the more pertinent question to ask is if Putin has any power in the first place.
Before you indignantly answer, “Yes, of course he has power!” let me give you an example of what I mean. Two years ago, Putin visited a boy dying of leukemia at a Moscow cancer clinic for children. He ate blini and drank tea with the boy, and at the end of his visit, Putin promised to build a new cancer clinic. The entire episode with Putin, the boy and the blini was shown on national television. Two years have passed, however, and the ground has yet to be broken.
If Russia were a democracy, Putin would have been given his pink slip for not fulfilling his promise. If Russia were a dictatorship, he would have found a fall guy and executed him. But what is most important is that the person responsible for not building the hospital either knew damn well that Putin didn’t care enough ever to punish him for his failure, or he knew that Putin was simply not capable of doing anything to him.
This is far from being an isolated case. For example, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn asked Putin to allocate 30 million rubles to finish the publication of a biographical dictionary of Russian writers, the president himself wrote “Allocate” in his directive. What happened after that? The promised money disappeared without a trace.
Don’t misunderstand me — I am categorically opposed to the president signing off allocation requests that are presented to him directly by various citizens and interest groups. Besides that, how is Putin supposed to come up with 30 million rubles to publish a dictionary, or an even larger sum to build a hospital, out of thin air?
But there is another issue here: Why is it so easy for subordinates simply to ignore instructions? If those in power cannot enforce their decisions, they have no power at all.
Another essential component of authority is the power of arrest. General Alexander Bulbov, a senior officer with the Federal Drug Control Service, was arrested in October as part of a bitter turf war with a competing siloviki group. Why was he arrested? To avenge Bulbov’s eavesdropping campaign against this rival group, even though Putin ordered the surveillance. The question then is: Who is running this country?
You might cite the Duma’s total obedience to Putin to prove that the president is in full command. But a subservient Duma is only a secondary indication of authority; the primary characteristic is when subordinates fulfill their superiors’ instructions. The Duma doesn’t fulfill Putin’s commands as much as it just licks his boots.
To be sure, Putin did have power as president, and there were two main components to that authority. First, Putin was able to appoint whomever he wanted to whichever office he chose. 
But this authority will be transferred to Medvedev. The second component is money. It is hard to say if political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky’s $40 billion estimate of Putin’s net worth is accurate, but we can say one thing with certainty: In recent years, the only commands issued by Putin that officials have fulfilled unconditionally were those concerning the redistribution of state property to his close friends and associates. The problem will come when Putin leaves office in May and discovers that he and his friends have radically differing ideas about who actually owns that property.
All things considered, it won’t be difficult for Medvedev to take power away from Putin in those areas he controlled. But the real question is whether Medvedev will be able to have power over the system itself and over the other forces within the government?

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Bright and beautiful
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Glossy and enticing, the Soviet photographic albums of the 1930s presented an airbrushed world in which the sausage was plentiful, the Young Pioneers sunned their bare bottoms at the Black Sea and milkmaids proudly showed off their record-breaking cows.
Such coffee-table books were usually produced in costly limited editions, destined for members of the nomenklatura and libraries. Their contents could be dry, as suggested by titles such as “The Industry of Socialism” and “On Rail Transport in the Soviet Union,” but the dynamic photographs and graphic design by artists including Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky could make even features on tractors or steel production look attractive.
In a new book, “Great Stalinist Photographic Books,” artist Mikhail Karasik goes through the genre from its origins in avant-garde experiments of the 1920s to its petering out in the 1940s, when such books generally became dull and pompous. Some of the books are well-known and highly collectable in the West, but they have been unfairly neglected in Russia until recently due to their political connotations, Karasik believes.
“These books were never collected by bibliophiles. They were considered very political and ideologized,” he said in a telephone interview. Many were given away during paper recycling campaigns in the Brezhnev era; others lay hidden in libraries’ “special” storage rooms, due to their abundance of images of Stalin.
This book, which was partly funded by the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency, is the first to systematize and reprint hundreds of page layouts and covers of the books. “I think the main point of this book is that we gathered them all together,” Karasik said.
The books came from libraries, Karasik’s own collection and museums such as the Sergei Kirov apartment-museum in St. Petersburg.
One of the most notorious books featured is “10 Years of Uzbekistan,” put together by Rodchenko and his wife, Varvara Stepanova, and published in 1934. Three years later, it was taken out of circulation because many of its featured heroes had been repressed. 
The story was told in David King’s book, “The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia.” The writer looked at Rodchenko’s own copy, where many faces had been erased with black ink.
This book reproduces more than a dozen photospreads from “10 Years of Uzbekistan.” One shows a bare-chested harvester grinning as he hugs a mass of snowy cotton; in another a woman plays a grand piano, her hair hanging loose in a sign that she has rejected the traditional hijab. Fold-out pages reveal giant panoramas of cotton fields and mills, while the red endpapers are dotted with giant bolls of cotton.
Another book, “Belomor-Baltic Canal Named After Stalin” has become a byword for artistic compromise. Its authors, including novelist Alexei Tolstoi and the brilliant comic writer Mikhail Zoshchenko were dispatched to sing the praises of a project based on slave labor. But it’s rare to see pages from the book itself, designed by artists including Rodchenko and published in 1934. An embossed portrait of Stalin decorates the cover; inside are photographs of workers teeming over the canal bed and breaking rocks.
“All the portraits have been retouched. It’s hard to say who looks more frightening: the re-educated enemies of the people, wreckers and criminals worn out by work, or the leaders and educators from OGPU [a forerunner of the KGB],” Karasik writes.
“In this book, there is a lot of politics, not because I wanted there to be, but because it was a time of politics,” said the author, who specializes in creating limited-edition artist’s books on themes such as Central Asia and the absurdist writer Daniil Kharms.
Despite the Soviet books’ political subtexts, they also stand out for their artistic verve.
Rodchenko and Stepanova added lift-up flaps to photographs in the 1938 book “Moscow Reconstructs,” so that you can look inside buildings or see hidden metro tunnels. In “The Workers and Peasants’ Red Army” from 1934, El Lissitzky gave whole pages to single images such as sailors throwing a basketball and created dramatic photocollages in the shape of a five-pointed star or the map of the Soviet Union.
“When I was researching the books in libraries, sometimes when I was given one and opened it up, I felt aesthetic pleasure, of course,” Karasik said.
Some of the books were produced in print-runs of as little as 1,000, while others went up to 50,000. They were generally very expensive. One, titled “Sausage and Smoked Meat” cost 250 rubles in 1938 - more than many people’s monthly salary. That 1938 book, apparently aimed at a trade audience, printed full-page drawings of delicacies such as “high-grade chequered glazed sausage” and included a price-list.
“That book wasn’t propaganda,” Karasik said. “You really could use it to put in an order.”
The least politically themed books are perhaps the most appealing, even though they also inevitably gloss over the deprivations and repressions of their time. Books on the All-Union Exhibition of Economic Achievements in Moscow show photographs of record-breaking animals, including a cow called Orbit, and the rabbit-breeding pavilion, whose centerpiece was a model of a giant rabbit, surrounded by smaller offspring.
The oddly titled “Wives of Engineers” from 1937 has drawings of women mending cars and riding motorcyles while their children sleep and play with giant teddy bears in sunny kindergartens. In “Artek,” a book about the country’s most deluxe Young Pioneer camp on the Black Sea, children lie in orderly rows on the beach wearing only sunhats, splash in the sea and are served fruit by pretty cafeteria staff.
“Retouching was an obligatory rule for the photo-books, not even sparing children’s faces,” Karasik comments in the introduction.
An exhibition based on several of the books called “Books and Cinema” is showing at the Anna Akhmatova Museum (see Museums listing on page xi).

“Great Stalinist Photographic Books” (Paradnaya Kniga Strany Sovietov) is published by Kontakt-Kultura.

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: <b>Andrei Makarevich</b>, frontman of the legendary band Mashina Vremeni, has come under attack since his band performed at a televised concert on Red Square for the members of the Kremlin-backed youth organization Young Guard to mark the presidential election last Sunday. Many of his old fans are in shock.
Meanwhile, another well-known musician <b>Yury Shevchuk</b>, frontman of DDT, made a stand by boycotting the pre-determined election and joining a Dissenters March in St. Petersburg on Monday (see article, page iii).
Makarevich has not recently been the spokesman for a generation he appeared to be in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming a TV chef, taking exotic vacations, running various businesses, playing at corporate concerts and accepting a medal from the Kremlin, but it seems that a lot of people had thought of him in that way. Now, after the March 2 concert, many feel deceived.
Hundreds of messages have flooded Makarevich’s personal website since Sunday evening, and they keep arriving.
Makarevich replied on the site that Medvedev was the best candidate of the four taking part in the election, but the excuse did not wash with fans who pointed out that no oppositional candidate had been allowed to take part.
“Dear Andrei, we are almost the same age, we lived through the history of one and the same country,” wrote a fan who signed as Konstantin.
“Perhaps due to your being busy or your dislike of politics, you failed to notice that the country has changed over the last few months. And this was epitomized on the night of March 2, when, among lies and servility, you were the only beam of light, and, alas, in the wrong place and the wrong time.
“The thing is not who came to power, but how. The thing is that the authorities have decided for the people (or cattle, as you put it), what authorities they need, long before the ‘democratic elections.’ This is how the Nazis decided for the Germans in the early 1930s that it should become Nazi Germany. [...]
“Sadly, I should establish the fact that in next to no time you have turned from the nation's favorite into a court jester.”
A Sergei Romanov referred to “Puppets,” the song that Makarevich wrote in the 1970s, and was seen by fans as an “anti-Soviet” protest when performed by the then semi-banned Mashina Vremeni.
“I am 30, and for 25 of my 30 years I have listened to Makarevich and MV — no exaggeration. [...] The man who wrote ‘Puppets’ is taking part in a puppet show himself now. 
“You, Andrei Vadimovich, have strings attached to your sleeves, just like your favorite [Medvedev]. Thanks to Shevchuk for saving the honor of rock musicians.”

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Hitler’s Titanic
AUTHOR: By Dave Graham
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — A new television film about the sinking of a Nazi ship carrying thousands of German refugees at the end of World War II has lifted the lid on one of Germany’s most painful memories.
The film, to be broadcast on Sunday and Monday in Germany, tells the story of the former Nazi cruise ship “Wilhelm Gustloff,” torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945. As many as 9,300 people died — believed to be biggest loss of life on a single ship.
Yet the tale of the Gustloff, which has frequently been referred to as Germany’s Titanic, remains relatively unknown outside the country due to the reluctance of postwar generations to examine publicly Germans’ suffering during the war.
“It’s been very hard to talk about this because it raises the difficult question of German victimhood in a war the Nazis began,” said British historian Roger Moorhouse. “This enforced silence for years will have been painful to many people.”
“But it’s really a testament to how the treatment of German history is returning to normal that the story is now being told as a big budget film on prime-time German television.”
The multi-million euro production “Die Gustloff” was to be aired on ZDF state television.
The imposing 209 meter-long (685 feet) Gustloff, named after the assassinated head of the Swiss Nazi party, was launched in 1937 and conceived as a cruise liner for the Nazis’ leisure organization Kraft durch Freude, or “strength through joy.”
Once war broke out, it was used by the German military.
Hundreds of soldiers were on the ship when it set off on its final voyage from Gotenhafen (now Gdynia in Poland) for Kiel. However, the vast majority of its passengers were refugees, many of them women and children fleeing from the advancing Red Army.
The ship was designed to carry about 1,500 passengers, but historians now estimate over 10,000 people were on board when it sank on the 12th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power.
Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, who made the anti-war film “Stalingrad”, the three-hour movie is the first to dramatize the Gustloff’s fate since German reunification in 1990. In 1959, a black-and-white West German film about the sinking was shot.
Until Germany’s Nobel laureate Guenter Grass addressed it in his 2002 novel “Im Krebsgang” (Crabwalk) the history of the Gustloff — whose death toll compares with around 1,500 for the Titanic — was relatively obscure even inside Germany.
The film, which Chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews saw in advance, purports to detail incidents from the sinking like a woman who gave birth on a rescue boat as death surrounded her in the icy waters.
“The screams were terrible,” Ursula Kossmann, a 77-year-old who managed to clamber on board a rescue boat with her mother, told daily Die Welt. “Some officers shot their families.”
Survivor Guenther von Maydell, who was 13 at the time, told the same paper he wasn’t afraid when the ship began to go down.
“I was just focused on escaping,” he said. “I only realized later how lucky I’d been. I must have had a guardian angel.”

TITLE: A matter of conscience
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Dissenters’ march held this week in St. Petersburg in reaction to Dmitry Medvedev’s ascent to the presidency on Sunday took on a cultural dimension — it was as heavy on poems and songs as it was on political speeches. 
With Yury Shevchuk, the frontman of leading Russian rock band DDT, joining the marchers, the rally drew extra attention from the media and music fans, while a powerful performance by Televizor’s Mikhail Borzykin, illuminated by the audience’s hand-held flares, became the highlight of the meeting.
Dissenters’ marches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and several other cities on Monday were organized by pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia and  other political and social groups to protest the March 2 presidential election, seen by the opposition as the epitome of unfairness, with the real opposition candidates excluded by various means in favor of the Kremlin’s faux oppositionists and favored successor Medvedev.
While permission was not granted to the Moscow march, which was violently stopped by the OMON police, the sanctioned St. Petersburg event was described as “key” by Eduard Limonov, the leader of the banned National Bolshevik Party at a press conference last week. It drew an estimated 2,000 protesters, who were, as usual, outnumbered by police located along the march’s route. Heavily equipped OMON policemen hid in nearby alleys.
Speaking after Other Russia leaders Garry Kasparov and Limonov, Shevchuk derided bands such as Mashina Vremeni, Chaif and Splean, who performed on Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate the new presidential arrangement, with President Vladimir Putin and Medvedev, in attendance on the night of the election on Sunday. The selected audience was limited to members of the Young Guard, a Kremlin-backed youth organization.
Shevchuk called the loyalist bands “culture’s delivery boys” as opposed to “bearers of culture.” 
“We saw culture’s delivery boys on Red Square on television yesterday,” he said.
“The artist is a nervous, tender and timid creature. But I want to say that for us, rock musicians of St. Petersburg and Russia, rock and roll is not Chuck Berry and not Little Richard, it is spirit and freedom. Most of all, freedom. And this freedom brought me here and I am with you. God bless you. Thank you. I wish you well.”
Shevchuk has criticized St. Petersburg’s authorities for destroying the city’s historical buildings in interviews and on stage and performed a number of dissident songs with lines like “Putin rides across the country, but we’re still in the shit” or “When the oil dries up, our president will die,” but has never before taken part in oppositional political rallies.
The DDT leader, who said he came to the march because he “had had enough” of the unfairness of the election, came of his own volition, according to Borzykin, who said that Shevchuk’s “conscience had been awoken.” 
“We walked the march’s whole route together,” said Borzykin. 
“First, in the beginning, at around 5 p.m. there was a rumor that Shevchuk had come — I didn’t believe it at first, but then I went to where I was going, found him there, was pleased to see him and I think he was pleased to see me as well. 
“I realized he was in a psychological state similar to the one I was in a year ago, when I came to a meeting and saw political groups that were unfamiliar to me and joined the ranks, with a certain apprehension, as an ordinary participant. I went to several marches like that. It was surprising and exciting feeling like a newcomer, a newcomer in some new community.
“For me, someone who is used to shouting my own words from the stage, it was difficult to shout other people’s words while walking down the street. I think Shevchuk experienced the same feeling.”
Borzykin said he helped Shevchuk to get oriented at the rally.
“He had no clear understanding of what The Other Russia consists of, or, rather, who the main organizers of the march were. As far I understood, he was driven there by his own conscience, he didn’t even take his own musicians there so as not to risk anybody’s safety, because he didn’t know how it would end — that makes his action twice as valuable. 
“The communication between us worked out quickly, and we didn’t need to explain to each other what’s happening in this country. I think we agree on most issues, and we have totally similar ideas about the situation of Russian rock music.”
The presence of Shevchuk raised the spirit of the protesters against the Kremlin’s authoritarian politics. It took courage, too, according to Borzykin.
“[Shevchuk] is a figure who had been seen as loyal, well-promoted and under the patronage of the powers that be until now, so it’s a special risk for him, because he can lose everything at once, and I greatly respect that he wasn’t afraid to come,” he said.
“And, naturally, it’s a scoop for journalists; it was very difficult to get rid of photographers, when I stood next to him. At one point we got annoyed by the endless clicking of cameras and Yura asked them to stop taking pictures of us.”
Borzykin’s own performance was one of the focal points of the event, with him singing his song “Nail the Cellar Shut,” to a blaring electro-rock background that he had recorded on the eve of the rally. While he barked out the words about the “neo Orthodox Christian Chekists,” as he has branded Putin’s team in a Kremlin dominated by former KGB officers, the Chernyshevsky Gardens, where the meeting took place, was illuminated by the red flame of flares held by Limonov’s supporters.
“It was the first time I managed to shake hands with Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, something that I had wanted to do for a long time,” said Borzykin.
The Dissenters’ march’s cultural component, which included actor Alexei Devotchenko, SP Babai and musician Andrei Vasilyev of the local band Mykhomory, changed the spirit of the event for the better, Borzykin said.
“The march was more poetic this time,” he said. 
“It was the first time that so many songs were sung from the stage as well as poems and an excerpt from [19th century author Nikolai] Gogol read by Devotchenko. All this gave a certain humanitarian, literary-poetic coloring to the march, adding a certain depth to the action, because politicians have translated poets into the language of politics, while poets, in their turn, have inspired musicians. 
“All in all, it created an interesting and unusual situation. There was less hysteria, and more friendly unanimity. It is what the opposition perhaps needs now, so that it can follow a positive program of development. Culture is probably one of the directions in which one should look for answers to political questions.”

TITLE: Sounds good
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Svetlana Surganova, frontwoman of rock band Surganova i Orkestr, has opened a club orientated toward live music this week. Launched with a concert by the Minsk, Belarus-based cabaret act Serebryanaya Svadba and the Moscow-based pop-rock band Undervud from Ukraine last Friday, the club — called A2 — aims to showcase some of the better-known bands and provide an unusually good sound system, Surganova said.
“I want a place in the city where totally diverse musicians can show their work, giving pleasure to both themselves and listeners,” said Surganova in a recent phone interview. 
“The accent is on sound quality, for which we installed a state-of-the-art Turbosound system. It is balanced, quite powerful, and has 16-kilowatt sound for a relatively small room that allows us achieve a crystal clear sound.”
According to Surganova, the room has also been equipped with fine sound insulation, with the use of Ecophon acoustic materials.
“We have put a special emphasis on it. Club managers usually don’t pay much attention or put money into this aspect for some reason, at least in St. Petersburg,” she said.
The club’s specialty will be live performances, said Surganova, although a late-night program of DJ sets is being formed as well. There is also a jazz concert once a week.
“The policy behind the repertoire is ‘musical cosmopolitanism.’ By that I mean totally diverse genres, an eclectic, musical medley designed to satisfy totally different tastes. Different music lovers enjoy themselves under one roof — fans of lounge, ska, jazz, disco, funk or singer-songwriters will all find something interesting.”
Surganova said she had the idea of starting a music club due to the lack of places where people can enjoy listening to or performing music. 
As a well-traveled musician, first with the band Nochniye Snaipery that she originally co-formed in Magadan before moving to St. Petersburg later, and  later with her own band, Surganova i Orkestr, she has had quite an impressive experience of performing at all types of venues. 
Conveniently located in the city center, in the “pyat uglov” area (“five corners” where Ulitsa Lomonosova and Zagorodny Prospekt intersect), A2 occupies the second floor over a wine bar called Assemblage Actuel shared by the same owners and forming part of the complex — hence the name A2.
The building on the corner of Razyezzhaya Ulitsa and Ulitsa Pravdy is a dull concrete 1970s dom byta (public services center), a socialist combination of a laundry, hairdresser’s, repair shops and other services, now largely turned into offices and shops. The club and the restaurant — which have a separate entrance from Razyezzhaya Ulitsa — have inherited their premises from a children’s store.
“To be honest, this building is a little shocking in its appearance, but there are some benefits — the most important is that it’s not residential, so we won’t disturb anybody and nobody will disturb us, which will allow us to stay open all night,” said Surganova.
Designed by local artist Ilya Levi, A2 looks a bit bourgeois yet it avoids “new-Russian” excesses. The club can hold up to 500 people, but, according to art director Yelena Zhukova, it only issues 350 tickets or less to avoid overcrowding. 
With shows held daily, performances on Monday through Wednesday are free, while tickets for the bands playing on Thursday through Sunday usually cost between 200 and 700 rubles, though there are two ticket types and prices. 
For instance, for popular ska band Markscheider Kunst’s concert this week, standing tickets were 300 rubles, while tickets for the sofas and tables in two rows on the sides of the room were 500 rubles. Beer costs 90 to 150 rubles per 0.5 liter glass.
Zhukova said the PA system is the finest in the city, while the lights were installed by well-known theatrical lighting designer Yevgeny Ganzburg from Moscow. 
“We have a better idea about Russian rock than about anything else,” said Zhukova, who also works as Surganova’s administrator and a concert promoter organizing Russian tours of the country’s rock acts. “But here we aim to have a very diverse repertoire, including international acts.”

A2 club is located at 12 Razyezzhaya Ulitsa, Metro: Vladimirskaya. 
Tel.: 984-3690. www.a2club.su.

TITLE: In search of Bush
AUTHOR: By Alan Brinkley
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: With almost a year still to go in George W. Bush’s presidency, he has already become the subject of an astonishing amount of literature — on the war in Iraq, on his controversial economic and social policies, on his two contested presidential elections and on the man himself. So Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, treads some familiar ground in his effort to understand the origins of Bush’s much-explored psyche. His analysis is not as original or startling as he sometimes claims; his explanations of Bush’s behavior are often highly speculative; and he relies too much on such overworked clichés as the parallels between the president and Shakespeare’s Henry V. 
But “The Bush Tragedy” is, nevertheless, an intelligent and illuminating book. It takes much of what we already know and uses it to create a mostly persuasive account of the character and behavior of a man whom many observers have already called the most disastrous president in our history.
Weisberg sees Bush’s life, and his presidency, as the product of a series of relationships — with his family and with the two men who most decisively influenced his administration: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. All these relationships, he argues, contributed to Bush’s failures, but none more importantly than the complicated one with his father.
George H. W. Bush was a true product of the family’s Yankee past — reserved, responsible, careful and, for the most part, open-minded. As a child, George W. Bush was largely ignored by his busy, career-oriented father (and raised mostly by his aloof and often depressed mother). As an adult, he found himself unable to live up to his father’s imposing example and chose, instead, to become something close to his opposite. For many years, he ordered his life not by carefully nurturing a career, as his father had done, but by using his father’s fame to pursue quick and easy deals. He came to scorn the patrician New England world that had shaped his family and embraced instead the less decorous and more aggressive society of the Texas oil country. He also became an alcoholic. 
But according to Weisberg, even his recovery from addiction — assisted in part by his newfound interest in religion — contributed to his stubborn, swaggering and often reckless certitude. (“Bush’s faith,” Weisberg suggests, is sincere but has “no theological content.” 
He “seldom goes to church,” and his faith is less evangelical Christianity than “Self-Help Methodism.”) For Bush, being born again did not mean becoming a new person, but a more effective version of the person he already was.
Weisberg also attempts to explain the extraordinary roles that, in different ways, Rove and Cheney played in fashioning Bush’s actions. To Rove, Bush was a hero from the moment they met. (“He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have,” he later recalled.) 
Long before anyone else imagined a big future for Bush, Rove was already planning the ascent to the presidency, and he would spend many years devoted to Bush’s career — using a large arsenal of political skills. (His tactics included ugly and effective whispering campaigns, which he heedlessly employed in both local and national races.) He was among the first to urge Bush to run for governor of Texas. 
After being set on his course, Bush needed little urging to imagine a race for president and entered the campaign as if the White House were a kind of entitlement; but it was Rove who had laid the groundwork for it within the party. Seldom has a candidate reached the presidency with so little personal effort or engagement. 
Once in office, Bush allowed Rove to continue shaping his political strategy, which overlapped extensively with public policy. The many concessions to the religious right were not the result of the president’s religiosity, but of Rove’s political calculations. 
He was determined to increase the evangelical turnout, which in 2000 had been so low it almost cost Bush the election. Sacrificed to this electoral strategy was the broad, cross-party appeal that Bush had created in Texas and the “compassionate conservatism” he had promised in his 2000 campaign. They were replaced with a narrow, base-driven strategy that alienated many of his initial supporters and undermined Rove’s ambitious goal of creating a permanent Republican majority.
Bush had a very different, but no less important, relationship with his vice president. Cheney did not share Rove’s belief in Bush’s great political gifts. Instead, Weisberg argues, he saw in the new president an easily manipulable vehicle for his own longstanding agenda. 
He did not strive to be Bush’s friend, but he became the president’s continual and loyal courtier. “Cheney had figured out how to play on the son’s sense of his reborn self, flattering the maturity of his judgment,” Weisberg notes. “There was no need to spell out the implicit proposition: You have the self-confidence and inner security to rely on me.” Cheney was not alone in persuading Bush (who needed little persuasion) to launch the disastrous war in Iraq, but without Cheney the conflict might never have overcome the opposition of many in the administration. Cheney was even more central to some of the other damaging actions of Bush’s presidency: the assaults on due process and civil liberties; the defense of torture; the heightened secrecy; the contempt for international law and international organizations; and, perhaps most of all, the imperial view of the presidency, based on Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” and (in Weisberg’s words) his “lifelong goal” of “making the presidency stronger.”
Is the story of George W. Bush in fact a tragedy? Many Americans, of course, believe that his presidency has been a tragedy for the nation and for the world. But Weisberg provides few reasons to think it has been a tragedy for Bush himself. He portrays Bush as a willfully careless figure, only glancingly interested in his legacy or even his popularity. “To challenge a thoughtful, moderate and pragmatic father,” Weisberg argues, “he trained himself to be hasty, extreme and unbending. He learned to overcome all forms of doubt through the exercise of will.” Tragedy, in the Shakespearean form that Weisberg seems to cite (although there is nothing tragic about Henry V either), requires self-awareness and at least some level of greatness squandered. 
The Bush whom Weisberg skillfully and largely convincingly portrays is a man who has rarely reflected, who has almost never looked back, and who has constructed a self-image of strength, courage and boldness that has little basis in the reality of his life. He is driven less by bold vision than by a desire to get elected (and settle scores), less by real strength than by unfocused ambition, and less by courage than by an almost passive acquiescence in disastrous plans that the people he empowered pursued in his name.

Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.

TITLE: Bound and gagged
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When Vladimir Putin became president, NTV television was renowned for in-depth political analysis and hard-hitting coverage of breaking news stories such as the then-unfolding war in Chechnya.
Now, as Putin prepares to step down, NTV’s standard fare might be best encapsulated in a recent teaser ad for “Profession: Reporter,” the channel’s prime-time investigative program.
“Why play with dolls if you can have a living toy?” asked the teaser for an investigation into the lives of 6-year-old mothers. “Who provoked a children’s sexual revolution in Russia?”
The metamorphosis in NTV’s coverage is characteristic of what has happened to television channels and newspapers across the country over the past eight years. Once bristling with criticism of the government and one another, media outlets these days rarely delve beyond the Kremlin line.
The authorities, meanwhile, have expanded their arsenal of measures to silence critical journalists to include detaining them as they travel to opposition events, expelling them as national security risks and even accusing them of using pirated software.
“An overwhelming number of journalists have accepted the rules of the game to keep their jobs,” said Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists. “They understand perfectly well what they need to do. Through the examples of NTV and other media outlets, they have seen what happens to those who don’t take the hint.”
NTV fell under state control after airing critical reports about the second war in Chechnya, undermining public support for efforts by then-acting President Putin to stamp out the insurgency there.
After Putin won the 2000 presidential election, prosecutors charged NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky with fraud, and he was briefly jailed. State energy giant Gazprom then began a bitter struggle to seize NTV over an outstanding debt, finally succeeding in early 2001 and prompting many reporters to resign.
NTV’s coverage of Chechnya was severely restricted, and Gusinsky fled the country.
As the NTV affair unfolded, the Kremlin set its sights on another television channel, ORT, and its de facto owner, Boris Berezovsky. The channel, now known as Channel One, had a brash anchor named Sergei Dorenko who sharply criticized the crackdown on NTV.
Dorenko lost his show after he aired an emotionally charged report about the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2000.
“That report came out on Sept. 2, and the next program, on Sept. 9, didn’t go on the air,” Dorenko said in a recent interview.
Officially, the program was put on hiatus for the fall and winter, but it never went back on the air. “Spring and summer just wouldn’t come,” Dorenko said.
Dorenko accused the Kremlin of censorship. Putin summoned him five times from September 1999, when he was prime minister, until the cancellation of his program, and urged him to be a “member of the team,” Dorenko said at a news conference on Sept. 11, 2000. Dorenko said he had refused each time.
ORT general director Konstantin Ernst denied Kremlin censorship and said Dorenko was being punished for disobeying orders to stop speculating that the Kremlin planned to oust Berezovsky from ORT.
The state, which owned 51 percent of ORT, reasserted control over the channel five months later when Berezovsky sold his 49 percent stake to businessman Roman Abramovich, who in turn passed it to the Kremlin. Berezovsky has accused the Kremlin of forcing him out.
A reshuffle also took place at the third major channel, state-owned RTR, which received a new director, Oleg Dobrodeyev, in January 2000. Dobrodeyev, an NTV veteran, tried to resign when Gazprom took over NTV, but Putin asked him to stay, and he agreed. RTR is now called Rossia.
The Kremlin quickly asserted a tight grip over Rossia, Channel One and NTV, as manifested in their lavish and praise-filled coverage of Putin’s meetings with his ministers and international leaders. A top media freedom activist, Oleg Panfilov, said television news reports began to resemble Soviet-era propaganda in 2005, and stations have increasingly embraced the practice, peaking during election campaigns and tense international debates, such as the Kremlin’s fierce opposition to Kosovo’s independence.
“Have you seen anyone offering a view that differed from the official position over Kosovo?” said Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
He said the television channels have failed to give opposition politicians any “significant” airtime to provide alternative viewpoints during election campaigns and allow voters to make a “conscious” choice.
NTV spokeswoman Maria Bezborodova said her channel would not comment on its editorial policy for this article. Channel One and Rossia officials asked that questions be submitted in writing in mid-February. No responses had been received by Tuesday.

The Kremlin’s Stance
As testimony to the existence of free media, the government has pointed to the television coverage of the January 2005 protests over the monetization of Soviet-era benefits, which threatened to topple the Cabinet.
A senior official at the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency conceded that there are problems with media freedom but insisted that the media is free. “To say that there’s no free speech is a lie about our media, society, country and the government,” said the official, Gennady Kudy.
One problem is that many media outlets remain under the control of various levels of government, he said. But the number of independent regional newspapers is growing and has reached at least five in every region, he said.
Putin has put the burden on the media, saying journalists have to fight for freedom in any country. “A decent girl must resist, while a true man must keep insisting,” Putin said, describing relations between the media and the government at an annual news conference in December 2004. “In that sense, we are not better or worse than other countries.”
But the problem in Russia, Putin said, is that the media do not make enough money to hold their ground against government pressure. “In my view, we have to make sure that mass media have an economic base for their independence,” he said.
Putin made similar comments during a speech to an international newspaper conference in Moscow in June 2006.
The president has also shown contempt toward journalists. In his first public statement about the murder of reporter Anna Politkovskaya, he brushed off her investigations into brutalities in Chechnya as nonevents. “She had minimal influence on political life in Russia,” Putin said in October 2006 after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden, Germany.
Perhaps coincidentally, on Sept. 9, 2000 — the same day that Dorenko’s show went off the air — Putin signed the Information Security Doctrine outlining the government’s new media policy. The lengthy document prohibits censorship and the monopolization of media by the state and calls for media freedom to be promoted. But it also seems to contradict these aims by invoking shadowy foreign and domestic enemies that must be fought through strict state control over the production and distribution of information.
The Kremlin set up a satellite television channel in 2005 in an attempt to shape foreign perceptions of the country. The channel, Russia Today, offers reports in English and Arabic.
Pointing to media rollbacks under Putin, Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog, has called him “Predator of Press Freedoms” and lumped him together with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi. It ranked Russia between Yemen and Tunisia in its most recent media freedom list, saying its evaluation had been determined by Politkovskaya’s murder and a glaring lack of media diversity, especially in television. The group has ranked Russia near the bottom of its list for years.

Fate of Newspapers
Although television wields more influence because it is the source of information for an estimated 70 percent of Russians, newspapers have also changed under Putin.
Most national newspapers belong to businessmen who are on good terms with the Kremlin, while the regional press is under the control of local authorities with just a few exceptions, said Yakovenko, head of the Russian Union of Journalists.
Few newspapers investigate Kremlin-sensitive issues like corruption, the difficulties of rebuilding Chechnya and relations with Belarus.
The tightening of screws started with the Segodnya newspaper and Itogi magazine, which went to Gazprom with the rest of Gusinsky’s media empire. Gazprom shut down Segodnya immediately, pointing out that it was loss-making. Most newspapers, however, were also loss-making at the time. Itogi, meanwhile, reinvented itself with a new staff, becoming friendlier to the Kremlin but losing Newsweek as its partner.
The liberal weekly Obshchaya Gazeta died quietly a year later: Its founder and editor, Yegor Yakovlev, sold it to a St. Petersburg businessman who turned around and closed the paper.
Then came Noviye Izvestia and Izvestia, which changed hands and style, shifting to more entertaining and pro-Kremlin coverage. National Media Group, a holding controlled by Yury Kovalchuk, a businessman considered to be close to Putin, is now planning to buy Izvestia from Gazprom.
Izvestia was sold to Gazprom after it published a harrowing front-page photo of the victims of the Beslan school attack in September 2004. Its editor, Raf Shakirov, was promptly fired after the publication.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, the country’s most-read daily tabloid, was in December bought by Oleg Rudnov, who with Kovlachuk owns Bank Rossiya.
Kovalchuk also controls Ren-TV, the only national channel in private hands. It occasionally shows interviews with opposition figures such as Eduard Limonov and Boris Nemtsov, but its share of viewers — and political influence — is dwarfed by that of the state-controlled channels.
Only three national newspapers are considered independent: Novaya Gazeta, Kommersant and Vedomosti, which is owned by the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times, Independent Media Sanoma Magazines. But their circulation is negligible compared with the Kremlin-friendly news flow.
“The authorities can afford to pay no attention to them,” Yakovenko said. “They are a ghetto for the lovers of pluralism.”

Journalists Under Fire
Despite the minimal impact that investigative reports have on the authorities, reporters remain the targets of attacks and apparent contract killings, as illustrated by Politkovskaya’s death. More recently, Kommersant reporter Ivan Safronov mysteriously fell to his death from the fifth floor of his apartment building in March 2007. Paul Klebnikov, a U.S. journalist of Russian descent, was shot on a Moscow street in July 2004.
Of those who died, it is unclear, how many were targeted over their reporting, with various organizations compiling sometimes conflicting information. The Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, for instance, does not list Klebnikov as a reporter killed for his work, saying only that the investigation into his death - which concluded that a Chechen separatist had ordered the killing over a 2004 book - left doubts. The center said the same about Safronov.
What is clear is that authorities have resorted to a wider choice of tools to silence the media. One of the latest trends ostensibly has nothing to do with free speech but is about copyright protection.
Novaya Gazeta’s office in Samara had to close last year after police seized all its computers over accusations that they ran on pirated software. The local edition’s editor, Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, insisted the software was legal and linked the police raid to the edition’s critical stories about the local authorities, United Russia and an opposition Dissenters’ March.
Kurt-Adzhiyev’s daughter was an organizer of the march, one of several countrywide protests that are a brainchild of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. It took place on the same day that Russia and the European Union held a summit near Samara.
“I’ve been taken to court for libel about 20 times, but this is not in fashion any longer,” Kurt-Adzhiyev said by telephone from Samara. “It’s not possible to stop a newspaper with a libel investigation. So where do they hit? A newspaper can’t exist without computers.”
About 90 percent of the computers used by Russian newspapers run pirated software, but the police do not visit newspapers that are loyal to the government, Yakovenko said. “They are using a new type of censorship that never existed before,” he said.
Kudy, the official from the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency, warned against classifying the piracy software investigations as an attack on media freedom. He said a court must rule on each case before any conclusions are drawn.
The police, who have long detained reporters covering anti-government rallies, appear to have employed a new, preventive tactic under Putin. They detain reporters boarding planes and trains to cover protests and release them only after it is too late to arrive at the event on time.
In another change under Putin, unwritten rules for regional newspapers now come down from the federal authorities, not local officials, Yakovenko said. “There used to be an enormous difference among the regions,” he said. “Now certain rules are set for the country as a whole.”
Sometimes, the authorities use state security as a reason to prevent journalists from doing their jobs. Most recently, a foreign reporter for The New Times, a weekly magazine published in Moscow, was denied entry to Russia and sent home to Moldova on security grounds. The decision to expel Natalya Morar came shortly after New Times published her latest investigative report looking into purported money-laundering schemes used by Russian officials.
Also, the State Duma has reclassified the libel of public officials as extremism, toughening the penalty for a conviction. The government is using the law in an attempt to punish a reporter in Perm for calling Putin “our good Hitler” in the headline of a story published in December. Other than the Perm case, the only effect the law has had on journalists is to force them to practice self-censorship when writing about the government, said Boris Timoshenko, a researcher at the Glasnost Defense Foundation.
Notably, under Putin Russia saw its first cases of journalists being granted political asylum in another country. Last month, Ukraine offered asylum to Alexander Kosvintsev after he said he had been harassed for reports in his hometown of Kemerovo. Fatima Tlisova, an editor at the North Caucasus bureau of the Regnum news agency, and Yury Bagrov, a Radio Liberty correspondent in the region, received political asylum in the United States last year after complaining of pressure from the authorities. Both were also stringers for The Associated Press.

Challenges Ahead
While advertising is soaring for television, revenues are much lower for newspapers, and many are struggling to get by.
Putin’s call for economically self-reliant media is commendable, Yakovenko said, but the government appears to have made every effort to achieve the opposite. The dominance of state-controlled media has undermined the economic viability of independent news organizations by attracting the lion’s share of advertising budgets from businesses, he said.
In another inequality, he noted, the government handed 2.6 billion rubles ($108 million) last year to its official Rossiiskaya Gazeta to expand its circulation. “No other publisher has a budget like this. How can you compete under these conditions?” Yakovenko said.
Kudy, the government media official, said the additional copies of Rossiiskaya Gazeta were sent free of charge to disadvantaged groups such as disabled people and World War II veterans and were meant to raise the quality of the news they get. “There’s no end to all kinds of printed rubbish, but there is a lack of quality press that has a balanced coverage of the events in the country and its regions,” he said.
Panfilov said some newspapers have brought trouble on themselves, with owners who use them as political weapons. “Such a press doesn’t have a future,” he said. “These journalists are trying to make up for the lack of active politicians. This is bad for journalism as a profession.”
On the bright side, he said, some local newspapers have become major independent voices in their regions. He mentioned Altapress, a Siberian media group in Barnaul, as the best example. “They have learned to resist,” he said. “They have begun to learn the rules. They pay taxes and don’t do politics.”
Another improvement in the media, Dorenko said, is that they no longer serve as weapons in the hands of warring businessmen. But with the loss of their belligerence, they also lost diversity, he said. “The press has turned into ... a kind of a Kremlin press service,” he said. “When I was news editor at ORT, my only problem was that the news was reported at 6 p.m. because Gusinsky reported his news at 7 p.m.”
Together with many reporters from NTV, Dorenko ended up as a host at Ekho Moskvy, a radio station that Gazprom swallowed up with the rest of Gusinsky’s media empire but has managed to maintain its editorial independence.

TITLE: Caucasian zest
AUTHOR: By Gina Lentine
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tarkhun // 14 Karavannaya Ulitsa // Tel: 571 1115 // Open daily from 12 p.m. until 12 a.m. // Menu in English and Russian // Dinner for two with alcohol 2,300 rubles ($92)
Tarkhun is Armenian and Russian for tarragon, a zesty, sharp herb usually used in breads and meat. A new restaurant named after the herb has a similar flavor: cream-colored walls, cheery, warm lighting, charming, unfinished rustic tables and cozy, upholstered chairs. While the interior is pleasant and comfortable, it is quite clean, and the staff (a cross-section of people from the Caucasus and Russia) are hospitable and low-key. This ambience easily transports the customer to the Caucasus in summer, complete with traditional Georgian music (played by the restaurant’s owner). Tarkhun offers a perfect balance of activity and privacy — while the music plays and the waiters are attentive, the background noise does not overpower a dinner conversation, nor do the diners feel rushed during the course of the meal. The combination of the staff, cuisine, and homey-yet-elegant atmosphere strike all the right notes.
If you are not a connoisseur of Georgian cuisine or have never tried it before, Tarkhun is a fantastic place to begin. The menu itself is extensive, and offers not only kavkazky cuisine, but also European fare such as salade caprise with tongue, chicken, cucumbers, apple slices and walnut (210 rubles, $8.40) and steak with a creamy mushroom sauce (300 rubles, $12.00). Also offered are traditional Russian dishes such as borshch (170 rubles, $6.80) and blini with tvorog (80 rubles, $3.20). However, what Tarkhun does best is Caucasian cuisine: The dolma — warm mince meat wrapped in fresh grape leaves, served with a creamy goat cheese sauce — are particularly outstanding (220 rubles, $8.80), as is the khachapuri cheese bread with tarragon, which is flaky and buttery and filled with rich cheese and tarragon (160 rubles, $6.40). Be sure not to miss the shah-pilaff — daunting due to its large size — baked with crisp, flaky bread and filled with fresh, saffron-infused rice and a choice of chicken or pork (600 rubles, $24). Those with a sweet tooth (and room for dessert; the portions are quite generous) will enjoy the baklava, which has a rich, nutty flavor and perfect consistency. 
Tarkhun, however, lacks the same breadth regarding its drink menu: There are only two vodkas from the Caucasus, both from Armenia (the artsakh has a smooth apricot flavor, and goes for between 1,650 and 3,000 rubles, or $66 and $120), and all of the wines are from other parts of the world, including Spain, Chili, Australia, and Italy. This was a bit of a letdown, as I was hoping to try a wine from Azerbaijan. A further disappointment was the lack of tarkhun, a bright-green soft drink made with tarragon (90 rubles, or $3.60). As someone who was looking forward to tasting this peculiar drink of the restaurant’s namesake, I suppose I will have to wait — the supply had run out. 
Smoking is permitted in Tarkhun, which can be either a plus or a deterrent, depending on personal preference. However, the smoke is by no means overpowering, and the restaurant is well-ventilated. For those who enjoy an after-dinner smoke, there is a cigar menu, offering cigars from different parts of the globe. 
For someone looking to experience Caucasian cuisine for the first time, Tarkhun is the perfect place to go. The menu has something for everyone, but the Georgian dishes are by far the best. The environment is so cozy, well-lit, and congenial that it is a pleasure to stay a while, nibble on golden, crumbling squares of warm khatchapuri, and listen to carousing traditional Georgian music.

TITLE: An unexpected gift
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Juno MacGuff, the title character of Jason Reitman’s new film, is 16 and pregnant, but “Juno” could not be further from the kind of hand-wringing, moralizing melodrama that such a condition might suggest. Juno, played by the poised, frighteningly talented Ellen Page, is too odd and too smart to be either a case study or the object of leering disapproval. She assesses her problem, and weighs her response to it, with disconcerting sang-froid.
It’s not that Juno treats her pregnancy as a joke, but rather that in the sardonic spirit of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, she can’t help finding humor in it. Tiny of frame and huge of belly, Juno utters wisecracks as if they were breathing exercises, referring to herself as “the cautionary whale.”
At first her sarcasm is bracing and also a bit jarring — “Hello, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion,” she says when she calls a women’s health clinic — but as “Juno” follows her from pregnancy test to delivery room (and hastily retreats from the prospect of abortion), it takes on surprising delicacy and emotional depth. The snappy one-liners are a brilliant distraction, Cody’s way of clearing your throat for the lump you’re likely to find there in the movie’s last scenes.
The first time I saw “Juno,” I was shocked to find myself tearing up at the end, since I’d spent the first 15 minutes or so gnashing my teeth and checking my watch. The passive-aggressive pseudo-folk songs, the self-consciously clever dialogue, the generic, instantly mockable suburban setting — if you can find Sundance on a map, you’ll swear you’ve been here before.
But “Juno” respects the idiosyncrasies of its characters rather than exaggerating them or holding them up for ridicule. And like Juno herself, the film outgrows its own mannerisms and defenses, evolving from a coy, knowing farce into a heartfelt, serious comedy.
A good deal of the credit for this goes to Page, a 20-year-old Canadian who is able to seem, in the space of a single scene, mature beyond her years and disarmingly childlike. The naïveté that peeks through her flippant, wised-up facade is essential, since part of the movie’s point is that Juno is not quite as smart or as capable as she thinks she is.
It’s not simply that she has impulsive, unprotected sex with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), or that she decides, against the advice of parents and friends, to have the baby and give it up for adoption. These, indeed, are choices she is prepared to defend and to live with. Rather, Juno’s immaturity resides in her familiar adolescent assumption that she understands the world better than her elders do, and that she can finesse the unintended consequences of her decisions.
The grown-ups, at first, seem like familiar caricatures of adolescent-centered cinema: square, sad and clueless. But Juno’s father (J. K. Simmons) and step-mother (Allison Janney) turn out to be complicated, intelligent people, too, and not just because they are played by two of the best character actors around. Cody’s script and Reitman’s understated, observant direction allow the personalities of the characters to emerge slowly, and to change in credible and unpredictable ways.
This is especially true of Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), the baby’s potential adoptive parents. The audience’s initial impression of them, like Juno’s, is of stereotypically smug yuppies trapped in rickety conventions of heterosexual domesticity. Vanessa is uptight and materialistic, while Mark tends the guttering flame of his youthful hipness, watching cult horror movies and trading alternative-rock mix CDs with Juno.
Juno is, on the surface at least, a familiar type, surrounding herself with and expressing herself by means of kitschy consumer detritus (she calls the clinic on a hamburger phone) and pop cultural ephemera. She could be the hero of a Judd Apatow comedy (like, say, Cera, the boneless wonder of “Superbad” and a purely delightful presence here). Except, of course, that she’s female. Cody, Reitman and Page have conspired, intentionally or not, to produce a feminist, girl-powered rejoinder and complement to “Knocked Up.” Despite what most products of the Hollywood comedy boys’ club would have you believe, it is possible to possess both a uterus and a sense of humor.
“Juno” also shares with “Knocked Up” an underlying theme, a message that is not anti-abortion but rather pro-adulthood. It follows its heroine — and by the end she has earned that title — on a twisty path toward responsibility and greater self-understanding.
This is the course followed by most coming-of-age stories, though not many are so daring in their treatment of teenage pregnancy, which this film flirts with presenting not just as bearable but attractive. Have a good time at “Juno.” Bring your parents, too.

TITLE: Chelsea Advance to Champions League Quarterfinals
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Frank Lampard eased the pressure on Avram Grant as his dynamic display helped Chelsea cruise into the Champions League quarterfinals with a 3-0 win over Olympiakos on Wednesday.
Grant would have faced a fight to keep his job if Chelsea had lost in the last 16 second leg at Stamford Bridge, but Lampard set up Michael Ballack’s opener, scored the second himself and laid on Salomon Kalou’s third in a 3-0 aggregate victory.
After his side’s lacklustre League Cup final defeat against Tottenham, Grant looked a beleaguered figure and stood accused of failing to deliver on the big occasion. His critics couldn’t fault the Israeli here.
To say Olympiakos offered limited opposition would be an understatement, but Grant’s decision to leave Nicolas Anelka on the bench was vindicated and even Lampard and Ballack finally combined to good effect.
The tie was over inside half an hour as Chelsea advanced to the last eight for the fourth time in five years.
Grant said: “I’m happy of course. We won, we are in the next round and played good football.
“First we knew Olympiakos always score away so we knew they were very dangerous, so I’m happy the team played very mature.
“They were patient, held the ball most of the time and were quick when we needed to be. It was clever football.”
Olympiakos coach Panagiotis Lemonis added: “After it was 2-0 obviously it was very difficult. I said the first 20 minutes would be important.
“It was proved that we couldn’t respond. But we played against a very experienced team.”
Grant had suffered a late blow when Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech was ruled out with an ankle injury.
But Chelsea hold the Champions League’s best defensive record this season and hadn’t lost at home for two years, so even Cech’s absence wasn’t likely to disturb them too much.
So it proved. They took the game to the Greek champions from the start and went ahead after just five minutes.
Lampard, a transfer target for Juventus, emphasised why Chelsea will surely move heaven and earth to keep him. The England midfielder’s precise cross from the left picked out Ballack and he took advantage of slack marking to bury a header past Antonios Nikopolidis.
Although Olympiakos had frustrated Chelsea in the goalless first leg two weeks ago, it was all too easy for the Blues here.
They went close to a second goal after a flowing move involving Lampard, Kalou and Joe Cole sliced through the visitors defence. Didier Drogba’s wild volley didn’t do justice to the move but his side’s superiority was clear.
It was only a matter of time before Chelsea killed the tie and Lampard duly delivered in the 25th minute.
Once again Olympiakos failed to clear their lines and Cole’s header gave Ballack a sight of goal. Nikopolidis could only block the German’s shot and Lampard tapped-in.
Lampard was frustrated when Grant left him out for the first leg but he was making up for lost time now. He laid on the third goal in the 48th minute.
His corner flicked off Drogba and Ricardo Carvalho as Olympiakos stood statuesque. Eventually it reached Kalou and the Ivory Coast striker bundled home from close range.
Lampard should have added a fourth goal moments later but dragged his shot wide. It was just about the only thing he got wrong all night.
It took an hour for Lemonis’s side to register their first shot and even then Chelsea responded with a more incisive raid. 
Drogba burst through and finished well, only to see his strike ruled out for offside.
Nikopolidis denied Cole and Claude Makelele in quick succession but Chelsea had already done enough to buy Grant a moments’ peace.

TITLE: Small Bomb Goes Off on Times Square
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — An explosive device caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above “the crossroads of the world.”
Police blocked off the area to investigate the explosion, which occurred at about 3:45 a.m.. No one was injured. The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame.
“If it is something that’s directed toward American troops than it’s something that’s taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate,” said Army Captain Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.
He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.
Witnesses staying at a Marriott hotel four blocks away said they could feel the building shake with the blast.
“I was up on the 44th floor and I could feel it. It was a big bang,” said Darla Peck, 25, of Portland, Oregon.
“It shook the building. I thought it could have been thunder, but I looked down and there was a massive plume of smoke so I knew it was an explosion,” said Terry Leighton, 48, of London, who was staying on the 21st floor of the Marriott.
Members of the police department’s bomb squad and fire officials gathered outside the station in the early morning darkness, and police cars and yellow tape blocked drivers — most of them behind the wheels of taxicabs — from entering one of the world’s busiest crossroads. Police began allowing some traffic through around the start of rush hour.
Though subway cars passed through the Times Square station without stopping in the early hours of the investigation, normal service was soon restored, with some delays.
The recruiting station, located on a traffic island surrounded by Broadway theaters and chain restaurants, has occasionally been the site of anti-war demonstrations, ranging from silent vigils to loud rallies.
In October 2005, a group of activists who call themselves the Granny Peace Brigade rallied there against the Iraq war. Eighteen activists, most of them grandmothers with several in their 80s and 90s, were later acquitted of disorderly conduct.
The recruiting station was renovated in 1999 to better fit into the flashy ambiance of Times Square, using neon tubing to give the glass and steel office a patriotic American flag motif. For a half century, the station was the armed forces’ busiest recruiting center. It has set national records for enlistment, averaging about 10,000 volunteers a year.
Police said it was too early to say if the blast may have been related to two other minor explosions in the city.
In October, two small explosive devices were tossed over a fence at the Mexican consulate, shattering three windows but causing no injuries. No threats had been made against the consulate, and no one took responsibility for the explosion, police said.
At the time, police said they were investigating whether it was connected to a similar incident at the British consulate on May 5, 2005.
In that incident, the explosions took place in the early morning hours, when Britons were going to the polls in an election that returned Prime Minister Tony Blair to power.
In both cases, the instruments were fake grenades sometimes sold as novelty items. 
They were packed with black powder and detonated with fuses, but incapable of causing serious harm, police said.

TITLE: Capello Says He’ll Pick Beckham For England
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — David Beckham will get his 100th England cap as long as he is fit and in form, manager Fabio Capello told national team fans on Wednesday.
“I know Beckham very well from Real Madrid and I hope David will play the 100th game and get that cap,” Capello told representatives of the official England supporters club.
“He will get his 100th cap if he is fit and in form.”
Beckham was left out of Capello’s first squad for the friendly against Switzerland at Wembley Stadium last month because Major League Soccer (MLS) was in its close season and the midfielder was not match-fit.
Speaking mostly in English on Wednesday, Capello said he or his assistant Franco Baldini would travel to the United States this month to see the 32-year-old former England captain in action for his MLS club Los Angeles Galaxy.
“I understand from reading his last interview that at this moment his fitness isn’t good. I will phone him because I want to know exactly what he thinks.
“Los Angeles play in Dallas on March 14 and Franco or I will go to see him and assess his fitness.
“He is in contention for France. We will check on him in Dallas and then we will decide whether he will be fit for that squad,” Capello was quoted as saying in British media.
England face France in a friendly in Paris on March 26 but if that is too soon then Capello said Beckham can feel confident about winning his 100th cap, possibly in potential friendlies against the U.S. and Trinidad & Tobago in May and June.
Capello was also asked who would be appointed permanent England captain after Steven Gerrard was given the armband on a temporary basis for the Switzerland match.
The Italian said he would decide in time for the 2010 World Cup qualifying matches which start away to Andorra in September.
“It’s very important to choose the captain for the World Cup qualification games but I have to know not only the player but the man as well,” Capello was quoted as saying on the FA web site. “He must be a symbol of the England team. To be that symbol he must be a good player, a good man and he has to represent the England team, always, in every situation.”

TITLE: Clinton Bounces Back
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Barack Obama Wednesday turned to hardball tactics after Hillary Clinton’s comeback wins staved off extinction for her Democratic White House bid, as President George W. Bush embraced Republican candidate John McCain.
Obama aides vowed to fight fire with fire, after Clinton’s withering scrutiny of his integrity and national security mettle helped her break his 12-contest win streak in three of Tuesday’s four nominating showdowns.
“The vetting of Hillary Clinton has yet to start. The hard questions haven’t been asked of Senator Clinton,” said Obama strategist David Axelrod.
The Obama campaign demanded in a conference call that Clinton immediately release her tax returns, which opponents accuse of her trying to cover up.
Axelrod also accused the former first lady’s camp of initiating a “search and destroy” mission against Obama, over a hard-hitting ad campaign questioning his capacity to handle a late-night foreign policy crisis as president.
On the Republican side, in the latest twist to an often complicated relationship, Bush welcomed McCain, whom he crushed in the 2000 primary race, to the White House, the day after the Arizona senator finally clinched the nomination.
“He’s going to win,” said Bush, and pledged to campaign for his once sworn foe.
However, the president will need careful handling as he is unpopular nationally, despite being a hero to conservatives skeptical of McCain. “If he wants my pretty face standing by his side at one of these rallies, I’ll be glad to show up,” Bush said.
Earlier, as weary Democratic strategists geared up for the reality that the most expensive nominating battle in history will likely stretch into June, and even into August’s convention, the Clinton camp fired the first shot.
In a memo sketching Clinton’s “path to the presidency” her camp warned, “The vetting of Obama has just begun.”
If the race ended soon, with the Illinois senator as nominee, he would be a “lightning rod of controversy,” while Clinton had withstood 15 years of media and Republican scrutiny, the memo argued.
Only days ago, pundits had predicted the former first lady was heading into oblivion after Obama surged to 11 straight wins in the fight to be the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nominee.
But in a stunning change of mood, in a blitz of Wednesday media appearances, she was fielding questions about whether putting both Democratic rivals on a united party ticket was the only way out of the struggle.

TITLE: Sports watch
TEXT: <b>Murray Beaten</b>
DUBAI (AP)  — Nikolai Davydenko edged Andy Murray of Britain 7-5, 6-4 Thursday to reach the semifinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships.
Murray, who upset top-ranked Roger Federer in the first round, was forced out of his defensive game by the fifth-ranked Davydenko’s hard serves and quick moves on the baseline.
“I played well,” said Davydenko, who trailed 3-0 in the second set. “If you are crazy, you can lose your match. ... If you are concentrated you can win every game.”
Murray opened the tournament by extending Federer’s losing streak to two matches. He improved his record to 2-1 against the 12-time Grand Slam champion.

<b>Bad Start For England </b>
SYDNEY (Bloomberg) — England lost two late wickets to slip to 87-2 after Ross Taylor’s century helped New Zealand post 470 on day two of the first cricket Test in Hamilton. 
Chris Martin removed Alastair Cook and nightwatchman Matthew Hoggard in the space of 14 balls following an 84-run opening partnership between Cook and visiting captain Michael Vaughan, who was 44 not out at the stumps. 
Taylor, who turns 24 in two days, made 120 and shared a seventh-wicket partnership with Daniel Vettori of 148. The pair gave the home team the advantage after resuming with the match in the balance at 282-6. Taylor, in only his fifth innings at cricket’s elite level, struck 18 boundaries in 235 balls for his first Test hundred. 
The teams also play Tests in Wellington and Napier this month. The Black Caps won their one-day series 3-1 last month, while England last lost a Test series in New Zealand in 1984, winning two and drawing two since.

<b>Cipriani Disciplined</b>
LONDON (Bloomberg) — Danny Cipriani was dropped from England’s team to play Scotland in two days in rugby union’s Six Nations because of ``inappropriate behavior,’’ the Rugby Football Union said. 
The 20-year-old Wasps player, a likely long-term successor to England’s record points scorer Jonny Wilkinson at fly-half, had been selected at fullback for his first start. 
“I’ve taken the decision regarding Danny and the matter is now closed,’’ England head coach Brian Ashton said in a statement. “I will keep an open mind on selecting him for future games.’’ 
The incident is believed to relate to Cipriani being pictured leaving a nightclub early this morning, the BBC reported on its Web site. RFU spokesman Richard Prescott didn’t pick up a phone call seeking comment. 
Gloucester’s Iain Balshaw, whom Cipriani initially replaced, returns to the team for the March 8 match at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield stadium. Charlie Hodgson is named among the replacements, with Cipriani omitted completely. 

<b>101-Year Old Runner</b>
LONDON (Reuters) — Already Britain’s oldest employee, 101-year-old Buster Martin now aims to become the world’s oldest marathon runner by completing the London Marathon and celebrating with a pint of beer and a cigarette.
Sprightly and bearded, he completed a half marathon at the weekend in five hours 13 minutes. The former Army physical training instructor works three days a week for a London plumbing firm and says he has trained for the April 13th race in his spare time.
Martin, who had 17 children and returned to work at the age of 99 saying he was bored after two years of retirement, would beat the previous record for world’s oldest marathon runner by eight years.
“If I finish, I’ll do what I always do and have a pint and a ciggy,” he said. “People ask what is my secret but I haven’t got one. They say ciggies and booze are bad for you — but I’m still here, aren’t I?”

<b>Radcliffe Pulls Out</b>
LONDON (AP) — World record holder Paula Radcliffe withdrew from the London Marathon on Thursday because of a toe tendon injury. 
Radcliffe, a three-time champion in London who also won last year's New York Marathon, is expected to recover in time for this August’s Beijing Olympics. 
“I am desperately disappointed that I have to pull out of this year’s race,” said Radcliffe, who won the London Marathon in 2002, ’03 and ’05 but missed the last two editions because of injury and the birth of her daughter. “I love running in London and this race would have been the perfect test for me before the Olympic Games.”

TITLE: Gaza Strip Suffering Under Grip of Israeli Siege Policy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — A human rights coalition charged Thursday that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has reached its worst point since Israel captured the territory in 1967. 
In a scathing report, eight British-based rights organizations said that more than 1.1 million people, about 80 percent of Gaza’s residents, are now dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63 percent in 2006. It said that overall unemployment is close to 40 percent.
It also said that hospitals are suffering from power cuts of up to 12 hours a day, and the water and sewage systems were close to collapse.
The report follows strident international condemnation of Israel after it struck hard against Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing more than 120 in the past week, including many civilians, after Palestinians militants escalated their daily rocket fire at Israel.
The Palestinian rockets have killed 13 people, wounded dozens more, traumatized thousands and caused millions of dollars in damage.
Israel’s Defense Ministry rejected the report, blaming the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza for the hardships.
“The main responsibility for events in Gaza — since the withdrawal of Israel from the territory and the uprooting of the settlements there — is the Hamas organization, to which all complaints should be addressed,” read a statement by spokesman, Major Peter Lerner.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said Israel must protect its citizens, “but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care.”
Israel removed all 21 settlements and withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005. Israel maintains that ended its occupation, but rights groups say that since Israel still controls Gaza’s land, sea and air access, it is still the occupier.
After Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in June, Israel closed its crossings, allowing only shipments of vital goods into Gaza.
The 16-page report — sponsored by Amnesty, along with CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save the Children UK and Trocaire — calls for Israel to reverse its policy on not negotiating with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Israel and the West shun Hamas and label it a terrorist organization. Hamas does not accept the presence of a Jewish state.
Replying to the report, Israel’s Defense Ministry said it was misdirected.
The Israeli Defense Ministry also said medicines and medical equipment are shipped into Gaza with no limitation. On Wednesday, a typical day, the military said it allowed 69 truckloads of supplies into Gaza, including basic food and baby formula.
This week NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog, called on human rights groups to end what it called their political use of international law. It cited an Amnesty International press release that it said made unsubstantiated accusations that Israeli responses “are being carried out with reckless disregard for civilian life.”

TITLE: Chavez Stops Trade With Colombia After Attack
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is starting to block billions of dollars in Colombian imports and investment under orders from President Hugo Chavez, threatening economic havoc in both nations in response to a Colombian military attack on rebels hiding in Ecuador.
Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa demanded international condemnation of Colombia’s U.S.-allied government on Wednesday night, while Chavez predicted a sharp fall in the $6 billion in annual Colombia-Venezuela trade: “That’s coming down.”
“We aren’t interested in Colombian investments here,” Chavez said, standing beside Correa. “Of the Colombian businesses that are here in Venezuela, we could nationalize some.”
He said Venezuela will search for other countries like Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina to replace products imported from Colombia. Noting that Colombia traditionally supplies food to Venezuela, he said now “we can’t depend (on Colombia) not even for a grain of rice.”
Though Venezuelan officials express confidence they will quickly find replacements for Colombian goods, government critics says the move is bound to worsen shortages of basic foods from milk to chicken that were an annoyance in Venezuela well before a dispute that has ballooned into one of South America’s most serious diplomatic crises in years.
Chavez and Correa warned on Wednesday that a regional diplomatic crisis would not end without clear international condemnation of Colombia’s government for Saturday’s deadly cross-border strike against leftist rebels.
In a bid to defuse a dispute that has seen Venezuela move tanks and troops to its border, the Organization of American States on Wednesday approved a watered-down resolution calling the raid on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp a violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty.
But Correa said that while welcome, the resolution was not enough and his government still wants explicit condemnation.
“The OAS resolution pleases us. We are pleased, but not satisfied,” Correa said as he visited Chavez in Caracas. “This isn’t going to cool down until the aggressor is condemned.”
Chavez called the attack by Colombia’s U.S.-allied government a “war crime.” The bombing and raid killed a top rebel leader, Raul Reyes, and 23 other guerrilla fighters who had set up a base just over a mile from the border inside Ecuador.
Colombia has accused both Chavez and Correa of ties with the leftist rebels, and said that was shown by documents found on a laptop seized at the bombed rebel camp.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he would not mobilize troops or allow his nation to be drawn into war with his neighbors.
Meanwhile, Venezuela said most of the 9,000 soldiers mobilized by Chavez had reached the Colombian border area Wednesday. Ecuador said it sent 3,200 soldiers to its border with Colombia on Monday.