SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1478 (40), Friday, May 29, 2009
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TITLE: Soldiers' Mothers Suspect 'Roundups'
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group is crying foul at what the organization’s head Ella Polyakova describes as “massive roundups” carried out by the city’s military commissions with the aim of catching potential conscripts trying to avoid from compulsory service in the army.
“We have been getting information about a manhunt going on around town in student hostels, metro stations and even homes,” Polyakova told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. “The situation around the Prospekt Prosveshcheniya and Moskovskaya metro stations and the student hostel at Novoizmailovsky Prospekt is particularly worrying.”
Military authorities adamantly denied the accusations. Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Yury Klyonov, an aide to the Commander of the Leningrad Military District, said the spring draft “has been well organized and continues without serious incident.”
“Everything has been going according to the draft plan,” Klyonov said. “More than 65 percent of conscripts have already been drafted, and 40 percent of all draftees have been sent to their places of service. As for the alleged roundups, those are against the law, and we do not organize any raids like that. Besides, as of April 2009, all recruitment offices have been operating a new staff scheme that has only one officer assigned per every district military commission, so the resources are rather limited in principle.”
Yelena Popova of the Soldiers’ Mothers dismissed Klyonov’s words and argued that her organization has received numerous testimonies from those who have been raided. The raids, she said, started back in April but have become especially frequent in recent few weeks.
“Next to the security guards at the student hostel on Novoizmailovsky Prospekt, there have recently emerged officers with piles of papers in their hands; the papers contain long lists of potential conscripts,” Popova said. “Everyone going in or out gets their documents checked. We have reports of officers breaking into the hostel early in the morning and detaining those suspected of trying to dodge the draft.”
Popova compared such detentions to kidnapping. “The law does not mention any forced renditions to military commissions,” she said. “In reality, the young men get caught and then go straight to medical examinations, where everyone is quickly pronounced suitable for the service and any health complaints are ignored.”
The pressure group says some of the would-be conscripts are caught in their homes. Polyakova also stressed the role being played by draft-dodging companies that exist in St. Petersburg — as well as in many other Russian towns — in helping young men to escape from service for a hefty fee, and suggested that some clients of these firms who cut deals several years ago may be suffering now.
“These companies demand thousands of euros to produce a fake document, like, for example, a false medical certificate,” she explained. “They settle everything with the military commissions, but because it is a highly corrupt business, the deals may not be forever, and I do not rule out that after a year or two the commissions get on the trail of the young men with the false documents.”
The Soldiers’ Mothers said the police work hand in glove with the military commissions, and it is not uncommon for young men to be detained on the street for no good reason.
Human rights advocates tell stories of the police planting drugs on the young men or putting bullets in their pockets, and then offering them a choice between the army and prison. When arrested, they are not allowed to call home and their families may not know for months what happened to them, as a result having no opportunity to protest.
Mothers of potential conscripts have also complained that officers at military commissions laugh when the mothers ask about their sons’ rights. Officers refuse to provide them with a list of illnesses that would exempt the young conscripts from having to serve.
During officially arranged medical examinations doctors ignore severe illnesses, including stomach ulcers and circulatory problems, according to Soldiers’ Mothers.
The human rights group has been involved in a number of court cases in connection with their claims about violations of draftees’ rights and hazing in the army. In the most recent case, involving the Krasnogvardeisky District Military Commission, the Soldiers’ Mothers won and the court ruled that the commission should compensate the human rights group for all the expenses incurred in the legal proceedings.
One alleged draft-dodging company is currently trying to sue Soldiers’ Mothers, and is demanding one million rubles ($32,000) for “damages to its professional reputation.”
TITLE: Kremlin Takes Small Step to Ease NGO Law
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s stifling NGO law has been labeled a hallmark of former President Vladimir Putin’s heavy-handed approach to civil liberties. Likewise, President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent promise to review the law has been praised as a sign of his liberalism.
But when the first details of that reform emerged this week, nongovernmental organizations said Medvedev’s liberalization turned out to be top-down, leaving them with little extra room to maneuver.
Medvedev promised to enact changes after listening to NGO leaders’ complaints at a Kremlin meeting last month, and he set up a nine-member working group to chart the reforms.
The working group — composed of representatives of the presidential administration, the Justice Ministry, the State Duma, the Federation Council and civil society — has agreed on two key changes: to ease the registration process and to simplify accounting requirements, said Yury Dzhibladze, a member of the group.
Dzhibladze, director of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, told The Moscow Times that the results were far from what he had hoped to achieve but that they were a “reasonable compromise” given constraints set by Medvedev.
Medvedev on May 8 ordered the group to draw up legislation by this Friday so the Duma could consider it before adjourning for its summer recess.
“The deadline, of course, makes work difficult, because agreeing with the other side takes time,” Dzhibladze said.
The proposed changes are meager and won’t make life much easier for NGOs, said Jens Siegert, head of the Moscow branch of the Boell Foundation, a political think tank affiliated with Germany’s Green party.
The only really positive change would affect the registration process, he said. Under the proposal, registrations and re-registrations will no longer be canceled if deemed incomplete or incorrect but just suspended until missing or corrected documents are handed in.
“Until now, applications were rejected for just one wrong comma or too many blank spaces between words,” Siegert said in e-mailed comments.
NGO representatives have also expressed bewilderment at Medvedev’s decision to name Vladislav Surkov, his first deputy chief of staff, as the head of the working group. Surkov, who held the same post in Putin’s Kremlin, is believed to be the man behind the tough NGO law that is now under scrutiny.
“This made me wonder how difficult [the review] would be, given that Surkov was essentially the key person responsible for policy changes throughout Putin’s presidency,” Dzhibladze said.
Surkov has established the reputation of being the Kremlin’s top ideologue and chief architect of the concept of “sovereign democracy,” which is widely seen in the West as a set of measures that undermine democracy.
Surkov’s office did not respond to an interview request sent by fax Tuesday.
But Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information, said the mere fact that Surkov heads the working group does not rule out the possibility that the law will be liberalized. “Surkov is an opportunist who will consider the interests of both presidents,” he said.
Mukhin said Medvedev’s order to review the law might be a reflection of his liberal slant or might just reflect pragmatic politics.
The tough NGO law was passed amid government fears that NGOs might be used to mount a serious challenge to the ruling regime in the 2007 Duma elections and the presidential vote in 2008. Fueling those worries was the fact that NGOs played a key role in peacefully toppling the governments of Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004.
The next Duma elections are scheduled for December 2011.
“Given its current levels of control, the government takes little risk in demonstrating some liberalism,” Mukhin said.
The main point, Mukhin said, is that any liberal changes enacted today can be taken away tomorrow.
Sergei Markov, a Duma deputy with United Russia and a long-standing advocate of the NGO law, said the review of the law had nothing to do with a policy change and had been planned since the law’s inception in 2006.
“It was clear from the beginning that we would look at how the law works and then improve it,” Markov said in a telephone interview. “Setting up that working group was decided when the law was enacted.”
He conceded that reform was necessary to remove bureaucratic burdens for NGOs but was adamant that this was not a sign that Medvedev is more liberal than Putin. “It is a sign of both Dmitry Medvedev’s and Vladimir Putin’s liberalism,” he said.
NGOs said the proposed changes should only be a first step. “They should not stop with the working group,” said Mathew Schaaf, an NGO expert with the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch.
He said that next on the list should be the powers of auditors who regularly inspect NGOs on their compliance to the law. “They are allowed to demand practically any document. These are really broad and invasive powers that need to be addressed,” he said.
The Boell Foundation’s Siegert said that in order to make the law really liberal, the vaguely defined reasons for refusing to register or for closing an organization needed to be changed.
He said, though, that he had little hope that this would be addressed. “Definitions like ‘Endangering the sovereignty and national character of Russia’ are probably too convenient ... to be discarded,” Siegert said.
TITLE: President Attends Opening of New Boris Yeltsin Library
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev opened the new Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
“This library will become not only a unique repository, but also the connecting hub for the country’s whole library system,” Medvedev said at the official opening ceremony in the city’s historical Senate and Synod building.
“Anyone with an Internet connection will now be able to access the library’s electronic resources,” Medvedev said.
“The importance of our history and our values is one of our key priorities,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev became the library’s first registered reader after he was issued with reader’s pass number one. The pass looks like a plastic identification card.
The idea of a library unifying the country’s information and archival resources was first suggested in 2007. The then-president Vladimir Putin signed a decree to found such a library. He also proposed naming it after the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.
The library is set to act as a central connecting point for all of the country’s libraries. Its electronic archives will receive materials from the Russian State Historical Archive and from Russia’s leading national libraries. It will mainly contain materials on the history of the Russian state. Texts, audio files and pictures are included in the database.
Readers will have access to the library’s materials not only in its main building in St. Petersburg, but also in the library’s branches all around the country. Ordinary Internet users will also have access to the information from the library, although with some limitations, said Vladimir Kozhin, head of the Presidential Property Management Department.
“We have an understanding about what will be freely accessible and what should be limited. There are some rare materials that we can’t allow to be copied,” Kozhin said.
Medvedev also presented the new library with a copy of the inaugural edition of the Russian Constitution, previously kept in the Kremlin in Moscow.
At the same time, VTB bank prepared another valuable gift for the library. The bank bought a unique collection of books and magazines connected to Russia. The collection, consisting of more than 2,000 books, belonged to a Swiss family who amassed it over three generations, with the oldest book in the collection dating back to 1551. The collection was set to be auctioned off, but was then offered for full sale to Russia.
Boris Yeltsin’s widow Naina Yeltsina, who was also present at the ceremony, said “Russia has always prided itself on being a nation of readers.”
“Although life is changing now, and today every family has a TV set, we need to keep books in our life because they are one of mankind’s most priceless inventions,” Yeltsina said, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.
Yeltsina said that her husband loved reading, especially in his student years. Later in life, his political activities did not leave him much time for reading but when a new book appeared in the house Yeltsin used to always say that he would read it when he retired, she said.
“And it really happened that way,” Yeltsina said.
“In his last years reading was his main occupation. Our daughters barely managed to read new books because he got through them so quickly! The opening of the library is a priceless gift for all book-lovers and a fitting tribute to Boris,” she said.
TITLE: Siberian Police Rescue Girl, 5, Raised by Dogs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police in the Siberian city of Chita said Wednesday that they have rescued a 5-year-old feral girl whose father kept her locked in a filthy apartment and who was essentially “raised” by the animals she lived with.
An anonymous caller tipped police off that the girl, Natasha, was living in “inhumane conditions” with her father, grandparents and other relatives in an apartment in the city’s Zheleznodorozhny District, the regional Interior Ministry said in a statement on its web site.
After strong resistance from the girl’s relatives, police from child affairs managed to enter the three-room apartment and found Natasha unwashed, in dirty clothes and acting “like an animal,” the statement said.
Natasha “attacked” the officers “like a dog,” police said. “In all of these years, the child was able to learn the language of animals,” the statement said. “She almost can’t talk, though she understands human speech.”
Doctors have discovered no permanent damage to Natasha’s mental development, though when they leave her alone in a room she lunges at the door and barks, the police statement said. While doctors say she has a normal appetite, she forgoes using a spoon and simply licks her plate, it said.
TITLE: History Repeats Itself At City's Traffic Black Spot
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Six people, including two children, were hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing near a bus stop on St.Petersburg’s Tallinskoye Shosse on Tuesday.
The accident took place on the very same spot where, half a year ago, a marshrutka (a minibus that follows fixed public transport routes) ran over 12 people, killing six of them.
This time four adults were admitted to hospital, including a 38-year-old woman in a severe condition. A 15-year-old boy was also hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds. The three adults, including a 51-year-old woman and two men of 50 and 58 years old, remain in a stable condition, Fontanka reported. An 8-year-old girl had a lucky escape with only light wounds, and her parents were able to take her home.
The victims of last year’s October 26 crash were less fortunate. A number 81 marshrutka hurtled into oncoming traffic, then careered onto the pavement and into a bus stop where people were sheltering from the rain. Six people died, including three children.
The St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case charging the driver with dangerous driving resulting in multiple fatalities. Sentence was passed in April this year, and the company that the taxi belonged to was required to pay compensation to the victims’ families.
Meanwhile, last Saturday new tougher driving laws came into force. Now, drivers who fail to give way to pedestrians at pedestrian crossings can face fines of up to 1,000 rubles ($32.12).
TITLE: Russia Asks Spain for Yukos Suspect
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The Moscow Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors have asked Spain to extradite Antonio Valdes Garcia, a former associate of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky who fled from house arrest in the midst of a money-laundering trial involving the bankrupt oil company two years ago.
The request for Valdes Garcia’s extradition was sent to Spanish authorities Tuesday, Prosecutor General’s Office spokeswoman Marina Gridneva said, news reports said Wednesday.
Valdes Garcia, a Russian-born Spanish national, is the former head of Fargoil, a former Yukos oil-trading subsidiary that plays a central role in the second trial against Khodorkovsky, which is currently under way at Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court.
Valdes Garcia was due to have been sentenced over his involvement in a purported embezzling scheme, but he fled from house arrest in Moscow in January 2007 after reportedly locking his police guards inside his apartment.
The chances that Valdes Garcia would be extradited remain unclear, as Spain does not extradite its own citizens.
The Spanish Embassy in Moscow said Wednesday that it would not comment on individual cases. An embassy spokesman said cooperation with the Russian justice system was very good and that Spain had extradited Russian nationals to their homeland.
“But it is legally not possible to extradite Spanish citizens [from Spain],” the embassy spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.
Russian prosecutors reckon that Spain could grant extradition because they believe that Valdes Garcia may have obtained his Spanish passport illegally, Kommersant reported Wednesday.
His lawyer, Roman Karpinsky, told The Moscow Times on Wednesday that Valdes Garcia was born in Russia but that one of his parents is a Spanish citizen. Karpinsky said he did not know whether it is his mother or father who is a Spaniard.
Repeated calls to the Prosecutor General’s Office went unanswered Wednesday.
Yelena Liptser, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky and his co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, confirmed that Valdes Garcia claimed to have been badly beaten and mishandled while in authorities’ custody after he voluntarily returned to Russia in 2005.
“We had a written declaration from him read out at the trial [of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev] in April,” she told The Moscow Times.
Prosecutors claim that from 2000 to 2003, Yukos officials illegally transferred $13 billion in crude oil sales out of the country through Fargoil, a wholly owned Yukos subsidiary run at the time by Valdes Garcia. Transfers were also made through Ratibor, another Yukos trading arm, prosecutors allege.
Prosecutors claim that Fargoil’s revenues from refined oil sales were transferred back to Yukos while the profits were siphoned off by Khodorkovsky and his associates.
The allegations are central to prosecutors’ current case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who stand to be freed from prison in 2011 after serving an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax charges.
TITLE: Police Also to Declare Income In Drive Towards Transparency
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Taking a cue from President Dmitry Medvedev’s transparency drive, a senior Interior Ministry official said Wednesday that rank-and-file police officers — widely seen as the country’s most corrupt public servants — will be required to show their tax declarations to their bosses.
Beginning next year, all police officers will be required to present their tax declarations to their superiors, including information about the income and assets of their spouses and children under the age of 18, said Vladimir Kikot, head of the ministry’s personnel department.
It was not immediately clear whether the declarations would be made public like those of senior government officials, who, under a decree signed by Medvedev this month, are required to publish their earnings.
The police officers’ declarations “may be presented to the media as envisaged by law,” Kikot said cryptically without elaborating, Interfax reported.
Repeated calls to the Interior Ministry’s personnel department and the ministry’s press office went unanswered.
Officers who fail to present tax declarations or who provide false or incomplete information may be fired or subject to other punishments, Kikot said.
Public opinion polls consistently show the police as one of the country’s least trusted institutions, and senior law enforcement and government officials concede that corruption is rampant.
As part of his anti-corruption campaign, Medvedev has signed a number of decrees this year ordering certain senior officials to publish information about their incomes and property. One decree requires the tax declarations to be published on government web sites or released to journalists within one week of an official request. The president, prime minister and Cabinet members are now required to submit their declarations by April 1, while other officials should follow suit by April 30.
This year, many senior officials, including Medvedev, released their tax declarations, although they are required by law to do so only starting next year.
TITLE: Citizens Seize Power Stations in Dagestan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — For the second time this week, a group of angry citizens seized a power station Wednesday in Dagestan after their electricity was shut off because of unpaid municipal debts.
Electricity to the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala, and its suburbs was cut by 20 percent last Thursday because of the city’s 998 million ruble ($32 million) debt, the Interregional Distribution Grid Company, which supplies electricity in the North Caucasus, said in a statement.
About 50 people broke into the power station in the village of Uchkhoz on Wednesday morning, the Dagestani Power Supply Company said in a statement, RIA-Novosti reported.
The people forcibly ejected an employee on duty at the station, switched the distribution feeders back on and surrounded the station to protest the electricity shortages, the statement said.
It was the second such incident this week in Dagestan.
At about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a group of 60 to 70 people, most of them women, stormed a power substation in Sulak, switched the distribution feeders back on and secured the station with their own locks, the Interregional Distribution Grid Company said in a statement, RIA-Novosti reported.
Law enforcement officers and local officials looked on silently as the group switched the power back on, RIA-Novosti said.
TITLE: Fridman Takes Over TNK-BP
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Billionaire shareholder Mikhail Fridman unexpectedly emerged Wednesday as the man who will temporarily run TNK-BP while BP and its Russian partners consider the candidacies of two independent CEOs until the end of the year.
In announcing the deal, BP and the Russian partners, collectively known as AAR, also said they had agreed to appoint the prospective CEOs, Pavel Skitovich and Maxim Barsky, to senior positions at TNK-BP.
“Each has the credentials to become the new CEO,” BP and AAR said in a joint statement.
BP nominated Skitovich on Monday. BP and the Russian partners agreed to nominate Barsky jointly at a board meeting Wednesday, said BP spokesman Vladimir Buyanov.
The move appears to reflect a desire by the 50/50 partners to avoid another standoff after a high-profile dispute last year led to the resignation of the previous CEO, Robert Dudley, and raised doubts about the protection of the rights of foreign investors in Russia.
Fridman’s appointment as an interim chief came as a surprise because industry sources had said over the past few days that the position would go to Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian shareholder, unless a permanent CEO took over.
“I am happy to help in the interim and comfortable that day-to-day operations will remain in the capable hands of the current management team,” Fridman said in the statement.
BP said it had asked Fridman to take the job. It declined to say why.
Vekselberg said in a separate statement released by TNK-BP that he was pleased with the board’s decision. He serves as the company’s executive -director for the natural gas business.
Fridman will be replacing current interim chief Tim Summers, who will resume his role as chief operating officer responsible for the day-to-day business of the company.
The changeover will take place on Monday, when Summers’ mandate as the interim CEO will run out, Buyanov said.
Stan Polovets, AAR’s chief executive officer, said the TNK-BP board would be looking at how Skitovich, formerly a senior executive at Vladimir Potanin’s investment vehicle Interros, and Barsky, a former managing director at London-listed oil producer West Siberian Resources, will cope in their new jobs as TNK-BP executive vice presidents.
“As in any board, the directors of TNK-BP will be looking at the leadership qualities of Mr. Skitovich and Mr. Barsky, their ... professional skills, industry knowledge and how well and quickly they are able to integrate into the existing management team,” he said by e-mail.
There was a consensus at the board meeting that Barsky and Skitovich require more time to become familiar with TNK-BP’s complex business before assuming the role of CEO, Polovets said.
Independence from either side of shareholders will also be vital. “We want to make sure that both focus on performance rather than politics,” Polovets said.
AAR accused Dudley, a former BP executive, of siding with BP in the shareholder dispute last year.
Barsky and Skitovich are front-runners for TNK-BP’s top job, but other candidates may also emerge, a source close to the TNK-BP board told The St. Petersburg Times.
While Polovets didn’t dispute this assertion, he said, “Such an outcome is unlikely given that the search process has already taken half a year and the shareholders felt that they had two superb candidates in Skitovich and Barsky.”
BP chief Tony Hayward said in the joint statement that he was pleased that all the shareholders had agreed on the CEO succession plan and TNK-BP’s existing management team would remain in place.
TITLE: Russia Prepared to Invest $10Bln in IMF Bonds
AUTHOR: By Ira Iosebashvili
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is prepared to invest up to $10 billion from its reserves into the International Monetary Fund’s first-ever bond issue, a move that some say could signal a bid to gain greater influence in IMF decisions.
“We are holding preliminary discussions in the government ... about investing up to $10 billion in IMF bonds in the near future,” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told President Dmitry Medvedev at a meeting broadcast Wednesday on Vesti-24 television.
The government “will soon allocate” the money from its foreign reserves, Kudrin said at the meeting, which took place late Tuesday.
Medvedev backed the idea, saying he hoped that the funds would be used to aid countries — including Russia’s neighbors — who are “suffering the most from the financial crisis.”
At last month’s G20 summit in London, leaders of developed and emerging countries agreed to contribute $1.1 trillion to the IMF and other global organizations to aid struggling economies. The major buyers of the bond issue are expected to be the world’s largest developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — known collectively as the BRIC countries.
The bonds will most likely be denominated in Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, an international reserve asset created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries.
Russia, which currently holds 47 percent of its reserves in dollars, has, along with China, persistently criticized the dollar’s status as the dominant global reserve currency and advocated using SDRs as a potential alternative.
But while buying the bonds would theoretically give Russia an opportunity to diversify — the SDR is comprised of several major currencies and only 44 percent weighted to the dollar — some analysts said the state’s motives in buying the bonds may lie in a completely different direction. “You can be sure that Russia wants more out of this than simply a good rate of return,” said Martin Gilman, a former IMF representative in Russia and professor at the Higher School of Economics.
“It could be an initial step,” he said. “But if they gave more money, they would likely want a greater say in how the IMF distributes its funds.”
The IMF welcomed Russia’s support. “The Russian authorities have signaled strong support for the IMF and its mandate,” it said in an e-mailed statement. “It is our hope that other fund members will join this effort.”
Russia’s contribution would be on par with India’s but would be roughly a quarter of the $40 billion that China is expected to contribute. Russia could start buying the bonds this fall, Interfax reported, citing a government source.
Russia itself may have to borrow up to $7 billion in 2010 and $10 billion in 2011 to overcome its $10 billion budget deficit, Kudrin said Monday. He said the money would not come from the IMF.
TITLE: Ignatiev Says Recovery From Recession May Be Underway
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s recovery from its first economic contraction in a decade may have already started, reducing the risk of spiraling loan delinquencies, central bank Chairman Sergey Ignatiev said.
The economy will reach “the low point” this quarter if it didn’t reach it in the first quarter, Ignatiev said at a banking conference in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
“It’s very important when the rebound from the bottom happens,” Ignatiev told reporters. “If it starts in the second quarter or the third quarter, as I expect, then the increase in activity in the real sector could prove decisive for reducing bad debts.”
The economy of world’s largest energy supplier is contracting for the first time since 1998, when oil prices dropped below $10 a barrel. Gross domestic product shrank 9.5 percent in the first quarter after averaging growth of about seven percent since 1999. Output may decline as much as eight percent this year, Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said in an interview last week.
Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin in March warned that the economy may face new shockwaves from the global financial crisis in the form of bad loans as companies struggle to raise funds amid tumbling demand.
“We are paying very close attention to this,” Ignatiev said. “The situation is complicated, but far from critical.” Banks have reacted “adequately” by increasing capital ratios to 18 percent from 14.5 percent in eight months, he said.
The rate of bad-loan growth accelerated in April after slowing in March, Ignatiev said. Last month, industrial output shrank a record 16.9 percent and unemployment rose to a nine-year high.
“Of course the problem of bad debts is not just a problem of the banking sector but the real sector as well,” Ignatiev said. “A vicious circle has formed. Banks don’t lend to the real economy because borrowers are in a poor financial state.”
Ignatiev’s first deputy, Gennady Melikyan, said that banks could survive an increase in overdue loans to 13 percent. If the squeeze in bank lending became a long-term trend, and banks continued to “cut the branch they sit on,” the sector could be threatened, he said.
Non-performing loans rose to 4 percent of outstanding credit on May 1 from one percent on Sept. 1, Ignatiev said.
As inflation slows, Ignatiev said Russia would continue to cut interest rates to increase credit, helping both companies and individuals refinance debt.
“It is very likely that inflation will slow in the coming months,” Ignatiev said in a speech on Thursday morning. “This will allow the central bank to reduce the refinancing rate further, which will reduce interest charged by commercial banks on loans.”
It is “quite possible” there could be another cut in June, he said, speaking to reporters later in the day.
Bank Rossii last month cut its key refinancing and repurchase rates for the first time since 2007 and lowered them again May 13 as the pace of consumer-price growth ebbed. The refinancing rate, seen as the limit for borrowing, now stands at 12 percent while the repurchase rate charged on central bank loans is at 11 percent.
TITLE: A Backward Tradition of Manipulating History
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: The Kremlin opened a new front against its “internal and external enemies” on May 19, when President Dmitry Medvedev created a presidential commission “for counteracting attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia’s interests.” The 28-member commission includes Kremlin-friendly conservatives such as State Duma deputies and United Russia members Konstantin Zatulin and Sergei Markov as well as representatives from the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry. The commission also has representatives from the Defense Ministry, which has posted on its web site an article titled “Fabrications and Falsifications of the Role of the Soviet Union at the Beginning of World War II” that argues that the real reason the war began was due to “Poland’s refusal to fulfill German demands ... Germany’s demands were very reasonable.”
But the real purpose of the commission has less to do with history than it does with increasing the authorities’ power and control during a highly instable period caused by the economic crisis.
By attempting to impose its own “correct” interpretation of Russia’s complex and tragic past, the Kremlin is taking another major step toward violating Articles 13 and 29 of the Constitution, which guarantee protection against political persecution. The big winners in this initiative are the siloviki, who have long sought a legal pretext for persecuting and suppressing the opposition.
A couple of years ago, the siloviki pushed a series of broadly worded laws through the Duma to “fight extremism” that can be interpreted anyway they want. As a result, the aggressive, pro-Kremlin Nashi movement is allocated prime space in the center of Moscow to carry out demonstrations against the opposition and other “enemies of the state,” while peaceful demonstrations by pensioners and human rights organizations are prohibited because the government considers them “extremists.” The FSB — clearly taking a page from the KGB’s 5th Division, infamous for repressing and jailing Soviet dissidents — has created a special division to watch and control opposition groups.
But these powers are not sufficient for the siloviki to win its battle against the opposition. The problem is that the new anti-extremism laws require that the accused be guilty of a concrete action, and it has proven difficult to lock people up for peaceful protests in defense of free speech or human rights. The siloviki have long dreamed of having a clause in the Criminal Code that would allow them to arrest and imprison critics of the regime for their ideas and statements. This is exactly what was done during Josef Stalin’s rule. He created the 58th clause of the Criminal Code on “counterrevolutionary activity,” which guaranteed that anyone found guilty of “agitation and propaganda” against the Soviet authorities would be sent straight to the gulag.
Leonid Brezhnev continued this tradition during his 18 years in power. He created the 70th and 190th clauses of the Criminal Code concerning “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and “slanderous fabrications that discredit the Soviet system.” These clauses served as the formal basis to sentence Vladimir Bukovsky, Pyotr Grigorenko, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Zhores Medvedev, Andrei Almarik and many others to years in confinement in psychiatric institutions.
In the shadows of this harrowing legacy, Medvedev has created the commission on historical falsification. He paid particular attention to the problem of “revising the results of World War II.” Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov went even further, calling for criminal prosecution for anyone “repudiating the results of World War II.” Mironov has targeted those who question the bravery of the Red Army and Soviet people during World War II. If his proposal becomes law, a Russian or foreigner who doubts the “genius” of Stalin as commander-in-chief during World War II or questions whether the people in the Warsaw Pact nations really “obtained their freedom” could be sent to prison for three to five years.
At the same time, authorities have not released historical documents that could shed light on the real — albeit at times painful and incriminating — truth of Russian and Soviet history, including World War II. In fact, the head of Medvedev’s commission on historical falsification, presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Naryshkin, also heads the agency charged with declassifying archived materials. Meanwhile, new textbooks for schools are being prepared that describe Stalin as an “effective manager.”
This creates a direct threat to historians and ordinary citizens trying to research the history of the war objectively. Despite the difficulties in getting archived materials, imagine what might happen to a leading Russian historian who wrote a book about Stalin’s mistakes and crimes during the war. He could easily be charged with “revising the results of World War II” and sentenced to prison.
The irony of this farce is that by far the worst falsifiers of history have been Russian and Soviet authorities. The Romanovs rewrote the history regarding the interregnum Time of Troubles from 1598 to 1613 to cast themselves in a better light. The Bolsheviks justified the October Revolution, the Red Terror and years of dictatorship by relying on Marxist dialectical materialism. The main Bolshevik historian, Mikhail Pokrovsky, hit the nail on the head when he coined the phrase, “History is always politics viewed backwards.” Stalin justified his Great Terror by writing it off as an “aggravated phase of the class struggle” and whitewashed over his own mistakes made prior to and during the war. Under Leonid Brezhnev history books were revised to depict a relatively small military operation in 1943 that Brezhnev participated in at Cape Myskhako, near Novorossiisk, as a turning point in the war. Brezhnev turned this battle into a sensationalized autobiography titled “Malaya Zemlya,” which later became the butt of many jokes against the geriatric, self-absorbed leader.
Now, the Kremlin leaders are reviving the Stalinist cult in order to justify their own violations of human rights. They believe that a “firm hand” is necessary to deal effectively with the Russian character and the country’s huge territorial expanse. The power vertical, we are told, is the most effective form of government for Russia, considering its “unique historical and cultural tradition.”
Moreover, the Kremlin interprets criticism of Stalin’s crimes as an attack on its own authoritarianism. This is not surprising considering that today’s leaders have made use of many weapons from Stalin’s arsenal by creating a police state and the myth that Russia is encircled by enemies, including a fifth column planted inside the country.
It is highly symbolic that the freshly painted portrait of Stalin’s chief prosecutor-cum-henchman, Andrei Vyshinsky, who also served as foreign minister from 1949 to 1953, adorns the corridors of the Foreign Ministry. Vyshinsky summed up the struggle against Stalin’s enemies in an “academic article” in 1937, writing, “Their plots were exposed and the conspirators were seized and ruthlessly crushed.” A fitting battle cry for all of the siloviki in their efforts to fortify the power vertical even more.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy.
TITLE: Crime and No Punishment
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: On May 13, Interior Ministry employee Roman Zhirov, driving his powerful SUV, hit and killed a 34-year-old pregnant woman on a Moscow crosswalk. Pregnant woman are not particularly known for sprinting across pedestrian crossings out of nowhere and catching an approaching driver by surprise.
Zhirov pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic to pass a car that had stopped at the crosswalk to let the pregnant woman pass. After Zhirov struck the woman, he raced away, but eyewitnesses wrote down his license plate number. In the West, this would be classified as manslaughter and fleeing the crime scene. In Russia, the investigation was handed over to the same department where Zhirov worked. He was questioned briefly and released.
A scandal erupted 10 days later. The victim’s husband wrote that Zhirov was back at work as if nothing had happened. The scandal spread to the Internet, where a record number of posts finally spilled onto President Dmitry Medvedev’s personal blog. After which, the Interior Ministry reported that Zhirov had been arrested.
But this turned out to be false. Zhirov had not been arrested, but only dismissed for “committing an act bringing dishonor to the police force.”
On Tuesday, the Investigative Committee reported on its web site that it has opened up a criminal case against Zhirov and that he would be called in for questioning “in the near future.” But Zhirov has not been arrested. If Zhirov is the prime — and only — suspect, he should be arrested immediately. What is the Investigative Committee waiting for?
Putin personally set the stage for this double standard of who must answer to the law and who gets away with murder — literally. In May 2005, a car driven by Alexander Ivanov — son of then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov — struck and killed 68-year-old Svetlana Beridze, also on a pedestrian crosswalk. Criminal charges were later brought against Beridze’s son-in-law, while Sergei Ivanov publicly declared that his son had suffered intense moral and physical trauma from the incident. Shortly thereafter, the criminal case against Alexander Ivanov was closed.
Moscow police Major Denis Yevsyukov, who went on a shooting rampage on April 27 that left three people dead and six injured, was just unlucky: He was caught red-handed on a surveillance camera. This was the only reason he was arrested. But nobody was filming Zhirov’s car when it killed the pregnant woman, and today he is free.
Yevsyukov’s patron, former Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin, described Yevsyukov as a “worker with a bright future” and called on people not to exaggerate or become overly dramatic about the shooting incident.
When a law enforcement official commits a crime — ranging from extortion to murder — the unofficial code within the ranks of the police provides for mutual protection, both within the police force and between the police and prosecutors. The crimes are swept under the carpet and the perpetrators are rarely prosecuted.
In every civilized country of the world, the authorities protect the law. In Russia, they commit crimes with virtually full immunity.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: High stakes
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With 2009 having been declared the year of Nikolai Gogol to commemorate the bicentenary of his birth, plenty of events have been devoted to the great Ukrainian-born Russian writer this year. A performance based on Gogol’s play “The Gamblers” and produced by the wildly popular actor and theater director Oleg Menshikov is consequently as topical as ever, despite its seven-year history, and is showing at the weekend in St. Petersburg.
Ironically, the first performance of “The Gamblers” more than a hundred years ago received a chilly reception from St. Petersburg audiences. Now, Menshikov’s production rarely fails to sell out and more often than not, plays to a full house.
The production reveals another side of Gogol to the spectator: Gone is the dark, cruel imagination of “Taras Bulba” and the horror story “Viy;” instead the mood is lighthearted, daring and exciting.
The production is not Menshikov’s first experiment with literary classics — the actor’s eponymous theatrical company staged Alexander Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit” in 1998.
Although there is now a tendency to modernize classics, Menshikov has never done so. He has directed plays based on contemporary writers’ works, such as Maxim Kurochkin’s “Kitchen” in 2000, and is constantly trying something new — his most recent work is a one-man production of Alessandro Baricco’s monologue “Novecento,” or “1900” — but he refuses to adapt classical works to modern life as is so frequently done. Instead, he finds in these established works eternal ideas and jokes. By emphasizing them, Menshikov transforms literature that at school may have seemed boring and irrelevant into something that is interesting, vivid and highly topical. One of Russia’s best-loved actors, he returns to the finest traditions with his renditions of classic Russian comedies.
The chamber performance is staged for a small scene. In St. Petersburg, the most appropriate venue is the Theater for Young Spectators (TYuZ). The aim is to create the atmosphere of a 19th-century Ukrainian village for the audience, who upon entering the auditorium find themselves in an old countryside tavern. The auditorium is littered with hay and a rotting cart with a broken wheel, and is surrounded by an old fence.
To make this atmosphere as authentic as possible, as spectators search for their seats they are offered real vodka — an essential feature of such taverns — by the inn servant Alexei (Dmitry Mukhamadeyev). At first, the audience is usually shy, but not for long, and just a few minutes later, people are already sitting on the stage itself among the props and decorations, and proposing toasts.
And then the performance begins. “The Gamblers” is a play that extols the thrill of cheating, of enjoying games within the game, of audacious swindling that seizes its victim and does not let go until the game is over.
A gang of con artists tricks another swindler, Ikharev (Alexander Usov) out of 80,000 rubles — a huge sum at the time in which the action is set. Ikharev has spent his life preparing a special marked pack of cards with a female name — Adelaida Ivanovna. But according to Gogol and Menshikov’s rendition, the game does not care for such serious players. Cheating should be done without thinking; it should be done artfully using improvisation to add to the thrill.
This is just how the Uteshitelny gang plays its hand. The group consists of the stern and reasonable Shvokhnev (Alexei Gorbunov), the comical and shy Krugel (Alexander Sirin) and the real live wire and king of the game Uteshitelny, played by Menshikov. Uteshitelny is intelligent and perceptive, he believes in the game and its fervor, and can charm anyone — but before they know it, they will be fleeced. These are the cheats that are in Fortune’s favor.
All of this is accompanied by live background music. A small folk orchestra plays cheery Ukrainian melodies and the characters dance or sing Ukrainian folk songs, to the delight of Russian audiences. A multitude of interesting details serve to make the picture more vivid, such as the clerk Zamukhryshkin’s monologue, which is translated into Ukrainian and performed by Viktor Sukhorukov.
The director’s gambits are never wasted on the audience. Menshikov manages to make people laugh at Gogol’s text because it sounds like speech from contemporary life. But Gogol has always been inextricably linked to mysticism and the devil, and “The Gamblers” is no exception. From time to time, a little demon (Nikita Tatarenkov) appears, and without wishing to reveal all the secrets the performance has to offer, Ikharev is not the only victim of the Uteshitelny gang’s tricks.
“The Gamblers” is Menshikov’s longest-running performance — usually the actor closes his plays when they are at their peak. He has said that he needs to develop constantly, and concentrate on something new.
Furthermore, all the actors in his performances are recruited for that particular play, and since they naturally have their own creative lives and careers, it can be difficult to keep the whole group together for a long time. “The Gamblers” is an exception, and can be seen on tour in Russian cities and abroad more often than it is shown in Moscow.
“The Gamblers” will be performed in Russian at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at St. Petersburg’s Theater for Young Spectators (Pionerskaya Ploshchad 1, M: Pushkinskaya, tel: 712 4102).
On Monday and Tuesday, the Bolshoi Drama Theater (Nab. Reki Fontanki 65, tel: 310 0401, M: Sennaya Ploshchad) will stage a new performance of Oleg Menshikov’s “1900.”
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: GEZ-21, or the Experimental Sound Gallery, part of the Pushkinskaya 10 alternative arts center, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a major music event headlined by Chris Cutler this week.
Called “Looking Forward: GEZ-21’s International Festival of Experimental Music,” the event features more than 20 acts, mostly Russian, but also three from the U.K., Austria and the Netherlands. The concerts will be held both outdoors in the Pushkinskaya 10 courtyard (afternoons, free entrance) and at GEZ-21 (evenings, 300 rubles.)
Cutler first became known as a member of Henry Cow, a British experimental-rock group that he joined in 1971. In 1978 the band set up Rock In Opposition, an influential collective of radical-minded bands and musicians.
Since then he has collaborated with Art Bears, Daevid Allen and Gong, The Residents, Aqsak Maboul, David Thomas, Daevid Allen, Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith and Tom Cora, among many others.
Cutler first came to Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then called, in the late 1980s and performed with the band Cassiber at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall.
Cutler will perform solo on Friday at 7 p.m. and in trio with Zga’s musician and GEZ-21 founder Nikolai Sudnik and ex-Markscheider Kunst trombone player Ramil Shamsutdinov, who now heads his own band, Nado Podumat.
From Vienna comes the guitarist Lars Stigler, whose music is described as “ambient,” “experimental” and “alternative.”
“His music is on its own track,” Stigler’s MySpace page reads.
“One that is less interested by the density of structures and with a simplicity that is more about clarity than minimalism for its own sake.”
Stigler will perform at 7 p.m. on Sunday.
The festival will also feature a conference called “Experimental Sound: Topography and Chronology, Technology and Conception.”
The entrance to GEZ-21 and the Pushkinskaya 10 art center is from 53 Ligovsky Prospekt, not from Pushkinskaya Ulitsa.
Other highlights this week include 65daysofstatic, an instrumental post-rock band from Sheffield, England. On tour in support of its fourth studio album “Escape from New York,” the band will perform at A2 on Saturday.
The Chicago-based electronic music act Telefon Tel Aviv and Bristol-based “psychedelic-a cappella-trip-hop band Dub_FX will perform at Sochi on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.
The reformed 1980s Californian glam metal rockers Motley Crue are scheduled to play at Ice Palace on Wednesday, while the reformed 1970s Birmingham new wave band Duran Duran will perform as part of the International Economic Forum on Palace Square on Thursday.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Freedom on display
AUTHOR: By Luke Ritchie
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new exhibition of radical art has opened at Pushkinskaya 10’s Museum of Non-Conformist Art, but one of the exhibits is missing. Dr. Kurt Fleckenstein’s work “Chess,” a critique of the Iraq war, fell foul of Russian customs.
Fleckenstein, a political activist and former landscape architect from Germany, told the St. Petersburg Times, “In Poland there was no problem at all, but here … oh well, this is my first exhibition in Russia. I’m still very happy with the exhibition.” Rows of correspondence concerning the contentious piece now adorn the intended display area.
Located in the Maly Hall of the Museum of Non-Conformist Art, Fleckenstein’s pieces depict mundane objects taken out of their usual surroundings and placed in provocative, political interpretations that question concepts like democracy in Eastern Europe.
His two-part work, ‘New Way of Life,’ which is also the title of the exhibition, features rows of signs reading “Smoking is dangerous for your health” placed side by side, creating an oppressive effect. The idea? Democracy is not truly freedom, since certain groups of people (such as smokers) face a constant bombardment of negative signs throughout their day.
“I relax by smoking, but now in the West it’s practically forbidden,” said Fleckenstein.
The other part of “New Way of Life” is essentially his interpretation of former Eastern Bloc countries’ attempts to clothe themselves in Western culture. One screen depicts a rear view of a normal car entering an automated car wash, while the other screen shows the wreck of the same car in an identical setting. The viewer stands between these two images, accompanied by the loud sounds of the car wash, separating reality from imagination.
Fleckenstein’s other piece on display, ‘Red Cube of Freedom,’ emulates his favorite artists. “My two inspirations are Duchamp and Malevich,” he said. “The cube fuses my love of geometrical forms with the mundane, and delivers a strong political message.”
Meanwhile, the main room of the Museum of Non-Conformist Art plays host to three artists from the city of Pskov, sponsored by Pskovart.
“The name of the festival is ‘Pogranichniki,’ meaning ‘Border Guards,’” explained Alexander Donetsky, a journalist from Pskov who wrote the program for the exhibition. “We see ourselves as the nearest part of old Russia to the European border, and our art reflects this.”
The contrast between the three artists and the layout of Fleckenstein’s exhibition is striking: Whereas Fleckenstein provides a complete concept with strong political tones, the three artists from Pskov — Anatoly Zhbanov, Eduard Sharipov and Viktor Timofeyev — present works that are small pieces of modern life. Linked only by their independent spirit and location, these artists present their subversions in different, unique ways.
Sharipov’s primitive shapes huddle and moan in dark corners, resembling icons or lost, lonely seafarers cast adrift. Ambiguous in meaning, even his “Structure” appears deformed and incomplete.
Zhbanov, on the other hand, presents bright, colorful works, each containing a small metaphorical story. Solid objects hang from naked figures, such as in “Catching Mermaids on the River.”
Last, but certainly not least, are the wonderful metallic sculptures of Timofeyev, who interprets nature by replacing bread with iron and fish with circuitry. Witty and surreal, works such as his “Goldfish” are ingenious in design and implementation.
The artists said that St. Petersburg was a natural choice of venue for their work. “It’s only here that it can be done ... St. Petersburg is the heart of modern culture,” said Sharipov.
For Fleckenstein, who has family roots in southern Russia, St. Petersburg is his window into the world of the Slavs. For the Pskovians, it is their window out.
“Pogranichniki” and “New Way of Life” run through June 21, Wed to Sun, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Pushkinskaya Ulitsa 10, tel. 764 4852, www.nonmuseum.ru. M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya.
TITLE: Identity crisis
AUTHOR: By Aimee Linekar
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: French onion and Korean kimchi soups. Greek, Italian and Russian salads. Shashlik and blini, pasta and Chicken Kiev. Amid the multiethnic fog of Bari Galust’s extensive menu, one might be forgiven for wondering where on earth Armenia has disappeared to — if, indeed, the restaurant owes anything besides its name (which means “welcome” in Armenian) to the country.
Bari Galust’s ambience proved no less confused than the choice of cuisine, its textured cream walls adorned with cast iron light fittings more suited to the dungeon of an establishment of ill repute than to an eatery. The muzac the night we visited was a series of absurd Madonna and Michael Jackson covers including, most amusingly, a woman crooning that “the kid [was] not [her] son”. Add in the brick partition glowing in a haze of hastily-applied gold spray-paint, and the final effect is akin to a leisure center circa 1986.
Still, with a bit of perseverance it is possible to unearth a couple of traditional Armenian dishes. First to arrive was the Armenian cheeseboard (150 rubles; $4.80), a tastefully presented array of distinctive, rich, salty cheeses served with a small herb-garden of fresh purple basil, dill, coriander and parsley. Why, though, did it not come with bread? The last-minute order of lavash bread, (20 rubles; $0.64) was inexpensive and arrived well before the other starters, but fridge-cold. Several millennia later, the cheeseboard was joined by a garlicky chicken noodle soup (180 rubles; $5.80) and some disappointingly herbless tolma, or stuffed vine leaves (200 rubles; $6.41) complete with a garlic and yoghurt sauce tasting, somewhat disconcertingly, of indigestion.
If the multicultural pile-up of the menu as a whole isn’t enough, more intrepid diners can opt for the ultimate fusion-food, the trilingually-named beef stroganoff spaghetti (280 rubles; $9). The simple beef stroganoff (350 rubles; $11.21) was also creamy and moreish, if somewhat marred by its absurd presentation with semi-sweet rice (not listed on the menu), a lost cherry tomato and some refugee cucumber chunks.
After a wait that can only be attributed the kitchen being in a different time zone — or, perhaps, several, in keeping with the global spread of its culinary offerings — a small bowl of beef stew appeared. The delay spoiled the experience somewhat as the rest of the company had long since demolished their mains, but the khashlama (300 rubles, $9.60), laconically listed as “beef, tomatoes, greens and potatoes” was truly delicious; buttery and sweet, with properly tender beef (cheap gluey cuts on the bone that are near-impossible to dissect with any grace at the table, but which burst with flavor and leave you wishing for more than a two-millimeter layer).
The overall verdict, then? Bari Galust is an unfortunate case. They get so much right: The food is genuinely enjoyable, and the staff are friendly and willing to make an effort in English when required. And yet, at least on the night we visited, they failed spectacularly to provide any sort of cohesive service, the meal descending into a comedic litany of omissions and errors. A glass of orange juice was entirely forgotten, while an order for an international-standard glass of wine resulted in a full-sized wineglass with a lonely 100ml of Areni (120 rubles; $3.85) lolling around the bottom. Dishes came in relays and often contained ‘surprises’ not marked in menu descriptions. When taking an order for mashed potato to accompany the beef stroganoff, the waitress failed to mention that it would come with rice anyway; yet while the khashlama could have done with some kind of starchy side order, she gave no prompt. In the event, the mashed potato never actually materialized, and to add insult to injury, the first attempt at a bill turned out to be yet another bizarre fusion: in this case, of our food and the next table’s.
For a faster meal with less fuss, you might do better to head to Armenia for the evening.
TITLE: Animal print, tantrums and nose jobs
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week, Yana Rudkovskaya, the producer of Eurovision winner Dima Bilan, presented her tell-all memoir “The Confessions of a Concubine.” She poses on the cover lying on a leather couch with a tiger, in what I can only assume is a tribute to her love affair with the animal-print dresses of Roberto Cavalli.
The “concubine” reference in the title is also not 100 percent clear from my speed read of the book. Rudkovskaya used to be married to businessman Viktor Baturin, who is the brother-in-law of Mayor Yury Luzhkov. They divorced acrimoniously, with Baturin complaining about the amount of money Rudkovskaya spent on promoting Bilan. There were also some ugly tabloid stories about their battles over child custody. But nothing in the book suggests that Rudkovskaya was anything but her own woman.
The book is written in a naive, chronological style with the kind of spelling mistakes that suggest that it was rushed out to coincide with Eurovision — does Rudkovskaya really think that she stayed in a luxury London hotel called the Dodzhester?
Nevertheless, there are some good stories. When Bilan first competed in Eurovision in 2006 in Athens, pop star Filipp Kirkorov went along as support — with Rudkovskaya paying all his bills. But things went terribly wrong when someone asked Rudkovskaya at a party who was the most popular singer in Russia. Not thinking about Filipp Bedrosovich standing near by, she said. “Dima Bilan.” Then she tried to correct her tactlessness by saying, “Filipp is definitely the most popular star, but he is more popular with middle-aged women.”
Kirkorov turned dark red, said, “What did you say: middle-aged women? Does it mean nothing that I’ve sold out venues for 20 years?” He then walked out, slamming the door. Rudkovskaya rang him in tears, but he insisted that he was leaving immediately. She went around to his hotel room, and Kirkorov suddenly started laughing and invited her in for tea.
There are also plenty of bitchy comments about Baturin, though the book is not a complete hatchet job. Who would not be touched by a man secretly buying you a yellow Mercedes and leaving it under your window tied up with a bow? But Rudkovskaya reveals that Baturin liked to save money, too, and bought all his furniture at IKEA.
Rudkovskaya also gives us some information about her subsequent affair with ice skater Yevgeny Plushenko, who skated on the Eurovision stage with Bilan. She confides that when she first saw Plushenko on television, she wondered why he couldn’t afford to get a nose job. When he first asked her out, Rudkovskaya said, “Zhenya, do you realize what you’re suggesting? You know I’m married.” Plushenko calmly responded, “So what. I’m still married, too.”
But if you want an expose of Dima Bilan, this book is the wrong place. Rudkovskaya assures us that his romance with a model Yelena Kuletskaya, whom the singer publicly promised to marry after his Eurovision victory, is the real thing. And she denies that he takes drugs. In fact, the book has surprisingly little detail about Bilan as a person, so engrossed is Rudkovskaya in details of concerts, contracts and her latest Dolce & Gabbana dress.
TITLE: GM All But Certain to File for Chapter 11
AUTHOR: By Tom Krisher and John Porretto
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DETROIT — General Motors, the company that put tail fins on a Cadillac and was once the nation’s largest employer, moved to the edge of bankruptcy protection Wednesday as debtholders refused a last-ditch deal. Crosstown rival Chrysler hoped to pull off a quick exit from Chapter 11 and prove there is hope yet for a leaner Detroit.
Investors who are owed billions of dollars by GM rebelled against a plan to accept a sliver stake in the company in exchange for their bonds, one of the government-imposed conditions for restructuring out of court.
A bankruptcy protection filing could come within days — perhaps around Monday, which had been the government deadline for GM to reorganize.
Meanwhile, Chrysler began a marathon session in federal court in New York, trying to persuade a judge to sign off on its plan to sell most of its assets to Italian automaker Fiat. After nine hours of testimony, the judge adjourned the hearing until Thursday morning and said a decision may not come until Friday.
Since Chrysler entered bankruptcy protection four weeks ago, its sales have fallen but not tanked, raising hopes that both automakers might be able to shed debts and modify contracts under court protection and emerge leaner, stronger and more competitive.
The U.S. government has pledged to back both companies’ warranties to reassure consumers their purchases will be protected no matter what happens. Analysts say that seems to be helping Chrysler, where sales during the first two weeks of May fell at about the same rate as the whole U.S. market.
At the Jack Maxton Chevrolet dealership in the Columbus, Ohio, suburb of Worthington, it appeared to be business as usual Wednesday even as GM contemplated Chapter 11.
One salesman took a family on a test drive, a man put on his glasses to take a closer look at the sticker for a new Camaro, a car was being cleaned by the service department’s automatic car wash and the receptionist was busy routing phone calls.
Owner Jeff Mauk said President Barack Obama’s pledge to back warranties seems to have erased some of the fear for potential buyers. As for a potential filing for bankruptcy protection, Mauk’s sentiment is the sooner the better.
“If they are going to do it,” he said, “let’s do it and get through it.”
Dana Johnson, chief economist at Comerica Inc., the financial services company, said Americans are more accustomed to the bankruptcy process than many people think.
“Banks fail and reopen under new names and that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem,” Johnson said. “It seems to happen all the time with the airlines and they keep flying.”
GM, the century-old American icon that put a V-8 engine in the Chevrolet, was once the symbol of American industry. In 1979, it employed 618,000 Americans, more than any other company. By early this year that figure was just 88,000.
The U.S. government late last year began pouring billions into both troubled automakers, fearing that their failure could push the struggling economy into a full-blown depression.
In the years after World War II, no one would have imagined the collapse of either, but since then there have been so many corporate crises and economic black eyes that people have had time to get used to it, said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor who studies American popular culture.
“It really takes optimistic thinking to think that this country is going to ever get back to that place in its manufacturing history,” he said. “It’s not just automobiles. You look at manufacturing across the country, it’s really grim.”
At GM, which has received $19.4 billion in government loans and will need billions more to get through the bankruptcy court process, the bond offer’s failure kicks a leg from under its out-of-court restructuring effort.
Together GM and Chrysler employ more than 126,000 people in the U.S.
TITLE: Taliban Claim Responsibility for Lahore Attack
AUTHOR: By Babar Dogar
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAHORE, Pakistan — The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for a deadly bomb and gun attack on police and intelligence agency offices in eastern Pakistan, while two new blasts ripped through a market in the northern city of Peshawar.
At least four people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions in Peshawar’s Qissa Khawani market, senior police officer Zarman Shah Khan told The Associated Press. The bombs were planted on two motorcycles and detonated by timers, bomb disposal squad chief Shafqat Malik told reporters.
Television networks showed video of people carrying a bloody body from a shop, mangled and smoking cars and walls and windows apparently blasted away. Commando units which rushed to the scene fought a gunbattle with several militants, fatally shooting two of them, Khan said.
“It was a sudden blast and then there was fire all around, a cloud of smoke filled the sky,” said Khair Uddin, a shopkeeper whose hands and chest were bloodied by shrapnel from the blast.
A doctor at a nearby hospital, Sahib Gul, said 75 people wounded in the blast had been brought in, most of them with critical injuries.
Peshawar is the main city in Pakistan’s northwest and is close to the lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border where Taliban militants have long held sway.
Violence has become increasingly common in the city. On May 16, two separate bombings on the same day destroyed an Internet cafe and wrecked a bus carrying handicapped children, killing at least 11 people.
The explosions Thursday came a day after a suicide attack on police and intelligence agency offices in the eastern city of Lahore killed about 30 people and wounded more than 300 others.
Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that Wednesday’s attack in Lahore was in response to the military’s ongoing offensive against militants in the northeastern Swat Valley.
In the Lahore attack, gunmen fired and lobbed grenades at offices of the police and top intelligence agency, then detonated an explosive-laden van in a busy street in Pakistan’s second-largest city — a major cultural center and a hub for the armed services.
A little-known group calling itself the Taliban Movement in Punjab has also claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim could not be verified, and the militant group’s relationship to the Taliban was unclear.
The attack on Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, was far from the restive northwestern Afghan border region where the Taliban have established strongholds in the Swat Valley.
The military launched a major offensive in the Swat region late last month after the Taliban seized control of a neighboring district in a bold bid to extend their influence. Washington and other Western allies see the campaign as a test of the Pakistani government’s resolve to take on the spread of militancy.
Brig. Tahir Hamid, the commander of military operations in Mingora, the largest town in the Swat Valley, said Thursday the militants had suffered “huge casualties” in the fighting and up to 70 percent of the town was now in government control.
The fighting has ruined villages in the region, prompted more than 2 million people to flee and thousands of others to hunker down under stiff curfew restrictions. Aid officials warn both situations could turn into humanitarian disasters.
The military claims more than 1,000 militants have died in the month-old campaign, though access to the region is restricted and the tally cannot be independently confirmed.
Wednesday’s attack was the third since March in Lahore, following deadly assaults on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy.
TITLE: Scores Hurt As Riots Mar Win For Barcelona
AUTHOR: By Marcelo Aparicio
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BARCELONA — Police arrested 134 people and more than 150 were injured as Barcelona’s Champions League victory celebrations descended into riots.
Around 100,000 people spilled onto the streets of the Catalan capital after Barcelona’s 2-0 triumph over Manchester United in Rome.
But the carnival atmosphere turned ugly after midnight when youths began clashing with police around Las Ramblas, the city’s most famous street.
Youths hurled bottles as they tried to storm through metal barricades keeping a mob back from shops, prompting a surge by baton-wielding riot officers.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to control rioters, who damaged lampposts, telephone kiosks and bus stops, media reports said.
Terrified passersby cowered behind walls as the clashes intensified.
A police statement said 119 arrests were made for public order offences in the city and a total of 134 in the wider Catalan region.
A total of 153 people were injured, said the statement.
TITLE: S. Korea, U.S. Troops On Alert Over Threats
AUTHOR: By Eric Talmadge
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean and U.S. troops raised their alert Thursday to the highest level since 2006 after North Korea renounced its truce with the allied forces and threatened to strike any ships trying to intercept its vessels.
The move was a sign of heightened tensions on the peninsula following the North’s underground nuclear test and its firing of a series of short-range missiles earlier this week.
In response, Seoul decided to join more than 90 nations that have agreed to stop and inspect vessels suspected of transporting banned weapons.
North Korea says South Korea’s participation in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative is a prelude to a naval blockade and raises the prospect of a naval skirmish in its western waters.
On Wednesday, it renounced the 1953 truce that halted fighting in the Korean War. It said Thursday through its official media that it was preparing for an American-led attack. The U.S. has repeatedly denied it is planning military action.
“The northward invasion scheme by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet regime has exceeded the alarming level,” the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
“A minor accidental skirmish can lead to a nuclear war.”
The two Koreas remain technically at war since a peace treaty has never replaced the truce.
South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young accused the North of “seriously distorting” the decision to join in the initiative and called its response “a groundless misconception.”
South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said the South Korea-U.S. combined forces command raised its surveillance from the third to the second-highest level on a scale of 5. He said the last time the alert level was that high was in 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test.
A South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff officer, speaking on condition of anonymity citing department policy, said the South’s military has also bolstered “personnel and equipment deployment” along its land and sea borders.
He said, however, that there has been no particular movement of North Korean troops along the heavily fortified border areas.
There are 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan. All are within striking range of North Korea’s missiles.
Though the officer refused to give details, South Korea’s mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday that Seoul has recently deployed more anti-air missiles and artillery at its military bases on islands near the disputed western sea border with North Korea.