SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1522 (84), Friday, October 30, 2009
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TITLE: Aids Experts Say Russia Needas New HIV Strategy
AUTHOR: By Douglas Birch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — AIDS experts urged Russian officials on Wednesday to scrap their abstinence-based strategy for curbing the spread of HIV, saying the country’s fast-growing epidemic could be entering a dangerous new phase.
AIDS specialists meeting in Moscow urged Russia to adopt successful strategies like needle-exchange programs and heroin substitutes such as methadone for drug addicts.
The number of HIV infections in Russia has doubled in the past eight years and there is evidence that in this region the virus is increasingly being spread by heterosexual sex.
The rapid growth of the epidemic in Russia is in contrast to sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, where prevalence of the virus fell during the same eight-year period, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS agency.
Russia’s chief public health officer, Gennady Onishchenko, told a regional AIDS conference Wednesday that Russia is “emphatically against” the use of drug replacement therapy. Meanwhile, he criticized programs that exchange clean needles for used ones, saying such programs may promote illicit drug sales and HIV transmission.
Both are part of a so-called harm reduction strategy, in contrast to the just-say-no programs that urge abstinence from drugs and risky sex. Russian health officials say they are committed overall to a “healthy lifestyles” rather than a harm reduction approach to improving public health.
That isn’t good enough, a number of foreign experts say.
“International studies show that an abstinence-based message on drug use or sex simply doesn’t work,” said Robin Gorna, executive director of the International AIDS Society. In Russia, she said, “it does appear that ideology is getting in the way of public health care policy.”
Russia has increased spending on AIDS programs by 33 times since 2006, making it a central part of an ambitious new national health care strategy. It has expanded drug treatment dramatically for AIDS sufferers and is among the leaders worldwide in reducing the incidence of transmission of the disease between mothers and their babies.
But many Russian officials view harm reduction efforts as encouraging criminal or shameful behavior. The position has left it increasingly isolated, as China recently embraced such programs, foreign AIDS experts here said.
Russia has some highly successful needle exchange programs and free condom programs, several foreign specialists said, but many have been paid for through grants from the international Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
Now those grants are being terminated under Global Fund rules, the specialists said, because Russia is too wealthy to qualify for them.
Chris Beyrer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said Russian officials “have never really embraced” needle exchange, free condom distribution and other harm reduction techniques.
“It is the reason I think that they continue to have one of the most severe epidemics in the region,” said Beyrer, director of Hopkins’ AIDS International Training and Research Program. He was in Moscow for the regional meeting, which runs through Friday.
Gorna of the International AIDS Society said the only needle exchange programs in Russia are some 75 funded primarily by foreign donors, 22 of which shut down in August after their grants ran out. She and other experts said the regions where those programs have operated have seen slower transmission rates than the rest of Russia.
Russian civic groups and other nongovernment organizations that have distributed millions of free condoms in Russia also lost their Global Fund grants in August, due to the eligibility issue, Gorna said. She said she was unable to determine Wednesday whether the Russian government has continued those programs.

TITLE: Cash-for-Clunkers Plan Comes Under Fire
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As the Industry and Trade Ministry puts the last touches on a cash-for-clunkers program, skepticism about the plan’s viability is running high among car-recycling firms.
The state program, patterned after similar initiatives in Germany and the United States aimed at bolstering domestic car production, would award certificates worth 50,000 rubles ($1,730) to drivers who turn in cars 10 years old and older for recycling. The certificates could be used at any dealership that sells Russian-made cars.
But a lack of legislation and recycling infrastructure bode poorly for the program, which is supposed to start up next year.
And while the program aims to assist carmakers at the beginning of a car’s life cycle, it is misguided because it does not establish a clear policy on recycling cars at the end of their life cycle, industry insiders said.
“It’s like mixing up the services of a delivery ward and a funeral,” said Yury Vorontsov, deputy director of Vtormet, a Moscow-based company that recycles car bodies and sells shredded metal to Severstal and NMLK.
The Industry and Trade Ministry aims to finish drafting the cash-for-clunkers program and forward it to the Cabinet by this weekend.
The program is at the stage of “agreeing on the general principles,” Alexei Rakhmanov, head of the ministry’s automobile department, said in an interview last week.
“The prime minister is rushing us to finish by Nov. 1,” he said, declining to outline the general principles before they are agreed upon and forwarded to the government.
Ten billion rubles ($341 million) will be earmarked for the program next year from “the sack of anti-crisis measures,” Rakhmanov said.
The federal funds will serve as the “cash” in the cash-for-clunkers program.
With no additional money expected to be allocated for the program, the regions will bear the responsibility of making sure that the cars are properly recycled, Rakhmanov said.
“The regions have given us the names of companies interested in participating … and we expect the regions to be responsible for whom they delegate the recycling to,” he said.
Only 15 percent to 20 percent of discarded cars are currently recycled in some way. Last year, about 1.78 million automobiles were deregistered without being registered again, according to a report compiled by Tolyatti-based Avtostat.
Vtormet, one of the largest companies involved in car recycling, processes about 400,000 tons of metal per year, but cars make up only 10 percent to 12 percent of its raw materials.
“Every car recycler runs into the problem of stable supply and stable demand for secondary use materials,” Vorontsov said, adding that it is the job of the government to set up a system that guarantees both.
Secondary use materials include a car’s metal and plastic components, as well as oil, engine and tires. European legislation requires cars to be 95 percent recyclable by weight by 2015. Currently the figure is 85 percent.
Vtormet, which operates with a 12 percent profit margin, has to get rid of nonmetal components, which make up 20 percent of the car’s weight, by paying to have them burned or buried in landfills. Although there is an engine recycler in the region, Vtormet cannot take on the cost of shipping engines. Used oil, for which there is a huge market in the United States, has to be burned, while companies recycling plastics, glass, and textiles are too small to handle Vtormet’s needs, Vorontsov said.
Vorontsov, who has lobbied for more than three years for a federal law on car recycling, said he has been disenchanted with the government’s efforts and thinks that the clunkers program is nothing but a short-lived campaign initiated for political reasons.
“There are no laws in Russia that set standards and requirements determining a car’s fate after it reaches the end of its life cycle,” said Sergei Udalov, deputy head of Avtostat, which compiled a report on car recycling in Russia in August.
While other countries introducing cash for clunkers programs merely injected money into a pre-existing system for waste management, Russia has no such system and has not even developed waste legislation yet, he said.
Europe requires car producers to bear some of the responsibility for processing cars after they reach the end of their life cycle, and even Tolyatti-based car giant AvtoVAZ factors about 100 euros ($150) into the cost of each Lada sold in Germany for this program, Udalov said.
The necessary Russian legislation will be drafted next year and could come into force in 2011, said Rakhmanov, of the Industry and Trade Ministry. “Optimistically speaking, we’ll need a whole year to prepare to launch it in 2011, because the legislation needs to go through the State Duma,” he said.
But Russian legislation on waste management is at least 10 years behind that of European countries, said Vera Merkulova, a corporate social responsibility specialist at Toyota Motor Russia. The European Union has been developing its policy on managing old cars since the 1990s, adding regulations on landfills, shipments and the incineration of waste, as well as standards for recycling and the safety of vehicles.
“Currently, Russia only has one industrial waste law, and there is no mention of car recycling,” Merkulova said.
In addition to legislation, the government needs to provide major investment into recycling infrastructure, because car recycling as a whole is not currently profitable, the Avtostat report said. “Simply requiring producers and importers to develop the system is not effective,” it said.
With a budget deficit and a flat economy, however, federal investment is unlikely.
The crisis has made business even harder for recyclers, said Denis Puzanov, director of RTI Holding, a small company that recycles tires in Sergiyev Posad, a town in the Moscow region. Equipment that turns tires into rubber pellets costs 2 million euros ($3 million), and with the current credit crunch, such a purchase is out of the question for a business that turns a low profit, he said.
Despite the fact that Article 14 in the Law on the Environment declares tax breaks for environmentally oriented companies, “We have worked here for years, and neither the municipal government nor the tax service know about this law,” Puzanov said.
Only 10 percent of used tires are recycled in Russia, Puzanov said. “In the regions, people make flowerbeds out of them,” he said.
Companies that want to recycle cars face numerous barriers and few incentives, said Vorontsov, of Vtormet. Six years ago, a Moscow government decree gave his company an additional 3.5 hectares to dismantle cars and sort the components. “The site had cannabis growing on it, and the occasional murder,” he said. “We put a fence around it but now have to pay an annual fine for the fence because the documents for the land have still not been processed.”

TITLE: Russia, U.S. Scramble to Reach Deal in Nuclear Arms Talks
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and the United States are scrambling to address disagreements over a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with little over a month left until the existing agreement between the old Cold War adversaries expires.
Despite the narrowing timeframe, both sides expressed optimism at the end of a day of negotiations Thursday between visiting U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and National Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said in televised remarks he was “sure” Jones’ “successful” visit would help forge a new treaty. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said “intensive efforts” would be required to reach an accord but he struck a generally optimistic tone.
On leaving the Foreign Ministry, Jones said that the two had a “very good discussion on a number of bilateral issues,” without elaborating.
President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed at a Moscow summit in July to cut the number of nuclear warheads each possesses to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.
But the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation recently noted several sticking points that may take negotiations into the 11th hour.
The obstacles include a divergence on the number of so-called delivery vehicles — a reference to missiles and bombers. 
Washington has reportedly proposed a limit of 1,100 such weapons platforms, while Russia wants less than half that number, a discrepancy too great to forge an agreement, the center concluded.
Other hurdles may include the issue of whether to include stockpiled weapons — those not operationally deployed — in the warhead count. The U.S. says no, while Russia would prefer blanket inclusion.
The U.S. has sought to separate the issue of arms reduction from plans to station a missile defense system in Central Europe, near Russia’s western fringe, but Moscow — a bitter opponent of the idea — is unlikely to overlook them.
Referring to arms reduction and missile defense, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov claimed “an objective interconnection between these two platforms of strategic stability has not disappeared,” according to comments published Thursday in Russian daily Vremya Novostei. “It is wrong not to recognize this.”
Jones’ visit comes as Iran was to respond to a UN-drafted plan on shipping the country’s low-enriched uranium to Russia for further processing. The plan proposes a curtailment of any covert nuclear arms making abilities by Iran. Jones was expected to discuss the matter with Moscow.

TITLE: Russia Hopes Nuclear Ship Will Fly to Mars
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia should build a new nuclear-powered spaceship for prospective manned missions to Mars and other planets, the nation’s space chief said in remarks released Thursday.
Anatoly Perminov first proposed building the ship at a government meeting Wednesday but initially didn’t explain its purpose.
He said in remarks posted Thursday on his agency’s Web site that the nuclear spaceship should be used for human flights to Mars and other planets. He said the project is challenging technologically, but could capitalize on the Soviet and Russian experience in the field.
Perminov said the preliminary design could be ready by 2012. He said it would then take nine more years and 17 billion rubles (about $600 million, or euro400 million) to build the ship.
President Dmitry Medvedev backed the project Wednesday and urged the government to find the money.
“The project is aimed at implementing large-scale space exploration programs, including a manned mission to Mars, interplanetary travel, the creation and operation of planetary outposts,” Perminov’s Web statement said.
The ambitious plans contrast with slow progress on building a replacement to the mainstay Russian spacecraft, sounding more like a plea for extra government cash than a detailed proposal.
Russia is using Soyuz booster rockets and capsules, developed 40 years ago, to send crews to the International Space Station. The development of a replacement rocket and a prospective spaceship with a conventional propellant has dragged on with no end in sight.
Despite its continuing reliance on the old technology, Russia stands to take a greater role in space exploration in the coming years. NASA’s plan to retire its shuttle fleet next year will force the United States and other nations to rely on the Russian spacecraft to ferry their astronauts to and from the International Space Station until NASA’s new manned ship becomes available.
Perminov said the new nuclear-powered ship should have a megawatt-class nuclear reactor, as opposed to small nuclear reactors that powered some Soviet military satellites. The Cold War-era Soviet spy satellites had reactors that produced just a few kilowatts of power and had a life span of about a year.

TITLE: U.S. Soldiers Accused Over Marriage Scam for Benefits
AUTHOR: By Kevin Maurer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WILMINGTON, N.C. — Sergeant Jason Hawk and his bride met for the first time when he picked her up at a bus stop near his Army base a day before their wedding. Prosecutors say the speedy romance was echoed by a fast honeymoon: Ayna Ivanova returned to New York soon after.
Two other paratroopers who served with Hawk and three women now each face up to five years in federal prison when sentenced for their roles in what authorities say was a marriage scheme that garnered U.S. citizenship for Russian brides and coveted housing allowances for junior enlisted men. Prosecutors said the marriages cost the government at least $200,000 in wages and benefits.
Attorneys for the former soldiers and the women either did not return calls or declined comment on the case, which prosecutors contend stems from the work of Pavel and Alexander Manin, two brothers from Kazakhstan who joined the U.S. military. Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, was part of the Soviet Union until independence in 1991 and still has a large Russian population.
Alexander Manin came to New York in 1998 to attend school. He joined the Marine Corps soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, served three years and received an honorable discharge. He then moved back to New York and opened an international car shipping business.
His brother, Pavel, came to the United States in 2001 and joined the Army in March 2005. While in the Army, prosecutors say Pavel Manin recruited soldiers when he was stationed with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to take part in the scheme. As junior enlisted soldiers, they couldn’t live off post unless they were married or had a family.
The Manins’ scheme was simple, according to court documents.
All the soldiers had to do was marry the women, who returned to New York City after the nuptials, and file immigration papers stating that they were married. In exchange, the soldiers would get more than $600 a month as a living allowance from the Army and permission to live off post.
Back in New York, Alexander Manin allegedly recruited women seeking immigration status and solicited between $1,000 and $5,000 per marriage from the women. Prosecutors allege the brothers took part in at least three other fraudulent marriages between the Manins and other women.
Chris Grey, an Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman, said this type of fraud case happens “very infrequently” and housing fraud cases usually don’t involve false marriages. Most deal with soldiers receiving benefits they’re not entitled to for reasons such as not reporting they are divorced or saying their rent requires all of the money and doesn’t.
Besides Hawk, Sergeant Wesley Farris, 23, agreed to marry Svetlana Kaloshina and Sergeant Stephen Schneider, 23, married Tatyana Urazova in 2005, according to court documents. Like Hawk, Farris and Schneider filed immigration applications for the women and received a housing allowance, allowing them to move off post into a house.
Federal agents were alerted to the alleged fraud in June 2008 by the Army Criminal Investigations Division. Army investigators contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI.
Hawk, prosecuted by military authorities, was ordered to pay a fine of $20,000, imprisoned for 4 months, demoted from sergeant to private and discharged from the Army. He does not face federal charges.
The Manin brothers are in custody in Edgecombe County, N.C., awaiting trial next year on charges of marriage and visa fraud, conspiracy and stealing public money. U.S. District Court Judge Louise Wood Flanagan deemed both brothers a flight risk. Pavel Manin had an airline ticket to Kazakhstan when he was arrested.
Farris and Schneider pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. Both await sentencing next year. Details of Farris’ and Schneider’s plea agreements weren’t immediately available, but court records indicate that coconspirators will testify against the Manin brothers. Urazova, Schneider’s wife, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit marriage fraud as part of a plea agreement. Kaloshina also pleaded guilty in August and is awaiting sentencing.

TITLE: City Hall Gives Go-Ahead To March Against Hatred
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City Hall has issued a permit to the anti-fascist March Against Hatred due to be held on Saturday, while refusing to authorize the nationalist Nov. 4 Russian March, suggesting its organizers hold a stationary meeting at a remote park instead.
The March Against Hatred is held to protest against “the growth of national and religious intolerance and xenophobia in society,” the organizers said in a statement.  
The March Against Hatred is an annual event that was first held soon after the 63-year-old scholar and hate crimes expert Nikolai Girenko was murdered by extreme nationalists in 2004. Dedicated to Girenko, the rally is held on Oct. 31, his birthday.
Due to be held for the sixth time this year, the March Against Hatred has been the only protest march not banned by the authorities during the past two years. All the other protest marches, including Dissenters’ Marches and Marches for the Preservation of St. Petersburg, were not granted permits under various grounds.
Sixteen organizations, among them some political groups, are among the event’s organizers, including Russia Without Fascism, African Unity, Memorial, Soldiers’ Mothers, Yabloko and Solidarity. For the first time, the gay rights group Vykhod (Coming Out) is officially listed as one of the organizers.
The March Against Hatred, due to start by Yubileiny Sports Palace at 12:30 p.m., will end with a stationary meeting at Ploshchad Sakharova at 2 p.m.
Although a permit was issued, traffic will not be closed along the route. Last year, hundreds of protesters were forced to walk along narrow sidewalks, with the police preventing them from stepping into the road.
The extreme nationalist Voyevodin-Borovikov gang, whose members have been on trial since February, are accused of killing Girenko and a number of non-Russians. The death sentence issued to Girenko for his anti-fascist activities by the so-called “Russian Republic’s Government” was still available on its web site when accessed on Thursday.
Although City Hall’s Tolerance Program was awarded an honorary mention by UNESCO last week for “its constructive efforts to inculcate mutual respect and tolerance in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society and to prevent and eradicate all forms of discrimination,” St. Petersburg remains the second city after Moscow in terms of the number of racist crimes committed, according to the Moscow-based SOVA Center.
According to its report, 39 people were victims of racist and neo-Nazi attacks in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast between Jan. 1 and Oct. 15. Seven were killed, and 32 wounded or beaten.
Meanwhile, the Russian March, an annual nationalist rally that has been held on the People’s Unity Day national holiday (Nov. 4) since 2005, was restricted to a stationary meeting at Polyustrovsky Park in the city’s north on Wednesday. 
People’s Unity Day was introduced by the Kremlin in 2005 to mark the 1612 victory over the Poles and replace October Revolution Day (the Day of Accord and Reconciliation since 1996), which was marked on Nov. 7 until it was abolished in 2004. Many Russians still celebrate the day, according to polls.

TITLE: Investigators Release Arctic Sea
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators have lifted the arrest of the Arctic Sea and will turn over the cargo ship to Maltese authorities in the next few days, the Investigative Committee said Wednesday.
The Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea has stayed in international waters near Malta since Moscow’s Basmanny District Court sanctioned its arrest in late August, the committee said in a statement.
The ship was heading toward Malta on Wednesday and will arrive there Thursday, after which negotiations about the ship’s handover to local authorities will start, RIA-Novosti reported, citing a source in “military diplomatic circles.”
However, a source at the Russian Embassy in Malta told Interfax that the ship was unlikely to dock by Thursday.
Maltese authorities have demanded that they be allowed to examine the ship before it arrives.
The Arctic Sea and its crew of 15 Russian sailors vanished July 24 off the Swedish coast while carrying a cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria. The Navy announced the seizure of the ship and eight suspected hijackers on Aug. 17 off the western African coast.
Eleven sailors and the suspected hijackers were subsequently flown to Russia, while the four other sailors have stayed on board the ship.
Russia had asked Algeria for permission to dock the ship in its port, but local authorities refused, RIA-Novosti said.
The Arctic Sea is being towed to Malta under the escort of Black Sea Fleet vessels, RIA-Novosti said.
Much remains unexplained about the Arctic Sea and why pirates would target a ship carrying just $1.8 million in lumber. The uncertainty has prompted speculation that the ship was carrying a secret cargo of missiles for Iran that was detected by Israeli intelligence.
Investigators have given few details about their activities on the Arctic Sea.
Heightening the mystery, Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of a web site that was the first to point out inconsistencies in the authorities’ account of the ship’s saga, fled Russia last month after receiving threats.
In an odd twist, President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday jokingly suggested that the Federal Space Agency call its systems that track and monitor moving objects “the Arctic Sea.”
Medvedev made the suggestion after hearing a report from Federal Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov at a meeting on the modernization and technological development of the economy.
“I have even thought up a name for the project,” Medvedev said with a smile, Prime-Tass reported. “You should call it the Arctic Sea.”
Perminov did not grasp the humor and replied, “If necessary, we’ll name it that.”

TITLE: President Concedes Elections Were Marred by Irregularities
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that irregularities had occurred in the disputed Oct. 11 vote and said he would include several proposals on elections in his state-of-the-nation address.
Medvedev also told Central Elections Commission chief Vladimir Churov to review the irregularities and make sure that complaints of vote rigging were heard in court.
“Problems that have taken place, irregularities that were found, should be taken into consideration in the further work of the Central Elections Commission,” Medvedev told Churov during a meeting at the presidential Gorki residence outside Moscow, according to a transcript on the Kremlin web site.
“It is your direct responsibility to provide an opportunity for parties to go to court,” Medvedev added.
Opposition parties and independent election observers have complained of massive fraud in the elections, which were held in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions and were swept up by United Russia. In Moscow, United Russia won 32 of the 35 seats in the City Duma, with the rest going to the Communists.
In one documented instance of outright fraud, Yabloko, which had two seats in the previous City Duma, not only failed to win any seats but also received zero votes at the polling station where its leader, Sergei Mitrokhin, and his family cast their ballots.
“The Central Elections Commission should take into account all the problems, all the hitches, that were revealed,” Medvedev told Churov.
Churov, a former Liberal Democratic Party deputy who has led the commission since March 2007, showed Medvedev a thick binder of documents outlining his commission’s work on the complaints. He said 196 complaints have been sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office and that several dozen cases have been forwarded to court.
Churov also said he would meet with leaders from seven political parties Nov. 24 to discuss what lessons could be learned from the elections in order to avoid a repeat in the next nationwide vote. Under the law, nationwide elections are held twice a year, on specially allotted days in March and October.
Medvedev said he would make suggestions on how to improve electoral law in his state-of-the-nation address, which is expected to be delivered in early November. Medvedev gave no details but told Churov that the elections commission should listen carefully and take his suggestions to heart.
The president reiterated that he might consider amendments to the current election law, a statement that he also made to the State Duma’s three opposition parties during a meeting about the disputed vote Saturday.
Leaders of the Communist Party and the LDPR have demanded Churov’s dismissal because of this month’s elections.

TITLE: Riot Police Raid Dam Disaster Site
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee and OMON riot police swooped into the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant in a raid Tuesday, seizing documents and isolating employees at their workstations in a probe into an August accident that killed 75 people.
RusHydro, the state-controlled owner of the plant, said the surprise raid halted all activities there, snarling repair work and efforts to prepare the plant for the winter.
The Investigative Committee has been working at the plant since the Aug. 17 accident caused a flood that killed 75 workers, but this is the first time that OMON officers have been brought in.
“The company has been fully complying with the investigation, and we are very surprised at the presence of the OMON,” Dubovets said.
The Investigative Committee declined to comment on the matter.
The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

TITLE: Putin Recalls Fall of Berlin Wall in New Documentary
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has publicly recalled how he personally contributed to this turn in history as a Soviet spy in East Germany.
Putin told veteran NTV reporter Vladimir Kondratyev in a half-hour interview how he managed to calm down an angry crowd of East German protesters outside the KGB headquarters in Dresden in late 1989.
Putin rose from obscurity to the country’s most popular politician in 1999, serving as president from 2000 to 2008 and subsequently becoming prime minister.
Kondratyev said Wednesday that Putin had gladly recalled fond memories from his days in Cold War Germany and acknowledged the inevitability of the German Democratic Republic’s demise.
“He was very relaxed and smiled a lot, yet he expressed a very clear opinion about the fall of the wall — that what happened was bound to happen,” Kondratyev told The Moscow Times.
Kondratyev would not reveal how many minutes of his upcoming documentary film “Stena” (“The Wall”) would be devoted to Putin, but he denied that the prime minister was its main theme. “It is about the fall of the wall. Putin is just one of many characters who will appear,” he said.
He said, however, that he would travel to Dresden later this week to shoot the introduction.
Putin’s interview will be aired as part of the 50-minute film at 7:25 p.m on NTV on Sunday, Nov. 8 — one day before the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.
Putin served as a KGB officer in Dresden, which was then a provincial outpost so remote that locals could not receive West German television, from 1985 to 1990. His only brush with history there occurred on Dec. 5, 1989, almost a month after the wall fell.
After storming the nearby local headquarters of the East German Secret Police, or Stasi, protesters gathered outside his office building.
Public information about Putin’s ­service in East Germany is scarce, and the only reliable account is in “First Person,” a series of autobiographical ­interviews published in 2000. Here, Putin recalled how he met the crowd personally and told them in German that this was a Soviet military organization. When people replied suspiciously that he spoke German too well, “I told them I was a translator,” he said.
Kondratyev said Putin gave no new account of those events, but the prime minister made it clear that he understood at the time that the Soviet-inspired division of Germany had no future.
“He said that the wall was all unnatural and that he thought that its fall meant the end of the GDR,” Kondratyev said.
In “First Person,” Putin expressed his deep frustration about Moscow’s waning power when he called Soviet military headquarters for help against the protesters. “I was told that nothing could be done without orders from Moscow. And Moscow is silent,” he said.
Eventually, he said, military personnel did come and the crowd dispersed, but the words “Moscow is silent” remained with him. Putin said he got the feeling then that the Soviet Union had disappeared.
German media have reported that one Soviet official threatened to shoot at protesters, saying he was “a soldier until death,” and the quote was later ascribed to Putin, although Putin never mentioned it and it was never verified.
In the NTV interview, Kondratyev said Putin suggested that the protesters understood that the Stasi and not the Soviet Union should be the prime target of their anger.
“He spoke very positively about these events and stressed that German-Russian relations subsequently achieved a new quality and included a feeling of gratitude,” he said.
Under Putin’s eight years as president, relations with Berlin flourished, with Germany becoming both a key foreign investor and foreign policy ally. That privileged partnership, as dubbed by the Kremlin, was conceived under the close personal friendship between President Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der, and continues under their successors, Dmitry Medvedev and Angela Merkel.
However, Putin’s record as a democratic leader has been debated in Dresden just as much as anywhere else in the West.
Wolfgang Sch?like, head of the city’s German-Russian Culture Institute, said Putin’s KGB background makes relations with him more complicated for East Germans than for West Germans.
Since the democratic upheaval of 1989, any record of employment or cooperation with Communist security services is seen as an utter disgrace, Sch?like said by telephone from Dresden. “The Stasi here is the ultimate whipping boy,” he said.
He noted that in today’s Germany it is unthinkable for people who once worked for the secret police to take public office like Putin has done in Russia. “Even kindergarten workers lost their jobs after it was revealed that they had links to the Stasi,” he said.
Sch?like said he credited Stanislav Tillich, prime minister of the local state of Saxony, for striving to improve local relations with Moscow.
But there was considerable outrage in local and national media when Tillich handed a medal of honor to Putin in Dresden in January, at the height of the gas war with Ukraine.
“And next year the medal will go to Colonel Gaddafi,” Antje Hermenau, a local leader of the Green party, said at the time.
n?Nearly a quarter of Russians believe that there is a personality cult of Putin in the country, according to a new poll by the independent Levada Center. A total of 23 percent of respondents said they saw evidence for this, an increase from 22 percent last year.
In a sign that such tendencies can spill over as far as the United States’ West Coast, a media report said the Russian Bodybuilding Federation was planning to present a bust of Putin to Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Alexander Chernoshchyokov, a St. Petersburg-based sculptor, told Agence-France Press that the bust was being created as a gift for the former Hollywood bodybuilder and would be delivered in March. “Putin is such a complex personality. He’s left no one indifferent,” Chernoshchyokov told AFP.

TITLE: Bosco to Sponsor Sochi Games
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian apparel brand Bosco Sport signed up as leading domestic sponsor of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on Wednesday in a deal worth more than $100 million.
The agreement also makes Bosco Sport the exclusive outfitter of Russian Olympic teams for the upcoming Winter Games in Vancouver through the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
“Western fans have been very envious [of Bosco Sport’s outfits] and now they will become even more so,” Sochi organizing committee chairman Dmitry Chernyshenko said at the signing ceremony with Mikhail Kusnirovich, the head of Bosco Sport’s parent company, Bosco di Ciliegi.
Bosco Sport also signed a deal to produce licensed apparel with the Olympic symbols through 2016, the Sochi organizing committee said.
“It’s very nice that the Sochi organizing committee is supporting a Russian manufacturer,” Kusnirovich said at the ceremony at GUM, the ornate department store on Red Square where Bosco Sport has one of its outlets.
The company’s white-and-red Olympic outfits won praise at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, but the uniforms were laden with Bosco logos, violating the games’ limits on logo size. The logos were quickly covered up with stickers after a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee, which also warned that company banners at the athletes’ villages and event venues were in violation of regulations.
Sochi organizers said they have now raised more than $850 million in domestic sponsorship revenues so far and hope to top the $1 billion mark.

TITLE: World Bank Warns Of Climate Change Threat
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is likely to bear the brunt of changes to regional climate brought on by global warming, according to a World Bank report presented  Wednesday, and government officials are preparing special measures to deal with the negative effects of climate change.
The country will see the greatest increase in climate extremes over the next 60 years to 80 years among the 28 countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the report said. The effects of climate change will be exacerbated by decrepit infrastructure and the legacy of Soviet resource management, the report said.
Temperature in the region has increased by an average of 0.5 degrees in the south and 1.6 degrees in northern regions like Siberia. In the Arctic, temperatures have been increasing at twice the global average, with ice, tundra and permafrost experiencing the biggest impact. By 2050, the number of frost days will decline by as much as 30 days per year, while the number of hot days will increase by up to 37 days.
Despite Russia’s vulnerability to climate change, Russians are not as concerned about the issue as are people in other countries, the report said. In 2007, only 40 percent of Russians considered climate change a serious issue, compared with 70 percent of Turks, the report cited a Pew poll as showing.
Official rhetoric about climate change has ranged from skepticism to enthusiasm. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin famously said in 2003 that global warming might even benefit Russia.
“For a northern country like Russia, it won’t be that bad if it gets two or three degrees warmer,” since “we would spend less on fur coats” and “our grain production would increase,” he said at a climate change conference in Moscow.
Although conditions for agriculture will improve in Russia, the improved output would only amount to 25 percent of what could be currently gained by increasing efficiency and upgrading infrastructure, the report said.
“Even countries that can benefit from climate change don’t have the resources,” said Rachel Bloc, one of the report’s authors. “The quality of the soil in northern territories is different, and there is no infrastructure there for farming,” she said.
Some government agencies appear to be taking the World Bank’s warning seriously.
The Emergency Situations Ministry is preparing a report for the government about measures needed to prepare for the negative consequences of climate change in the regions that are most vulnerable, said Igor Veselov, deputy head of the ministry’s department for international affairs. “We won’t be asking for money so much as for legislative measures,” he told The Moscow Times, adding that the documents will be sent to the government by the end of this year or the first part of next year.

TITLE: Central Bank Cuts Interest Rates to Battle Crisis
AUTHOR: By Paul Abelsky and Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank cut its key interest rates to record lows to boost lending, stem speculative inflows and help carry the commodity-reliant economy out of its worst slump since official records began more than a decade ago.
Bank Rossii lowered the refinancing rate to 9.5 percent from 10 percent and reduced the repurchase rate charged on central bank loans to 8.5 percent from 9 percent, effective from Friday. The bank has cut the rates eight times since April 24. It last lowered them by half a percentage point on Sept. 29.
The decision was made “with the aim of additionally stimulating lending activity of the banking sector,” Bank Rossii said in a statement. “Reducing the difference between short-term interest rates on the internal and external markets will” also “reduce the attractiveness of short-term investments in Russian assets and stop the accumulation of risk on the stock and currency markets.”
The benchmark Micex stock index has almost doubled this year, out-performing Brazil’s Bovespa bourse and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index, while the ruble was the fourth-best performing emerging market currency between February and October of 26 tracked by Bloomberg. Earlier rate cuts have been slow to filter through to bank lending rates, hampering domestic demand and leaving companies short of the credit needed to resume investment and hire workers.
Businesses in the world’s biggest energy producer still lack funds to rebuild inventories and recover from last year’s slump in raw material demand. The economy shrank a record 10.9 percent in the second quarter and contracted a further 9.4 percent in the three months ended September.
“Today’s cut will do little to ease the pain for households and firms,” Neil Shearing, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, said in an e-mailed note to investors. The central bank is likely to reverse the cuts if the oil price falls back to $50 a barrel next year, undermining the ruble, he said. “There is a good chance that the refinancing rate ends next year back in double-digit territory,” he said.
 The ruble maintained declines and was down 0.5 percent at 29.2924 against the dollar in Moscow on Thursday. It was little changed against the euro at 43.1796. Crude oil, Russia’s chief export, touched a one-year high of $82 a barrel on Oct. 21.
The current level of inflation and interest rates provides a “big opportunity” to cut rates further, Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of the central bank, said in Moscow on Oct. 21. The bank may lower rates below 9 percent in 2010, he added.
The cuts “so far have not led to an increase in lending by banks or a comparable reduction in the interest rates on loans,” Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin said during parliamentary hearings last week.
Russia is the only member of the four so-called BRIC nations still cutting rates. India last lowered its reverse repo and repo rates in April, China reduced its lending rate in December and Brazil hasn’t cut its overnight rate since July.
The government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expects the economy of the world’s biggest energy exporter to contract 6.8 percent in the second half and 8.5 percent in 2009 on average, after growth of 5.6 percent in 2008 and 8.1 percent the year before. Output will grow 1.6 percent next year and 3 percent in 2011, the government estimates.
Recovery prospects still hinge on Russia’s financial system and a resumption of lending growth. Credit flows have faltered even after the rate cuts as banks remain concerned that borrowers can’t service debt and as asset quality deteriorates. Overdue bank loans rose to 5.8 percent of total lending in August from 5.5 percent a month earlier. Average interest rates charged on corporate loans declined to 14.5 percent last month after growing to 15.1 percent in August.
“High risks and uncertainty” continue to stifle corporate lending, Putin said last week.
The severity of Russia’s economic decline has undercut demand and may bring the inflation rate this year below the government’s target for the second time in a decade. Consumer prices grew an annual 10.7 percent in September, compared with 15 percent the same month last year and failed to grow for a tenth week in the seven days through Oct. 26.
“The usual seasonal October acceleration in inflation may well be smoothed by consistent ruble strengthening in the foreign-currency market,” said Anton Nikitin, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Producer prices, budget spending and an increased money supply aren’t creating enough pressure to fuel inflation, he said. “These conditions remain favorable for loosening monetary policy as early as October.”
Consumer-price growth this year may be “a little more” than 8 percent, Putin said in St. Petersburg on Oct. 25. That would be the slowest annual average pace of inflation since records began after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

TITLE: Local Poll Respondents Say They Need $1,437 A Month
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To afford reasonable living standards Moscow residents require a monthly salary of 62,000 rubles ($2,122), while inhabitants of St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod need a monthly income of 42,000 rubles ($1,437), according to new research.
Experts at state insurance firm Rosgosstrakh’s Strategic Research Center (SRC) found that on average across Russia, 40,000 rubles would be needed to maintain a reasonable living standard, the Prime-Tass news agency reported. 
The lowest costs for reasonable living standards are to be found in Astrakhan, Kostroma and Penza, where as little as 25,000 rubles a month is sufficient, according to the SRC research.
The experts said that the average cost of reasonable living standards has fallen by 4.7 percent since Sept. 1.
“The drop in the figure considered a ‘decent’ income is probably the result of a fall in real estate prices in Russian cities,” said Alexei Zubets, head of SRC.
“Additionally, the crisis has also led to a fall in redundancy compensation,” Zubets said.
Respondents were happiest about their income levels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk, the SRC experts said. 
“The proportions of people who think that they’ll never achieve the income levels they desire are higher in the smaller towns — that’s a result of the booms in capital investment that have been characteristic in larger cities but have not reached those smaller towns,” Zubets said. 
Men aged 40 to 50 with a higher education are most likely to believe that they have achieved a reasonable standard of living, he said. 
Uneducated elderly women, however, are those most likely to believe that they will never achieve their desired level of income, Zubets said.

TITLE: Ecuador Seeks Russian Support for Infrastructure
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ecuador seeks Russian financial and technical support to overhaul its energy industry and for road-building and hydropower projects, President Rafael Correa said in Moscow on Thursday.
“In all these strategic projects Russia could offer enormous support thanks to its technological capacity and its capacity to provide financing,” Correa said during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev and Correa agreed Thursday to give a “new impulse” to cooperation in oil production, nuclear energy, agriculture and defense.
Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said that Inter RAO UES, Russia’s largest electricity exporter, seeks to build two hydropower plants of 200 megawatts and 400 megawatts in Ecuador.
Rosatom Corp., Russia’s nuclear energy holding company, will explore uranium and other natural resources in Ecuador under Thursday’s intergovernmental agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the company’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer Ivan Kamenskikh said in an interview.

TITLE: Go, Sovereign Democracy!
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: The Oct. 11 elections held in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions ended with an unusual emotional outburst after three opposition parties claimed that there were massive falsifications of the results. After the parties stormed out of the State Duma on Oct. 14, they demanded an urgent meeting with the guarantor of the Constitution — President Dmitry Medvedev. By doing so, they placed Medvedev in a difficult position, essentially forcing him to react in some form or another to the charges of widespread election fraud by the ruling United Russia party, headed by none other than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It is impossible to imagine that Medvedev could offer even the slightest support for the opposition’s complaints since that would represent a direct challenge to Putin and a terrible blow to their ruling tandem.
As for the elections, the general impression was that United Russia went way too far this time in exploiting its administrative resources. Internet testimonials as well as the independent print media were overflowing with eyewitness accounts detailing how election results were falsified at polling stations all across the country.
Since the ballot-counting is basically done by hand, there are three main methods to pad election results:
1. Early voting. This usually gives the ruling party an additional 5 percent of the vote. In the most flagrant cases, up to 20 percent of the voters in a given district vote can be gained by manipulating early voting and absentee ballots. And as a rule, independent election observers and opposition members have little control over this stage of the voting process.
2. The “carousel” method, generally carried out with the collusion of members of specific election commissions. Groups of people are bused from one district to another, given fresh ballots in each and thereby cast their votes repeatedly for the ruling party. It is difficult for observers to catch such violations because it would require manually checking every name on every passport presented against the list of local registered voters.
3. Ballot-box stuffing. This can be done at various stages of the voting process and even after the polling station has closed. It is theoretically possible for an observer to catch someone stuffing ballot boxes, but only if he keeps his eyes on them at all times. It is even more difficult to personally accompany each of the “mobile ballot boxes” that are taken off the premises to receive the ballots of housebound voters. The number of these mobile boxes can reach eight or nine per polling station, requiring an equal number of observers to monitor them all. The lower the voter turnout at any given district, the easier it is to manipulate the returns using ballot-box stuffing. For example, in the recent Moscow City Duma elections, many analysts calculated voter turnout at 20 percent to 24 percent, although the city election commission put the figure at 36 percent. In can be inferred that the “extra” votes went to United Russia.
In addition to these methods, some districts don’t even bother counting ballots at all. Instead, election officials simply write in the necessary percentage received by each party, as dictated by orders from above.
It is interesting to note that the Oct. 11 vote and the Oct. 14 protest in the Duma coincided with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Moscow. She met with representatives of opposition parties that do not hold seats in the Duma. But both during her visit and directly afterward, the U.S. administration was restrained in its criticism of election irregularities. The Russian mass media seized on a comment reported in Kommersant by U.S. President Barack Obama’s chief Russia adviser, Michael McFaul, that the White House would stop publicly criticizing Russia’s “sovereign democracy.”
Will this restraint serve as the foundation for Obama’s “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations? Many high-ranking members of the Obama administration believe that it would be better to focus less on Russia’s internal democracy and human rights issues and more on the most pressing global issues that the two countries can cooperate on, such as curtailing Iran’s nuclear program or working together on a joint missile defense program.
While the United States has apparently chosen a hands-off approach toward internal Russian affairs — at least for the time being — Russians also demonstrated their own version of a hands-off  policy after the recent elections. The overwhelming majority of Russians were highly apathetic about the allegations that the party in power trampled over their fundamental democratic rights to choose their own leaders.

Georgy Bovt is a co-founder of the Right Cause party.

TITLE: Zyazikov’s Endless Power Struggle
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Maksharip Aushev, one of the most influential people in Ingushetia, was gunned down near Nalchik on Sunday. He was murdered the day after he bitterly denounced former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov on “Nedelya,” the analytical news program on Ren-TV hosted by Marianna Maximovskaya.
I spoke with Yakhya Aushev, Maksharip’s father, the day that he was killed. Although he was cautious about assigning blame, he said it might be connected with the statements that his son had just made against Zyazikov on Ren-TV.
Maximovskaya supported this version. “I have the feeling that it was because of us,” she said. “In addition, Maksharip saved the lives of our film crew exactly 10 days ago.”
The “Nedelya” camera crew had been filming a report in Ingushetia about rampant corruption among bureaucrats and relatives in the former Zyazikov administration — in particular, the Zyazikov family mansions in his native village of Barsuki. When the journalists returned to their hotel, unidentified assailants tried to abduct them.
The driver of the film crew was beaten by none other than Ruslanbek Zyazikov, Murat Zyazikov’s cousin who served as head of the personal security detail for the former president of Ingushetia. While the driver was being beaten, the journalists quickly called Maksharip. He arrived at the scene, pulled out a Stechkin pistol and saved the journalists from Ruslanbek’s assault. Maksharip then shuttled the journalists off to close advisers to the current Ingush president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, to whom they gave testimony about the attack.
On the “Nedelya” program, Aushev said members of the Zyazikov clan paid insurgents to remain alive when they were in power. When Yevkurov replaced Zyazikov, insurgents tried to sabotage Yevkurov and his administration. As an example, he cited Ingush Construction Minister Ruslan Amerkhanov, a Yevkurov appointee. On Aug. 12, while Yevkurov lay in the hospital following an assassination attempt, assailants shot and killed Amerkhanov in his office because he refused to participate in corrupt business deals involving real estate projects.
Maksharip Aushev’s killing might very well be linked to the issue of whether to initiate criminal proceedings in Moscow against the Zyazikov administration for embezzlement of state funds. The Prosecutor General’s Office has been considering opening a criminal case for six weeks. The physical survival of the Zyazikov clan depends on whether those charges are filed.
While Yevkurov lay in the hospital with serious injuries after the assassination attempt, members of the Zyazikov clan tried to strike some sort of deal with Yevkurov’s ministers — with the exception of Amerkhanov. But as soon as Yevkurov returned to work, he dismissed the ministers and the deal fell through.
The murder of Aushev demonstrates that, apart from the obvious disagreement between Yevkurov and the insurgents over the question of creating a trans-Caucasus emirate, there is a less obvious but very deep split between Yevkurov and part of the Zyazikov clan.
The Aushev case is not one of those crimes where the motive and the perpetrator are known immediately. But his murder presents a huge challenge for Yevkurov. His ability to find the killers will prove whether he is really in control of Ingushetia.
And the answer to that question is a matter of life and death for Yevkurov — both politically and literally.

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

TITLE: Made in Britain
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new exhibition of British contemporary art is now on view at the Hermitage. Part of the museum’s 20/21 project, which aims to collect and display works of art by contemporary artists, the show heralds the second time that pieces from Charles Saatchi’s collection have been displayed at the museum.
Lacking any overarching concept, the exhibition is called “Newspeak” in reference to the language George Orwell invented for his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Defined by the author as “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year,” it is a rather inauspicious model with which to champion a new generation of British artists. It also seems especially chilling in a country like Russia, upon which, in part, Orwell modeled his dystopia. 
The stated theme of the show, as far as there is one, is rebellion against the status quo. Yet the real theme is equivocation. All of the artists are, according to the catalogue, making work in reaction to prevailing cultural values and authenticity. There is nothing new in that. And as much as the curators beg for the show to be read as a political statement, casting a portrait of singer Cher as Che Guevara as the show’s totemic image speaks more about the disappearance of politics in empty gesture. 
In true focus-group style, it’s all about packaging. It feels like “Newspeak” is just a hodge-podge of the collector’s recent purchases and that the curators, faced with Saatchi’s omnivorous collecting habits, simply scrambled to find a conceptual framework with which to justify the grouping. Which, truth be told, isn’t at all necessary. 
There is some first rate work on display and it would have been much better to have simply pointed the way and let the work speak for itself.  “Stuff I Like” would have been a more honest and, frankly, more challenging title. Instead, the viewer is confronted with overly complex, buzzword filled didactic texts on the walls of the gallery that are more obfuscating than illuminating. Misdirection and sleight of hand win the day.
Among the highlights, and there are many, are a riff on a Bacon portrait painted by Hurvin Anderson and a Barry Regate painting that is like Philip Guston, George Condo and Paul McCarthy bashed into a Cuisinart. Saatchi still has a keen eye for good, new painting. 
Sculpture is also well represented. Fergal Stapelton’s “And a Door Opened 3” is a nearly opaque black Perspex box that is mysterious, elegant and impenetrable. It looks the least like capital “A” art of anything in the show, except perhaps for littlewhitehead’s “It Happened in the Corner.” A life-sized group of wax figures dressed in all manner of street-gear huddles in a corner peering at something they conceal with their bodies. The work is so realistic and the posture so compelling that viewers join the back of the queue to try and get a peek at what’s going on.
Despite serious misgivings about value creation masquerading as something important and thoughtful, the collector and the museum deserve credit for bringing to light things which otherwise would probably have taken a lot longer to be recognized. And while “Newspeak” is strangely hollow as an exhibition, and a far cry from the exuberance and open-ended possibilities that “Sensation” pointed to, there are some extremely handsome and fascinating works that resonate beyond the confines of the narrow context into which they have been forced. 
As always, the best approach is to stroll in, have a look round and make up your own mind rather than taking too much notice of the white noise that supports and surrounds the exhibition. Patient looking is always rewarded, and the value of discovering something new for oneself is worth putting up with a bit of doublespeak.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: <strong>Tantsy</strong>, a new club near Sennaya Ploshchad, was to be a follow-up to Sochi, the bar with DJs and live concerts that closed in August, but has become more like a continuation of the more esteemed but also defunct club Platforma, according to Denis Rubin, who was art director at both venues.
Literally translated as “dances,” the club’s name actually means a “dance party” and was chosen as an “unpretentious, non-ambitious, common” word, Rubin said. He also pointed out the word’s “positivity,” on the one hand, and its cultural meaning on the other.
“It’s the first art form,” he said. “The first thing the primeval tribes did was to beat drums and dance.”
Tantsy will promote live dance styles such as hip-hop, funk, acid jazz and break beat, rather than techno and house. “We stress that people can dance at our club, and do so to good live music,” Rubin said.
“When we were building it, I thought it would be a certain continuation of Sochi — because the name Tantsy is closer to Sochi, ideologically.”
“But as soon as we opened it, I realized it resembled Platforma more closely, including the audience’s behavior, because if people went to Sochi to relax after a concert somewhere else, like they go to Datscha, then this place is an event-oriented venue — a lot of people come to events, but don’t come just to spend time.”
Like Platforma, Tantsy seems to be more of a “social” place than a place in which to get drunk to music like Sochi was, Rubin said.
After launching Tantsy two weeks ago, before renovation work was even complete, the concept was reconsidered. 
“We were planning to hold two concerts [a week] and fill the other nights with dance parties, but having realized it’s more like Platforma, we are arranging events for every night — not only musical, but film and literature events as well.”
Tantsy is located in an old building through a courtyard on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, between Sadovaya Ulitsa and the River Fontanka. 
“There was a huge space there, between little shops and offices, that was empty. I found it two years ago when Platforma closed, when we were looking for a new location for Platforma,” Rubin said.
Platforma’s failed to re-launch due to a lack of investors, he said.
Tantsy is owned by Rubin himself, along with former Datscha director and Sochi co-owner Ivan Dmitrevich and two other investors, who are from an IT background and are new to the club scene, he said.
The crisis has had a strange effect on the club scene, according to Rubin, who said many new places are opening now. 
“I wouldn’t say people go out less; maybe they buy fewer drinks and have got pickier about what events they attend,” Rubin said.
He said prices for drinks are comparable to Datscha or Fidel; “even a little cheaper.” A Vasileostrovskoye beer on tap costs 100 rubles, while a vodka or cheap cognac costs 80 rubles.

<em>— By Sergey Chernov</em>

TITLE: Inspirational voices
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mirja Ruonaniemi, a petite, agile Finnish woman of 83 with bright black eyes, does not look her age. Her memory still serves her well, too. “On one occasion, already many years after the [Second World] war, I was translating at a peace meeting held in a gym,” she remembers. “There were several translators, and we were sitting by the boxing rings. Then the interpreter next to me suddenly told me he knew who I was. He recognized my voice from the war days. It was so touching.”
From 1941 to 1944, Ruonaniemi broadcasted from Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, for Finnish audiences, fronting antifascist propaganda programs.
Ruonaniemi is one of the characters featured in a new documentary book that focuses on the city’s radio during the Siege of Leningrad, telling people’s stories. Authored by three professors of the journalism faculty of St. Petersburg State University — Vladimir Osinky, Tatyana Vasilyeva and Valentin Kovtun — “The Sound of Courage,” was published this fall by the Special Literature agency in St. Petersburg. 
“In the beginning we had to give all our texts to the censors for approval, but it was making the whole process so time-consuming that I was soon allowed to simply read out what I had written,” said Ruonaniemi.
The book reveals fascinating new facts about the editorial side of the operations of Leningrad Radio during the war years, while offering a captivating personal angle to the issue through the recollections of the characters.
“Food rations were scarce, and all the women around me could not bear to look at themselves in the mirror. ‘Everything is gone but the bones,’ they would say, and weep,” Ruonaniemi recalls. “Someone sent me a group photograph taken during the siege and published in a Leningrad newspaper but, strangely, when I looked at myself I felt I was not just bones.”
“The Sound of Courage” also touches on the importance of music in the broadcasting policies of Leningrad Radio. “Back during the siege, the words ‘music’ and ‘radio’ were inseparable for most citizens,” according to the book.
Striving to bring hope to Leningraders living without electricity and heating, the city authorities created The Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, which held its first rehearsal during the 1941-44 Siege of Leningrad on March 30, 1942 and performed regularly throughout the siege. At that time, the only sounds emanating from street-mounted loudspeakers were chilling air-raid warnings and subsequent all-clear signals.
By broadcasting the performances of the orchestra, the Leningrad authorities aimed to give people some emotional stimulation so that they could feel cared for.
The orchestra was greatly loved by the Leningraders, and the halls were always packed. During the darkest period of the siege, when people’s daily food ration dropped to 125 grams of bread, some would exchange their daily meal for a ticket to the concert.
Many Leningraders who didn’t have a radio at home would gather on the streets to listen to orchestral music coming from the loudspeakers. It was an opportunity to rise above physical weakness, fear and starvation.
“The Leningrad Radio broadcasted many marches; the sound of percussion and brass bands dominated the programs,” reads the book. “There were many songs, too, both patriotic and lyrical. It was not all about propaganda. From the very first days of the war, the presenters felt that apart from spirit-lifting marches and romances and lyrical songs to warm up their hearts, the soldiers needed a healthy dose of four-line politically charged satirical couplets to provide comic relief.”
“A bulldog bit Hitler on the leg,
Causing a great fuss in his castle.
Hitler scratched his leg a bit,
And the bulldog went mad and died,” goes one of the couplets.
Such a book could not be written without mention of the poet Olga Berggolts, the signature voice of radio during the siege.
“The radio has never meant nearly as much as it did in Leningrad during the siege,” Berggolts used to say, and her personal contribution was crucial to creating the atmosphere in the homes of Leningrad residents during the war. Many survivors of the siege recalled the voice of Berggolts reading her poetry, and said she helped them to stay alive and sane during the hardest moments. Berggolts’ recollections and her contemporaries’ memoirs appear throughout the book, making the figure of the legendary poet and journalist central to the story of radio during the siege. The book’s authors all attended the lectures of Berggolts while studying at the university, and their personal testimonies of their most admired professor add a valuable personal flair to the book.



By Galina Stolyarova
STAFF WRITER
Mirja Ruonaniemi, a petite, agile Finnish woman of 83 with bright black eyes, does not look her age. Her memory still serves her well, too. “On one occasion, already many years after the [Second World] war, I was translating at a peace meeting held in a gym,” she remembers. “There were several translators, and we were sitting by the boxing rings. Then the interpreter next to me suddenly told me he knew who I was. He recognized my voice from the war days. It was so touching.”
From 1941 to 1944, Ruonaniemi broadcasted from Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, for Finnish audiences, fronting antifascist propaganda programs.
Ruonaniemi is one of the characters featured in a new documentary book that focuses on the city’s radio during the Siege of Leningrad, telling people’s stories. Authored by three professors of the journalism faculty of St. Petersburg State University — Vladimir Osinky, Tatyana Vasilyeva and Valentin Kovtun — “The Sound of Courage,” was published this fall by the Special Literature agency in St. Petersburg. 
“In the beginning we had to give all our texts to the censors for approval, but it was making the whole process so time-consuming that I was soon allowed to simply read out what I had written,” said Ruonaniemi.
The book reveals fascinating new facts about the editorial side of the operations of Leningrad Radio during the war years, while offering a captivating personal angle to the issue through the recollections of the characters.
“Food rations were scarce, and all the women around me could not bear to look at themselves in the mirror. ‘Everything is gone but the bones,’ they would say, and weep,” Ruonaniemi recalls. “Someone sent me a group photograph taken during the siege and published in a Leningrad newspaper but, strangely, when I looked at myself I felt I was not just bones.”
“The Sound of Courage” also touches on the importance of music in the broadcasting policies of Leningrad Radio. “Back during the siege, the words ‘music’ and ‘radio’ were inseparable for most citizens,” according to the book.
Striving to bring hope to Leningraders living without electricity and heating, the city authorities created The Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, which held its first rehearsal during the 1941-44 Siege of Leningrad on March 30, 1942 and performed regularly throughout the siege. At that time, the only sounds emanating from street-mounted loudspeakers were chilling air-raid warnings and subsequent all-clear signals.
By broadcasting the performances of the orchestra, the Leningrad authorities aimed to give people some emotional stimulation so that they could feel cared for.
The orchestra was greatly loved by the Leningraders, and the halls were always packed. During the darkest period of the siege, when people’s daily food ration dropped to 125 grams of bread, some would exchange their daily meal for a ticket to the concert.
Many Leningraders who didn’t have a radio at home would gather on the streets to listen to orchestral music coming from the loudspeakers. It was an opportunity to rise above physical weakness, fear and starvation.
“The Leningrad Radio broadcasted many marches; the sound of percussion and brass bands dominated the programs,” reads the book. “There were many songs, too, both patriotic and lyrical. It was not all about propaganda. From the very first days of the war, the presenters felt that apart from spirit-lifting marches and romances and lyrical songs to warm up their hearts, the soldiers needed a healthy dose of four-line politically charged satirical couplets to provide comic relief.”
“A bulldog bit Hitler on the leg,
Causing a great fuss in his castle.
Hitler scratched his leg a bit,
And the bulldog went mad and died,” goes one of the couplets.
Such a book could not be written without mention of the poet Olga Berggolts, the signature voice of radio during the siege.
“The radio has never meant nearly as much as it did in Leningrad during the siege,” Berggolts used to say, and her personal contribution was crucial to creating the atmosphere in the homes of Leningrad residents during the war. Many survivors of the siege recalled the voice of Berggolts reading her poetry, and said she helped them to stay alive and sane during the hardest moments. Berggolts’ recollections and her contemporaries’ memoirs appear throughout the book, making the figure of the legendary poet and journalist central to the story of radio during the siege. The book’s authors all attended the lectures of Berggolts while studying at the university, and their personal testimonies of their most admired professor add a valuable personal flair to the book.

TITLE: Rules of the game
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian obsession with the film Fifth Element is an occasional topic of conversation among the expat community. Whether there is an official law that the film has to be shown on TV at least once a fortnight or whether the programmers simply consider it poor form not to is unclear, but its cult status in Russia is undeniable. It is a common theme at corporate events, and the opera-singing alien is a popular object of mimicry on Channel One’s appalling musical entertainment shows.
The latest addition to the culinary hub that is Ulitsa Rubinshteina — housed in the building in which the legendary pianist lived — at first glance appears to be a loving homage to Fifth Element. Its sci-fi design, featuring a futuristic, curvy bar and plastic S-shaped chairs, elicited comparisons with McDonalds from my companion. The walls, floor and ceiling of the relatively small establishment (it can seat 54) are all gray, while the table tops are silver, and laid with black goblets and serviettes. A narrow mirror runs at head height around the room, and identical plants in silver pots adorn the windowsills. Strange electronic music completed the cosmic feeling.
The strip lighting is not likely to appeal to many, but the scariest part is the wait staff, who appear to be dressed as characters from Fifth Element. Not only are they clad in silver boiler suits, some of them even had the same distinctive haircuts as two of the characters (the regularity with which the film is shown means most people living in Russia are intimately familiar with the film, whether they like it or not.) One wonders whether the staff at Pravila Povedeniya get a bonus for going to such measures.
A large TV screen showed a loop of extracts from cookery programs and several very diverse films, though not, mercifully, Fifth Element. It was unclear whether these were in some way illustrating the rules of behavior alluded to in the restaurant’s name. The paper placemats were a definite reflection of the name, depicting all shapes and sizes of glasses and various kitchen utensils imaginable, complete with labels — handy vocab practice for foreign diners.
The overall design and ambience had not really created great expectations for the food, so it was a pleasant shock to discover that Pravila Povedeniya  in fact offers excellent food at very reasonable prices, though the clues were there — the restaurant’s chef has previously worked at the Kempinski hotele and Moskva restaurant.
An assortment of five bruschetta (500 rubles, $17) comprised toppings of tomato and guacamole; salmon; tomato and Mozzarella, roasted red bell peppers and artichokes. All were crisp, fresh and full of flavor, and would make an excellent light accompaniment to a glass of wine.
Salad with rucola, spinach, avocado and tvorog (280 rubles, $9.50) was unusual and sublime. It could not have been fresher and the ingredients were beautifully proportioned to create a delicate balance. A huge bowl of piping hot onion soup (240 rubles, $8) was another hit. Full of stringy Swiss cheese, it would have made a substantial meal on its own.
After such successful starters, the main courses seemed doomed to disappoint, but once again, turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Homemade pasta with sheep’s cheese and vegetables (350 rubles, $12) sounded very simple but was in fact an excellent, highly aromatic dish with a flavor that was difficult to identify, but extremely agreeable. Beefsteak was truly excellent value at 350 rubles ($12) for a generous portion cooked to perfection — rare, as requested — and served with potatoes and a rich mushroom sauce.
Portions are deceptively large at Pravila Povedeniya, but the chocolate mousse (220 rubles, $7.50) on the menu proved too great a temptation to resist. Dark and firm, a la francaise, it was challengingly rich, and it was a testimony to the chef’s skill that it all eventually disappeared.
The interior design may be deemed “catastrophic,” depending on one’s taste, and the icy draught from the air conditioning was hardly welcome, but the food at Pravila Povedeniya is difficult to fault.

TITLE: UN Rethinks Role in Afghanistan After Attack
AUTHOR: By Todd Pitman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL — Traumatized UN staff in Afghanistan were under orders to stay home Thursday, one day after Taliban militants stormed a guest house in the capital and killed eight people in a brazen attack that is forcing the world body to re-evaluate its mission in the war-ravaged nation.
The attack underscored the risks facing UN and Afghan officials in organizing a runoff election following the fraud-marred first-round vote Aug. 20, and the massive challenge for the U.S.-led military force in curbing the determined Taliban insurgency. NATO said two members of its military operation in Afghanistan were killed in bomb blasts in the south Wednesday, including one American.
The guest house assault, which left five foreign UN staff and three Afghans dead, demonstrated the ease with which Taliban militants can penetrate the relative safety of Kabul. A Taliban spokesman said the attack was aimed at undermining the Nov. 7 presidential election runoff; the target was a small hotel home to the largest concentration of UN staffers working on the election.
UN spokesman Aleem Siddique said at least nine UN staff who survived the two-hour assault on the Bakhtar guest house will be evacuated to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday.
The UN has ordered its employees to remain “on lockdown,” with their movements restricted, Siddique said Thursday, declining to give details for security reasons. Another UN staffer said that meant most staff were staying home.
An internal UN memo ordered restrictions on movement for the rest of the week and said UN departments will be reviewing lists of critical and nonessential personnel, suggesting some people may be moved out of the country for their own safety.
Siddique, however, said “our work continues, and in terms of the elections, preparations are already well advanced. But the impact this will have needs to be evaluated over the coming days, and it’s too early to make any judgments.”
The Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, prompted the UN to pull out of Iraq for several years.
An umbrella group of more than 100 local and international aid agencies said aid organizations in Afghanistan “have been subject to increasing numbers of attacks, threats and intimidation by both insurgent and criminal groups.”
The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said attacks on aid groups are “higher now than in the last six years.” Wednesday’s violence brought to the number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan this year to at least 23, the group said. Fifteen more have been injured since the start of the year.
“This situation has forced many aid agencies to restrict the scale and scope of their development and humanitarian operations,” the group said. “Deteriorating security conditions continue to jeopardize the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance and threaten the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.”
The five UN staff killed Wednesday were from Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, the Philippines and the United States, Siddique said. The nine wounded suffered mostly cuts and bruises as they tried to escape, he said.
Afghan police and UN officials said two security guards and the brother-in-law of one of Afghanistan’s most powerful governors, Gul Agha Sherzai, were also killed, in addition to the three attackers.
The two-hour assault on the guest house began shortly before 6 a.m. when three gunmen wearing green uniforms and suicide vests broke into the three-story residential hotel. The crackle of gunfire echoed across the city and explosions set fire to the building, filling the lobby and the upper floors with smoke. Terrified UN workers scrambled over the roof or leapt from windows to escape.

TITLE: Clinton, Students 
In Heated Exchange
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAHORE, Pakistan – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Pakistan had little choice but to take a more aggressive approach to combating the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents that threaten to destabilize the country.
With the country reeling from Wednesday’s devastating bombing that killed at least 105 people in Peshawar, Clinton engaged in an intense give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore, insisting that inaction by the government would have ceded ground to terrorists.
“If you want to see your territory shrink, that’s your choice,” she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.
Dozens of students rushed to line up for the microphone when the session began. Their questions were not hostile, but showed a strong sense of doubt that the U.S. can be a reliable and trusted partner for Pakistan.
Clinton met with the students on the second day of a three-day visit to Pakistan, her first as secretary of state. The Peshawar bombing, set off in a market crowded with women and children, appeared timed to overshadow her arrival. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2007.
Clinton likened Pakistan’s situation — with Taliban forces taking over substantial swaths of land in the Swat valley and in areas along the Afghan border — to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border.
It would be unthinkable, she said, for the U.S. government to decide, “Let them have Washington (state)” first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centers of population and power on the East Coast.
Clinton was responding to a student who suggested that Washington was forcing Pakistan to use military force on its own territory. It was one of several questions from the students that raised doubts about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
During her hour-long appearance at the college, Clinton stressed that a key purpose of her three-day visit to Pakistan, which began Wednesday, was to reach out to ordinary Pakistanis and urge a better effort to bridge differences and improve mutual understanding.
“We are now at a point where we can chart a different course,” she said, referring to past differences over an absence of democracy in Pakistan and Pakistani association with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
As a way of repudiating past U.S. policies toward Pakistan, Clinton told the students “there is a huge difference” between the Obama administration’s approach and that of former President George W. Bush.
“I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him,” she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. “So, to me, it’s like daylight and dark.”
Although Clinton said she was making a priority of engaging frankly, she declined to talk about a subject that has stirred some of the strongest feelings of anti-Americanism here — U.S. drone aircraft attacks against targets on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.

TITLE: Iran Collaborates With West on Nuclear Deal
AUTHOR: By Nasser Karimi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Tehran will not give up its nuclear program although the West and Iran are now cooperating on the issue — remarks that appear to reinforce Iran’s support for the general outline of a UN-drafted nuclear deal.
The speech by Iran’s president came on the same day Iran has promised to deliver its decision on the UN pact, which seeks to ease Western worries about Tehran’s ability to produce a nuclear warhead.
Ahmadinejad’s speech suggested that Iran will stick by earlier comments that support the framework of the deal, but demand some changes. A key point is how quickly Iran is willing to send its stockpile of low-enriched uranium outside the country for further processing.
Ahmadinejad said the West has moved “from confrontation to interaction” with Iran over its uranium enrichment program, which he called an “inalienable right of the Iranian nation.”
“Today we reached a very important point,” Ahmadinejad said, speaking at a rally in the northeastern city of Mashhad. “Ground has been paved for nuclear cooperation” and Tehran is ready to now work on nuclear fuel supplies and technical know-how with the UN nuclear watchdog, Ahmadinejad added.
But he insisted his government “will not retreat even an iota” over the nation’s right to pursue a nuclear program — which the West fears masks a nuclear arms ambition.
Iran denies the charge and says the uranium enrichment program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, to make fuel.
Iran has promised to reveal on Thursday whether it accepts the UN plan, hammered out with world powers last week in Vienna, to ship out 70 percent of its enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment.
The Vienna-brokered plan requires Iran to send 2,420 pounds (1,100 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium — around 70 percent of its stockpile — to Russia in one batch by the end of the year. After further enrichment there, France would convert the uranium into fuel rods for return to Iran for use in a Tehran reactor that produces medical isotopes.
Western powers say it’s critical for Iran to send out 70 percent of its uranium store in one load to eliminate — at least temporarily — its options to make a nuclear weapon.
A significantly lower amount or gradual shipments by Iran could jeopardize a key part of the proposal, which was reached after talks last week that included the United States. About 1,000 kilograms is the commonly accepted amount of low-enriched uranium needed to produce weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear warhead.
Tehran signaled this week it wants significant changes in the UN deal and to be allowed either to buy the fuel for the Tehran reactor from abroad or to ship the material in small batches. That would not reduce fears about further enrichment to weapons-grade uranium because Iran would be able to quickly replace small amounts it sent out of the country with newly enriched material.
Ahmadinejad said the West had pushed for halting Iran’s nuclear program in the past but that now it is “ready for cooperation and participation on exchange of nuclear fuel and building power plants.”
The UN Security Council has slapped three sets of sanctions against Iran after the country refused to halt the uranium enrichment.
But the world now recognizes Iran’s nuclear right, Ahmadinejad claimed. “We welcome the West’s change in behavior,” he said, adding that Iran is ready to “shake any hand that is honestly extended toward us.”
Also Thursday, a team of UN nuclear inspectors returned to the agency’s headquarters in Vienna from a visit to a previously secret Iranian uranium enrichment site. It expressed satisfaction with the mission but details have not been revealed.
What the inspectors saw — and how freely they were allowed to work — will be key in deciding whether six world powers engaging Iran in efforts to reduce fears that it seeks to make nuclear weapons seek a new round of talks with Tehran.

TITLE: Zimbabwe Blocks Entry of  UN 
Torture Investigator
AUTHOR: By Donna Bryson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwean immigration officials barred the United Nations’ torture investigator from entering their country and returned him to South Africa on Thursday, an act he termed a “serious diplomatic incident” that reflects a split in the coalition government.
“There are certainly some parts of the government who do not want me to assess the current conditions of torture,” Manfred Nowak angrily told reporters in Johannesburg upon arrival from Zimbabwe.
Nowak said that he had a meeting scheduled with Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday at the start of his mission to investigate alleged attacks carried out on Tsvangirai supporters by militants linked to President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
Tsvangirai, a longtime opposition leader, joined the government with Mugabe in February, but withdrew temporarily from Cabinet earlier this month after accusing ZANU-PF of human rights violations.
Nowak called his treatment “alarming” evidence of the split in the southern African country’s coalition government.