SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1506 (68), Friday, September 4, 2009
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TITLE: 9 Held, Accused Of Smuggling Yachts
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police detained managers of the country’s leading luxury yacht importer along with several customs officials on smuggling charges Wednesday, in what could become the country’s next high-profile smuggling case after the closure of Moscow’s Cherkizovsky Market.
A total of nine people were detained, including founders, managers and staff from Burevestnik Group and members of the Federal Customs Service’s central administration, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The suspects are accused of evading customs duties on expensive ships imported from Britain and Italy between 2007 and 2009, said the statement published on the committee’s web site. Investigators also searched 15 homes and offices, the statement said.
Burevestnik is Russia’s biggest importer of yachts and smaller motorboats, industry insiders said.
Among those detained was the group’s managing partner, Andrei Lomakin, who also holds Russian rights for the dealership franchise for Aston Martin, the British luxury sports car maker.
Lomakin was detained in a dramatic police operation just minutes before he was to speak at a news conference on the yacht market at noon.
RIA-Novosti, which was to host the gathering in its offices, reported that a car with SOBR special police officers crashed through a barrier into one of its parking lots as Lomakin arrived in his Mercedes. Officers smashed the limousine’s windows during the arrest.
They then questioned the businessman for more than two hours before taking him to an unknown destination, the report said.
About 20 law enforcement officers took part in Lomakin’s detention, Interfax reported.
Calls to Burevestnik Group went unanswered Wednesday.
Formed in 2007, the group comprises the country’s biggest yacht club, also called Burevestnik, a design bureau, the Yachting magazine and the Aston Martin dealership.
Trading was mainly done through its AG Marine subsidiary, which investigators identified as part of the suspected smuggling scheme. AG Marine was founded in 1999 and is owned jointly by Lomakin and his business partner Andrei Boiko.
The news conference went ahead as planned, but just four of the scheduled seven speakers showed up, said Alexander Rubinov, the owner of the Adventor Yachts consultancy firm.
Rubinov said he did not know Lomakin well and could only speculate on the reasons for his sudden detention. “Maybe it was a business dispute, maybe something political,” he said.
Political analysts linked the case to a recent overhaul at the Federal Customs Service and to a general tightening of policies against the country’s wealthy businessmen, commonly known as oligarchs.
Alexei Mukhin, of the Center for Political Information, suggested that the Kremlin was unhappy with the customs reform. “The service has not been working effectively, and smuggling is a handy tool to put pressure on them,” he said.
The major overhaul of the Federal Customs Service, which began last year and involved the closure of many smaller customs posts, has been mired with disorganization. In March, long lines at new terminals in the Moscow region forced many companies to pay overtime fees.
Mukhin said the case also might be part of a bigger onslaught against oligarchs. “This is hitting the glamorous part of society and could easily be used for blackmailing them,” he said.
Smuggling charges have also been slapped against another one-time business mogul, former Yevroset chief Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who fled to Britain in December. He said Wednesday that he would only return to Russia once the country was “free.”
Mikhail Vinogradov, an analyst with the Center for Current Politics, said the yacht detentions might be a more populist version of the crackdown on Cherkizovsky Market. “This case carries much more social acceptance, and that is good PR for the government,” he said.
Cherkizovsky, once Europe’s biggest market, was closed this summer after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complained of smuggling there, putting thousands of traders from China and Vietnam out of work. Nationalists have accused the foreigners of taking jobs away from Russians.
Rubinov said the country’s yacht market, which saw exponential growth of up to 200 percent annually in the boom years, had slowed down considerably because of the crisis. “We are experiencing a drop of 30 to 40 percent,” he said.
Industry players said that despite high tariffs and taxes, the Russian market remained very attractive.
Yachts carry a 30 percent tax for individuals and 42 percent for organizations, said Andrei Amelin, director of Allyachts.ru. He added that prices for a mid-range yacht ranged from $500,000 to $600,000 in 2007 but have fallen considerably since then.
Charles Massey, head of global sales at Peters & May, a British-based cargo logistics company, said this was about double the cost elsewhere in Europe.
He said importing boats to Britain carried a tax of 15 percent, while any boat over 12 meters in length was tax-free.
Despite Russia’s recent slowdown and difficult infrastructure, it still has great potential, he said. “This market is nowhere near saturation,” he said by telephone from Southampton, England.
Amelin said the arrests might actually boost interest in yachts. He pointed out that Burevestnik was planning its annual exhibition this weekend. “I know from several sources that they received umpteen calls today from people interested in going,” he said.
Amelin said the yacht show would go ahead despite the detentions.
TITLE: Court Orders Probe Into Politkovskaya Case
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a surprise ruling, Russia’s Supreme Court ordered further investigation Thursday into the killing of an investigative journalist gunned down after harshly criticizing Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The Supreme Court’s military bench returned the case against three suspects accused of involvement in Anna Politkovskaya’s brazen 2006 slaying to prosecutors, the court’s press service said. It ordered them to merge that case with another investigation into the alleged gunman and the search for the mastermind behind the killing, a lawyer for one of the suspects said.
The decision reversed a ruling by a lower court, which had rejected a request by Politkovskaya’s children for a single investigation into her killing. Her family has criticized the prosecution of the suspects in custody, who are accused only of helping set up the slaying. The journalist’s family says justice will not be done until the gunman and the mastermind are caught and punished.
Thursday’s ruling could increase the chances that Russian authorities will eventually determine who was behind Politkovskaya’s murder — a crucial question in a country plagued by the killings of journalists and activists who criticize government authorities.
But it is unlikely to dispel persistent concern among relatives and rights activists about the government’s willingness to conduct a complete, aggressive probe that activists suspect could lead back to people in power.
“Whether the Prosecutor General’s office will use this new opportunity we cannot say,” said Karinna Moskalenko, a prominent human rights lawyer who has represented Politkovskaya’s relatives. “We can only hope.”
Sergei Sokolov, a deputy editor at Politkovskaya’s newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the Supreme Court ruling but pessimistic about the possibility that a mastermind will ever face trial.
“We have always wanted a full, wide investigation. I hope the investigative team will take advantage of this ruling,” he told The Associated Press.
During her career, Politkovskaya sharply criticized Putin’s Kremlin and the Kremlin-backed government of Chechnya. The southern Russian area was the site of two post-Soviet separatist wars and of widespread rights abuses that Politkovskaya focused much of her investigative reporting on.
Politkovskaya was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006 — a slaying that prompted international outrage and deepened tensions between Russia and the West.
Three men accused of helping set up the shooting were acquitted in February after a trial marred by the absence of the suspected gunman and virtual silence from prosecutors on the key issue of who might have been behind the killing.
The Supreme Court overturned the acquittal, and preliminary hearings in the men’s retrial began last month.
In Thursday’s ruling, the court’s military branch ordered their case to be merged with the case against the suspected gunman, Rustam Makhmudov, and efforts to determine who was behind the contract-style killing, defense lawyer Murad Musayev said.
Prosecutors, who had backed the request for further investigation, suggested Thursday’s ruling would mean the trial would be suspended, state-run RIA-Novosti reported. It quoted prosecutor Vera Pashkovskaya as saying a trial would likely not be held until Makhmudov, who authorities say has fled Russia, is in custody.
Pashkovskaya vowed that prosecutors would seek Makhmudov — who is the brother of two of the suspects acquitted in February — and try to determine who had Politkovskaya killed, the report said.
TITLE: Outspoken Piracy Expert Mikhail Voitenko Flees Russia
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The mysterious saga surrounding the disappearance of the Arctic Sea cargo ship took a new twist Wednesday when an outspoken piracy expert who saw political overtones in the case fled Russia.
Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of the respected Sovfrakht Marine Bulletin web site, told The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from Istanbul that he had been pressured into leaving.
“Some serious guys hinted to me yesterday or the day before yesterday,” Voitenko said. “They advised me to return in three or four months.”
Asked who the people were, Voitenko said simply, “Guess.”
Asked if it was because of his role in the Arctic Sea case, Voitenko said, “Yes, it was because of the Arctic Sea.”
Russian authorities say the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea and its 15 Russian crew members were seized by eight hijackers near Sweden on July 24 and freed by the Navy off the west African coast on Aug. 17. But authorities have failed to offer a coherent and plausible version of what happened, including why hijackers would seize a ship reportedly carrying only $1.8 million in timber and why the ship’s Arkhangelsk-based crew was barred from contacting relatives for more than a week after they arrived in Moscow.
The ship was listed as carrying the timber from Finland to Algeria, but several commentators, including Voitenko, who was the only source of information about the case in the first days of the drama, have speculated that it might have been involved in illegal arms smuggling.
Voitenko said Wednesday afternoon that he had just flown to Istanbul. “I won’t stay here long. I will go to some other place,” he said.
Voitenko’s web site posted regular updates on the Arctic Sea case, citing unidentified sources, including people in the Defense Ministry.
Last month, after the ship was found, Voitenko gave a news conference at the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper’s offices where he said the sailors “got involved in a saga with government interests.”
He was quoted in a Time magazine article published Monday with the headline, “Was Russia’s ‘Hijacked’ Ship Carrying Missiles to the Mideast?”
Before becoming editor of the web site, Voitenko spent 15 years as a sailor. He told Radio Rossiya in an interview last year that he is “fanatical about the merchant navy.”
Voitenko had contact with the crew members’ relatives in the first days of the incident, and his web site was the first to publish an open letter from the crew members’ wives, asking the Russian government to open an investigation.
Right after the appearance of the letter, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Defense Ministry to find the Arctic Sea and liberate it if it had been captured.
Voitenko said Wednesday that he was not communicating with the relatives. “The relatives are silent. I mustn’t let the relatives down. It will be the worse for them,” he said, without elaborating. “If they consider that I did something good, they can write me a thank you.”
He also said he would continue to work on his web site, Sovfrakht Marine Bulletin. The site crashed for several hours on Wednesday, showing an error message, before resuming normal service.
It first crashed on Friday afternoon for reasons Voitenko could not explain but worked again Monday and Tuesday. The web site includes a forum where the Arctic Sea case was discussed by experts and sailors.
Voitenko continued to work Wednesday, offering comments to Ukrainian and Russian journalists on the case of Ariana, a ship with a Ukrainian crew captured by Somali pirates.
His bulletin is published by Sovfrakht-Sovmortrans Shipping Group.
Andrei Soldatov, an analyst who tracks the secret services at the Agentura think tank, said the intimidation described by Voitenko was not typical of the secret services toward Russian citizens, although foreign journalists might be expelled under similar circumstances.
He called the pressure to leave the country “very, very strange,” saying that secret services would be more likely simply to speak to Voitenko or close his web site.
“The question is: Who talked to him? It does not look like the secret services but arms traders, illegal arms traders or someone like that,” Soldatov said.
This is not the first case of an independent-minded Internet journalist fleeing Russia under pressure.
Roza Malsagova, the editor of Ingushetiya.ru, an Ingush opposition web site, fled with her three children in August last year and applied for political asylum in France. Magomed Yevloyev, the site’s publisher, was shot dead in police custody weeks later.
The eight suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea have been charged with piracy and kidnapping and are awaiting trial in the Lefortovo prison.
Eleven of the ship’s sailors returned home to Arkhangelsk on Sunday. They have refused to speak to reporters, saying sarcastically that they disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle where they were fed ice cream by pirates.
Voitenko has suggested that the sailors have been persuaded to keep silent.
The authorities say the other four sailors are taking the ship to Novorossiisk. It is expected to arrive in mid-September.
TITLE: Chichvarkin Says He Won't Return
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Yevroset chairman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who is living in self-imposed exile in London, said he had no plans to return to Russia but would be happy to discuss criminal charges waiting for him at home in a British court.
“When it becomes a free country where it is possible to build something, I will gladly return,” Chichvarkin told the Bfm.ru news portal Wednesday in his first interview since leaving Russia in December.
The 34-year-old businessman, who used to run the largest mobile phone retailer in the country, denied prosecutors’ charges of smuggling and extortion, saying his “conscience was clean.”
Prosecutors have said they are seeking to extradite Chichvarkin, but Chichvarkin said he has not received any documents informing him that an international arrest warrant has been issued.
“None whatsoever. The court in London wants something long forgotten in Russian jurisprudence: evidence,” he said.
Chichvarkin also said he was ready to appear in court, “any court on the territory of Great Britain.”
TITLE: Interfax Reporter Expelled From Dam
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — RusHydro expelled an Interfax reporter from its Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant, where a flood last month killed 75 people, over what the news agency said Wednesday was the journalist’s refusal to let the company edit his stories.
The state-run power giant accused the unidentified reporter of “incompetence” and violating safety rules. The dispute over coverage of the disaster and its consequences also embroiled Rustem Adagamov, one of Russia’s best-known bloggers. Interfax hinted that RusHydro was influencing his on-site posts from Khakasia.
Coverage of the Aug. 17 accident has set the government on edge, with questions arising about whether Soviet-era infrastructure has been adequately maintained and how rescue efforts at Sayano-Shushenskaya were handled.
A week after the accident, President Dmitry Medvedev angrily denounced the “mass of apocalyptic commentaries … about how we’ve reached the technological end of Russia and the Chernobyl of the 21st century” as lies pushed by “those who don’t approve of Russia in its current boundaries and its role on the world stage.”
In the same televised speech, he conceded that technologically “we really have fallen far behind.”
Interfax spokesman Yury Pogorely told The Moscow Times that the reporter was removed from the site Monday because he refused to let RusHydro’s press service edit his stories, tried to talk to the plant’s workers and incorrectly indicated the position title of the plant’s new director.
Pogorely also said RusHydro spokeswoman Yelena Vishnyakova had called him to say bloggers had accused the Interfax reporter of misinterpreting information that officials provided at the disaster site. “I took it as a threat meaning that if we don’t meet the press service’s requirements, bloggers will write bad things about us,” Pogorely said.
RusHydro spokesman Yevgeny Druzyaka said the reporter was forced to leave a press tour that was paid for by the company because he wrote “incompetent” stories that could “raise people’s anxiety,” and because he violated safety rules.
Druzyaka said he did not know whether Vishnyakova had called Pogorely but said she was a professional who “couldn’t threaten a journalist.”
Vishnyakova could not be reached on her cell phone Wednesday.
Adagamov wrote Sunday on his blog to correct a story by the Interfax reporter on an “important technical detail,” he said in a phone interview. He said workers who turned off water at the plant were able to prevent further harm in the flooded turbine room, not prevent an overflow at dam, as the Interfax reporter had stated.
Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said the profession’s ethics should prevent reporters from going on paid tours. “If you have sold yourself, don’t demand your rights,” Panfilov said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have closed a criminal case against local journalist Mikhail Afanasyev, who had been accused of libel for criticizing regional officials over the disaster, Interfax said.
TITLE: Violence Flares at Gazprom Tower Hearing
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Violence broke out Tuesday at a third and final public hearing devoted to the Okhta Center, or “Gazprom tower” — the 400-meter skyscraper that Gazprom, Russia’s largest energy company, is planning to build in St. Petersburg.
The city’s preservationists and many residents are worried that the tower will destroy St. Petersburg’s protected skyline and spoil the views of some of the city’s most famous sights — a concern shared by world heritage body UNESCO.
Photographs and videos taken during the hearing showed one opponent of the tower being choked, another lying on the floor with his sweater and shirt askew, apparently having been thrown to the ground, and a third being beaten by plain-clothes men. Yevgeny Polonsky, a 38-year-old doctor and activist with Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), was severely beaten and had to go to hospital.
“He was kicked in the head by the thugs, and when they took him over to nearby policemen, the police refused to detain him,” Andrei Dmitriyev, the leader of NBP’s local branch, said by phone on Tuesday.
“They said, ‘Get yourself to a hospital.’”
Dmitriyev was himself detained after he and his fellow party activists raised the NBP’s black hammer-and-sickle flag and threw leaflets while shouting “Your Hearing Is a Farce!” He was then taken to a nearby police precinct and charged with “disorderly conduct” (specifically, with “using profane language in public.”)
“There were plain-clothes men in the room, and they attacked everybody they didn’t like, very actively, very roughly,” said Denis Vasilyev, an activist with Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF), who was detained at the hearing and charged with the same offence as Dmitriyev.
“I interfered when they pushed Zhenya [Yevgeny Polonsky], a Natsbol [NBP activist], on the floor and were kicking him in the face.”
Seven people, including a preservationist, three Natsbols, one OGF activist and two anarchist punks were arrested during Tuesday’s hearings. Having been taken to Police Precinct 66, five were charged with “using profane language” while the two punks were charged with violating the law on assembly.
“They were having a cigarette outside before the hearing even started, one of them holding a rolled-up [anti-Gazprom] placard under his arm [when they were arrested],” Dmitriyev said.
Dmitriyev said that Polonsky, who had a cut on his forehead caused by being kicked in the face, is preparing a letter to the Prosecutor. “That’s when we’ll have a chance to find out who these plain-clothes men were — were they plain-clothes policemen or private security agents?” he said.
The Ladoga hall of the Karelia Hotel, where the hearing was held, was surrounded by dozens of OMON special-task policemen before the start of the hearing. Some were armed with truncheons, and there were at least three police dogs inside the building. To get in, people had to pass through three security checks and two metal detectors. Water, apples, chocolate bars and small bottles of what could have been medicine were confiscated.
An old man fainted and fell to the ground outside during the hearing, which lasted for four hours without intervals, and was put on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance by several OMON officers. The room provided by the organizers had a total capacity of 350, and proved far too small for the number of people who turned up. As a result, many members of the public had to stand in the aisles, while many more could not enter the room or even the building.
Speakers on behalf of Okhta Center, including Pyotr Luchin of ODTs Okhta (a subsidiary of Gazprom responsible for the tower’s construction) and Filipp Nikandrov of the British architectural firm RMJM that is responsible for the project, frequently changed the subject of the hearing away from issues raised — that the tower would exceed the height restrictions set by the regulations for the district — and at times, even appeared to be mocking the project's opponents.
In response to the question of why such a small room had been chosen for the hearing, Luchin said that it was the only appropriate, air-conditioned room available in the district. “When we build Okhta Center, we will have plenty of room in which you can attend hearings,” he said with a smile, ignoring the ensuing protests, cries and whistles.
Opponents of the tower say that at least two thirds of the room was filled with people brought in by the organizers. After the hearing, several members of the Yabloko Democratic Party saw what they thought was a man distributing payment to the tower’s supporters around the Karelia Hotel.
When Yabloko activist Ksenia Vakhrusheva took a photograph of the situation, the man rushed over to her, tried to take away her camera and in the struggle that followed injured another Yabloko activist, Alexander Shurshev, but the activists managed to report him to nearby policemen. The man turned out to be Alexander Kaganovich, 38, a private security firm employee, Shurshev said on Thursday.
Unlike many preservationists who tried to engage in a debate with ODTs Okhta’s management and officials, providing detailed arguments against the construction, the NBP chose the tactic of direct protest because no other means work, representatives said.
“The hearings are just a matter of ticking boxes, they do not affect anything, no matter what happens during them,” Dmitriyev said.
“In any case, the objective of the opposition is to try to ruin their criminal plans and not to let them build anything. To bite, scratch, dig their teeth into this Gazprom beast.”
Having held the hearing on Tuesday, ODTs Okhta now only has to get the project approved by the Land Use and Development Commission and then by City Hall. Governor Valentina Matviyenko has repeatedly expressed her support for the skyscraper’s construction.
TITLE: August Oil Output Hits New Record
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian oil output hit a record high in August, nearing 10 million barrels per day as Rosneft began production at a new giant field, while gas production recovered from its lows on improved demand, according to Energy Ministry data released Wednesday, Reuters reported.
August oil output rose to 9.97 million bpd, up 0.6 percent from 9.91 million bpd in July and 1.5 percent higher than 9.82 million bpd in August 2008.
The increase came after state-run Rosneft launched Vankor, a major new field in the Arctic. The Energy Ministry’s figures showed that Rosneft’s oil output in August rose to 2.39 million bpd, up by 5.5 percent or 123,700 bpd from July.
The Vankor field will supply Rosneft with 25.5 million tons of oil, or 510,000 bpd, when it reaches peak production in 2014. This is equivalent to nearly one-quarter of the firm’s output last year.
LUKoil, the country’s second-largest oil company, produced 1.86 million bpd of crude, up by 0.2 percent versus July.
TITLE: Billionaire Plans First Circus in Space
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Canadian billionaire who founded Cirque du Soleil wants to turn cosmonauts into clowns when he blasts into space this month.
Quebec-born philanthropist Guy Laliberte departs for the international space station Sept. 30 and is in training at a base outside Moscow.
He said in a videoconference Wednesday from Star City that he hopes to use his 12-day stay aboard the orbiting laboratory to promote universal access to clean water. Laliberte also said he plans to persuade fellow travelers to don red clown noses and is taking nine of them into orbit.
“Eventually maybe there will be a million up there, I don’t know,” he joked.
Laliberte paid $35 million for a seat on the Soyuz rocket, the same price as Charles Simonyi, the station’s previous guest.
He will likely be among the last private visitors to the space station for a few years as NASA retires its shuttle program and turns to the Federal Space Agency to ferry U.S. astronauts to the space station, crowding out places for tourists.
Laliberte — a former tightrope walker and fire-eater — has been dubbed the “first clown in space.” Though a confessed thrill seeker, Laliberte hopes that his trip will be more of a spiritual journey than a cosmic joyride.
“Besides maybe the departure and the entrance, when maybe there will be some adrenaline, I foresee this as more of a spiritual experience than a physical experience,” he said. As for zero-gravity clowning around, he said “maybe I’ll try to do some juggling act.” But he ruled out fire eating.
Laliberte, who turned 50 on Wednesday, has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. From space, he is planning to coordinate a string of shows in Moscow, London, New York and 11 other cities around the world beginning Oct. 9, coinciding with his last few days in space, to attract publicity to his One Drop foundation, which is dedicated to providing access to water.
He said former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore and performing artists Peter Gabriel,
Shakira and Irish rockers
U2 have confirmed their participation.
Laliberte has a 95 percent stake in Cirque du Soleil, which turned 25 this year.
TITLE: Transneft Fights Widespread Oil Theft in Caucasus
AUTHOR: By Stephen Bierman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Transneft is struggling to combat oil theft in the Caucasus as attacks on police strain security and federal funds fail to lift the region out of poverty.
The company opened an office in Dagestan and now has 700 guards along its 480-kilometer pipeline after thieves stole 27,000 tons of oil last year, a record for the region, Jafar Nasirov, Transneft’s local chief, said in an interview.
As it builds pipes to supply Europe and China, state-run Transneft needs to show that it can enforce security as Russia attempts to regain control of a region rocked by war and terrorism. Assaults on police in the republic have surged in the past month and now occur almost daily.
“It will be impossible for Transneft to eliminate the problem,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib. “There’s something of a Robin Hood element to the theft. People feel they are being shortchanged by Moscow and so are taking their share directly.”
The link through Dagestan, connecting the Azeri capital Baku to Novorossiisk, transported 5.8 million tons of oil last year. It ran through Chechnya until war and theft forced Transneft to reroute it in the 1990s.
Thieves tap the pipeline by drilling a hole and filling oil drums that they transport by car or truck. Investigating sites can be difficult because at times there are no roads or the pipe goes through farms or private land. Transneft’s security has found “hot taps” in the pipe where it runs under houses and offices.
“Someone with a car needs only about half an hour to take 2 tons of oil,” Nasirov said.
Transneft reorganized its security this year and stepped up patrols, stopping “large-scale” siphoning for now, he said. “The amount of theft could have doubled had we not done something.”
Dagestan is dependent on Kremlin funds, and wages in the region are about $260 a month, according to the State Statistics Service, less than half the Russian average of $557. The Dagestani leadership, which can distribute federal funds largely as it chooses, is losing control, said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
“People steal in other regions, but the amount is hundreds of times smaller,” Transneft spokesman Igor Dyomin said. “In other regions, criminals are caught and jailed. Here they have been released and the blame put on terrorists.”
Transneft absorbs the cost of missing oil, delivering full quotas to clients. While volumes of stolen crude in 2008 were worth about $20 million, less than 1 percent of its net income of 70.5 billion rubles ($2.2 billion), the theft hurts as the company services its debt and seeks to eke out savings across its business amid financing efforts.
Transneft has taken more than $3 billion from a credit line provided by Sberbank and will also receive $10 billion from China Development Bank. It may also sell $1.1 billion of bonds this month as it seeks to fund major projects.
“If in capitalism one is sure to make a profit of 300 percent, committing any crime is possible,” said Arkady Yegorov, Transneft’s deputy head of security in Dagestan, citing Karl Marx.
“Here, oil gives a chance for much more.”
Thieves sell the crude to refineries at a discount or process it themselves. Authorities shut down a so-called minirefinery in Rodnikovy this year after the owner failed to show a bill of sale for the 80 tons found there, Nasirov said.
The operation consisted of seven partially rusting tanks that looked like former railcars, connected by a pipe and hose to a concrete heating unit with tanks, pumps, and temperature and pressure valves. The Azeri crude shipped through the pipe is high quality, so it needs little refining and can be processed at simple facilities, Nasirov said. One ton of diesel produced there could fetch as much as 20,000 rubles ($850) last year, Nasirov said. That compares with a peak of $1,191 for Russian diesel in July 2008. The same amount of stolen crude brought in up to 10,000 rubles.
Dagestan has more than 40 such minirefineries, he said. Authorities could not confirm that figure, Dagestan Interior Ministry spokesman Ruslan Ibragimgadzhiyev said. These types of refineries are shut down when discovered, he said.
Local filling stations that mimic national chains are also common. A “LIKoil” station, resembling an outlet of oil producer LUKoil, can be found just outside Makhachkala.
Nasirov said Transneft halted one of the more “major” siphoning operations in July, when a spill from a supposedly abandoned pipe led to the chance discovery of illegal tapping.
Criminals diverted crude into an unused pipe belonging to a different company and running downhill to the coast, where it’s accessible by road and unguarded. The operation was detected after other criminals drilled into the pipe and caused a spill that attracted authorities, Nasirov said.
TITLE: Property Market Nears Bottom
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian real estate market appears to be bottoming out, with the rate of decrease in prices for real estate slowwing every month.
In August, prices for residential real estate decreased by just 0.7 percent in St. Petersburg and 0.3 percent in Moscow, according to the Construction News Agency.
In July, prices for real estate decreased by 1.8 percent in St. Petersburg and by 1.4 percent in Moscow.
By the end of August, the average cost of a square meter in St. Petersburg was 69,500 rubles ($2,200), and 136,700 rubles ($4,320) in the capital.
During the summer, a residential square meter in St. Petersburg lost 5.4 percent of its value, becoming 4,000 rubles cheaper. A square meter in Moscow now costs 4.3 percent (6,200 rubles) less than it did in the spring.
However, the relative stability of the current microeconomic situation suggests that a further decrease in ruble prices for real estate this autumn is several times less likely than in the summer. In some local districts and segments of the real estate market, growth in prices is possible by the end of the year, according to the Construction News Agency.
Further change in real estate prices in different cities and regions of Russia will be defined in the near future not by global microeconomic changes, but rather by the specific local characteristics of the markets and the economic policies of the state, the local authorities and major players on the world market, it said.
A more active real estate market could be promoted by encouraging lenders to issue new home loans, lending to new constructors and those with a good reputation, informing the population about tax breaks and other privileges for buyers of real estate and recipients of loans, and providing state guarantees to buyers of apartments in newly constructed buildings. Public private partnerships with developers could also have a positive influence on the process, the agency said.
However, changes in the microeconomic situation — for example a decrease in the price of oil and other Russian exports — could also affect the situation, it reported.
TITLE: Local Luxury Hotels Frozen Amid Recession
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Eleven hotels planned for St. Petersburg have been put on hold as a result of the economic crisis. The frozen hotels would have provided at least 2,425 new rooms for St. Petersburg’s guests.
All the frozen sites are at different stages of construction, ARIN Real Estate Development and Research Agency said, Lenta.ru reported.
Overall, at least 37 hotel projects are planned for the city, comprising about 6,669 rooms, the news portal reported.
By the end of July, the number of hotels under active construction in the city increased by 26 percent compared to the same period last year. The number of projects at the final stage of construction grew by 20 percent, ARIN said.
The majority of the projects planned for St. Petersburg belong to the four-star category, but only 33 percent of those hotels are already under construction.
Experts say that this can be explained by decreased demand for top class hotels, which has made the construction of three-star and economy class hotels more promising.
Most new hotels under construction in the city are located in the Admiralteisky and Central districts, which together can claim 55 percent of the hotels currently under construction.
DTZ consulting company said that occupancy rates in St. Petersburg hotels had decreased by a third in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period last year.
The number of guests staying in hotels located in historic buildings and in the center of the city dropped by 36.5 percent, while in local branches of business chain hotels it dropped by 28.8 percent, and by 29.4 percent in mid-range hotels.
As a result, hotels have had to significantly lower their prices.
DTZ forecasted that St. Petersburg’s hotel industry would not recover from the economic crisis before 2011.
TITLE: Moscow Sees Innovations In Property Development
AUTHOR: By Bela Lyauv
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow is taking a completely new approach to construction, creating a first public-private partnership that will bear all the infrastructure costs to develop a property, a City Hall source said.
Mayor Yury Luzhkov signed an order Friday creating the partnership, which will develop land along a road in southern Moscow. The initiative was backed by Moszemsintez, which will also be the project’s coordinator, a source close to the company said.
TD Ramenskaya and Moszemsintez will pay for the planning and surveying work at a 120-hectare plot in Moscow’s Ramenka district, the order says.
Ramenskaya belonged to Inteko, which had planned to build 600,000 square meters of housing there. In the spring, however, Inteko sold the company for more than 10 billion rubles ($315 million). In May, the Uniform State Register of Legal Entities was changed to show that the company was controlled by Inteko executives, with 90 percent belonging to president Yelena Baturina and the remaining shares split evenly between two deputies, Oleg Soloshchansky and Konstantin Edel.
An Inteko employee said these were interim data.
In total, the partnership will develop some 200 hectares of land along a road that will run beside a southern stretch of Kutuzovsky Prospekt.
Under the partnership, the city will prepare the planning documentation for the entire territory and pay to build the infrastructure, including roads, utilities networks and social infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. The land owner will have to get the documentation approved and do the building.
Before, developers were responsible only for construction, an arrangement investors found attractive, said Obid Yasinov, chief executive of MSM-5.
But the city will also have to meet developers half way. Construction volumes fell 32 percent last year to 3.3 million square meters. This year the figure is expected to be 3.1 million square meters, and in 2010, it will be just 1 million.
Creating the utilities networks and spending on social infrastructure increase construction costs by as much as 2.5 times, said Andrei Pankovsky, deputy chief executive of DSK-1.
In the public-private partnership’s first project, the city will cover all of the infrastructure costs. Moscow’s investments could reach 80 billion rubles, while the investors could pay 250 billion rubles over seven to eight years, the City Hall source said. That will help lower the final price, the source said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s target of 30,000 rubles per square meter is realistic if the state pays for the infrastructure, Baturina said at a meeting of the president’s council on the priority national projects. The pilot partnership will operate on territory belonging to the city (70 hectares), the Defense Ministry, Inteko (more than 70 hectares), Ramenskaya (58 hectares), SG-Trans (10) and Mosgaz (7). City Hall will sign agreements with them within three months. Soloshchansky, the Inteko vice president, confirmed that talks were taking place but declined further comment. SG-Trans and the Defense Ministry were not available for comment.
TITLE: Real Estate Forum to Give Limelight To Trends in Development, Funding
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The ProEstate 2009 International Investment Real Estate Forum opened in St. Petersburg on Thursday, attracting participants from more than 30 countries as well as 40 Russian regions, according to the forum’s press service.
This year’s ProEstate will feature an exhibition of projects and services in the real estate sphere in Russia and CIS countries and an open auction of properties, the event’s organizers said. The program will demonstrate the main development trends in real estate and new methods in the areas of attracting investment, development, town planning and real estate management.
ProEstate is taking place in St. Petersburg for the third time. The forum’s events are due to conclude on Sept. 5.
TITLE: Spinning Stalin
AUTHOR: By Sergei Obukhov
TEXT: The decision by Moscow authorities to restore Stalin’s name to the vestibule of the Kurskaya metro station on the 130th anniversary of his birth has sparked a storm of debate. Not surprisingly, not a single official from the Moscow Mayor’s Office has taken responsibility for reinstating the verse from the 1944 version of the Soviet anthem that reads, “Stalin raised us to be loyal to the nation; He inspired us to work and be heroic.” But it is clear that the decision could not have been made without the mayor’s approval.
The Kurskaya station is a classic example of 1950s Stalinist architecture with its signature deep columns. The station is associated with Stalin in another way as well: It is named after the 1943 Battle of Kursk during World War II, the largest tank battle in history that decided the fate of the Eastern front. Obviously, it would be nonsense to restore the station — an architectural monument specifically dedicated to the Stalinist period — without referring to Stalin.
Incidentally, when there was an initial widespread movement to dismantle and remove Soviet symbols following the August 1991 putsch, the Supreme Soviet, as the parliament was called at the time, passed a law forbidding the destruction of Soviet symbols when they were integral parts of the structure’s design. A good example is the State Duma building, which is embedded with the Soviet hammer and sickle, although in early August the post-Soviet double-headed eagle was also placed on the building.
The liberal opponents of the decision to restore the verse from the Soviet anthem to Kurskaya offer the same, weak argument: If it would be unthinkable in Germany to reinstate the swastika on renovated buildings dating back to Hitler’s rule, why is it acceptable to glorify Stalin in Russia? But they have failed to take one important point into consideration: Nazism and fascism were condemned at the Nuremburg Trials, but no such verdict was ever handed down against the Soviet Union, one of the victorious powers of World War II and a founding member of the United Nations. A Nuremburg-like verdict against the Soviet Union (or Russia as its legal successor) is impossible to imagine — not only because nobody can deny Stalin’s historical role as one of the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition, but also for pragmatic reasons, since such a move would strike a serious blow to the current system of international relations.
A calculation of human losses under Stalin’s regime can hardly serve as a solid criterion for deciding whether or not to preserve his name on the wall of a historical building. If we were to apply this same logic and standard to European countries, they would have to destroy a significant portion of their cultural heritage, including monuments to Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte. This would apply to the United States as well — in particular, President Harry Truman, who ordered U.S. troops to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in August 1945, killing more than 100,000 innocent civilians.
The current pro-Stalin PR campaign by the authorities coincides with the campaign for the Moscow City Duma elections on Oct. 11. The United Russia party traditionally has far worse electoral results in the capital than in other regions. But for Mayor Yury Luzhkov, whom the new City Duma will ultimately decide either to reappoint or retire, a strong showing by United Russia would be his ticket to retain his post.
That is why all the attention given to the Kurskaya metro affair could very well be an intentional campaign stunt by United Russia to win additional votes from older and middle-aged voters, who tend to have a more positive attitude toward Stalin and who make up a key support base for the Communist Party.
Recent surveys show that few Russians support a harsh condemnation of Stalin. According to the Levada Center, only 6 percent of Russians condemn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and only another 17 percent hold a moderately negative opinion of it. It is also evident from the public’s reaction to the resolution passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in early July equating the Soviet Union and Stalinism with Hitler’s Germany and fascism. According to VTsIOM, only 11 percent of Russians agree with that view, and only 14 percent of respondents insist on a campaign to rename blatantly Soviet city and street names.
The return of Stalin’s image to Kurskaya received wide media coverage. This has enabled the authorities in the Moscow city government to gain favor with one of the most disciplined and loyal members of the electorate — older voters who are sympathetic to the Soviet Union. It is part of a United Russia campaign strategy to steal votes away from the Communist Party, its main opposition.
But these kinds of underhanded campaign tactics will hardly be successful. United Russia’s attempt to co-opt the glory of Stalin — the man who turned the Soviet Union a formidable superpower — is doomed to fail. After all, the voters can simply compare Stalin’s monumental legacy with United Russia’s poor record — namely, its economic and political failures that have only increased as the crisis takes its toll — and it will become clear that United Russia is not their fathers’ Communist Party.
Sergei Obukhov is a State Duma deputy from the Communist Party.
TITLE: Geopolitics for Swindlers
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev visited Ulan Bator on Aug. 25 and 26 and signed a commercial agreement with the Mongolian authorities. Hardly a month passes without Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin or, in rare cases, Medvedev visiting one exotic country after another and signing ground-breaking commercial agreements. This summer alone, Russia also closed big deals with Nigeria, Cuba and Venezuela.
These commercial deals are a direct reflection of Russia’s foreign policy. Our friends are the countries that are willing to sign a deal directly with Russia’s leaders. Our enemies are the countries whose leaders refuse to sign such deals. But the most surprising thing is that none of these deals has been carried out, and this is mostly Russia’s fault.
In March 2006, then-President Putin wrote off Algeria’s $4.7 billion debt to Russia. In return, Algeria signed agreements with Gazprom and state arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Andrei Illarionov, former economic adviser to Putin, and other analysts believe that the deal in which a debt owed to the federal budget was waived in return for payments to companies headed by Putin’s friends is a cover for a classic corruption scheme. But Gazprom simply failed to carry out its end of the bargain. What’s more, Algiers was unhappy with the quality of the MiG jets it received from Rosoboronexport and sent them back to Moscow. In January 2008, Putin paid a visit to the socialist government of Bulgarian leader Sergei Stanishev, who signed a range of agreements, including a commitment for Russia to build a nuclear power plant in the Bulgarian city of Belene. But no sooner had the ink dried on the agreement than Russia raised the price for the plant from $3 billion to $10 billion. With a new Bulgarian government now in power and the old one widely accused of corruption, it is obvious that the contract with Russia will be broken. So far, nothing has been built.
In April 2008, Putin forgave Libya $4.5 billion in debt in return for profitable contracts signed between Libya and Gazprom, Russian Technologies and the Russian Railways — state-controlled companies run by friends of Putin. One year has now passed since Russian Railways was supposed to have started building a 500-kilometer railroad between the Libyan cities of Sirt and Benghazi. Not a single track has been laid.
The Kremlin declared Russia to be a “raw materials superpower” after signing an agreement in 2005 for construction of the Nord Stream pipeline. Despite the fact that Nord Stream is a European project — which, you would think, would demand a more responsible approach — Moscow is using the same tactics as it has with Libya and Venezuela. When it needed an agreement from the German government, it hired former German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der. When it needed Finland to sign off on the deal, it hired former Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen. But neither Schr?der nor Lipponen could help. The Nord Stream project is at a standstill. Hopes for the South Stream project have collapsed, plans to pipe additional gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Russia through the Caspian Sea region have yet to be realized, and Putin’s pipeline agreement with China remains a reality on paper only.
The failure of those agreements cannot be explained away by the complex logistics of these projects. Russia simply does not have the technological or financial resources to carry out these projects. And in its corrupt deals with countries such as Nigeria and Algeria, Russia has the dubious honor of being the one who is swindling its partners.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Back to the future
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Now in its twelfth edition, the city’s groundbreaking Earlymusic Festival returns to the city next week with an array of exciting new concerts and ensembles. Every fall, vibrant performances by the refined musicians that it attracts evoke, embody and revive the long-lost noble spirit of St. Petersburg.
The event, this year subtitled “Crossroad of Cultures,” kicks off on Monday with a concert by the English soprano Katharine Fuge, the Buryat musician Viktor Zhalsanov, the Tatar Ensemble Bereket and the Catherine the Great Orchestra. The performance, planned for the Yekaterinsky Hall of the Tavrichesky Palace and showcasing traditional Tatar and Buryat music as well as baroque works, embodies the philosophy of this year’s festival.
Early music, embracing everything created between the medieval era through to early classicism, long remained a missing link in the repertoires of Russian orchestras. The brainchild of local enthusiasts Marc de Mauny and Andrei Reshetin, the Earlymusic Festival was originally designed for a narrow circle of the initiated. But interest was instantly sparked, news traveled fast, and the event is now in full blossom.
The festival — which is the only one of its kind in Russia — has, during the twelve years of its history, attracted some of the biggest names in early music to St. Petersburg. This year is no exception.
“This festival is something more sophisticated than a string of decent concerts; we perceive it rather as a musical instrument,” said violinist Andrei Reshetin, artistic director of the Catherine the Great Orchestra and the festival’s co-organizer. “When in good hands, a musical instrument can produce magical sounds that touch your heart and get under your skin.”
It is the policy of the festival’s godfathers to introduce the ensembles that once formed their own musical tastes and influenced their preferences.
According to the festival’s ideologists, its mission has been to break down the stereotypes that had built up around the early music repertoire and musicians who perform it. They aim to position early music entirely outside the field of classical music as an alternative to classical music, just as jazz and rock are alternatives.
They are convinced that music as it was composed, played, and performed up to the end of the 18th century has a lot more in common with both jazz and rock than it does with music of the 19th and 20th centuries, both in terms of the musical material itself, the way the notes are written, the approach it demands, what is required from the musician, and in terms of its place and role in society.
Reshetin said that one of the aims of Earlymusic is to build up a base of musicians in the country who are devoted to playing early music. In order to achieve this, the festival is bringing the best musicians it can to perform here.
“Everything depends on the quality of the performance,” Reshetin said. “People want something new. They want the best.”
In one of the previous years, the festival’s slogan was “novaya sistema koordinat,” which is difficult to translate into English. The Earlymusic organizers rendered it as “a new set of values” — it summarizes their philosophy in the sense that what they are attempting to do is more than just music.
Mathematically, on their system of coordinates, the horizontal axis would be “returning to cultural roots,” whereas on the vertical would be “breaking new ground.” That is: Moving forward toward something new while at the same time returning to the original sources.
“Sound, Gesture and Word” is the title of what promises to be a not-to-be-missed concert in the Menshikov Palace this Tuesday. The French harpsichordist Benjamin Alard and French actor Benjamin Lazar are joined by Chinese musicians in a concert juxtaposing ancient Chinese folk music and poetry with European early music and verse.
A recitalist on both harpsichord and organ, Alard has performed at prestigious early music festivals and venues including Nantes (Le Printemps des Arts & La Folle Journee), Saintes, Brussels (‘Flagey’ Hall), and many others. He also collaborates with leading ensembles such as La Petite Bande, Capriccio Stravagante and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. In 2005, Alard was appointed organist at the church of St-Louis-en-l’Ile in Paris, where he plays a new instrument built by Aubertin.
Another major draw will be the concert at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church on Thursday, Sept. 10 that will feature the renowned Spanish baroque guitarist Jos? Miguel Moreno.
Moreno is one of the very few artists in the world to play vihuelas, renaissance lute, baroque lute and all types of guitars with equal skill and talent. His repertoire covers four centuries, and the musician maintains a tight international performing schedule as well as teaching in some of the world’s most prestigious conservatories.
On Monday, Sept. 21, the Glinka Philharmonic will host “The Big Baroque Concert” featuring the Pratum Integrum Ensemble.
“The young Moscow orchestra Pratum Integrum is rapidly becoming one of the leaders in the authentic performance of early music,” writes classical music reviewer Pyotr Pospelov in Vedomosti newspaper.
“The musicians of the new orchestra are true masters, with the violinists deserving special praise for their fresh, daring sound. The ensemble performs most of the works at hurricane tempos, with the level of emotional intensity reaching far beyond traditional academic concerts.”
The Earlymusic Festival wraps up on Tuesday, Sept. 29 with a concert by the distinguished Belgian Huelgas Ensemble L’Arpeggiata, one of the most highly acclaimed baroque ensembles in Europe, led by Paul Van Nevel.
Founded by Van Nevel in 1970 at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basle, the group took its title from the name of a Cistercian monastery near Burgos. Originally, the musicians focused on contemporary music but their interests soon switched to the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The ensemble presents a rather unorthodox program, featuring unknown works from composers such as Nicolas Gombert, Claude Le Jeune, Johannes Ciconia and Pierre de Manchicourt.
The Huelgas Ensemble will perform its only local concert on Tuesday, Sept. 29 at the Maltese Cappella.
http://www.earlymusic.ru
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: To the shock of onlookers and the club’s management, a punk concert was called off by the OMON special-task police force on Monday.
The U.S. hardcore punk band Die Young, which was to perform at the underground club Zoccolo, failed to perform after an estimated 50 OMON policemen and around 10 high-ranking police officers arrived at the venue before the show and ordered the show to be canceled.
A source at Zoccolo said the police had also checked the venue’s documentation. One officer said he would “recommend” canceling the concert, and the club had to obey.
The Russian musicians and promoter who came to the show were interrogated. “They wrote down information about the musicians who had come there, asked them what kind of songs they performed and if they [the songs] contain any threat to society,” a musician from one of the three Russian bands that were scheduled to take part in the show said by phone on Thursday. He requested that his name and the name of his band should not appear in print.
“Hardcore concerts are seen as ‘extremist’ by the police,” he said.
“In fact, not only some fascists, but also anti-fascists are treated as ‘extremists.’ Any musicians who touch on radical themes.”
He said there was unconfirmed information that a call had been made to the police reporting an impending mass fight outside the club.
“So they sent two trucks with the OMON police, many cars from the GUVD and RUVD [city and district Interior Ministry departments] and shut down the show,” he said.
“Everybody arrived, including mustached generals wearing decorations. I’ve never seen so many cops in all my life. There were more cops than fans.”
He said the club had been surrounded by the police, who also blocked all access to it, though he added that the police behaved politely.
“There was no violence, but the thing is that whatever officials do not like is called ‘extremism’ now —any manifestation of youth activity, be it right-wing or left-wing,” he said.
“If Greenpeace supporters had a concert, they could come and shut it down just the same.”
The musician said his band had posted a “friends only” letter to their fans on the Internet saying that from now on they would stop performing at public concerts and switch instead to “secret” gigs.
“Before we got hit by the Nazis, now we get hit by the police. But it’s the same thing,” he said.
According to the musician, the police are targeting the wrong people.
“The police are not hunting extremists, they’re hunting people with guitars who they try to describe as ‘extremists.’ But the ideas that this music brings are totally peaceful, calling for tolerance and other good things.”
The Skatalites will perform at The Place on Saturday. Local heroes Markscheider Kunst will be sharing the bill.
The two bands are not hardcore punk or radical, so the chances are that the gig will not get shut down.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Black sea magic
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An incredibly relaxing late summer evening.
As the sun is setting we lie back and relax on soft dark sofas and watch small yachts slowly cruise past Petrovsky Island, young crews dancing, chatting and enjoying their drinks.
We order our own drinks — fresh, zesty homemade lemon and lime lemonade with mint leaves and a touch of strawberry, adding a pinkish color and a mild aroma (200 rubles, $6.50 per glass).
We are sitting on the terrace of Chernoye More — the Black Sea — overlooking a sandy beach with a blue pool sparkling in the sun, a beach bar well-stocked with bottles of alcohol and two rows of white wooden tables just next to the terrace. The tables were all empty on the night we visited, as were the sun-loungers and a large, comfy-looking blue-and-white hammock hung in the corner with no hope of being used.
Sipping our drinks, we contemplated the fact that for a Friday night the place was surprisingly deserted. Apart from a few tiny groups of young hipsters — mainly fooling around the pool — the place looked completely abandoned, as if it was about to vanish and disappear into the thin air, along with the last days of the summer.
Well, the solitary feel may not be good news for the owners, but it somehow added a precious nostalgic charm to the evening. The music, mainly lounge, was pleasant and quiet, with just enough volume to add to the atmosphere. After scanning the menu — a selection of European dishes, from Caesar salad, Greek salad and salmon steak to kebabs, beef jerky, chebureki (meat pies) and pilaf, plus a couple of Italian bestsellers of the likes of mozzarella and tomato salad and tiramisu — we settled on eastern dishes.
The Uzbek pilaf (360 rubles, $12) was the highlight of the evening. Expertly made, with jeera and dried berberis, the dish was spicy, aromatic, generous in fat and not at all overcooked. Juice dripped out of the lamb kebab (450 rubles, $14), a genuine treat — tender, moist, full of flavor and not at all heavy. The meat’s remarkable lightness deserves a special mention.
Vegetarians are catered for at Chernoye More with Adzhap-sandal (320 rubles, $10.50) — a mixture of tenderly baked tomatoes, sweet pepper, onions and aubergines, spiced up with minced garlic and coriander. The dish provided an excellent accompaniment for the lamb kebab.
Strangely enough, our hot starters — samsa (230 rubles, $7.50) and kutabs (200 rubles, $6.50) arrived after the main courses. While the samsa — fried pastry parcels with rich lamb and onion fillings served with a spicy tomato sauce — were savory and rich, with large chunks of lamb, the kutabs were, regrettably, a failure. The thin pastries contained a glutinous mass of over-boiled spinach and green onion, and after sampling one of them, we decided to leave the other two aside.
After our small oriental feast, heavy on the lamb side, we opted to skip the desserts, which included tiramisu, pakhlava, a bowl of seasonal berries, three flavors of sorbet (lemon, blackcurrant and mango) and three flavors of ice-cream (strawberry, vanilla and maracuja.
All in all, the food is good at Chernoye More, yet it is obvious that it is the atmosphere and surroundings that seem to get the place its clientele.
On a warm day I see this place booming with life, packed with guests playing beach volleyball (there is a small sandy stretch and a net), swimming, ordering drinks from the tropical-looking bar, dancing and enjoying life under the sun.
TITLE: Many Missing, 57 Dead in Quake in Indonesia
AUTHOR: By Irwin Fedrianyah
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CIKANGKARENG, Indonesia — Indonesian rescue workers pulled bodies Thursday from homes buried in a landslide triggered by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 57 people and severely damaged more than 10,000 buildings.
At least 110 people were hospitalized with injuries from Wednesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake, centered just off the coast of densely populated Java island, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said. Ten were in critical condition.
“Everything is gone, my wife, my old father-in-law and my house ... now I just hope to find the bodies of my family,” 34-year-old farmer Ahmad Suhana said as he pried at giant stones with a crowbar.
Heavy digging equipment had not reached parts of the worst affected district in West Java province, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Thursday. Police, military personnel and villagers used their hands to remove rubble.
Yudhoyono cautioned rescue workers to be wary of dozens of aftershocks “although they are becoming less powerful.” He pledged $500,000 in national assistance to help victims.
More than 24,800 homes, offices, schools and mosques were damaged, about 10,000 seriously, the Disaster Management Agency said on its Web site. At least 3,100 people were forced into temporary shelters, and the Red Cross said it distributed 1,500 tents, as well as blankets, clean water and other provisions.
Some rural areas, particularly along the southern coast, could not be reached by telephone and there may be more victims and damage, officials said. Many of the deaths and injuries were caused by falling debris or collapsed structures.
The death toll continued to rise Thursday. More than a dozen bodies were dug out of the rubble in Cianjur district, where a landslide buried a row of homes in the village of Cikangkareng. Villagers were searching for more than 30 friends and relatives listed as missing and feared dead.
Maskana Sumitra, a district administrator, said 11 houses and a mosque were buried by the landslide.
“The chance of survival is so slim ... but we have to find them,” Sumitra said.
When the quake struck Wednesday afternoon, it was felt hundreds of miles (kilometers) away on the neighboring resort island of Bali. In the capital, Jakarta, 125 miles (190 kilometers) north of the underwater epicenter, thousands of panicked office workers flooded out of swaying skyscrapers onto the streets, some of them screaming.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake but was lifted an hour later.
Hospitals in towns and cities across West Java quickly filled with scores of injured people, most with broken bones and cuts.
In Cikangkareng, Dede Kurniati said her 9-year-old son was playing at a friend’s house when the earthquake struck and is now “buried under the rocks.”
“I lost my son ... now I just want to see his body, I want to bury my lovely son properly,” she said, weeping.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago, straddles continental plates and is prone to seismic activity along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. A huge quake off western Indonesia caused a powerful tsunami in December 2004 that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, half of them in Aceh province.
TITLE: Obama Aims To Renew Health Care Debate
AUTHOR: By Charles Babington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Hoping to salvage his politically endangered health care overhaul, President Barack Obama will give a State of the Union-style address featuring fresh and more detailed arguments for revamping the system.
Scheduling of the speech for Wednesday, just a day after lawmakers return from their August recess, underscores the determination of the White House to confront critics of Obama’s overhaul proposals and to buck up supporters who have been thrown on the defensive. Allies have been urging the president to be more specific about his plans and to take a greater role in the debate, and aides have signaled he will do that in the address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber.
The speech’s timing also suggests that top Democrats have all but given up hope for a bipartisan breakthrough by Senate Finance Committee negotiators. The White House had given those six lawmakers until Sept. 15 to draft a plan, but next week’s speech comes well ahead of that deadline.
It follows an August recess in which critics of Obama’s health proposals dominated many public forums. Approval ratings for Obama, and for his health care proposals, dropped during the month.
White House senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters Wednesday, “We believe this is the best way to kick off the final discussions, the final debate, and bring this thing to a close in a way that is meaningful.”
Listeners to Obama’s address will have “a clear sense of what he proposes and what health care reform is not,” Axelrod said. He declined to offer details of what the president might discuss.
Axelrod said earlier that all the key ideas for revising health care are “on the table,” suggesting Obama will not offer major new proposals.
But he may talk more specifically about his top priorities, and perhaps add details to pending plans, to save a high-profile initiative whose defeat would deliver a huge blow to his young presidency.
Obama has spoken forcefully for rules that would prevent health insurance companies from denying coverage based on an individual’s health history and providing subsidies to low- and middle-income Americans to obtain health insurance.
Administration officials also have said a provision on end-of-life counseling sessions, part of a House Democratic bill, would likely be dropped from any final legislation. This summer, critics labeled the sessions “death panels,” and while the notion was widely debunked, it still remained contentious and scared seniors.
Several lawmakers say Obama must convincingly show that he can reduce the cost of pending health care plans. Nonpartisan budget officials have said Obama’s proposals could increase the federal deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade.
TITLE: Gunmen Kill 17 at Drug Rehab in Mexico
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center, lined people against a wall and shot 17 dead in a particularly bloody day in Mexico’s relentless drug war. The brazen attack followed the killing of the No. 2 security official in President Felipe Calderon’s home state.
The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors’ office. At least five people were injured.
Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico’s most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone.
Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence, which has taken a heavy toll across Mexico. Earlier the same day, gunmen ambushed and killed a senior security official in the home state of President Felipe Calderon.
Dozens of sobbing relatives rushed to the rehabilitation center to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Soldiers and federal agents patrolled the streets surrounding the center in the Bellavista neighborhood.
Calderon sent thousands more troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez earlier this year, but the surge has done little to stem the raging violence. The city is home to the Juarez drug cartel, which is battling other gangs for trafficking and dealing turf.
The government is struggling to revamp Ciudad Juarez’s police force, which is plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.
The massacre capped a particularly bloody day in Mexico’s relentless drug war.
Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.
Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.
Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.
Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta’s car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.
An AP reporter at the scene saw the bodies of Revuelta and his bodyguards in the car, which had at least 15 bullet holes in the front windshield. Soldiers and federal police rushed to the site — just three blocks from the headquarters of the Michoacan Public Safety Department — and a helicopter circled overhead.
Soldiers and federal police have intensified their fight against La Familia since accusing the cartel of killing 18 federal agents and two soldiers last month. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were slain and their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning.
It was the boldest cartel attack yet on Mexico’s government. Authorities said say La Familia was retaliating for the arrest of one of its top members.
The government has since rounded up more La Familia suspects, including Luis Ricardo Magana, who is alleged to have controlled methamphetamine shipments to the United States for the gang. Days before his capture, prosecutors detained the mother of reputed La Familia leader Servando “La Tuta” Gomez despite his threat to retaliate if police bothered his family. The woman was released after two days “for lack of evidence” of involvement in the cartel.
Calderon first launched his crackdown against drug cartels in Michoacan, sending thousands of federal police and soldiers to his home state after taking office in late 2006. Tens of thousands more have since been deployed to drug hotspots across Mexico.
TITLE: A Mausoleum Packed With Stars Awaits Jackson
AUTHOR: By Lynn Elber
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GLENDALE, California — One month after a lavish public memorial for Michael Jackson, the pop singer’s family prepared to inter him privately Thursday in a mausoleum filled with legendary entertainers.
On Wednesday, a judge said Jackson’s estate will bear the funeral costs, which were characterized by an attorney as “extraordinary.” It was disclosed in court that 12 burial spaces were being purchased at Forest Lawn Glendale, about eight miles north of downtown Los Angeles, but no details were offered on how they would be used.
Jackson will rest in the cemetery’s Great Mausoleum with Hollywood stars including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and W.C. Fields.
Jackson’s funeral won’t end the legal drama over his drug-induced death at age 50, which authorities have labeled a homicide. No criminal charges have been filed over his June 25 death, which came on the cusp of London concerts meant to restore Jackson to his once-incandescent stardom.
Last week, coroner’s officials said they believed Jackson’s death was homicide, and his death certificate has been amended to reflect that.