SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1527 (89), Tuesday, November 17, 2009
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TITLE: Reputed Crime Boss Sentenced To 14 Years
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Reputed St. Petersburg crime boss Vladimir Barsukov was sentenced to 14 years in prison late last Thursday after being convicted of fraud and money laundering during a high-profile trial.
St. Petersburg’s Kuibyshevsky District Court, whose staff moved to the Moscow City Court for the trial out of fear for the safety of the participants, ruled that Barsukov and seven co-defendants were guilty of money laundering and organizing the illegal takeover of companies and property in St. Petersburg between July 2005 and June 2006.
Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Barsukov to 15 1/2 years in a maximum-security prison and to fine him 1 million rubles ($34,880).
The court on Thursday also ordered Barsukov to pay the 1 million ruble fine.
Barsukov, who has maintained his innocence, is believed to have led the powerful Tambov crime group in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. He was arrested at his country home outside St. Petersburg in August 2007 by dozens of OMON police officers who were brought from Moscow, while local law enforcement agencies were left in the dark to prevent information leaks.
The courtroom was packed with people Thursday. A dozen armed officers guarded the two defendants’ cages, while the onlookers included about 25 prosecutors who had pressed charges against Barsukov and his associates at various times and three dozen photographers, television cameramen and reporters.
The court handed down punishments ranging from five to 15 years in prison to the seven co-defendants: Vyacheslav Drokov, Pavel Tsyganok, Albert Starostin, Oleg Kumishche, Dmitry Malyshev, Valery Astashko and Alexander Baskakov.
“Barsukov and Drokov dealt with general questions and coordinated the activities of the criminal group,” Judge Yelena Gorbunova said in announcing the guilty verdicts.
She said Barsukov had pleaded not guilty, while Drokov had pleaded partially guilty to the charges.
Barsukov faces a second trial on charges of organizing murder and attempted murder in a separate criminal case.
Several foreign publications have speculated that Barsukov might have had ties to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, when Putin worked in the St. Petersburg city government. The reports said Barsukov was a board member of a Russian subsidiary of the German firm SPAG, where Putin once worked as a consultant. Barsukov has repeatedly denied any links with Putin, and Putin’s spokespeople have declined to comment about Putin’s ties to SPAG.
A native of Tambov, Barsukov, who changed his last name several years ago from Kumarin, is thought to have assembled the infamous Tambov gang with natives from his hometown in the 1990s.
The illegal takeover of companies and property is a bane of businesspeople in Russia. President Dmitry Medvedev called for tougher punishment against such raiders Nov. 5.
In October, Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin proposed introducing a new clause in the Criminal Code that would cover corporate raiding.
The Investigative Committee has opened more than 70 criminal cases into corporate raiding over the past two years and 12 cases were sent to court in the same period, Bastrykin said.
TITLE: Russia Dashes Iran’s Nuclear Reactor Hopes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow on Monday dashed Iranian hopes that a Russian-built nuclear reactor will be switched on this year, a blow to Tehran amid persistent tension over its nuclear program.
Officials in Russia and Iran had previously announced plans to switch on the reactor at the southern port of Bushehr this year, giving Iran its first operating nuclear power plant decades after construction started.
“We expect serious results by the end of the year, but the launch itself will not happen,” Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko as saying.
According to reports, Shmatko blamed the delay on technical issues, but analysts say Moscow has used the project to press Tehran to ease its defiance over its nuclear program.
Iran says the program is purely peaceful, while the U.S. and allies claim Tehran is working to develop nuclear weapons. Russia also says Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons, but it has close ties with Tehran and has used its position as a veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council member to water down Western-backed sanctions.
Shmatko’s remarks came a day after President Barack Obama pushed for continued pressure on Iran and its nuclear program. During talks with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Singapore Obama said that “time is running out” for Iran to sign on to a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Since September, Medvedev has suggested Russia could support further sanctions against Iran if it did not open its nuclear program to inspections to prove it was not trying to build a bomb. He spoke in similar terms Sunday, avoiding the word sanctions but saying “other options remain on the table” if Iran does not meet its obligations.
Shmatko said construction is proceeding as planned at Bushehr and that Russia “is certain that it will fulfill its commitments to Iran,” according to RIA Novosti.
But his remarks raised hackles in Iran, already angry over Russia’s foot-dragging on fulfilling a contract to provide surface-to-air missiles to Tehran.
TITLE: Green Victory as Nuclear Waste Shipments are Halted
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Environmentalists from the international pressure group Greenpeace are trumpeting their biggest success in years after German-Dutch company URENCO announced on Monday that it is ending the practice of sending spent nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing and storage.
Radioactive loads on board foreign ships had been arriving at the port of St. Petersburg every month for a decade to be sent by rail to factories in Siberia and the Urals.
Environmentalists feared that transporting such loads through the city presented a major threat to public health and environmental security.
In 1999, they failed in their attempts to have the importing of spent nuclear fuel from abroad into Russia banned.
In December 2000, the State Duma voted overwhelmingly to adopt the practice of importing irradiated fuel from other countries.
Supporters of the project then said that the money the business would raise would be used to develop Russia’s nuclear industry, as well as improve its safety record and help clean up contaminated areas.
Greenpeace and other pressure groups such as Ecodefence argued that the containers containing the waste were not completely leak-proof and the freight traveled across the country unguarded, while the drivers of the trains that carry the dangerous cargo were left in the dark about the radioactive content of the containers.
Russian authorities proved impossible to influence but pressure on the Dutch government was more effective and no more radioactive waste will be sent to Russia from the Netherlands or Germany.
Greenpeace volunteers from across Europe have been campaigning against this practice since the mid-1990s, when the Russian government inked its first contracts with a string of foreign companies to receive uranium hexafluoride and other radioactive material for reprocessing and storage.
“Those contracts were extremely profitable and beneficial for the foreign companies, and humiliating for Russia as it allowed foreign states to easily dispose of nuclear waste, which is extremely expensive to process and store,” explained Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace’s energy program in Russia. “At the same time, the Russian Atomic Agency was buying up the nukes at 0.6 cents per kilo, which is equivalent to the price of toilet paper. The market value of uranium hexafluoride was at the time around $200.”
Worse, most of the spent nuclear fuel that has been arriving in Russia for reprocessing was meant to be stored in the country as well. As a result of such deals, Russia has now accumulated around 120,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride, in addition to 700,000 tons of uranium that the country had already kept in storage.
German environmentalists say it cost German companies three times less to send irradiated leftovers to Russia than to reprocess them at home, and blame their home country for being immoral.
The practice of sending waste to other countries is unethical, they say, as every country that decides to use nuclear technologies has to be responsible for any costs and consequences involved. Burdening other countries with it and choosing one state as the world’s nuclear dumping ground, however difficult the circumstances of the state may be, is despicable, ecologists insist.
URENCO was not the only supplier of spent nuclear fuel to Russia.
French company EURODIF continues to send regular shipments with uranium hexafluoride. Russia’s contract with EURODIF expires in 2014, and Greenpeace is actively campaigning in the country.
In 2008, Russia also signed contracts with India, Pakistan and China to receive spent nuclear fuel and highly toxic uranium hexafluoride in addition to the regular shipments of radioactive cargoes from Western Europe.
“Our organization has recently organized a film screening of our new documentary devoted to this issue,” said Maria Musatova of Greenpeace. “The screening had the effect of a major explosion, and the French authorities have created a special commission aimed at investigating all the circumstances of the deal, including transparency and safety levels.”
Russian officials claim nuclear transportation is safe but the rosy picture drawn by the authorities clashes dramatically with reports by environmentalists.
In July 2006, members of the local branch of Greenpeace said they measured unsafe levels of radioactivity originating from six containers loaded on trains at Kapitolovo station on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Radioactive shipments always transit through this station, but the wagons were unguarded.
“This kind of transport would make a perfect gift for terrorists, both in the sense of accessibility to radioactive material and as a very vulnerable potential object for attack,” Dmitry Artamonov, head of the local Greenpeace branch, said at the time.
Two months earlier, members of the group found 37 rail containers marked “radioactive material” sitting on the tracks at Kapitolovo.
TITLE: Diploma Red Tape Adds to Visa Hassles
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev urged migration authorities to show more hospitality toward foreigners in his state-of-the-nation address last week, even as those same authorities start enforcing a diploma rule that affects most foreign professionals.
In his Thursday address, Medvedev mentioned visas when he spoke about the need to make working in Russia attractive in order to lure foreign researchers and businesspeople who can commercialize new inventions.
“They must be issued visas quickly and for a long period,” Medvedev said. “We are interested in them, not the other way around.”
In speaking about researchers, Medvedev said officials must simplify the rules for recognizing foreign diplomas.
But migration officials, who have demanded that foreigners supply their diplomas proving their qualifications in order to obtain work permits for the past decade, started in September to also require that the diplomas be submitted with an apostille, a stamp from the foreigner’s Foreign Ministry that certifies the diploma’s authenticity to a foreign government.
Foreign white-collar workers now have to go back to their native countries or otherwise arrange to obtain these stamps.
The Cabinet demanded the use of apostilles in a decree issued back in 2006, said Ksenia Bortnik, coordinator of the migration committee with the Association of European Businesses. Immigration authorities largely overlooked the rule until September, when they began tightening the screws on policy, apparently seeking to make more jobs available to Russians, she said.
Apostilles can take two to eight weeks to get, adding another headache to the cumbersome process of hiring qualified foreign staff for companies investing in Russia, said Lyudmila Shiryayeva, a senior human capital manager at Ernst & Young. “Any delay or new requirement may generate a catastrophe in this complicated process.”
Acquiring apostilles, which does not contradict international rules, also makes the process costlier, she said.
Problems include the fact that some specialists possess unique experience but have no diploma or have education certificates in lieu of diplomas, she said.
The Federal Migration Service required notarized copies of translated diplomas before the new requirement kicked in.
Alexei Filipenkov, a manager at Visa Delight, said the new rule came out of the blue, disrupting the plans of many large and small companies that his visa agency serves.
“Of course, everyone is unhappy because there wasn’t any advance notice,” he said. “Everyone is adapting now.”
He expressed doubt that Medvedev’s mention of visa and work permit difficulties would prompt eased rules for hiring qualified Western staff.
A spokesman for the migration service said it favored simplified rules and would like to see the government shift its policy in that direction.
“Our position is very simple: We are against hurdles and burdensome mechanisms, especially for qualified staff,” spokesman Konstantin Poltoranin said.
TITLE: Medvedev Makes Soothing Speech at APEC Summit
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the world community Saturday with a call for cooperation and coordination in handling the pullout from economic stimulus measures, but he took a wait-and-see approach on specifics.
Speaking in Singapore at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Medvedev largely echoed comments from his Thursday state-of-the-nation address and an article that he published the following day in The Economist.
But the speech was noteworthy for its lack of criticism of the United States, which has been a constant subtext of his economic addresses since last year. The address also came a day before bilateral talks with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
“It’s early to talk about the recovery of the world economy. Most likely, it’s still adapting to the new conditions,” Medvedev said in his address to APEC delegates, according to a transcript on the Kremlin web site. “So what comes next? If we’re going to be entirely open about it — despite the enormous number of forecasts, research papers and expert predictions — no one knows for sure.”
He said countries must coordinate their exits from anti-crisis measures to avoid “premature or late actions,” agreeing with other APEC leaders that stimulus programs should be folded only when the world recovery becomes steady.
“We only need to define the period [when this should be done], and this will probably be the most difficult thing to do,” he said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government has injected an estimated 2.5 trillion rubles ($86.6 billion) in fiscal stimulus to soften the impact of the global recession on Russia’s commodity-reliant economy. At a Group of 20 summit in Scotland earlier this month, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said it was time to start discussing a winding down of the bailout measures, but he also refrained from setting specific timelines.
TITLE: Tower Opponents Wrap It in Ribbons
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Preservationist groups Living City and ECOM Center of Expertise launched a campaign against the planned 403-meter-tall Gazprom Tower, officially known as Okhta Center, with an event featuring artist Dmitry Shagin and rock musician Vladimir Rekshan on Saturday.
Called Blue Ribbon, the campaign included distributing blue ribbons for locals and visitors to wear, symbolizing the clear sky endangered by the project, as well as distributing flyers informing them about the issue.
In an outdoor theatrical performance on Saturday, an activist dressed in costume resembling the tower was symbolically wrapped up in blue ribbons by participants of the event.
“The Blue Ribbon Campaign is oriented at citizens who care about preserving St. Petersburg’s cultural heritage, to help them identify each other and demonstrate [visually] that the struggle goes on,” Living City activist Pyotr Zabirokhin said by phone on Monday.
“Blue ribbons are easy to get, anybody can get one, and we’re hoping for a chain reaction. The campaign will grow spontaneously, under its own impetus.”
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko signed a decree exempting the Okhta Center from the city’s height restriction law last month.
TITLE: Opposition Leader Limonov Put in Jail
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eduard Limonov, a leading Russian author and oppositional politician, was sentenced to 10 days in custody by a court in Moscow on Thursday. He was found guilty of violating the rules for organizing a rally and disobeying a police officer’s orders.
According to his supporters, Limonov called upon citizens to come to Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow on Oct. 31 to protest against the Russian authorities’ restriction of the constitutional right of assembly by refusing to authorize oppositional events. Limonov had specifically warned them not to bring posters or shout slogans.
“He had only just reached the square when he was detained, he didn’t have time to violate anything,” Limonov’s publicist Alexander Averin said by phone from Moscow on Monday.
“He didn’t fail to obey a police officer, he was grabbed, pushed onto the asphalt and shoved into a bus.”
Limonov is the leader of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which formed the pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia with chess champion and opposition politician Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF) in 2006, and since late 2006 has been a major force in Dissenters’ Marches, the opposition protests that have taken place in several Russian cities.
A massive police presence has been sent to put down such rallies, with officers often beating protesters and chance passers-by. The NBP was banned by a court in 2007 as “extremist” under the 2006 Law on Extremism.
Limonov, 66, is an author and poet who has published more than 40 books since “It’s Me Eddie,” the groundbreaking “punk” debut novel that he wrote as an emigre in New York in 1976. A long-time political opponent of the Kremlin, he was sentenced to four years in jail on firearms acquisition charges in 2001, but was paroled half way through his sentence in 2003.
Earlier this year, Limonov announced he would run for the Russian presidency in 2012. The Oct. 31 protest was part of his Strategy 31 campaign to demand that the authorities abide by Article 31 of the Russian Constitution that guarantees the right of assembly.
According to Limonov’s plan, protesters should go to Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow on the last day of months that have 31 days. The first Strategy 31 event was held on July 31, the next is due on Dec. 31. The campaign has been supported by people including human rights activist and veteran of the Soviet dissident movement Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who has taken part in the protests.
Despite the protests’ peaceful nature, they have been violently thwarted by OMON special forces police and dozens have been arrested.
According to Limonov’s supporters, last Thursday’s imprisonment was not entirely unexpected.
“We expected something like this from the vigor with which the police acted, but we didn’t expect it would be a full 10 days,” Averin said.
“In any case, Limonov went to court with a toothbrush.”
Limonov is expected to be released on Sunday.
TITLE: Corpse Sold to Kebab Stand in Perm
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other pieces of the corpse to a kebab kiosk in the Russian city of Perm, Reuters reported.
Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of Perm, the Perm branch of the Investigative Committee said in a statement, the news agency reported.
Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon the man with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, investigators said on their web site, Susk.perm.ru.
“After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies,” the statement said Friday, Reuters reported. It was unclear if any of the corpse had been sold to customers.
TITLE: High-Speed Train Tickets Cause Confusion
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tickets for a new high-speed train between Moscow and St. Petersburg failed to go on sale on Monday and the delay was put down to a misunderstanding.
A ticket seller at the Moskovsky Vokzal station in St. Petersburg told The St. Petersburg Times that tickets for the new trains were not available Monday and that the service has not yet been included in the timetable.
Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin held a press conference about the new service on Saturday.
But a spokesman for Russian Railways in St. Petersburg contacted on Monday explained the mix up.
“We said that the sales will start at the beginning of this week, but the exact date would be publicized later,” media relations head Yulia Mineyeva said, adding that she couldn't yet name this date.
The maiden trip of the regular high-speed Sapsan line is expected to take place on Dec. 11.
Tickets reportedly cost from 2,400 rubles ($84) for budget-class tickets to 6,700 rubles ($234) for business class. The new train is said to have a maximum speed of 250 km per hour and cut the journey time to Moscow down to 3 1/2 hours.
A previous high-speed train between the two capitals covered the distance in 4 1/2 hours. It ran from 1984 to Feb. 28 this year.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Caviar Case Ends in Fine
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local opposition politician Olga Kurnosova will appeal the decision of an Astrakhan court, which fined her for handling illegal goods on Wednesday, she said by phone on Monday.
Kurnosova, the leader of the local branch of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF), described the trial itself as “illegal.” She was searched on a train from Astrakhan in what some say resembled a targeted raid and detained for having a can of caviar, which the police said could have been produced illegally.
“The whole prosecution was built on the presumption that not having a sales receipt means the goods were illegal. The lack of presumption of innocence and the violation of the law of criminal procedure is undoubted,” Kurnosova said.
Kurnosova was given a 5,000-ruble ($174) fine, although the offense can be punished by up to two-years imprisonment. The prosecutor asked for a 10,000-ruble fine.
Kurnosova, who had to pay several visits to Astrakhan, a city on Volga more than 2,000 km south-east from St. Petersburg, in connection with the investigation and trial, said the case was a set-up to complicate her political activities.
“For the past year I have not been allowed to travel around the country freely, I had to authorize my every move with the investigator,” she said.
Bomb Hoax on Metro
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A fake bomb was found in St. Petersburg’s underground metro system on Saturday, Fontanka.ru reported.
The object was discovered in a metro train when it reached Parnas station at the end of Line 2 (the blue line) at 3.30 p.m. and the station was closed for two hours while appropriate checks were made. Bomb disposal officers later removed the hoax bomb.
The Interior Ministry was quoted as saying that the object consisted of plasticine wrapped in plastic with a clock and some wires attached to it. A swastika was drawn on the plastic bag in which the object had been placed.
Parents in Heroin Raid
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A married couple suspected of forcing their children to sell heroin for them were arrested on Thursday, Olga Barashkina of the Internal Affairs Department was quoted by Life News as saying.
Barashkina said the police had been following the case for some time before they mounted a raid on the home of the children.
When a special purpose police unit broke into the suspects’ apartment, the couple was caught apparently trying to destroy evidence and the floor was reportedly covered with white powder.
Anti-Jobless Campaign
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg’s Labor Committee has begun a campaign against unemployment, Fontanka.ru has reported.
The campaign will include the production of 30 films costing more than 3.2 million rubles ($123,000) promoting occupations in demand on the local labor market such as smiths, embroiderers, watchmakers and train conductors.
Other aspects of the 10-million ruble ($350,000) campaign will be two programs about the labor market for television and a jobs fair.
TITLE: 2 Killed by Arms Depot Blast
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Huge explosions and flames ripped through an Ulyanovsk military arsenal for hours, killing two firefighters and sending personnel fleeing to a bomb shelter to wait out the worst of the firestorm, officials said.
The dozens who took refuge in the shelter Friday were at first feared trapped in the conflagration, but later emerged safe — dispelling initial worries of a high death toll.
State television broadcast footage of orange flames and thick smoke clouds rising from the naval munitions facility in Ulyanovsk, a city 720 kilometers east of Moscow.
Frequent explosions set off fire bursts high in the night sky. The blasts broke apartment buildings’ windows near the facility and set off car alarms kilometers away, residents said.
“There was a loud bang, then there was silence and then explosions, explosions, explosions — like fireworks on New Year’s,” resident Igor Komandin told Channel One television.
The blasts and blaze erupted while ammunition was being destroyed at the facility, the local branch of the Federal Security Service said. Artillery shells and other munitions were stored at the site, Channel One reported.
Two firefighters were killed and seven military personnel were injured, Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said.
Some 3,000 civilians were evacuated from nearby homes, Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov said.
Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed concern about the blasts. Medvedev, on a visit to Singapore for an APEC summit, directed the military and emergency services to take “all the necessary measures” to deal with the emergency, the Kremlin said. Putin issued similar instructions, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Hours after the blasts and fire began, Morozov said more than 40 workers were safe. “These are precisely the people considered to be missing,” Morozov told Channel One by telephone. He had said earlier that 35 people were missing.
The 43 military personnel who took refuge in the bomb shelter emerged with the help of rescuers after firefighters “partially localized” the blaze, the provincial government said on its web site.
Several explosions and fires have occurred at munitions-storage facilities in the former Soviet Union in recent years. There has been no indication of terrorism in the conflagrations.
Artillery shells and other ammunition at a storage facility west of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, exploded when a forest fire got too close in August last year, and a fire and explosions at a munitions depot in southern Ukraine in 2004 killed five people. It took days to put the blaze out.
A fire at a Soviet-era military base in Kagan, Uzbekistan, spread to an ammunitions depot in July 2008, igniting a series of explosions that killed three people and injured 21 others.
TITLE: Diary of Ukraine Famine Displayed for First Time
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin’s murderous famine in Ukraine were put on public display for the first time Friday.
Journalist Gareth Jones sneaked into Ukraine in March 1933, at the height of a famine engineered by Josef Stalin. Millions of people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock as part of a campaign to force peasants into collective farms. Jones’ reporting was one of the first attempts to bring the disaster to the world’s attention.
“Famine Grips Russia — Millions Dying,” read the front page of the New York Evening Post on March 29, 1933. “Famine on a colossal scale, impending death of millions from hunger, murderous terror … this is the summary of Mr. Jones’ firsthand observations,” the paper said.
As starvation and cannibalism spread across Ukraine, Soviet authorities exported more than a million tons of grain to the West, using the money to build factories and arm its military. Historians say 4 million to 5 million Ukrainians perished.
Walking from village to village, Jones recorded conversations with desperate people scrambling for food, scribbling brief interviews with them in pencil on lined notebooks.
“They all had the same story: ‘There is no bread — we haven’t had bread for two months — a lot are dying,”’ Jones wrote in one entry.
“We are the living dead,” he quoted a peasant as saying.
Jones’ eyewitness account had little effect on world opinion at the time. Stalin’s regime tightly controlled the flow of information out of the Soviet Union, and many Moscow-based foreign correspondents — some of whom had pro-Soviet sympathies — refused to believe Jones’ reporting.
The New York Times’ Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, dismissed Jones’ article as a scare story. Other correspondents chimed in with public denials, and with his colleagues against him, Jones was discredited.
Eugene Lyons, a U.S. wire agency reporter who gradually went from Communist sympathizer to fierce critic of the Soviet regime, admitted the role that fellow journalists had played in trying to destroy Jones’ career in 1937. But his admission came too late for Jones, who was killed by bandits in 1935 while covering Japan’s expansion into China in the run-up to World War II. The full circumstances of his death remain murky.
Jones’ diaries are on show at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he was a student, until mid-December.
TITLE: Obama, Medvedev Declare Arms Treaty Talks a Success
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SINGAPORE — President Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States and Russia would have a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear arms ready for approval by year’s end.
Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation to announce good progress in negotiations on an updated pact to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expires Dec. 5.
Sitting, gesturing and leaning toward Medvedev, Obama said the pair discussed a successor to the treaty and described “excellent progress over the last several months.”
“I’m confident that if we work hard and with a sense of urgency, we’ll be able to get that done,” Obama said, adding that technical issues remain.
Medvedev said he hoped that negotiators would “finalize the text of the document by December.”
Obama and Medvedev agreed in April to reach a new nuclear arms reduction pact to replace and expand upon the one that was signed by former President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During a July summit in Moscow, Obama and Medvedev further agreed to cut the number of nuclear warheads that each nation possesses to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.
U.S. officials say the two nations have agreed on the broad outlines of a new treaty, which could be signed during Obama’s travels to Europe in early December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama also pushed on Sunday for continued pressure on Iran and its nuclear program. Appearing with Medvedev, Obama said, “We are now running out of time.” “Unfortunately, so far it appears Iran has been unable to say yes” to the proposal on uranium reprocessing, Obama said.
Medvedev continued: “We are prepared to work further, and I hope our joint work will reach a positive result. In case we fail, other options remain on the table.” He has said further sanctions against Iran were possible if it did not open its nuclear program to inspections to prove that it was not trying to build a bomb.
The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — along with Germany have engaged Iran on its nuclear program, most recently with a deal for it to ship enriched uranium to Russia for further processing as fuel for an aging reactor used for medical treatments.
TITLE: Officer Accused of Throwing 8-Year-Olds Out Window
PUBLISHER: The Moscow Times
TEXT: A military officer arrested on Friday on suspicion of throwing the 8-year-old twin daughters of his common-law wife out of an eighth-floor window said their mother had committed the act.
The girls, Dasha and Katya Lapuzina, survived the fall and have been hospitalized.
Captain-Lieutenant Nikolai Zakharkin, 31, said before a court hearing that he had learned about the fall from the girls’ mother, Irina Lapuzina, 27.
“I was asleep when she came to me and asked me to look out the window. The children were already there,” Zakharkin said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Investigators said Zakharkin sent Lapuzina a text message early Thursday morning saying, “You can say goodbye to Dasha and Katya,” when she didn’t return to their Moscow apartment and he suspected her of infidelity. He was intoxicated when police detained him.
The girls only survived because trees broke their fall from the apartment window and they landed on wet earth, not pavement, news reports said. Dasha was in intensive care with five broken ribs and a torn liver Sunday, while Katya suffered a ruptured spleen and had regained consciousness. Katya was asleep when she fell out of the window.
The Moscow District Military Court ordered Zakharkin’s arrest Friday.
TITLE: Chechen Rebel Leader Could Be Among 20 Militants Killed by Government Forces
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON — Government forces killed more than 20 militants in Chechnya on Friday, law enforcement authorities said.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said it was possible that Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov was among those killed in the fighting in the province’s southern mountains. Kadyrov said one of the dead was identified as a comrade who has often been at Umarov’s side, according to his office, but he cited no other evidence and said forensics experts would seek to identify other victims.
In Dagestan, a bomb blast at a village cemetery killed three civilians — the widow, sister and daughter of a police officer who was among the victims of nearly daily attacks on law enforcement authorities in the province, regional Interior Ministry spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said. The attack appeared to be the work of militants, he said.
TITLE: International Flights Resume From Chechnya
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechnya began its first international flights in 15 years on Monday, sending off a plane filled with Muslims on the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
The Boeing 757 carrying more than 200 pilgrims took off from Grozny International Airport on Monday, according to the Chechen government’s web site.
“Today’s event is a great success for our people,” said Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who saw off the 3 a.m. flight. More international destinations will be added soon, he said.
The Chechen capital Grozny was leveled during two wars against the federal government in Moscow, and domestic flights resumed only in 2007.
Kadyrov, backed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has rebuilt the city while wiping out resistance in a campaign criticized by human-rights groups.
Kadyrov has promoted a religious revival in traditionally Muslim Chechnya in an attempt to undermine the appeal of rebels vowing to establish an Islamic caliphate across the North Caucasus region.
TITLE: Putin Joins Hip-Hop Acts to Promote Healthy Life
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he thought that hip-hop could be a cure for alcohol and drug abuse and praised the country’s rappers for refining an otherwise alien culture by putting “Russian charm” into it.
Putin spoke during his first appearance on a hip-hop show, where he rubbed shoulders with performers in a subculture long associated with alcohol, drugs and violence.
“I do not think that the ‘top-rock’ or ‘floor-rock’ break dance technique is compatible with alcohol or drugs,” Putin said, speaking of problems that are rampant among the country’s youth.
He said “although rap is kind of rough, it has a social message dealing with problems of the young” and that graffiti had already become real art, “fine and elegant.”
Putin also said while phenomena like rap and break dancing showed their foreign origins by having English names, such an influx from abroad was unstoppable.
“Not everybody likes this, but we live in a peculiar time characterized by the penetration of cultures and customs. In politics and economics, we call that globalization,” he told the cheering crowd of hip-hop fans on “Fight for Respect,” which aired Friday night on Muz-TV.
Dressed in a white turtleneck sweater and a gray zipper jacket, Putin was quick to add why he has decided to embrace hip-hop on a national level. “I must admit that those young people who study this art in our country also inject their Russian charm into it,” he said.
And by using a variation of the Stalinist media policy “national in form, socialist in content,” Putin explained that any act, “regardless of national origin and name,” deserved attention “if it is talented in form and creative in content.”
Putin said he would like to see a global trend like hip-hop come from “Russian soil,” telling the laughing crowd that break dancing, hip-hop and graffiti were perhaps more entertaining than his country’s typical combination of “vodka, caviar and nesting dolls.”
Putin won lavish praise from the hip-hoppers, even though he often looked uncomfortably detached, standing in front of a dancing crowd, clapping his hands and not moving his body.
“It would be cool to write a track with him,” St. Petersburg rapper Roma Zhigan, one of the contest’s winners, sang in his thank you rap. “He is such a legendary man, he is our idol! Thanks to Muz-TV, thanks to the government of the Russian Federation.”
Hip-hop artists and their fans are not so closely associated to alcohol, drugs and violence in Russia as they are in the West, where several studies have found direct links between music and behavior. For example, a 2006 study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol found that young people are more likely to use alcohol and drugs and to behave in an aggressive manner if they listened to hip-hop.
But Russian rappers also have died from drug abuse. Zhigan, in his rap, offered a tribute to those rappers that included the line, “[They] passed away because of this s---.”
Putin took to the stage for a second time shortly before the end of the 20-minute show to respond to the tribute, and he struggled not to repeat the expletive.
When someone from the audience promptly shouted the singer’s proper quote, Putin dashed with the microphone to the corner of the stage, asking what had been said, “What did you say? Say it again!” When he got no reply, he said to the delight of the roaring crowd, “Because of s--- he said! Well right!”
Putin said performers who became addicts always saw their lives end in “degradation and tragedy.”
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the show was taped Wednesday.
He denied a media report that it had been staged just to promote the prime minister’s ratings, explaining that he had accepted an invitation from the all-music television channel.
“The sole intention was to promote healthier lifestyle among young people,” Peskov told The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday.
Kommersant had called Putin’s decision to appear on “Fight for Respect” a “desperate step” motivated by his sagging ratings.
Putin’s approval ratings suffered a sharp fall last month, dropping 6 percentage points to 66 percent on Oct. 24 and 25, according to the pollster Public Opinion Foundation.
Founded in 1996, Muz-TV is part of the media holding of Uzbek-born metals magnate Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov also owns Kommersant.
TITLE: More Police Make YouTube Appeals
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former Komi prosecutor has made a YouTube appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev over “fabricated” charges that resulted in two people getting life sentences in July, joining a growing group of law enforcement officials responding to Novorossiisk police Major Alexei Dymovsky’s videotaped appeal to denounce corruption.
Grigory Chekalin, a former deputy prosecutor for the Komi republic, posted his appeal to Medvedev on Thursday, asking him to investigate “fabricated” charges against two young men who were convicted of burning down a local shopping center.
Chekalin told The St. Petersburg Times that his appeal had already angered local authorities and that he had temporarily moved to Moscow after former colleagues told him that the Komi prosecutor’s office was considering opening a criminal case against him on charges of abuse of power.
“They have one goal: to keep me silent,” Chekalin said by cell phone.
“Interior Ministry officers or prosecutors could plant drugs or weapons on me in order to open a criminal case,” he added.
A spokeswoman for the Komi prosecutor’s office, Natalya Sekhlyan, said her office was examining Chekalin’s claims about the false charges. She had no immediate information late Friday afternoon on whether a criminal case might be opened against Chekalin.
Chekalin made his YouTube appeal to support another YouTube video posted by former Komi police officer Mikhail Yevseyev on Wednesday. Yevseyev also called the arson charges false.
Komi’s top police official, Vladimir Yeremchenko, said in a statement provided to The St. Petersburg Times on Friday that the police force would look into Yevseyev’s claims.
Meanwhile, a former Moscow traffic policeman, Vadim Smirnov, posted an appeal on YouTube on Wednesday to Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev, asking him to investigate work violations.
Smirnov said officers worked for up to 70 hours per week, instead of the legally authorized 40 hours, which hurt the quality of their work and resulted in poor safety conditions on the roads.
Smirnov said by phone Friday that he had refused to work extra hours and was fired this year.
He said he appealed his dismissal in Moscow’s Tagansky District Court, which ruled Friday not to reinstate him.
Police spokeswoman Yelena Perfilova said her superiors were examining Smirnov’s claims.
The videos were posted after Dymovsky created waves earlier this month by posting an appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in two videos on his personal web site, complaining of bad working conditions and being ordered to arrest innocent people. The videos were later reposted on YouTube, where they were viewed nearly a million times in less than a week, and quickly spread around the Russian blogosphere.
At a Moscow news conference last Tuesday, Dymovsky urged police officers nationwide to speak out about corruption and abuse of power.
A senior Sverdlovsk region police official, Tatyana Domracheva, did so Friday, complaining to prosecutors that the lease of part of the regional police headquarters to a private firm was illegal, Yekaterinburg News reported on its web site, Eburgnews.ru.
Domracheva discovered the nine-month lease a year ago, but when she reported it to her superiors, they started threatening to fire her, Domracheva told Eburgnews.ru.
Repeated calls to Sverdlovsk region police, regional prosecutors and the regional branch of the Investigative Committee went unanswered Friday.
TITLE: Supreme Court Sets Free Detained Drug Buster
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alexander Bulbov, a senior Federal Drug Control Service officer detained for more than two years in a case believed to be linked to a government power struggle, said he would return to work Monday after being freed from custody.
Bulbov walked out of Moscow’s Lefortovo jail late Friday following a Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that threw out a lower court decision to keep him in jail.
“On Monday, I will go to work,” Bulbov told reporters outside the jail, standing with his wife and son and carrying a cluster of plastic bags, Interfax reported.
He thanked his supporters for their “courage and patience.”
A law enforcement source told Interfax on Saturday that Bulbov had not been fired from the Federal Drug Control Service, even though he had been relieved of his post after being detained Oct. 1, 2007, on suspicion of paying $50,000 per month to an Interior Ministry official to tap the telephones of powerful businessmen, senators and prominent journalists.
The Investigative Committee, which is spearheading the case against Bulbov, confirmed that it was pursuing 35 counts against him, including illegal wiretapping, abuse of office, money laundering and extortion. If convicted, Bulbov could face up to 10 years in prison.
Bulbov and two other drug enforcement officers were arrested at Domodedovo Airport after returning from a trip abroad. Bulbov has called the arrests — conducted by the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service, or FSB — revenge by the FSB for his investigation into Tri Kita, a Moscow furniture store accused of evading several million dollars in import duties and smuggling Chinese goods through FSB storage facilities.
The Federal Drug Control Service had an active role in the Tri Kita investigation, which led to the ouster of several high-ranking officials in the FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The Bulbov case is widely seen as blatant manifestations of a power struggle between Kremlin clans that plagued the final months of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.
TITLE: Speech Scarce on Specific Plans
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev laid out few specific plans to modernize the country in his state-of-the-nation address Thursday, but sometimes offered goals that stretch far beyond his current term.
The longer-term goals included creating a local version of Silicon Valley, upgrading domestic industry to make affordable, high-quality goods for mass consumption and trimming Russia’s number of time zones.
“It’s a claim for re-election,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, a think tank. “He is demonstrating readiness to continue working on these issues, apparently as president.”
Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin say they rule the country in tandem. Putin, who sat rigidly in the front row during the speech, has said the two will decide later which of them will run in the next presidential election, in 2012.
Judging from the prime minister’s mannerisms, he was not too enthusiastic about the speech. State television showed Putin sitting in the front row of the Kremlin’s ornate St. George Hall, frequently raising his eyebrows and looking toward the ceiling.
Yevgeny Volk, a Moscow analyst with Heritage Foundation, a U.S. think tank, disagreed with the idea that Medvedev’s speech was a sign of his presidential ambitions, even though it set strategic goals.
“It’s a natural desire to demonstrate his authority,” Volk said.
As expected, the 100-minute speech was largely an expanded version of Medvedev’s article “Go, Russia!” which he published in September with an invitation for comments and suggestions.
Medvedev several times quoted responses that he received after the publication. One of them — posted on his LiveJournal blog from a resident of the Moscow region city of Serpukhov — backed the idea of electronically automating more state services to cut down on corruption, he said.
By citing these responses, Medvedev apparently sought to show that he attaches great importance to these online discussions, Makarkin said.
“He’s demonstrating that he’s interested in a dialogue with society,” Makarkin said. “This may give a new stimulus to this dialogue.”
Quite unexpectedly, Medvedev weighed in on a discussion about reducing Russia’s time zones from 11 to make cross-country communication easier. He ordered the government to evaluate the effect of a potential reduction and to study the usefulness of daylight savings time.
Arkady Dvorkovich, the Kremlin’s economic aide, said taking out one hour in the 11 time zones could be useful for the economy. “We are not talking about more abrupt moves,” he told reporters after the speech.
People in the regions may be asked to vote in a referendum on any time changes, he said.
Some observers were left baffled by the mention of such a trivial topic in the address.
“This was the single revolutionary idea that shocked me — that cutting the number of time zones is now part of the national strategy,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Will we or the Far East soon get up at 8 in the evening?”
On other issues, Medvedev said the key economic areas in need of upgrade are the medical and nuclear power industries, energy efficiency, communications and information technology. He criticized “primitive” reliance on commodity exports.
Current elites are likely to resist any changes that would wean the economy off oil and gas revenues, Makarkin said.
“Elites are generally content with the current situation,” he said.
Elites would fear a redistribution of political power and state finances, which will be a likely result of the modernization drive, Volk said.
Medvedev appears to be counting on youth, scientists and business people for support, Makarkin said.
A lot depends on Putin’s backing, he added. Putin will likely mention his views about the address at United Russia’s congress in St. Petersburg on Nov. 21, Makarkin said.
“Without Putin’s support, all this will be a mere declaration of intentions,” Makarkin said. “The real leverage belongs to the Cabinet.”
Tom Mundy, equity strategist at Renaissance Capital, agreed that investors would be looking for signs of consensus in the tandem when it comes to modernization.
Asked if Putin would make work on Medvedev’s modernization plans a priority, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Absolutely.”
Investors will find little new in the state-of-the-nation speech, analysts said.
“There was nothing hugely new or surprising,” Mundy said. “Medvedev addressed issues which have been a problem for many, many years.
“Talking about Russia’s problems is something that Russia’s leaders have done for a long time. Fixing Russia’s problems is a very different thing,” he said.
Mundy said he would like to have heard more about how to reach the goals of modernizing the economy and battling corruption.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, agreed that there were few specific proposals about spending and ways to help high-tech industries grow.
Medvedev laid particular emphasis on the need to tackle some of the major problems that keep foreign strategic investors wary of country risk, such as corruption, excessive bureaucracy and inadequate legal protection, Weafer said.
“But, again, there were no specific new proposals to deal with these issues other than highlighting them as priorities,” he said in a note to investors.
Investors will welcome Medvedev’s calls to develop nongovernmental organizations and scale down the government’s involvement in the economy, Mundy said. A good sign was Medvedev’s stated adherence to “pragmatic” foreign policy, Mundy said.
When talking about the economic crisis, Medvedev didn’t blame the United States as he had done on past occasions. He also markedly omitted any reference to the security of Russia’s energy exports, despite the fragile transit line via Ukraine. Medvedev mentioned last year’s war with Georgia just in passing when he made a point about Europe needing a new security arrangement.
In addition to modernization ideas, Medvedev made sure to mention social security issues, such as the government’s plans to raise pensions and provide apartments to military personnel despite the crisis.
“He understands that it’s important for people to have not only abstract prospects but also money in their pockets,” Volk said.
Senior Communist official Ivan Melnikov said Medvedev’s speech had a shade of “romanticism, idealism and even naivety” because it offered few specific proposals for resolving the country’s problems.
Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, an opposition figure, said Medvedev correctly identified the problems but his proposed solutions were inadequate. By praising the current political system, Medvedev implied that “there will be no real changes in the country and Russia is fully facing the threat of having no future,” Kasyanov said in a statement.
TITLE: Promises on Democracy Greeted With Cynicism
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday held out the remote republic of Tuva to illustrate Russia’s need for political reform and promised to make electoral changes that would promote democracy.
But opposition activists and independent analysts said his reforms were too feeble to amount to political change.
Medvedev, speaking during his second annual state-of-the-nation address, warned the opposition not to use democracy as a cover to “destabilize the state and split society.”
The president kicked off a 10-point list of reforms with a comical bow to the sparsely populated Tuva republic in southern Siberia.
Medvedev explained that Tuva’s legislature, known as the Peoples’ Khural, has 162 deputies — more than four times more than the Moscow City Duma, which has 35 members.
Tuva’s “economic potential is — sadly — much humbler than Moscow’s and its population is just one thirtieth of the size,” Medvedev said.
“We need to smooth out such distortions,” he said.
The president’s list also included a promise to make it easier for political parties to participate in elections by canceling requirements to collect signatures. As a first step, Medvedev suggested that the rule should be dropped in regional elections for parties that have deputies in regional legislatures but not in the State Duma.
The Central Election Commission has regularly been accused of unfairly using the requirement to bar opposition candidates by claiming that more than 5 percent of the signatures were invalid.
Medvedev said the rule was outdated because parties already needed to prove that they had significant membership numbers and organizational coverage in a majority of the country. “More proof of mass support and organization is unnecessary,” he said.
He also called for an end to illegal manipulations with early voting and absentee ballots. “It is finally time to put this in order,” he said.
However, Medvedev failed to mention the disputed Oct. 11 regional elections and the outcry that followed, where the State Duma’s three opposition parties — the Communists, the Liberal Democrats and A Just Russia — staged an unprecedented walkout to protest massive fraud.
He said, though, that the threshold for winning seats in regional legislatures should be no more than 5 percent of the vote and regions should guarantee equal media coverage for parties represented in local legislatures. Medvedev made a similar call regarding federal elections in last year’s speech.
Medvedev stressed that he was acting on behalf of democracy and freedom. “As the guarantor of the Constitution, I will continue to do everything possible to strengthen democracy in our country,” he said.
But he also said strengthening democracy does not mean the weakening of law and order. “Any attempts to rock the situation with democratic slogans, to destabilize the state and split society will be stopped,” he said.
He singled out the North Caucasus as the country’s biggest domestic problem. “The level of corruption, violence and clannishness is unprecedented,” he said, adding that state funds were being almost openly stolen in the region.
Medvedev said 26 billion rubles ($900 million) had been spent in Chechnya, and Ingushetia would get 32 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) over the next six years, but appalling poverty was a main reason for the violence. “Clearly the economic backwardness and the lack of opportunities for a majority of the population is the source of many problems,” he said.
Ingushetia and Chechnya have experienced a wave of violence this year unseen since the two separatist wars that ravaged Chechnya in the 1990s.
Medvedev vowed to “destroy the bandits” and announced that a federal minister would assume responsibility for “effectively coordinating” policies for the region.
The announcement was met with some reservation by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
“If they find a man who does not care about his personal interests but about the advancement of the North Caucasus, then this will be useful to the region,” Kadyrov said in a statement posted on his government’s web site.
Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said the candidate “must be responsible for everything good and everything bad. I believe he will have to be neutral and have full authority,” he said, Interfax reported.
In contrast to Medvedev’s first address last year, where he announced the extension of presidential terms to six years and threatened to station missiles in the western exclave of Kaliningrad, Thursday’s speech was markedly moderate.
The only discernible hawkish remarks were promises that the armed forces would be supplied with more than 30 intercontinental nuclear missiles and three nuclear submarines next year, plus some extensive praise for the country’s war veterans.
Medvedev’s main foreign policy message was that the country’s future path must be “exclusively pragmatic” and continue the traditional principle of multipolarity.
Medvedev also repeated his call for a new treaty on European security, a stance that he has persistently followed since taking office last year but that has not met any significant support in the West.
He said if his vision had been implemented, armed conflicts like last year’s war in Georgia could be avoided. “If we had had an efficient institute that could stop aggressors, Georgia would not have had the impudence to unleash a war against the people of South Ossetia,” he said.
While the leaders of the State Duma’s main opposition parties reacted positively to Medvedev’s address, the country’s tiny pro-Western opposition and independent analysts showed scorn.
“For the first time in many years, this was a sober analysis of the country’s situation and not just a list of promises,” senior Communist official Ivan Melnikov said, Interfax reported.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democrats, called the speech magnificent. “It addressed 99 percent of all current problems, gave assessments and recommendations. We will carry it out,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Leonid Gozman, a co-leader of the opposition Right Cause party, said while Medvedev’s proposals went in the right direction, they were too few and too vague to achieve the serious political reforms needed to fulfill his promises.
“Why did he say nothing on free speech and on the falsifications in the [Oct. 11] elections”? Why was he silent about corrupt courts and judicial independence?” Gozman said to The St. Petersburg Times.
Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, was even more blunt, saying the whole address was about the survival of the governing political elite.
“There was no revolution, and there will be none because there is no intention for revolution,” she said.
The promised political changes were minor and not capable of bringing any meaningful change. Shevtsova suggested a different tack. “A first step would be to open state television for dissenters and opposition politicians. He could do this immediately,” she said.
TITLE: BMW Positive On Russia
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Bayerische Motoren Werke, the world’s biggest maker of luxury cars, expects sales in Russia to increase 15 percent next year as the country’s economy recovers from the worst contraction on record.
“The market has already reached the bottom,” Christian Kremer, head of BMW Group Russia, said in an interview in St. Petersburg on Friday. “We will see signs of stabilization next year. There are still some clouds in the sky.”
Munich-based BMW sold 13,718 cars in Russia, including the Mini brand, in the first 10 months of the year, a decline of 16 percent from the same period last year. That was the smallest decline among the 20 most popular foreign brands in the country, according to the Association of European Business.
BMW is targeting about 17,000 deliveries for the full year, Kremer said.
Russia’s car market, Europe’s second biggest last year, fell to fifth biggest in the first half as the economy shrank, including by a record 10.9 percent in the second quarter, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in July. Russian sales of new cars and light commercial vehicles tumbled 51 percent from the same period last year to 1.2 million, according to the Association of European Business in Moscow.
“Russia is definitely one of the markets that will recover,” Kremer said Friday. “Within five years, you will see that it will be again one of the biggest European markets.”
TITLE: GM Workers Strike Over Salaries, Vacation
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva, Maria Buravtseva and Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: GM’s local plant is currently facing labor union action as workers demand changes to the terms of their employment.
The employees of General Motors’ St. Petersburg plant went on strike last week, with more than half of the plant’s 120 workers from the welding department participating in a “go slow,” said the leader of the plant’s labor union, Yevgeny Ivanov.
The employees are performing their jobs “slowly and maintaining quality standards,” causing the plant’s daily output of cars to decrease by 30 percent, he said. The union committee has proposed replacing yearly bonuses with a guarantee that wages will be raised annually by 8 percent plus inflation.
The workers are also requesting they be allowed to choose the timing of two weeks of their vacation instead of just one — this year the plant closed down for a mandatory three-week corporate vacation, and employees were left with only one week of flexible vacation time. These demands were presented to the plant’s management about a month ago but have received no response, said Ivanov.
Meanwhile, GM’s public affairs director for the CIS, Sergey Lepnukhov, said that the factory’s management has not noticed any employees engaging in coordinated activities. According to Lepnukhov, oscillations in output are possible as the plant prepares to release a new model — the Opel Astra. The plant’s administration is keeping dialogue open with the labor union, as well as with individual workers, but has not yet made a decision about modifying working conditions, he said.
Ivanov denied that the decrease in production was related to the release of the Astra model.
GM opened the plant last year, after investing a total of about $300 million. The factory produces up to 70,000 cars per year, including the Chevrolet Captiva, Cruze, and Opel Antara models. Employees in the production department earn an average salary of about 25,000 rubles ($867) a month. One hundred employees out of the plant’s 650 workers are members of the labor union, Ivanov said.
The Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk was the first carmaker to encounter a “go-slow” strike. A source familiar with the plant noted that even without strikes, plants are periodically forced to halt production due to the sharp fall in demand this year.
GM is in a difficult situation — it will not be easy to find resources to meet the workers’ demands, said Anna Ustiants, Northwest regional manager of Kelly Services. The plant’s salaries are quite competitive, and there are enough candidates on the labor market to replace dissatisfied employees, she said. There are twice as many qualified candidates as there are job openings at automotive plants, confirmed Yulia Sakharova, director of the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Warning System Agreed
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The European Union and Russia agreed on an early warning system in case of energy disruptions, after shipments of Russian natural gas across Ukraine were disrupted earlier this year.
The agreement was signed by EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko in Moscow on Monday, the EU said in an e-mailed statement.
Oil and gas deliveries from Russia have been disrupted because of disagreements involving middlemen and prices for transit countries. In January, a spat between Ukraine and Russia caused a cut in gas deliveries to 20 European countries. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned of reductions if Ukraine fails to make payments on time.
Bank Plans Share Sale
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Bank St. Petersburg, the biggest private bank in northwest Russia, is seeking to raise $200 million selling new preferred shares, the lender said in an e-mailed statement Monday.
AvtoVAZ Mulls Partners
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may look for other partners to save Lada-carmaker AvtoVAZ should Renault, its largest foreign shareholder, fail to join a rescue plan.
“If the existing shareholders can’t sign up to a plan on the company’s overhaul, modernization and long-term development, we’ll be forced to find other partners,” First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on state television Sunday.
While Russia isn’t demanding Renault increase its 25 percent share in AvtoVAZ, the government would “welcome” the French carmaker taking a controlling stake, Shuvalov said.
VEB Buys Airline Shares
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Vnesheconombank, or VEB, bought about 1.41 billion rubles ($49 million) of Aeroflot shares in the first half of the year, Interfax said, citing the Russian state development bank’s financial report.
That’s equivalent to a stake of about 3.8 percent in the Moscow-based airline, the news service said.
Gas Demands Increase
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — RosUkrEnergo, a natural-gas trader 50 percent owned by Gazprom, increased demands for compensation from Naftogaz Ukrainy fourfold to $8.26 billion, Vedomosti reported Monday.
RosUkrEnergo, which was the sole supplier of Russian gas to Ukraine until 2009, is seeking compensation for fuel it says was appropriated by Ukraine’s state energy company, the newspaper said, citing two unidentified people.
RosUkrEnergo, whose other major shareholder is Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash, is disputing 11 billion cubic meters of gas that Naftogaz claims as its own, the newspaper said. The Stockholm arbitration court plans to consider the case on Jan. 18, the daily said.
Airport Faces Change
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s government may hire a management company to run state-owned Sheremetyevo Airport, the country’s second busiest, Interfax reported, citing the Transportation Ministry.
The government may announce terms for the contract next year, the Russian news service reported Monday, without providing more details immediately.
TITLE: Deripaska: RusAl Debt Deal Nearly Complete
AUTHOR: By Katrina Nicholas
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire owner of the world’s largest aluminum producer United Co. RusAl, said the restructuring of more than $14 billion of debt owed by the company is “almost” complete.
“We are just going through the bank procedures,” Deripaska said in an interview. “We have 70 banks but I am pretty sure we are practically done.”
RusAl needs to agree on the restructuring with foreign lenders before it can proceed with a planned initial public offering in Hong Kong. The Moscow-based company intends to sell 10 percent of its shares to help repay borrowings, which ballooned last year after RusAl bought 25 percent of GMK Norilsk Nickel, Russia’s biggest mining company, before commodities prices collapsed in the second half of 2008.
“I have committed a lot of time and effort to restructure the debt,” Deripaska said Sunday in Singapore, where he was accompanying Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. “It was not easy to do.”
Deripaska, 41, whose Basic Element investment company employs one million people in Russia, said Asia is “very important” to RusAl. The company said last week it’s seeking seven or eight major customers in China to secure long-term aluminum deliveries. RusAl’s smelters in Siberia and its hydropower potential offer the region more efficient and environmentally friendly aluminum production, Deripaska said.
“We believe we can create a lot of solutions which will cut a lot of waste and create sustainability, but also to attract more partners from this region who are interested in developing new projects with us,” he said.
RusAl’s debt almost doubled after it bought 25 percent of Norilsk for $7 billion in cash and a 14 percent stake in RusAl. The aluminum producer had a net loss of $6 billion for 2008, Vedomosti reported last month. RusAl got $4.5 billion from Vnesheconombank in October last year, the biggest state bailout of any Russian company. In December, RusAl announced plans to cut 5 percent of jobs worldwide and reduce aluminum output.
“We were able to drop our costs by 25 percent in less than six months,” Deripaska said. “We have more aggressive plans to cut the costs to be even more competitive, and will be considering different opportunities for our business development including building joint ventures.”
Deripaska declined to comment directly on the progress of the IPO. RusAl hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, to replace Goldman Sachs Group in marketing the offering, which is slated for December. The IPO will be led by Credit Suisse Group and BNP Paribas, with banks including BOC International Holdings and VTB Group helping to manage the sale.
Goldman may have abandoned efforts to get a role as an underwriter because of concerns about Deripaska, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. U.S. officials prevented Deripaska from obtaining a visa because of allegations that he is connected to organized crime, the newspaper said.
“We maintain a good relationship with Goldman,” Deripaska said. “I have no restrictions to travel to any country.” He traveled to the U.S. twice in the past four months, he said.
TITLE: New Partner for South Stream
AUTHOR: By Stephen Bierman and Anna Shiryaevskaya
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Slovenia became the latest European country to join Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline project on Saturday, signing an agreement which paves the way for Russian gas to reach European markets.
The accord followed talks between Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and was signed by Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and Slovenian Economy Minister Matej Lahovnik.
Slovenia joins Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Greece as a partner in the onshore section of South Stream, which is designed to boost Russian gas supplies to western markets while bypassing Ukraine. The 900-kilometer (560-mile) pipe, due to deliver gas by the end of 2015 and being built in partnership by Gazprom and Italy’s Eni SpA, will run under the Black Sea to the Balkans, where it will split into northern and southern routes.
“We have today signed the final agreement among all European partners needed for completion of this project,” said Putin at the signing ceremony in Moscow. The project will enable Russian gas to reach Italy, where Eni is headquartered.
Slovenia, which buys about 600 million cubic meters of the fuel a year from Gazprom, was among the Balkan countries affected by the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The Adriatic nation now wants to avoid further disruption by diversifying energy sources.
“This agreement for us will be a very important event,” said Pahor.
The Slovenian section of the South Stream pipeline will be able to carry as much as 10 billion cubic meters a year, Lahovnik said Thursday in Ljubljana. The Russian gas-export monopoly and the Slovenian gas distributor Geoplin Plinovodi will form a joint venture to operate the pipeline with each company owning a 50 percent stake that will operate in line with European Union legislation, according to Lahovnik.
The cost of the project in Slovenia will be known in the next two years when the feasibility study is completed. Petrol Group, Slovenia’s largest energy group, may also benefit from increased gas flows through the country, according to former chief executive officer Marko Kryzanowski.
South Stream may compete with the planned Nabucco pipeline, backed by the European Union, which is designed to bring gas from the Caspian and Middle East to Austria through Turkey. It aims to start operations in 2014.
The South Stream agreement was signed hours before Russia and Slovenia met on the soccer field for their World Cup playoff.
?? Slovakia said Friday that it was upset by slow progress in its talks with Russia over new gas storage and guarantees of supply stability after suffering badly in January during a gas dispute between Moscow and Kiev, Reuters reported.
Slovakian Economy Minister Lubomir Jahnatek said his government asked Gazprom Export to prepare a document to outline anti-crisis measures but has had no response so far.
“We don’t know whether the documents are being prepared to prevent the crisis from repeating,” he told reporters after meeting Russian officials. “The second goal is to increase the security of Slovakia’s gas storage, and here we don’t have clarity either.
A standoff between Russia and Ukraine led to a halt of Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine for two weeks in January, and Slovakia was among the hardest hit.
TITLE: Shuvalov Announces New Asset Sales Revenue Target
AUTHOR: By Lucian Kim
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia raised its 2010 target for revenue from state asset sales to 100 billion rubles ($3.5 billion) as it seeks to overhaul decrepit infrastructure and finance the budget deficit, said First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.
The list of so-called strategic state-owned assets will be shortened in the process, Shuvalov said on television Sunday. Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said on Oct. 6 the goal was 70 billion rubles, which had been 10 times the original aim.
President Dmitry Medvedev last week called for inefficient state companies inherited from Soviet times to be sold and innovative industries promoted to cut reliance on oil and gas revenue. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also needs money to help plug next year’s budget deficit, which his government estimates at 6.8 percent of output. Last year’s 54 percent slump in oil prices pushed the economy into a 10.9 percent contraction in the second quarter, which eased to 8.9 percent in the third.
The state will keep a so-called golden share in companies it considers important, Shuvalov said Sunday.
The government plans to sell stakes in ports and airports, including Russia’s largest port Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port and Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, and has earmarked about 450 enterprises for divestment. It may also sell shares in companies already publicly traded, including Rosneft, its biggest oil producer, Shuvalov said on Sept. 22.
“The crisis showed once again very explicitly that Russia’s dependence on raw materials export is very dangerous for the stability of the Russian economy,” Andrei Kostin, chief executive officer of VTB Group, Russia’s second-biggest bank, said in an interview Monday in Singapore, where he was with Medvedev at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Embracing technologically advanced fields and making the economy more innovative is “now the key strategic idea in Russia,” Kostin said.
“High oil prices and stabilization of major commodity prices helped Russia, but we learned our lesson and we are not going to rely on commodity prices in the future,” he said.
“The shock of the oil price collapse destroyed” Russia’s “complacency,” and “the government has a renewed desire to advance a more radical reform program,” Troika Dialog, the country’s oldest investment bank, said in a note last month.
While the government needs to finance the budget shortfall, Russia also is seeking to attract private investors to help modernize dysfunctional infrastructure.
This adds to the appeal for investors because it increases growth potential, said Marcus Svedberg, chief economist of East Capital Asset Management, a Stockholm-based fund manager investing in eastern Europe. East Capital will target shares in assets linked to domestic demand, rather than stocks that track energy prices.
TITLE: Ukrainian Economy Contracted Nearly 16 Percent in Q3
AUTHOR: By Daryna Krasnolutska
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s economy contracted 15.9 percent last quarter, extending the former Soviet state’s decline, as political wrangling stalled the payment of bailout funds needed to keep the country afloat.
The annual contraction compares with a 17.8 percent economic slump in the second quarter, the Kiev-based state statistics committee said Monday, citing preliminary figures.
Ukraine lurched into recession after the global crisis undermined demand for steel, its main export, and left about 20 banks in need of state aid. The nation is now relying on a $16.4 billion International Monetary Fund loan to avoid bankruptcy and to keep up Russian gas payments ahead of winter. The IMF is withholding a $3.4 billion tranche after parliament passed a social spending bill in defiance of the fund’s calls for budget cuts.
“The figure turned out to be worse than we expected,” said Olena Bilan, an analyst at Kiev-based Dragon Capital investment bank. “It means that improved industrial output was offset by domestically-oriented sectors.”
While a resumption of global trade flows is showing signs of supporting Ukraine’s exporters, recovery prospects are uncertain as credit remains tight, hampering business investment needed for growth.
Banks’ asset quality took a hit after last year’s 37 percent hryvnia depreciation against the dollar and the IMF estimates non-performing loans jumped to 30 percent of total lending at the end of June. More than half the banks’ loans are in foreign currency, according to Fitch Ratings.
“Political dynamics mean policy may not be restored to a sustainable path before there is a further bout of financial instability,” Fitch analyst David Heslam said in a statement Thursday. “A further sharp depreciation in the hryvnia would intensify pressure on Ukraine’s crisis-hit banking system.”
The country risks a continued economic decline coupled with faster inflation should policy makers resort to printing money to address their budget needs, Fitch warned Thursday.
The rating service “sees an elevated risk that Ukraine could resort more heavily to monetary financing via the National Bank of Ukraine providing liquidity to banks, effectively printing money,” Heslam said. “This would in turn risk undermining fragile confidence in the currency and the banking system, and/or a rapid loss of foreign exchange reserves.”
Annual inflation stood at 14.1 percent in October, compared with 15 percent the previous month, the statistics office said on Nov. 9.
The country’s chances of an economic recovery may stall as policy makers, mindful of Jan. 17 presidential elections, fail to agree on budget reform needed to keep bailout funds flowing. Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko will appeal President Viktor Yushchenko’s approval of a bill that will swell the budget deficit beyond IMF mandated limits.
The government expects the economy to contract 12 percent this year, while the IMF sees a 14 percent decline.
TITLE: Burger King to Open in Capital
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Burger King, the world’s second-biggest hamburger chain, said Friday that it planned to open its first Russian restaurant in Moscow this year, Reuters reported Friday.
“We are still under negotiations with different parties. We are hoping to open soon. The plan is to open by the end of this calendar year,” spokeswoman Andrea Ungereit-Hantl told the news agency.
Bigger rival McDonald’s will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of its first Russian restaurant next year, but the country is still does not have many foreign fast-food chains.
Ungereit-Hantl said Burger King was looking to cooperate with multiple franchise partners in Russia but would not say how many restaurants that the company aimed to open, according to Reuters.
“It’s an interesting market. It’s a big country. It’s attractive and developing. It’s the country where Burger King should be,” she said.
McDonald’s, which has about 300 restaurants in Russia, saw sales here rise 20 percent in 2008 and has said it expected the country to remain its fastest-growing market despite the economic crisis, Reuters reported.
In September, Burger King categorically denied a report in Kommersant that it had signed a franchising deal with Mikhail Bazhenov, a co-owner of St. Petersburg-based Adamant Holdings.
The company said at the time that it was seeking multiple franchise partners.
The U.S.-based fast food giant, which operates more than 11,900 restaurants globally, has been focusing on putting the necessary infrastructure in place over the past several months and has recruited local development managers in Moscow and other major Russian cities.
TITLE: Satirical Ad Campaign Falls Foul of Agencies
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Major outdoor advertising agencies in Moscow and St. Petersburg have refused to carry Russian Newsweek’s latest campaign, saying the satirical ads are “too provocative” or that they violate the country’s law on advertising.
The Newsweek spots each feature a positive slogan — such as “The officials have stated their incomes,” or “Trust in the courts is growing in Russia” — with a pair of hands somehow mocking or discrediting the statement. Each ad ends with the words: “Everyone knows. We understand.”
Other media have had similar problems recently, most notably the Business-FM radio station, as advertising agencies are reluctant to run billboards that appear to criticize the government or its handling of the economy.
Mikhail Fishman, the publication’s editor-in-chief, told The St. Petersburg Times that advertising agencies considered the campaign “too provocative” and that the refusal was an act of self-censorship by managers afraid to lose their jobs.
“The meaning of our advertising is that we make complicated things understandable and explain political and economic life through understandable images,” Fishman said by telephone.
“There’s every indication that they refuse us for political reasons. It reminds me of the late Soviet Union,” he said.
Outdoor advertising agency News Outdoor refused to place the Newsweek ads at bus stations in Moscow, telling the magazine that there was no space left. The Moscow and St. Petersburg metros also declined the campaign.
Olimp, which sells advertising space for the Moscow metro, turned down the advertisements because they violated a law banning obscene gestures in advertising, an industry source told The St. Petersburg Times, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.
News Outdoor, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., gave no official rejection, but the source said it faulted the ads for being “too creative.”
Spokespeople for Olimp and News Outdoor declined to comment Friday. The Moscow Advertising Committee was unavailable for comment.
Other slogans included, “There are enough gold and currency reserves for now,” with a hand indicating a very small amount, and “Russia has good chances of winning the football world championships,” beside hands clasped together as if in prayer.
The advertising has appeared in Moscow and St. Petersburg airports, however. “Our billboards are hanging in Domodedovo, and nothing has happened so far,” Fishman said. The campaign was designed by the Ark Thompson agency and Newsweek journalists had created the images and slogans.
In April, the Moscow Advertising Committee banned a campaign by Business-FM, which used trivia questions to poke fun at corruption in Russia and mishandling of the economic crisis, all using the station’s broadcast frequency as the answer. In 2007, News Outdoor refused to place ads for Esquire that contained the words of rock musician Bono, who had compared politics with production of sausages.
TITLE: Imperfect State of the Nation
AUTHOR: By Vladislav Inozemtsev
TEXT: The reaction to President Dmitry Medvedev’s second state-of-the-nation address was largely ambivalent, a reflection of the relative lack of structure and specifics of the address itself.
The president acknowledged that “In the 21st century, our country once again needs to undergo comprehensive modernization. This will be our first ever experience of modernization based on democratic values and institutions.” I interpret this to mean that all of the talk associated with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during the oil-boom years about how Russia is “getting up off its knees” has become a thing of the past. Medvedev admitted that Russia lags behind the majority of developed countries. This admission, he believes, is in itself a necessary prerequisite for building a “pro-modernization consensus.”
In addition, Medvedev clearly spoke in favor of limiting the role of an all-powerful state in the economy and stressed that the government’s necessity to increase its share in leading businesses was justified only by the crisis: “Regarding state corporations, I think that this legal form of enterprise has no future in the modern world.”
By contrast, Medvedev was clearly complacent when discussing the fight against corruption, noting only that corruption charges had been filed against 1,200 officials in the first half of this year. (In China, that figure is 19 times higher for the same period, and only one in five of the Russian cases resulted in a conviction.) Overall, the president spoke about corruption in impersonal and abstract terms.
The theme of modernization dominated other topics in the message to such a degree that the president should probably have limited his address to that single topic. Medvedev’s proposed measures for improving the political system came off looking rather pallid considering the widespread falsification of the Oct. 11 election results — and his weak response to the resulting complaints. There was nothing especially revolutionary or earthshaking about his suggestions for helping “socially oriented” nonprofit organizations, and those remarks would have been more logical to present in a working meeting with justice and finance ministers than in an address intended for a national audience. His detailed description of problems with the educational system, not to mention the suggestion to reduce Russia’s 11 time zones, came off sounding a bit artificial.
It was difficult not to notice those parts of the message containing unrealistic goals. He instructed the government to draw up new procedures for making the permit and approval process on investment projects more efficient and speedy within two months, but only an incurable idealist would believe that the heavy bureaucratization in regulating investment projects could be eased in such a short time period.
Similarly, Medvedev’s detailed description of the weapons slated to be delivered to the Russian army by 2010 seemed out of touch with reality, considering that it represents roughly triple the average quantity of arms currently produced annually.
At the same time, it is worth noting that the president mostly set short-term goals. He made 15 references to the year 2010 in his message, while mentioning 2020 — Putin’s favorite strategic year — only once. It would be nice to believe that this was no coincidence and that the president was really focused on more realistic and shorter-term goals.
If this is the case, he truly has his work cut out for him. The problem is that most of the people listening to the speech in the Kremlin’s St. George Hall on Thursday — especially those who sat in the first row — are the very ones who have gained the most from the raw materials-based economy and imperfect democracy that Medvedev criticized so harshly. How will Medvedev possibly be able to overcome the powerful clan in the government and Kremlin that is most interested in continuing the anti-modernization status quo? Will he have the resolve to carry out fundamental staffing changes, a topic not even covered in this address? Whatever happened to his “Golden 1,000” list of most promising government cadre that attracted so much attention a year ago? This is an important issue because whether Medvedev’s modernization projects succeed or fail will largely depend on the people who are charged with carrying them out.
At the end of the day, however, Medvedev’s ambitious plans for modernizing and reforming Russia will remain empty talk. Although his words are inspiring, they are not realistic.
Vladislav Inozemtsev is a professor of economics, director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies and editor-in-chief of Svobodnaya Mysl.
TITLE: A Side Trip to Tatarstan
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: To all of the world, St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square is the very symbol of Moscow and Russia. Few, however, know what the cathedral has symbolized to Russians, especially when it was built in the mid-16th century on the order of Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan had several times unsuccessfully attacked Kazan, a strategically important city located on the Volga and a capital of Russia’s perennial enemy, the Tatars. In 1551, Ivan had an entire wooden fortress prefabricated upriver, then floated downstream and rapidly assembled on the island of Sviyazhsk. The resulting fortress was bigger than the Moscow Kremlin of the time and garrisoned the 75,000 troops that would lay siege to the nearby city of Kazan. Ivan was on the island during the fighting, praying fervently for victory. St. Basil’s Cathedral was his offering of gratitude and commemoration.
In recent times, Kazan has become a symbol of peace and harmony. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the city in October, wishing to see for herself this place of “religious tolerance and interfaith connection.” Indeed, Muslims, Russian Orthodox Christians and Jews appear to live in a rare and real harmony in Kazan. They enjoy and respect each other’s traditions, cuisine and jokes. Intermarriage is common. A soaring mosque, the Kul Sharif, was recently built in the Kazan Kremlin to replace the one razed by Ivan nearly five centuries ago. Meanwhile, Tatar activists who call for independence are subjected to severe pressure.
After meeting with local officials, prosecutors and publishers, I decided to take advantage of a quiet Sunday to make a side trip out to the island of Sviyazhsk from which Ivan had initiated his successful siege of Kazan. The roads were better than I expected, but the signage was worse. It took a lot of stopping and asking to get there. But then finally, there it was: a cluster of graceful cupolas and spires against a low steppe sky.
Because of the scale of his cruelties and the cinematic portrait of him by film director Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible had always seemed larger than life. Here, however, on the dirt paths and plank floors in the old churches, he seemed more real and accessible. Medieval Muscovy may have felt easily accessible, but it was the more recent past that proved harder to shake.
I asked a young, bearded priest about a series of buildings with crumbling walls and missing windows that the steppe wind blew through. He told me that they had been monasteries until 1924, when they were emptied out by order of the Bolsheviks. By 1935, those buildings were officially part of the gulag. Between Stalin’s death in 1953 and 1993, they were turned into a psychiatric hospital, one of those used to punish dissidents with insulin injections and electric shock therapy. “Practically no one got out of here alive,” the priest said. “Where are their graves?” I asked. He paused and then gave a quick, sharp look that encompassed the island. “Everywhere,” he said.
There are no side trips in Russia. Sooner or later, they all lead to the mass graves of the Soviet era, still unexcavated, still unexpiated. The better future that President Dmitry Medvedev envisaged in his state-of-the-nation address will remain out of reach until the weight of the Soviet past is removed from Russia’s shoulders. And when that victory is finally won, another great and glorious monument should be raised on Red Square.
Richard Lourie is the author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”
TITLE: In The Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This month, the makers of Tvoi Den tabloid and scoop-grabbing web site Life.ru started a new glossy magazine called Zhara, or Heat. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the British magazine of the same name, known for its “Circle of Shame” features on celebrities who dare to have cellulite. But so far, the Russian stars aren’t revealing any.
The magazine has been advertised with huge billboards showing Russian pop star Filipp Kirkorov with his trademark black locks shaved off and the slogan: “Read, look, don’t get burnt.” The singer is acting as a “consultant” for the magazine and was its first issue’s cover star.
The publishers began the campaign by putting out a viral video that showed Kirkorov having his head shaved. It was picked up by the other tabloids, until they realized that they were giving their rival free advertising.
It’s not surprising that the magazine looks a bit similar — to put it mildly — to the British Heat magazine, since the publishers used the design of the British Sun for their tabloid Tvoi Den. They got away with it on a “sincerest form of flattery” basis. Here, the magazine has the same red masthead, the same “10 Questions We Ask Everyone” feature on the last page and the same layout of the music, book and film pages.
A few essential elements are missing, though. “Torso of the Week” is one of them. Tvoi Den is happy to have Page 3 girls, but it apparently thought that Russian women weren’t ready for ogling famous men in swimming trunks — although Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would seem to be an ideal candidate and was once picked as a centerfold by Tainy Zvyozd magazine with that topless fishing photograph.
And it also stops short of Heat magazine’s scorched-earth approach to paparazzi shots, where the magazine picks the worst photos and circles offending rolls of fat, sweat patches or bad fake tan in a feature called “Circle of Shame” or “Hoop of Horror.”
So far the magazine doesn’t have much bite and feels slightly middle-aged — it even has a cooking column. This week’s cover star is squeaky-clean pop star Valeriya, who reveals extracts from her diary showing that she studies English a lot and gets up at the same time every day. The quote of the week section is topped by Putin saying something of little interest about state funding of films. And there’s a huge, soppy feature on ice-skating celebrities having babies.
On the other hand, there’s even a surprisingly intellectual interview, with writer Dmitry Bykov talking to comedian Garik Martirosyan.
The most political feature — although it doesn’t fit well with the rest of the magazine’s content — is about a Hollywood film on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, which will star Andy Garcia. Zhara responds with a satirical photo story using stills from the Godfather films and The Pink Panther with appropriately derogatory captions. It also takes the opportunity to reprint a photo of Saakashvili chewing his tie.
The only paparazzi feature shows it-girl Ksenia Sobchak celebrating her birthday with guests including Alfa Group president Mikhail Fridman. But there aren’t any Heat-style photos of her falling out of a night club afterward.
The magazine looks as if it is aimed at the young end of the massive-selling 7 Dnei magazine, with similarly cosy celebrity interviews and a convenient television guide. Ironically, this audience is unlikely to read an out-and-out tabloid like Tvoi Den but may pick Komsomolskaya Pravda with its handy dacha tips. And that’s probably why the magazine doesn’t really hang together so far.
TITLE: Obama Calls on China to End Censorship
AUTHOR: By Charles Hutzler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHANGHAI — President Barack Obama gave China a pointed, unexpected nudge to stop censoring the Internet access of its own people, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House — and telling his tightly controlled hosts not to be wary of a little criticism.
“I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable,” Obama said Monday in a town hall with students during his first-ever trip to China. “They can begin to think for themselves.”
Just hours ahead of talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Obama tried to find a political balance, couching his admonitions with words of cooperation, praise and American humility. He said few global challenges can be solved unless the world’s only superpower and its rising competitor work together, and he insisted: “We do not seek to contain China’s rise.”
But in his opening statement and in answers to the wide-ranging discussion with university students, Obama spoke bluntly about the benefits of individual freedoms in a place known for limiting them.
“We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation,” Obama said. Then he added that freedom of expression and worship, unfettered access to information and unrestricted political participation are not principles held only by the United States; instead, he called them “universal rights.”
The line offered echoes of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who often talked of the “universality of freedom.” Obama talked at length about the Internet, which he said helped him win the presidency because it allowed for the mobilization of young people like those in his audience in Shanghai.
“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said. “I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.”
Given where Obama was speaking, such a comment carried strong implications. And he appeared to be talking directly to China’s leaders when he said that he believes free discussion, including criticism that he sometimes finds annoying, makes him “a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
China has more than 250 million Internet users and employs some of the world’s tightest controls over what they see. The country is often criticized for having the so-called “Great Firewall of China,” which refers to technology designed to prevent unwanted traffic from entering or leaving a network.
Obama’s town hall was not broadcast live across China on television. It was shown on local Shanghai TV and streamed online on two big national Internet portals, but the quality was choppy and hard to hear.
Obama is in the midst of a weeklong Asia trip. He came with a vast agenda of security, economic and environmental concerns, although always looming was how he would deal with human rights while in China.
The president left Shanghai after the event and landed a couple of hours later in Beijing on a cold afternoon.
His China visit features the only sightseeing of his journey. He will visit the Forbidden City, home of former emperors in Beijing, and the centuries-old Great Wall outside of the city. Aides have learned that finding some tourist time calms and energize their boss amid the grueling schedule of an international trip.
U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman called Obama’s event the first ever town hall meeting held by a U.S. president in China. Yet former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also spoke to students and took questions from them during stops in China.
China is a huge and lucrative market for American goods and services, and yet it has a giant trade surplus with the U.S. that, like a raft of other economic issues, is a bone of contention between the two governments. The two militaries have increased their contacts, but clashes still happen and the United States remains worried about a dramatic buildup in what is already the largest standing army in the world.
TITLE: U.S. President Gets Lost In Transcription
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BEIJING — President Barack Obama’s first visit to China will undoubtedly be marked by difficult talks on trade and climate change, but another thorny issue has emerged: how to write “Obama” in Mandarin.
While the Chinese have written “Aobama” since the U.S. leader first emerged on the political scene, U.S. officials want “Oubama” to be the new standard transcription, as the characters more closely match the English pronunciation.
The Olympic Games held here last year may have influenced the Chinese on the spelling issue, as the character “ao” — which means “mysterious” or “secret” — is also used in the expression for the Games, “Aolinpike.”
But in recent days, ahead of Obama’s arrival in China on Sunday, the U.S. embassy began using the phonetic transcription “Oubama” on its website — which is already used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
“Oubama is the official U.S. government translation. We are trying to ensure consistency,” embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said.
A senior foreign ministry official who works on translation issues, quoted by the Legal Evening News, said “Oubama” is indeed correct.
Phonetic transcriptions are decided not by the foreign ministry, but by another governmental agency which issues an official manual on translating English names.
As for the president’s first name, Chinese media have adopted options such as “Balake” and “Beilake.”
Facetious Chinese bloggers have opted for something else altogether, creating “Maobama” or “Obamao” — a reference to Mao Zedong.
TITLE: Kosovo Poll Passes Without Violence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo’s first independent elections have ended peacefully, with the prime minister claiming his party won convincingly and some minority Serbs ignoring a call to boycott and casting ballots alongside ethnic Albanians.
The elections Sunday for city council and mayors in 36 municipalities were seen as a key test of the fledgling state’s viability following its contested February 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia.
Preliminary results were expected later Monday.
Hours after polls closed, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci claimed his party won in 20 of the 36 municipalities.
“Today we gave freedom, independence and democracy its full meaning,” Thaci told his supporters.
The junior partner in the governing coalition claimed it won in several of Kosovo’s areas, including the capital Pristina, while opposition parties contested Thaci’s outright victory and urged waiting until final results come out.
Across Kosovo party sympathizers celebrated by honking their car horns, waving party flags and setting off firecrackers.
No major instances of unrest or fraud allegations were reported, though the run-up had been marred by tensions between rival ethnic Albanian parties, as well as the possibility of a boycott from the Serb minority. Stones were thrown Wednesday at Thaci’s convoy, and there was an apparent assassination attempt Thursday on an opposition mayoral candidate.
Thaci had urged the country’s 100,000 Serbs to ignore calls by Belgrade and the Serb Orthodox Church to boycott the vote, calling it a key test for his new nation. So far, 63 countries have recognized Kosovo, including the United States and most European countries. Serbia has vowed to block further recognition and has Russia’s support.
“I’m sure we will have success and appreciate very much participation of all citizen, in particular Serbs of Kosovo,” Thaci told The Associated Press after he voted.
More than 5,000 officers were on patrol during the vote, which was also the first organized by Kosovo officials. Previous elections were run by the United Nations, which took control of Kosovo in 1999 after NATO waged an air war to stop Serb forces’ crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
“This is the best of democracy, and I will do my duty as a citizen,” said Zoje Bujupi, an ethnic Albanian.
The results of the council and mayoral races, largely run on local issues, were unlikely to upset the country’s fragile political scene, as the ethnic Albanian leadership is eager to show it can handle its own affairs.
Election officials said 45 percent of the 1.5 million registered voters cast ballots, a slight increase from the 2007 election turnout when 40 percent voted. Kosovo’s first UN-run poll in 2000 saw an 80 percent turnout.
“We are very happy with the flow of these elections,” election official Nesrin Kumnova told reporters.
“We have no information of any big incidents that would damage the election.”
It was unclear how many of Sunday’s voters were Serbs, but some Serbs could be seen voting in areas surrounded by majority Albanians.
One Serb leader running for a mayoral seat ignored the call to boycott and cast his ballot in the Serb enclave of Caglavica, just outside the capital Pristina.
“This vote here shows that ... the fear ... is loosening its grip,” Momcilo Trajkovic said. He said the fact that Serbs were voting was a sign of better times for the minority population, which decreased by a third after the war ended in 1999 and many left to live in Serbia.
Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said Belgrade did not recognize elections organized by “the so-called Republic of Kosovo,” but would not “retaliate” against the Serbs who take part.
TITLE: Ministers Push for Agreement Ahead of Copenhagen Talks
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: COPENHAGEN — Environment ministers from 44 key countries gathered in Copenhagen on Monday for a two-day closed-door meeting aimed at preventing embarrassing failure at next month’s UN conference on global warming.
Delegations included major greenhouse gas-emitters, including China, the United States, India and Brazil, as well as several island nations and African states that are among the poorest in the world and most vulnerable to climate change.
The Dec. 7-18 talks aim at reaching a post-2012 deal for slashing greenhouse-gas emissions and easing the impact of likely droughts, floods, storms and rising seas unleashed by disrupted weather systems.
But after two years of haggling, the 192 members of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) remain badly deadlocked.
“We are going to discuss the difficult subjects that remain, such as financing and the goals to be reached,” Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard told AFP last week.
The meeting is “the chance to really get to the heart of the discussions, including the really difficult issues because we don’t have much time left,” she added in a statement.
Developing nations have called for wealthy economies to cut their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and to provide around one percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) per year, or around 400 billion dollars, in finance.
So far, no rich country has come anywhere close to meeting such a demand.
They, in turn, are pressing emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil to strengthen promises to tackle their own greenhouse-gas output.
According to a diplomatic source, Hedegaard will present a proposal for a “binding political agreement” next month.
The “five-to-eight-page” draft document establishes pledges that would be fleshed out in 2010, the source said.
It would notably spell out ways of sharing curbs on greenhouse gases.
Rich countries would identify their commitments for reductions “over the medium term,” a timeframe usually meaning 2020.
TITLE: Australia Says Sorry to ‘Lost Children’
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: CANBERRA, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology Monday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, triggering calls for compensation for the abuse and neglect that many suffered.
The British government has estimated 150,000 British children may have been shipped abroad between 1618 and 1967, most from the late 19th century onward. After 1920, most of the children went to Australia through programs run by the government, religious groups and children’s charities.
The programs, which ended 40 years ago, were intended to provide the children with a new start — and the Empire with a supply of sturdy white workers. But many children ended up in institutions where they were physically and sexually abused, or were sent to work as farm laborers.
At a ceremony in the Australian capital of Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologized for his country’s role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the program who still live in Australia.
“We are sorry,” Rudd said. “Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy — the absolute tragedy — of childhoods lost.”
The apology comes one day after the British government said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologize for child migrant programs that sent children as young as 3 to Australia, Canada and other former colonies over three and a half centuries. The first group was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1618.
Rudd also apologized to the “forgotten Australians” — children who suffered in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the 20th century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused in state care.
The Australian government has ruled out compensation, saying liability lay with state governments and churches that ran the institutions.
British High Commissioner Valerie Amos said her government had not yet addressed the compensation question.
Ian Thwaites, service manager of the Child Migrants Trust, which has advocated for child migrants in Australia for 22 years, said both the British and Australian governments were liable.
“It takes two governments working closely together to be able to make this mess and break the hearts of thousands of children and families,” said Thwaites.
Andrew Murray, a former Australian senator who was a child migrant from Britain to an orphanage in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, called on Australia to pay reparations.
John Hennessey, 72, who was born in Bristol, England, and sent to Australia, said he was beaten and sexually abused at a Christian boys home in Western Australia state. He wants compensation from Britain, which he said had deported children to the other side of the world and then abandoned them.
“The apology should have started from England. They were embarrassed and Australia shamed them into it,” he added.
The Forgotten Australians also welcomed the apology. Rod Braydon, 65, said he was raped at the age of 6 by a Salvation Army officer on his first night in a boys home in the city of Melbourne.
“When we reported this as kids, we were flogged to within an inch of our lives, locked up in dungeons and isolation cells,” said Braydon, who received a cash settlement from the Salvation Army for the abuse and is suing the Victoria state government for neglect.
A 2001 Australian report said between 6,000 and 30,000 children from Britain and Malta, often taken from unmarried mothers or impoverished families, were sent alone to Australia as migrants during the 20th century. Many of the children were told they were orphans, though most had either been abandoned or taken from their families by the state. Siblings were commonly split up once they arrived in Australia.
Authorities believed they were acting in the children’s best interests, but the migration also was intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers.
A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted “a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock’ was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”
TITLE: Antarctic Search for 100-Year Old Whiskey
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.
The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.
Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.
Workers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.
Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut’s floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.
The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.
Fastier said he did not want to sample the contents.
“It’s better to imagine it than to taste it,” he said. “That way it keeps its mystery.”
Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay’s master blender, said the Shackleton expedition’s whiskey could still be drinkable and taste exactly as it did 100 years ago.
If he can get a sample, he intends to replicate the old Scotch and put McKinlay whiskey back on sale.