SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1528 (90), Friday, November 20, 2009
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TITLE: Tax Bill Puts Dent In Party’s
Image
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky and Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia’s majority in the State Duma suffered a major blow to its image Wednesday, when the Federation Council voted down controversial tax hikes on car owners that were broadly criticized by auto owners, opposition parties and eventually the Kremlin.
The about-face was one of the very few instances where the authorities have backed down on plans because of a public outcry, and it was the latest victory for well-organized drivers’ groups. The changes, intended to help plug a budget deficit next year, would have doubled the base rate of a transportation tax that is key to funding some regional budgets.
It is also a major embarrassment for United Russia, which has a large enough legislative majority to change the Constitution unilaterally, and feeds perceptions that the party is following orders rather than generating ideas.
Oleg Morozov, a deputy speaker in the Duma for United Russia, said Wednesday that lawmakers would pass the new amendments Friday, which would bring the base rate back to its current level and leave regions to decide on the actual annual payment that car owners will have to make.
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, also from United Russia, said Monday that the Federation Council should send the freshly passed bill back to the Duma for additional work, following criticism from Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Kremlin administration.
“Russian citizens, car enthusiasts, professional drivers and public organizations have spoken against raising the rate of the transportation tax,” Naryshkin said in comments carried on United Russia’s web site.
On Friday, United Russia deputies voted unanimously in the third and final reading to double the rate, despite opposition from the remaining three parties with seats in the Duma. Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, of the left-leaning pro-Kremlin Just Russia party, has sought to cast the debacle as evidence of the problems with United Russia’s dominance in the parliament.
The bill is also a major embarrassment for Gryzlov ahead of a United Russia party congress in St. Petersburg on Friday and Saturday, where officials will discuss party ideology and ways for carrying out the orders in President Dmitry Medvedev’s state-of-the-nation address.
Sergei Kanayev, a leader of the Federation of Russian Car Owners, said before the reversal that the group had collected more then 80,000 signatures against the measure.
Dmitry Oreshkin, an analyst with the Mercator think tank, suggested that the Kremlin’s rejection of the government-authored bill indicated that Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, United Russia’s leader, could be contesting each other’s authority.
“Not all is smooth in their duumvirate,” Oreshkin said. The decision to drop the bill after the angry reaction could also indicate that Medvedev’s liberal thinking was winning over Putin’s more Soviet-style mentality, which disregards public opinion, he said.
But Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information, said the Kremlin’s reaction indicated that Medvedev and Putin feared that their approval ratings would drop if the unpopular bill became law, which could damage “social stability.”
The Kremlin and the government failed to take into account an almost 10 percent drop in their ratings in some regions after the Oct. 11 elections, which were widely criticized for voting manipulations that favored United Russia, Mukhin said. United Russia, which “claims to become the party of the tandem” of Medvedev and Putin, “doesn’t want to quarrel with the Kremlin,” he said.
Explaining his sudden reversal after unwavering support for the bill, Gryzlov said Tuesday that some regional authorities wrongly thought that doubling the base rate meant that they would have to double the current transportation tax in their regions, which he called a “misreading.”
United Russia said revised amendments, to be considered Friday, would give regions the right to increase or lower the transportation tax, a measure that car owners also oppose.
“If in some region the transportation tax is increased, it will be a signal for us to organize demonstrations,” Kanayev told The Moscow Times.
Angry drivers have proven that they can be a powerful force, capable of damaging the Kremlin’s credibility.
Most notably, motorists from around the country united behind Oleg Shcherbinsky, who was involved in a 2005 accident that killed the Altai region governor, Mikhail Yevdokimov.
Yevdokimov’s car was speeding to get the governor to a regional celebration and hit Shcherbinsky’s Toyota. A criminal case was opened against Shcherbinsky, who was accused of violating traffic rules by not allowing the governor’s car to pass first.
Thousands of car owners and opposition activists rallied to support Shcherbinsky, who was later found not guilty. In that case, United Russia also eventually backed down to support Shcherbinsky, after accusing opposition parties like the Communists and Yabloko of using the incident to score political points.
Kanayev cited the Shcherbinsky case as an example of drivers’ unity, adding that “people are pushed to revolt.”
Personal cars, long out of reach for many Russians, have become a thing of pride in recent years, with the past decade’s oil boom bringing the number of car owners to more than 40 million.
“The car has a special meaning for people here. Many take on a lot of debt to own a good car because it’s a part of their image. I knew people who literally lived in their cars in the ’90s,” said Andrei Kalashnikov, a Moscow psychologist.
Fearing possible anger in the country’s two largest cities, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov called for the tax not to be doubled next year.
Alevtina Tsepeleva, an expert with the Vladimir regional legislative assembly’s budget committee, told The Moscow Times that while the majority of her committee was against the increase of the base rate, the local government supported the measure.
Under the new rules, the base rate would be 10 rubles (35 cents) for every unit of horsepower for engines with up to 100 horsepower. For 150-horsepower engines, it would be 14 rubles per unit, while for 200- and 250-horsepower engines the rate would be 20 rubles and 30 rubles per unit, respectively. For anything above 250, it would be 60 rubles.
The regions will be able to decrease the base rate by up to 90 percent, rather than 50 percent now, and will not be able to increase it by more than fivefold.
For a 2009 Ford Focus with a 100-horsepower engine, the base tax would be 1,000 rubles ($35).
Kanayev said his federation has long sought to have the rules changed to take into account the age and model of the car, rather than the size of the engine. Drivers also complain that the tax unfairly hits those who use their vehicles rarely.
The organization will soon appeal to the Supreme Court to challenge the law, proposing to raise the funds from gasoline, instead. “The tax should take into account the price of the car. The owner of some run-down but powerful jeep has to pay the same amount as the owner of a less powerful but brand-new car,” he said.
United Russia opposes the proposal to shift the tax to gasoline.
“It would be unfair toward those car owners who have inexpensive cars with underpowered engines,” United Russia deputy speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.

TITLE: State Lays Claim to Geography Society
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s passion for geography was on full display Wednesday as he became head of the Russian Geographical Society’s board of trustees, a day after Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu unexpectedly became the group’s president.
The shakeup at the St. Petersburg-based society, which bills itself as Russia’s oldest organization, has ruffled feathers in the group. Some members suggested Wednesday that the government’s sudden interest could be linked to the society’s extensive property holdings or a desire to use its prestigious name to lend credibility to state-backed projects.
Tsar Nicholas I created the Russian Geographical Society in 1845 as part of the imperial drive for geographical expansion and exploration of the country’s natural resources. The society is headquartered in a historic mansion in central St. Petersburg that includes various explorers’ archives and a library.
The society has some 20,000 members in 127 branches across Russia.
Shoigu was voted in as president following the sudden departure of Anatoly Komaritsyn, a retired naval admiral, on Oct. 15. The society called an emergency congress to hold the vote and Shoigu, the only candidate, was approved, as were changes to the charter.
Putin, who is often cited for calling the breakup of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, made heavy use of Russia’s imperial legacy in his address to the society’s congress.
“When we say great, a great country, a great state — certainly, size matters. … When there is no size, there is no influence, no meaning,” Putin said, praising the society for its early work in territorial exploration and its potential to help in the future.
“The society can offer practical support to our plans to develop Eastern Siberia and the Far East, Yamal and the north of Krasnoyarsk region, to participate actively in further research projects in the Arctic and Antarctica, as well as environmental support of the Olympic Games in Sochi,” Putin said.
Ironically, the Sochi branch of the society has been vocal against the reforms. The branch composed a letter expressing its concerns, including that the new president should be chosen democratically and according to the organization’s rules.
Vyacheslav Isayev, a member of the society’s branch in Sochi, was supposed to read the letter during the congress but “was asked not to by people in Moscow,” he said by telephone on Wednesday evening.
The new president, the charter, and the creation of the board of trustees were all introduced in the past month, Isayev said.
The charter, passed Tuesday, centralizes power in the organization, and “significantly inhibits the rights of regional branches of the society and their independence,” the Sochi branch wrote in its letter, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
Shoigu, who has led the Emergency Situations Ministry and its predecessor since 1991, also had plenty of plans for the organization.
“Soon we want to, if not establish, then to support, to purchase a magazine, which I will not name for the time being,” Shoigu said. “It’s a rather well-known title that has existed in our country for a long time,” he told the congress Tuesday.
The society may also help create a new television channel to popularize Russia and itself, Shoigu said, adding that the state VGTRK media holding, which owns Rossia television, has already proposed providing airtime to the society.
Additionally, the society may participate in the program to cut down the number of time zones in Russia, “if ordered to do so.” President Dmitry Medvedev made reducing Russia’s 11 time zones a goal during his state-of-the-nation address last week.
Putin promised 50 million rubles ($1.7 million) to fund up to 10 grants distributed for the organization’s research, promising to “do everything to help your work.”
Nobody at the head office or the Moscow office was able to comment on changes Wednesday. A member of its scientific council, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, told The St. Petersburg Times that rumors about Putin’s and Shoigu’s involvement had been circulating since this summer.
The source said there had been talk that it could be reformed as a department within the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Shoigu’s involvement appeared to run counter to Medvedev’s recent decision to ban top government and Kremlin officials from serving as presidents of sports organizations. He said last month that such bodies needed full-time leaders dedicated to the organizations.
The society’s role has dwindled over the past 20 years, as its research and publishing activities have all but ceased, said Alexander Drozdov, a society member and a researcher at the Geographic Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
While the society received budget funding in the Soviet era, it was mostly left on its own after 1990, he said.
“The present change is an initiative from above, and everything happened very quickly,” Drozdov said. While 50 million rubles for research sounds nice, it is not clear who will get the money, while the “enormous” financial support to some expeditions are “just window dressing,” he said.
Drozdov cited a 2007 submarine trip to the North Pole, where an expedition led by State Duma Deputy Artur Chilingarov planted a Russian flag 4,261 meters beneath the surface. Then-President Putin later congratulated the team, calling the move an important step in Russia’s exploration for natural resources in the Arctic.
Putin made headlines with a submarine trip of his own this summer. On Aug. 1, he traveled to the bottom of Lake Baikal with scientists to examine possible environmental damage from a pulp and paper plant.
On returning to the surface, Putin said he and the scientists had concluded that the lake was clean.

TITLE: Constitutional Court Rules for Ban on Death Penalty
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a much-anticipated ruling, the Constitutional Court on Thursday introduced a permanent ban on capital punishment in Russia. 
The moratorium on the death penalty was due to expire on Jan. 1, 2010. While the procedure may seem nothing more than a technicality — Russia has signed Protocol Six of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the use of the death penalty — it has been surrounded by fierce debate.
The death penalty was suspended in Russia in 1996, when the country became a member of the Council of Europe and signed Protocol Six. Since then, the Kremlin has periodically promised to ban the death penalty completely, but each time has stopped short of actually doing so. In 1999, the Constitutional Court ruled that capital punishment would not be administered until all of Russia’s 89 regions introduce jury trials, which was due to take place by the beginning of January, 2010.
Almost all experts agree that the restoration of the death penalty would have been impossible as it would undermine Russia’s relations with European countries and contribute to the image of Russia as a barbaric state. 
“The death penalty is the past; you cannot turn back the clock,” said Mikhail Barshchevsky, the official government representative at the Constitutional Court. “Life imprisonment is a much harsher punishment; it is basically like burying someone alive.”
Nevertheless, public pressure on the court was considerable. According to polls held in the country from October to November, between 65 and 75 percent of Russians would welcome the return of the death penalty. Defending their views, most ordinary Russians claim that terrorist threats, high levels of corruption and rampant organized crime in the country result in a need for capital punishment. Thirty percent of Russians polled by the Moscow-based Levada Center this month spoke favorably of public executions.
Responding to the polls’ results, Anatoly Lyskov, chairman of the Committee on Legal Issues of Russia’s Federation Council, offered to conduct a state-sponsored popular vote on the subject. “A referendum is a costly enterprise but it is a democratic procedure; the Council of Europe and other organizations will have to accept its results,” Lyskov said. “Russian society is very obviously not ready for a complete ban on the death penalty.”
President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Russia’s transition to a ban on the death penalty should be gradual. His view is shared by the majority in Russia’s ruling party, United Russia. The party leader, Boris Gryzlov, has said that Russia currently needs a temporary solution to the problem in the form of an extended moratorium on capital punishment.
These sentiments, however, were countered by Rashid Nurgaliev, Russia’s Interior Minister. “There are some horrendously cruel forms of crime that border on the inhumane, and the only adequate form of punishment for such crimes is the death penalty,” he said. As for possible mistaken verdicts, Nurgaliev suggested raising the levels of liability for investigators and judges whose actions might lead to innocent people being executed. 
Yakov Gilinsky, a crime analyst with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that majority support for the death penalty in Russia is a result of the worryingly high levels of violence in the country. “It is a state of mind that reveals itself in different ways: street violence, police violence, high homicide rates, frightening rape statistics,” Gilinsky said. “The social environment in Russia is very aggressive, with people expecting dangers behind every corner. Support for the death penalty is an indicator of the level of fear in society.”

TITLE: Russia Crashes Out of Soccer World Cup
AUTHOR: By Alin Zerdin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MARIBOR, Slovenia — A first-half goal from Zlatko Dedic earned Slovenia a place at next year’s World Cup finals in South Africa, eliminating Russia on the away goals rule.
Slovenia surprised Russia with its attacking game, giving the visitors little space to play.
Russia won 2-1 in Moscow on Saturday, but Slovenia’s 1-0 win was enough to secure its berth to South Africa.
“My guys became immortal!” Slovenia coach Matjaz Kek declared.
Defender Bojan Jokic was euphoric: “We were simply better! All of Slovenia is with us!”
Slovenia was the better side from the start and one minute before halftime, Valter Birsa passed the ball to Vfl Bochum striker Dedic, who shot into the left corner of Igor Akinfeev’s net.
Slovenia, which gained independence in 1991, played its only previous World Cup in 2002 in South Korea, but lost all three of its matches.
Nervousness seemed to increasingly affect the Russian team as the match went on and Alexander Kerzhakov was red-carded in 66th minute for a foul on Slovenia’s goalkeeper Samir Handanovic. Yury Zhirkov was then sent off in the 90th minute for scuffling with Slovenia’s reserve players.
Russia’s coach Guus Hiddink did not appear, as he had been expected to, at the post-match press conference.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Charity Presentation</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Swedish medical center Ekolsund is hosting a charity event this weekend in conjunction with The Petersburg Balls Fund. The occasion, scheduled for Saturday, will benefit two schoolchildren from Children’s Home No. 69 suffering from chronic illnesses. Yan Rumyantsev, 14, is diagnosed with Willebrand disease and juvenile chronic arthritis, while 16-year old Nadezhda Klimova suffers from vegetovascular dystonia. 
The evening will feature an auction to raise funds for Rumyantsev and Klimova’s treatment as well as presentations by the hosts. The Petersburg Balls Fund plans to discuss its philanthropic projects, while Ekolsund will present its medical and diagnostic capabilities. The center, which has plans to open a branch in Russia, specializes in ultrasound and computer diagnostics of the cardiovascular system. Ekolsund’s specialists advocate a healthy lifestyle through nutrition, stress management, and physiotherapy seminars. 
The event will take place at 5 p.m. in Zelenogorsk at the Severnaya Riviera Health Spa. The occasion is open to the public, although guests are asked to participate in the auction or contribute as sponsors.

Address: Severnaya Riviera, Zelenogorsk, Primorskoye Shosse, 570. Tel.: (812) 441-25-35
Hostage Released

* MOSCOW (SPT) — The son of a town leader in Dagestan was released Wednesday after gunmen kidnapped him a day earlier, local police told Interfax.
Police said they detained five suspects in the abduction of Magomedshamil Shahbanov, 30. His father leads the town of Buinaksk.

TITLE: TV Campaign Against Gazprom Tower Mounts
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The controversial Gazprom Tower found itself under harsh attack last week on Russia’s main state television, Channel One, for the third time in the past four weeks — and its supporters struggled to offer any good reason to back the 403-meter-tall skyscraper in close proximity to the city center. 
First slammed by the Kremlin-controlled channel in its primetime weekly news roundup on Oct. 18, the Okhta Center, as the building is officially known, was derided in the comedy show “Prozhektorperiskhilton” (Paris Hilton’s Spotlight) a week later, and last week became the subject of “Sudite Sami” (Judge for Yourself), a political talk show hosted by Maxim Shevchenko. 
This time Okhta Center representatives — communications director Vladimir Gronsky and the project’s chief architect Filipp Nikandrov of the British firm RMJM — were given a chance to present their case for the skyscraper, which is planned to house state energy giant Gazprom’s headquarters and was described by Bloomberg News critic Colin Amery as “just another global corporate monolith — banal, dull and inappropriate.”
The unsuspecting Okhta Center team, which enjoys full administrative support in St. Petersburg, arrived at the studio to discover that the show was to be called “The Tower Against the City.” They were then refused the opportunity to show their presentation of the project, and were instead confronted with a barrage of questions — including ones they had ignored or mocked during the heavily policed public hearings held in St. Petersburg.
With no backing from City Hall, OMON special-task police or menacing individuals scattered around the room pushing and kicking opponents, as there were at the public hearings, the Okhta Center’s representatives appeared helpless and confused. 
“During the past 80 years, no architectural masterpieces have been created in the city,” said Nikandrov, following one of the lines of the Okhta Center’s publicity campaign, to which the presenter Shevchenko asked whether Nikandrov considered the project to be a “masterpiece.”
“I think that this tower is a masterpiece,” Nikandrov replied. 
“So we have a list like this: Rastrelli, Rossi, Falconet, Nikandrov. A great list,” Shevchenko summed up with irony.
Professionally, Nikandrov’s reasoning was confronted by Andrei Bokov, president of the Russian Union of Architects, who gave examples of Soviet architecture in St. Petersburg.
“I don’t know you, and I am shocked that a man whom I, the president of the Union of Architects, see for the first time, has taken responsibility for such a complex undertaking,” Bokov said.
“This project is na?ve and aggressive; it is dull, it is archaic. Chinese cities are being built with buildings that are vastly more interesting and better than what you are offering. Your brains haven’t been turned on.”
Advocates of the tower who were present in the studio struggled to come up with good reasons to support the project. The arguments they made frequently sounded eccentric.
Film director Vladimir Bortko claimed that the tower would be an “adornment” to St. Petersburg.  When Grigory Revzin, Kommersant’s architecture critic, asked him to specify with what it would adorn St. Petersburg, Bortko replied, “With beauty!”
“You mean there’s no beauty [in St. Petersburg]? Not enough?” Revzin asked.
“Not enough,” Bortko responded.
Boris Nadezhdin, one of the leaders of the pro-Kremlin “liberal” party Pravoye Delo, touched on the political meaning of the tower, implying that it would symbolize the growing power of Russia.
“This tower is a symbol that Russia is rising from its knees, among other things,” he said.
“In clear weather it should be visible from the NATO Headquarters in Brussels!”
Gronsky applauded his own remarks, as if giving a sign to the pro-tower rent-a-crowd used at hearings in the past two years, but there was no rent-a-crowd to back him among the show’s audience. 
At one point during the 45-minute show, film director Bortko, who appeared to be verging on hysteria for most of the program, rushed out of the studio, failed to find the exit and circled the speakers again before managing to leave.
Summing up the debates, Valery Fadeyev, editor of Expert magazine, said that the planned tower should be thoroughly discussed on a national level. 
“We should return to the first phase of this project,” he said.
“The project has now gone outside of St. Petersburg. This problem has become national.”
The national uproar and Channel One’s campaign against the tower began after City Governor Matviyenko signed a decree exempting the Okhta Center from the height regulation law on Oct. 6. Some media suggested a rift in the Kremlin over the project and even took it as a sign that the project may soon be cancelled by the Russian authorities.

TITLE: Hermitage Lawyer Dies in Custody
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A 37-year-old lawyer jailed amid a heated tax dispute between Hermitage Capital, once the largest investment fund in Russia, and the Interior Ministry died abruptly in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina detention center.
Sergei Magnitsky, a father of two, died at 9:50 p.m. Monday of apparent toxic shock and heart failure, said Irina Dudukina, a spokeswoman for the investigative committee of the Interior Ministry.
Interior Ministry investigators had accused Magnitsky, a partner with the Firestone Duncan law firm, of being directly involved in developing and executing a scheme in which Hermitage head William Browder purportedly evaded more than 100 million rubles ($3.25 million) in taxes in 2002.
The tax case was opened after Browder accused senior Interior Ministry officials of stealing more than $230 million in budget money. Magnitsky testified in June 2008 and October 2008 against two police officials, including Colonel Lieutenant Artyom Kuznetsov, who later joined the investigation into Magnitsky.
Magnitsky was arrested Nov. 24 after a search of his apartment and moved between several detention centers before being sent to the Butyrskaya jail in late July.
Magnitsky’s lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov said Tuesday that Butyrskaya officials had barred him from entering the jail on Monday to visit his client, citing Magnitsky’s poor health.
“We asked what was wrong with him and were told not to worry,” Kharitonov told The St. Petersburg Times. “Today we were told that he had been taken to Matrosskaya Tishina and later we found out that he died at about 9 p.m. yesterday.”
Magnitsky’s mother was the first to find out about the death of her son Tuesday. She came to Butyrskaya to give him some personal items and was told that her son had been transferred to a different detention facility, Hermitage Capital said in a statement.
Dudukina, of the Interior Ministry, said Magnitsky had been transferred to Matrosskaya Tishina because he had needed medical attention and Butyrskaya did not have a hospital.
She said Magnitsky had not raised any health concerns at his most recent court hearing, when Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court ruled Thursday to prolong his detention until Nov. 26.
“For us it was a complete surprise. He didn’t complain about his health to the judge or to the investigator,” Dudukina said by telephone, referring to the chief investigator in the Magnitsky case, Oleg Silchenko, who attended the hearing.
Dudukina said an autopsy would be carried out.
But Magnitsky’s lawyer said his client had been visibly ill at the hearing. “He was very nervous that day after the judge turned down all our petitions,” Kharitonov said. “He was shaking, I’ve never seen him in such condition.”
Magnitsky was diagnosed with pancreatic problems in August. He told the Tverskoi District Court in September that he suffered chest pains and asked for a doctor to be allowed to examine him. The court rejected the request.
Magnitsky also complained at the September hearing about “inhumane conditions” in the Butyrskaya jail, including the absence of a toilet, hot water and windows.
Investigators had planned to pass the case to the court for trial in December, Dudukina said.
If he had been found guilty, Magnitsky would have faced up to six years in prison.
Magnitsky’s lawyers asked investigators Tuesday to open a criminal case in connection with his death and filed a series of complaints, including one about the medical attention given to Magnitsky in custody.
Magnitsky wrote a 40-page complaint to Prosecutor General Yury Chaika describing a serious medical condition that developed while he was in detention and pleaded for access to medical attention, Hermitage Capital said. There was no response to his complaint, it said.
Jamison Firestone, founder of the Firestone Duncan law firm, where Magnitsky worked, said the police bore responsibility for the death because they had not responded to Magnitsky’s complaints about his health. “The police just killed my colleague and friend,” Firestone said.
He said he doubted that a proper investigation would be carried out into the death.
Browder expressed his condolences to Magnitsky’s family.
“Sergei was a brilliant and honorable lawyer known by all who met him as a diligent professional and a committed family man,” Browder said in an e-mailed statement.
The Interior Ministry added Browder to an international wanted list last month in connection with the allegation that he and Magnitsky had organized the tax-evasion scheme.
Browder has been barred from Russia because of national security concerns since 2005. He has linked the ban to his high-profile battles against Gazprom over inflated corporate spending and Kremlin-linked oil major Surgutneftegaz over its murky ownership schemes.
Hermitage says five of its lawyers have fled Russia to avoid being detained like Magnitsky, while criminal cases have been opened against two fund managers, who also have left Russia.

TITLE: Shooting of 'Bonebreaker' Sparks Violence in Moscow
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A simmering confrontation between far-right youths and anti-racist activists has erupted into Moscow’s streets after the fatal shooting of an anti-racist activist known as “The Bonebreaker.”
The violence stems from deep animosity between two aggressive camps with starkly different visions of Russia’s future: neo-Nazi skinheads who rank in the tens of thousands and militant anti-racist groups that call themselves Antifa, short for anti-fascist.
Former punk rocker Ivan Khutorskoi, 26, provided security for meetings of anti-fascists. He also was known for organizing underground bare-knuckle boxing matches among them and taking part in violent attacks on ultranationalists.
Khutorskoi was gunned down in his apartment building on the city’s outskirts Monday night. A day later, dozens of masked men pelted the headquarters of the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Russia with stones, trash and steel rods, Young Russia’s leader said.
Kremlin critics say Russia’s leadership created Young Russia and similar youth organizations to keep its political opponents in check and provide support, and sometimes muscle, on the streets. Anti-racist groups claim that they have close ties with the ultranationalists they call fascists or Nazis.

TITLE: Speedy Entry to WTO Sought
AUTHOR: By Lyubov Pronina and Niklas Magnusson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Russia remains committed to joining the World Trade Organization and wants to complete membership talks as quickly as possible, alone or with trade partners Belarus and Kazakhstan, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.
Russia, which earlier sought to enter the WTO together with Belarus and Kazakhstan as a customs union, now may seek to join on its own “after having coordinated positions” with its two neighbors, Medvedev told a news conference in Stockholm on Wednesday at a summit between the European Union and Russia.
“Either is absolutely possible in my opinion, but for us the most important is the speed, whichever way turns out shorter we will take,” he said, adding that the path Russia chooses is “likely to be resolved in near future.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in September called for trade concessions, including an “intensification” of WTO talks, following President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a missile shield in east Europe. Russia has received indications from the U.S. that it may be able to join the WTO as early as 2010, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on Sept. 22.
The largest economy outside the WTO wants “fast completion” of accession talks, Vladimir Chizhov, the Russian ambassador to the European Union told reporters Wednesday after a meeting in Stockholm between Russian Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina and EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton.
Ashton said that Russia may become a member of the Geneva- based trade arbiter on its own, before Belarus and Kazakhstan, after she was told by Nabiullina that Russia wanted to join the WTO “quickly.”
“We’ve been saying there are different ways to come in — Russia can still come in and the others can follow,” Ashton told Bloomberg TV. “It is important for our trade relations, and for theirs, and we will support them.”
Nabiullina pledged in June to complete Russia’s bid to join the organization next year.
The EU is Russia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 52 percent of trade volume last year, according to the Russian Economy Ministry, or $382 billion, an almost five-fold increase since 2002. Energy resources make up 70 percent of Russian exports to the bloc, and Russia accounts for more than 40 percent of Europe’s gas imports, a figure that will rise to 60 percent in 2030, the European Commission says.
Chizhov said Ukraine, through which much of Europe’s gas from Russia is exported, will need “external financing” to pay for its gas supplies next year. The EU is ready to “stimulate” the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Monetary Fund to provide loans to Ukraine, he said.
The 27-nation bloc and Russia agreed Nov. 16 on an early warning system in case of energy supply problems, after shipments of Russian natural gas across Ukraine were disrupted earlier this year because of disagreements involving middlemen and prices for transit. In January, a spat between Ukraine and Russia caused a cut in gas deliveries to 20 European countries. Putin has warned of reductions if Ukraine fails to make payments on time.
Medvedev also said he hoped a new strategic partnership agreement between Russia and the EU will be in place “soon,” replacing the previous agreement that expired at the end of 2007. Russia’s five-day war with Georgia last year has delayed talks on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, the primary document that defines relations between the two sides.
Sweden, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, and Russia also held bilateral talks in Stockholm, announcing they will sign energy and transport agreements in the near future. Relations between the two countries may improve after Sweden this month became the second country to grant final approval for OAO Gazprom’s Nord Stream AG natural-gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, ending almost two years of Swedish opposition and wrangling over the energy project.
“This demonstrated that both sides are objectively interested in support of normal relations, preserving those principle assessments that were given at certain turns of recent history,” Chizhov said.

TITLE: Face of Nevsky Changes As Rental Rates Decrease
AUTHOR: By Yelena Dombrovskaya and Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s central thoroughfare looks set to cease being a street of boutiques, as mid-range clothing stores and restaurant chains replace luxury brands.
At 47 Nevsky Prospekt, where an Escada store used to be located, a Dve Palochki sushi chain restaurant opened in October. Nevsky Prospekt wasn’t the company’s priority, but the favorable terms made it possible to open another outlet, said Yakov Pak, marketing director of Dve Palochki. According to him, rental rates are now 30 percent lower than before the crisis, and investment amounted to about 35 million rubles ($1.2 million).
In place of the Hugo Boss store, which closed down at the end of the summer, a branch of the mid-range clothes brand Love Republic has appeared at 23 Nevsky Prospekt. 
Investment totaled about 3.5 million rubles; there was a discount on the rent, says Mikhail Urschumtsov, director general of Melon Fashion Group, which owns the Love Republic brand, as well as Zarina and Befree.
Flagship stores of these three brands are now open on the city’s central street, though the brands mostly have stores in shopping malls, he said.
Revenue at the stores on Nevsky had decreased by 35 to 40 percent — they went from being stable to unprofitable, Oleg Zelentsov, director of Holding Center, the Hugo Boss and Escada franchisee said at the beginning of September. According to Urschumtsov, revenues at Melon Fashion Group rose by 4 percent during the first 10 months of this year, excluding the new stores.
In the luxury goods segment, the turnover has decreased by up to 40 percent, and up to 60 percent in the mid-price sector — only the low-price segment is growing, said Nikita Kondrushenko, the former Versace boutique manager. Rental rates have not decreased as much as turnover, he said.
Opening a business on the city’s retail hub has become more affordable — landlords are prepared to negotiate, though rents vary greatly with different owners, said Vladislav Rogov, general director of Costa Coffee in Russia, which opened a coffee shop on Nevsky last week.
“The rental rate on Nevsky Prospekt used to be 8,000 rubles ($280) per square meter per month and there would be tenants lining up, now it’s 5,000 rubles and it takes six months to find a tenant,” said Marina Fyodorova, the director of the street retail department of Becar. According to her estimate, 15 percent of premises on Nevsky Prospekt are vacant. 
Among potential tenants, none want to open an expensive boutique on Nevsky anymore, said Roman Ignatenkov, director of Uspekh real estate agency. They are more willing to open bistros, cafes, mid-range clothing or lingerie brand stores — formats that guarantee money, he said.
Instead of the flagship boutiques of chain retailers, private entrepreneurs are appearing more and more often, said Yevgenia Vasilyeva, deputy director of the consulting department of Colliers International.
Those who could not previously afford premises on Nevsky Prospekt, such as private entrepreneurs, have now started developing actively. One of the main reasons is rental discounts, which amount to 30 to 50 percent — rent varies from 3,500 to 10,000 rubles per square meter per month, according to Ignatenkov’s estimation. 
The rent level has stabilized and it is now 5,000 to 8,000 rubles per square meter per month, said Vasilyeval. Fyodorova says that 70 percent of the tenants who have moved out their Nevsky premises couldn’t afford the high rent as a result of the economic crisis, while the rest left their premises due to their business closing or problems with the tax authorities. Nevsky has stopped being a deluxe street and is filling up with chain restaurants and coffee shops instead of boutiques, said Kondrushenko.
Melon Fashion Group is going to open new retail outlets on Nevsky Prospekt, said Urschumtsov. Rogov said Costa Coffee was also considering doing so. 
Denis Radzimovsky, director general of the Miks fast food chain, said he believed rental rates are still too high, even with discounts. The rental rates on Nevsky Prospekt have decreased at least twofold — from 8,000 rubles or more to 3,500 to 4,500 rubles per square meter per month, and more vacant premises have appeared, he said. Miks is now considering opening an outlet on Nevsky.
During the crisis, businesses should open not only to improve their image, but also to attract revenue, and a 200-square-meter coffee shop on Nevsky Prospekt can be profitable only if rental rates fall by a further 30 percent, said Radzimovsky.

TITLE: Energy Minister Says RusHydro Will Manage Dam Alone
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — RusHydro is taking full control of management to complete building the Boguchanskaya dam, and the hydropower firm will be able to raise up to $660 million selling shares to the private sector next year, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Wednesday.
Shmatko said United Company RusAl would be pulling out the management of its joint project with RusHydro — building the Boguchanskaya hydroelectric plant — although the aluminum giant will stay on as a financial partner.
After the Sayano-Shushenskaya accident, the government urged RusHydro and RusAl to speed up the construction of the Boguchanskaya plant, which the companies started in 2006.
The project has caused frequent feuding between the two firms, however, with RusHydro claiming that RusAl has delayed paying its share on several occasions. RusAl has since paid up on most of its Boguchanskaya obligations.
“RusAl paid almost all of its debt on the Boguchanskaya project by now, except for a small portion from 2008,” said Yelena Vishnyakova, a spokeswoman for RusHydro. She did not specify the exact amount.
Speaking about the power company’s future partnership with RusAl, she said, “We will maintain 50-50 parity financing, but RusHydro will be the sole manager of the project.”
“The decision to put RusHydro in charge of the project is due to the state’s push to speed up construction,” she said.
She said RusHydro would keep track of the payments and cover payment delays by its partner, RusAl.

TITLE: Ukraine Seeks Amendment to Gas Agreement
AUTHOR: By Kateryna Choursina
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ukraine is seeking an amendment to its accord with Russia to waive fines for buying less gas than contracted this year, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in a letter to Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
State-run Naftogaz Ukrainy may be unable to prepare for the heating season starting at the end of next year, potentially threatening “the reliability of gas shipments to Ukraine and transit to other European states,” Yushchenko said in the letter posted on his web site.
The president wants to reduce the volumes of natural gas that Ukraine imports under the contract to a maximum of 30 billion cubic meters a year, the letter reads.
Russia is open to talks with Ukrainian partners, President Dmitry Medvedev’s aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. “There is no sense in getting in depth analysis of” gas supply and transit, he said in the statement. “Commercial terms are not discussed at the level of heads of states.”
Ukraine signed a 10-year gas supply and transit contract with Russia in January after Moscow-based Gazprom, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas, cut shipments to Ukraine for almost two weeks in a price dispute. The spat caused disruption in 20 European nations amid freezing temperatures.
The contracts signed by the prime ministers of Russia and Ukraine in January envisage imports of 40 billion cubic meters by Ukraine this year, according to Bohdan Sokolovskyi, Yushchenko’s energy aide. The possibility of buying 20 percent less has not been documented, he said last week.

TITLE: Central Bank Averts $44M Pension Fund Heist
AUTHOR: By Daniil Zhelobanov, Alexei Nikolsky and Vasily Kudinov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank has foiled an attempt to steal 1.25 billion rubles ($44 million) from the state’s Pension Fund using counterfeit documents, a scheme that bankers say couldn’t have been carried out by ordinary criminals.
The Pension Fund discovered the theft Monday when it received a notice from the Central Bank that 1.25 billion rubles had been transferred from its account, Marita Nagoga, a spokeswoman for the fund, said Tuesday. She said the Pension Fund had made no such request to the Central Bank, which holds the fund’s accounts.
The Pension Fund said the transactions were carried out after the Central Bank received two counterfeit payment orders, with fake signatures and stamps from the fund. The purported swindlers went to the bank’s Moscow Branch No. 5 on Friday evening, where they managed to transfer 1.25 billion rubles, set aside for construction and planning work, to the Pension Fund’s account with the Central Bank. Then they made a second transfer, moving those funds to an account controlled by Spetstekhprom at Kuban bank, an Interior Ministry source said.
The two transfers were completed Friday, and on Saturday the criminals began transferring the funds to a variety of different banks, including some abroad. By Tuesday evening, the Central Bank had managed to block the transfers and return the money to the Pension Fund.
A secretary at Kuban, who only gave her first name, Irina, told Vedomosti that the bank’s managers could not speak to journalists because they had all been taken away for questioning after their offices had been searched.
Kuban has existed since 1989, but little is known about the lender, which doesn’t have a web site. According to the Interfax-100 bank ratings, Kuban has assets of 223 million rubles ($7.75 million) and capital of 42 million rubles, and it is not part of the state’s deposit insurance system.
Alexei Frenkel, a banker convicted last year for organizing the 2006 murder of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, listed Kuban among the banks that he said were unfairly denied access to the deposit insurance program because they were suspected of money laundering.
The bank was led by Marina Burova for several years, but her place was recently taken by Vladimir Zasorin, according to the Bankrange.ru industry portal.
A bank executive said it was possible that the lender was purchased before the attempted theft in order to carry out the heist. Vedomosti was not able to confirm with the Central Bank the changes in management or the possible change in ownership at Kuban. People who answered the bank’s telephones declined to identify the lender’s director.
If the Central Bank believed that a bank was being used to steal money, it could block the lender’s correspondent account, said Andrei Yegorov, first deputy chief of SB Bank. Then cash could only be withdrawn in person, but the criminals either decided not to do that, or the bank was not the end point for the theft, he said.
The Central Bank sees all ruble transactions within the country, and it takes several days for ruble payments to go abroad, which means the regulator has plenty of time to look into them, said a vice president at another bank.
The bankers said they were baffled, however, as to how the swindlers were able to bring counterfeit payment orders to the Central Bank.
All banks are Central Bank clients, and officials at several lenders explained how things work at the regulator’s offices. Outsiders aren’t even allowed into Central Bank branches, which require a special pass. The passes are typically given to two or three representatives for Central Bank clients who have legal authority to order transactions.
Even if a client gets a new representative, preparing the entry pass takes several days. The electronic system means that it’s easy to see who has entered branches and at what time, one of the bankers said. Additionally, there are video cameras monitoring the work of all Central Bank tellers.
A teller is not required to check the authenticity of a payment order, another banker said. They just look to make sure that the bank managers’ signatures are present and that the stamps match those on record at the bank. As a result, any representative who regularly visits the Central Bank could conceivably counterfeit and deliver faked documents.
Nagoga said all of the Pension Fund’s transactions were done electronically and that no one from the fund brought requests to the Central Bank on Friday evening. A well-informed banker said the Central Bank would not necessarily find anything suspicious about the order, since such payments are not uncommon, but that an unfamiliar representative would likely put a teller on guard.
“The Central Bank has created a commission, led by First Deputy Chairman Georgy Luntovsky, to carry out an internal investigation,” the Central Bank said.

TITLE: Report: Russia No. 1 in Economic Crime
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Companies in Russia experienced more economic crime this year than anywhere else in the world, according to a report released Thursday, which underscores the difficulties facing an ambitious Kremlin plan to curb corruption and lawlessness.
Of 86 companies surveyed in Russia, 71 of them — 82.5 percent — said they had been subjected to at least one major economic crime in the past 12 months, according to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“This is a shocking 12 percentage point increase compared with our 2007 research (59%), and is well above the global (30%), Central and Eastern Europe (34%) and BRIC countries (34%),” the report said. The BRIC countries are Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The figures also exceed results in South Africa, where 62 percent of firms reported economic crimes, and Kenya, with 67 percent.
PWC polled executives from more than 3,000 companies working in 55 countries, including 86 representatives of Russia’s biggest companies in various sectors. The poll was anonymous and no companies were identified.
“Imagine when 70 percent or more companies are suffering an increase in economic crime amid recession. No particular industry can be spared from these effects,” said John Wilkinson, a partner with PWC who helped conduct the survey.
Sixty-four percent of companies operating in Russia reported cases of asset misappropriation, while another 48 percent complained of bribery and corruption among their staff.
“If we say bribery, we do not necessarily mean cash in an envelope. We see it as a broader concept,” said Irina Novikova, PWC director of accounting, fraud risks and controls. “Bribery, in our view, includes unjustified discounts, compensations and coverage of business trips and expenses to third parties, including officials and their family members.”
Twenty-eight percent of respondents experienced fraud with financial statements, the report said.
“The distortion of financial results is because of the pressure banks put on companies, and it’s also because of the top management’s desire to meet the expectations of investors,” she said.
The growing number of economic crimes dealt large financial blows to companies operating in Russia, with 47 percent of respondents saying their losses topped $1 million.
Official statistics tend to focus more on successful prosecution than the volume of crimes reported, but they nonetheless show the magnitude of the problem.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said last month that there was an 11.3 percent increase in white-collar crimes in the first nine months of 2009. And in July, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin said a dozen corruption cases causing damages of more than 896 billion rubles ($31 billion) were sent to court in the first half of the year
PWC’s report found that many companies were suffering from illegal activity within their own ranks.
Sixty-two percent of companies said fraud was carried out in collusion with criminals outside the company, while 34 percent blamed violations on “wholly internal fraudsters.”
Wilkinson said the high rate of crime within companies was related to employees’ personal readiness to break the rules.
“We see incentive, pressure and opportunity as the essential factors, but when it comes to committing a crime, each person asks himself whether he should do it,” he said. “We assume opportunity and pressure are always there, but if a person is motivated correctly, he or she will not break the law.”
The main task for executives, he said, is to strengthen the “attitude and rationalization” in their staff to avoid crime.
The report was released days after Transparency International listed Russia 146th in the world’s corruption rating — tied with Ukraine and squeezed between the African nations Kenya and Sierra Leone. It was a one-step increase from Russia’s previous listing.
President Dmitry Medvedev has made the fight against corruption a central goal of his administration.
He called corruption the “main problem of the Russian economy” and promised a further clampdown during a Wednesday news conference as part of a Russia-European Union summit in Sweden.

TITLE: Putin Seeks Consolidation For Petrochemicals Sector
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will encourage consolidation in the petrochemicals industry because it is too fragmented to become globally competitive, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said late Tuesday, Reuters reported.
“Consolidation of this industry stands high on the agenda. The state should help this process and will definitely do it,” Putin told government officials and oil industry executives in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan. He added that consolidation in the petrochemical industry was a global trend, but Russia had not participated thus far.
“We’re selling raw materials and buying finished products, most likely made from our raw materials,” Putin said, stressing that Russia, which extracts 13 percent of the world’s oil, manufactures only 2 percent of the world’s plastic.
The meeting, held at the site where Tatneft is building an oil processing and petrochemical complex, is among several industry forums being held to discuss the development of nonextractive sectors of economy.
Putin said access to oil-product pipelines was a crucial problem for the sector and he warned that pipeline owners should not abuse their monopoly. “Access to product pipelines should not be discriminatory,” he said.
Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said the pipeline network needed to be developed since most oil and gas is extracted in Siberia, while most of the country’s petrochemicals plants are in the European part of Russia.
“For us, developing a network of products pipelines is a question of competitiveness,” Shmatko said. He said the structure of the sector has changed little over the past 20 years, though some new projects were being planned.
Shmatko said LUKoil decided to build a petrochemical plant near the Caspian Sea while Gazprom, Rosneft and petrochemicals firm Sibur were looking into building plants in the Baltic countries. New petrochemical plants should be built closer to large industrial centers and export markets, he said.
Putin also said he settled a long-running pricing conflict between Sibur, controlled by Gazprombank, and Kazanorgsintez, or KOS.
“During the visits to these plants today, we were able, I believe, to solve one of the toughest problems in the sector. I’m ordering [Deputy Prime Minister] Igor Sechin and the anti-monopoly service to finalize this and settle the agreement. We’re talking about prices, periods and volumes of raw materials delivered” to petrochemicals plants, he said, Interfax reported.
Government spokesman Dmitry Peskov later told Interfax that Putin was referring to the conflict between Sibur and KOS, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy. The petrochemicals firm had a net loss of 2.8 billion rubles ($99 million) last year, according to international financial reporting standards, and now has debt of almost 30 billion rubles, Interfax reported.
KOS, Russia’s largest maker of polyethylene, received a state guarantee for 10 billion rubles, while TAIF, a Kazan-based holding that controls KOS, got a guarantee for 7.5 billion rubles, the government said Oct. 30.

TITLE: State Plans To Develop Low-Rise Housing
AUTHOR: By Maxim Tovkailo
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Builders say they are pleased with a government plan to develop the construction of low-rise housing, which they plan to offer for no more than 30,000 rubles ($1,050) per square meter.
“We need to pull people out of the slums,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday during a government meeting on the housing sector. In the first nine months of the year, 35 million square meters of housing were constructed, although Putin said the yearly goal of 52 million square meters could still be reached thanks to construction started before the crisis. 
He also ordered the government “to create the conditions for the start of new construction,” with low-rise housing being among the priorities. 
Starting next year, regional governments will be able to seek funding from the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund for low-rise construction, under rules approved by the State Duma in a first reading Friday.
The fund currently cofinances regional programs to remodel buildings that could be used as housing and resettle residents from dangerous buildings, regardless of the number of stories in the new house. When the bill in the Duma is passed, the fund will be able to allot money specifically to resettle people into low-rise buildings, said Grigory Volkov, a spokesman for the fund. “There is a certain logic to it, since building low-rise housing is cheaper and faster,” he said. The law gives the regions simplified access to the fund’s resources.
This is the first time that the government has moved to support the mass development of low-rise construction, a government official said. Previously, its support was limited to specific programs through the national project on affordable housing. 
State guarantees or subsidized interest rates will be available to secure land, while young families will be given subsidies to buy houses, he said.
The spokesman for the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund was not immediately able to say how much the state corporation would direct toward the project, saying it “depended on the requests from the regions.” A member of the fund’s supervisory board said calculations would be wrapped up next month, but that the figure would not exceed 10 billion rubles ($348 million).
The Residential Housing Development Fund promised that it would join in the effort. “We’re planning to have low-rise housing on 60 percent of our plots,” a spokesperson said.
Low-rise construction is promising in areas where there is no shortage of land or building capacity, said Andrei Pankovsky, deputy chief of DSK-1. The production cost per square meter varies by region, but the government’s average price of 30,000 rubles is entirely possible, said Konstantin Popov, chairman of Incom Real Estate. 
The cost of the land can account for one-third or even half the price per square meter in low-rise housing, said Anton Danilov-Danilyan, head of Delovaya Rossiya’s expert council. Building low-rise settlements would require buying a large plot of land and installing utilities, he said. “And both those things are expensive to do in Russia.”

TITLE: Illegal Additions to Historic Homes
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As housing in Moscow gets more and more cramped, some homeowners are looking upward for extra space.
The construction of mansards, or stylized roof extensions giving room for an extra loft, has become popular among homeowners as a cheap and effective way to increase the area of their apartments.
But preservationists say mansards are being built illegally on historical landmarks, ruining the buildings’ appearances and endangering their foundations.
Eyebrows were raised after mansards appeared on two buildings in particular: one on Nikitsky Bulvar and another on Sadovaya-Sukharevskaya Ulitsa, both of which are recognized as historical landmarks and therefore protected by law from any construction work that changes their historical appearance.
A mansard is being constructed on the left wing of the House of Polar Explorers on Nikitsky Bulvar, which was built in Italian Renaissance style in 1937 and is considered a historical landmark.
“Construction of the mansard is bearing down on the foundation of the house, which causes the foundation to warp. As a result, cracks may start appearing on the front of the building,” said Natalya Samover, a preservationist with Arkhnadzor, a group seeking to protect old buildings in central Moscow.
“Whoever started the construction on the House of Polar Explorers definitely knew that it was a cultural landmark, as there was a plaque on the front of the building,” she said.
Nevertheless, building a mansard is an attractive option for homeowners, who can use it to increase the size of their apartment for a fraction of the price.
“It’s a third to two-thirds cheaper to build a mansard over your current top-floor apartment than to buy a two-floor apartment,” said Natalya Levitova, a senior adviser at Evans real estate agency.
A mansard can be built quickly, as it doesn’t require any additional engineering equipment, but there are also many problems in receiving permission, said Maria Litinetskaya, executive director real estate agency Blackwood.  
Other homeowners are more interested in a building with a mansard because they want the special atmosphere that comes with living directly under the roof.
Another building on which a mansard is being illegally constructed is the Pravdina Mansion, Arkhnadzor said.
Pravdina Mansion, built in 1908 on Sadovaya-Sukharevskaya Ulitsa,  is currently an office for the Interior Ministry’s internal security directorate, a service that investigates law enforcement violations.
“The Pravdina Mansion is the last historical house in the district of Samotyoka, and until recently it had preserved its original appearance,” Arkhnadzor said in a statement.
The Interior Ministry department built a mansard on the roof of the building in order to provide its employees with additional space, said an official from the internal security directorate who declined to give his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
“A mansard is not major construction work, and if it’s being built that means we have all the necessary documents and permits,” he said.
Under current legislation, any major construction on a historical landmark is forbidden, Samover said. It doesn’t matter whether they were able to get construction permits, it’s still a violation of the law. 
The ministry official dismissed concerns that the mansard’s construction was altering a historical landmark. “That’s ridiculous. Do you think we all should live in tents?” he said.
Arkhnadzor filed a complaint with the Moscow Cultural Heritage Committee, the city’s architectural watchdog, but no investigation has been opened.
A spokeswoman for the committee told The St. Petersburg Times that it had received the complaint and that an inspection would be made within a month. 
The Interior Ministry declined to provide an official statement.
If the Moscow Cultural Heritage Committee doesn’t move to stop the illegal mansard construction on Nikitsky Bulvar and Sadovaya-Sukharevskaya Ulitsa, Samover said Arkhnadzor would file a claim to the Moscow prosecutor’s office.

TITLE: Banks Take Control of RosEuroDevelopment
AUTHOR: By Anton Filatov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A consortium of Gazprombank, Goldman Sachs and Citibank has taken control of RosEuroDevelopment, a major commercial real estate developer, because of the company’s debt. 
One of the developer’s competitors told Vedomosti that a controlling stake had gone to the new owners, which was confirmed by RosEuroDevelopment board member Ilya Brodsky, chief executive Nikolai Artemenko, and a representative from one of the company’s shareholders.
A year ago, when most developers were facing difficulties because of the financial crisis, RosEuroDevelopment shareholders handed over roughly half of the company to the banks in exchange for a debt-restructuring deal. 
As a result, the consortium received 50 percent plus one share in RosEuroDevelopment, while its previous shareholders saw their stakes roughly halved. Lightwater, which represents individual investors including RosEuroGroup managers, had its stake cut to 30 percent. Moor Capital now has about 10 percent, while a joint venture between Morgan Stanley and French developer Altarea also has about 10 percent. 
Altarea said in its 2008 financial reporting that it left RosEuroDevelopment as a shareholder because of the “worsening macroeconomic situation in Russia,” without elaborating. Brodsky said he knew nothing about the company leaving. A shareholder in RosEuroDevelopment, however, confirmed the information, saying the stake went to Morgan Stanley. 
Either way, the percentages are not final, Brodsky said. The deal has not yet been closed and shareholders are discussing a possible buyback of some of their shares by the end of 2009, he said. 
He declined to specify the developer’s debt to the banks or the lenders’ relative shares in the consortium, but he said the company was working normally.
Early last year, RosEuroDevelopment announced that Gazprombank and Goldman Sachs were raising a mezzanine loan — used in real estate financing to raise funds backed by a stake in the borrower — of $165 million. The company has not disclosed its debt to Citibank.
Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined comment. A spokesman for Gazprombank was not immediately able to respond to questions, and Citibank could not be reached for comment.
RosEuroDevelopment specializes in building shopping centers and warehouses. According to the company’s web site, its portfolio includes 1.3 million square meters of shopping space, 1 million square meters in logistics parks, 500,000 square meters of housing and 100,000 square meters of offices. All of its projects where construction had not started were frozen late last year.
Among the projects that the company finished were the Planeta shopping mall (140,000 square meters) in Krasnoyarsk, the Krekshino storage facility in the Moscow region and the RosEuroPlaza office center (27,600 square meters) in Novosibirsk.
This is hardly the first time that an indebted developer has had to pay off banks with projects, shares or stakes in companies, said Mikhail Gets, managing director of Praedium Oncor International. 
Banks are now trying to decide whether to manage the property they’ve taken on or sell it. 
For example, VTB received 1,200 hectares on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse from Senator Sergei Pugachyov’s OPK to settle a $2.4 billion debt. The bank has also taken controlling stakes in developers Sistema-Hals and Don-Stroi Invest, as well as 75 percent of the Dynamo sports group.
Sberbank has also taken its share of property in exchange for debt, including 60,000 square meters of the Gorod Stolits project in Moskva-City, and 15,000 square meters in Gorod Yakht from Capital Group, as well as 370,00 square meters of property from Alpi.
There’s no point in selling it all immediately, since the market is recovering, Gets said. Even if it’s a few years down the road, demand for commercial real estate will recover, and the banks will be able to earn dividends on these assets, he said.

TITLE: The Perfect Fall Guy
AUTHOR: By Lilia Shevtsova
TEXT: History has seen many cases of the ruling elite leading society into a dead end while convincing the people all of the time that the road is leading toward a bright future. But it is a truly unique situation when a country’s leaders admit that they are at a dead end and then search for a way to stay there. This is precisely what the Kremlin is doing with President Dmitry Medvedev’s modernization program. Russia is trying to build a 21st-century society while preserving a system of personified power rooted in the 16th century. Even those who believe Medvedev’s best reformist intentions can’t avoid the question: How can the Kremlin pursue modernization if power remains in the hands of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for so much of the country’s anti-modernization?
We are witnessing classic “modernization a la russe” — overblown ambitions that mask what is really only a model for preserving the status quo. The ruling tandem understands perfectly well that the oil- and gas-based economy no longer works and that the political system is not sustainable. They also understand that they have lost the trust of the most dynamic sectors of the population. But they believe that by applying a fresh layer of paint to Russia’s dilapidated Lada, they will be able to continue the Putin-era status quo indefinitely.
This PR strategy is full of paradoxes. Medvedev’s modernization rhetoric is undermining the vertical-power hierarchy that Putin built, and it is delegitimizing the national leader himself. At the same time, Putin’s continued presence on the domestic and international stages gives Medvedev no chance to become a serious player. Moreover, the fact that Medvedev’s proposals will end up no more than just words will discredit the fundamental concept of trying to modernize the country.
It is not clear whether Medvedev realizes that the only thing he is building is another Potemkin village. In reality, he has been assigned the role of a standard-bearer without an army. He has been set up to wave the flag of a huge modernization project that is doomed to fail. Thus, Medvedev will be the perfect fall guy in 2012, at which point Putin will step in to save the country and become the next president.
This latest Kremlin experiment is also unique in that the Russian tandem is attempting to reach its objectives with the West’s assistance. The Kremlin does not hide its intentions, expressing them openly in the words of Medvedev’s first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov: “The more money, knowledge and technology we can get from advanced countries the stronger and more sovereign our democracy will become.” What this means in practice is that Russia should take from the West whatever will help it keep its sovereign democracy in place. This vision of modernization is in the spirit of Peter the Great and Josef Stalin, borrowing Western technology in order to inject new vigor into a highly personalized, autocratic rule. These tactics may have been partially successful when Russia was just starting its economic development, but it is clear that during the country’s post-industrial development stage, modernization requires freedom of the individual, protection of private property rights, debureaucratization, demonopolization, innovation and competition. Without these elements in place, the Western assistance will do little.
Nonetheless, Russia’s leaders have placed a high value on “resetting” relations with the United States and NATO. This will allow the Kremlin to focus on preserving its vertical power structure. What a smart idea — resetting relations with the West to preserve an anti-Western system. Interestingly enough, this ploy may work given that the West is also very interested in resetting U.S.-Russian relations. The only problem is that this partnership will always be unsteady as long as Russia doesn’t know how it is going to live tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the ruling elite have decided to discuss democratic standards with the West, an initiative that was met warmly by the West. Kremlin spin doctors recently met with leading Western pundits and intellectuals, including gurus Immanuel Wallerstein, Alvin Toffler and Fareed Zakaria, to discuss democracy. But this dialog can help bring the two sides together only if the Western participants actually entered into debate with the Russian officials and were able to convince them that the Kremlin’s vision of democracy and modernization differs from the commonly accepted understanding in the West. But there are no signs of such discussion, thus allowing the Kremlin to consider the West’s silence a mark of agreement. Attempts to criticize Russia for violating the basic tenets of democracy would be clearly out of place now. How can you criticize a country seemingly working so hard to build democracy?
But attempts to freshen up Russia’s facade — in particular by getting the West to help with the painting — will only worsen the country’s stagnation and perhaps make it irreversible. The attempt to reset relations with the West will end in more disappointment for both sides because they both have a fundamentally different understanding of what reset means. Attempts by Western politicians and intellectuals to discuss democratic standards with the Kremlin without standing up for their own views will only end up tarnishing their reputations.
To be sure, the West should try to strengthen its cooperation with Russia in the economic, political and security spheres, but engagement should focus on how to transform and modernize Russia rather than helping it preserve the status quo. This forces the West to go beyond its traditional model for relations with Russia. As for Russian society, it will soon realize that Medvedev’s modernization will fail just like Putin’s El Dorado did. The problem is that Russians will end up paying the price for the modernization sham.

Lilia Shevtsova is a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center and chair of the Davos Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Russia.

TITLE: Putin’s Vertical of Corruption
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: I have been wondering lately: How much of Russia’s gross domestic product is lost to bribes taken by government officials?
Consider an ordinary example — the price of housing. The standard rule is that the price per square meter for an apartment equals one or two times the amount of an average salary. With salaries averaging $500 to $1,000 per month, apartments should cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per square meter. In fact, they cost an average of $5,000 per square meter these days. That is five to 10 times higher than they should cost.
It is obvious that the price of apartments in Moscow reflects the amount that builders must pay in bribes to the officials. Contractors must fork over enormous sums simply to obtain the necessary permits, and those costs are reflected in the selling price. Also, the officials receiving the bribes do not invest their income in their businesses (their chief “business” is extorting bribes). Instead, they go out and buy more apartments, only fueling the cycle of ever-increasing prices. Let’s look at another example — airplane tickets. I recently paid $500 for a five-hour flight from Moscow to Madrid in economy class on Iberia Airlines. Before that, I paid about $950 for a three-hour flight from Novosibirsk to Chita. The math is simple: domestic flights cost two to three times what comparable flights abroad cost.  
And what about medicine? A pharmaceutical drug that I buy in Europe for 50 euros costs exactly twice that amount in Russia.
These are just trivial figures taken from everyday life, but when you multiply these examples of corruption across all of Russia, it creates a horrifying picture. In the “vertical-power economy” established by Vladimir Putin, bribery accounts for at least 50 percent — and more likely 70 to 80 percent — of GDP. That cost rivals the 70 percent to 80 percent of GDP that the defense budget accounted for in the Soviet Union of the 1980s.
The cost of imports has been further increased by officials continuing to demand the same (precrisis) exorbitant bribes to allow imports to cross the border. 
As a result, supermarket and department store shelves have become more empty because fewer people can afford imports.
The 1998 default and ruble devaluation led to a boom in domestic production, but this was not the case with the 2008 crisis. In Putin’s Russia, import duties are lower than the money that bureaucrats extort from domestic manufacturers. 
Thus, it is cheaper to pay customs duties once than to pay an endless procession of bribe-taking officials who perform endless inspections on the production process.
How stable is such a regime? History shows that such regimes remain stable up until their leader dies. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s nearly 40-year hold on power ended only when he finally died. Similarly, Chinese leader Mao Zedong endured for more than 30 years until his death in 1976. Such regimes cannot end before the death of their supreme leader, nor can they continue after his death.

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

TITLE: Life of a lion
AUTHOR: By Sasha de Vogel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Revolutionary Lion,” a new exhibition at the Museum of Political History, pays tribute to the life and work of Leon Trotsky. On Nov. 6, the museum unveiled a modest but concise exhibition of rare photographs, manuscripts, letters and other artifacts in honor of the 130th anniversary of Trotsky’s birth, on Nov. 7, 1879. The collection, which includes several pieces being displayed for the first time, reveals the complexities of this revolutionary mastermind’s rise and fall.
A leading figure in the October Revolution, Trotsky was widely considered to be second in power only to Lenin. He served as Commissar for Foreign Affairs following the Revolution, and in 1918 became the head of the Red Army, which he reformed and guided through the Civil War. 
A prominent Marxist theorist, Trotsky is particularly known for his theory of permanent revolution. Following Lenin’s death, Trotsky’s longtime rivalry with Stalin ended with Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist Party and exile to Kazakhstan, then to Turkey, Norway and Mexico. In 1940, he died in Mexico, after being attacked with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent. Unlike many other victims of the Purges, Trotsky was never rehabilitated, and it was not until 1987 that his books were published in the Soviet Union.
After Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist Party, the museum — then known as the Museum of the Revolution — expunged him from its records, leaving only documents and artifacts that showed the revolutionary leader in a highly negative light. These items, such as anti-Trotsky caricatures and critical writings, are displayed alongside previously unseen pro-Trotsky documents and photographs. 
Thanks to a gift donated to the museum in 2000 and new access to a formerly sealed special archive, the exhibition includes items such as a rough draft of the announcement of Trotsky’s death in Pravda newspaper, complete with Stalin’s written corrections and manuscripts of Trotsky’s work criticizing the party leadership. 
The exhibition is particularly effective at capturing the complexities of Trotsky’s public image through the careful juxtaposition of artifacts. A pair of contradictory Civil War-era pieces of propaganda conveys the threatening and inspiring power of Trotsky’s image, as well as the significance of his Jewish background. In one print, Trotsky as a bespectacled St. George slays the dragon of the counter-revolutionary movement; another, anti-revolutionary, anti-Semitic propaganda image depicts a long-nosed and devilish Trotsky, presiding over a Communist hell of chaos and violence. 
The tension between his role as an intellectual and as a military leader is captured by a commemorative scarf from the 1925 All-Soviet Scholastic Conference, decorated with the faces of the major intellectuals of Communism. Trotsky’s image has been carefully cut out from the lower left corner, leaving a conspicuous hole, but the preserved scrap shows him wearing a Red Army helmet and looking more like a general than a thinker. 
Although Trotsky can be seen in several photographs addressing Red Army soldiers with a steely passion, he is not represented as a military man in his portraits, which are also on display. Instead, he is represented as a philosopher, in the grips of a powerful idea behind his ever-present glasses. It is little wonder, then, that his likeness decorated the covers of notebooks for schoolchildren and his name was used on Komsomol certificates and diplomas, which are also exhibited here.
Materials from Trotsky’s time in exile round out the small display, beginning with a decree from January 1929 announcing his expulsion from Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, and from the U.S.S.R. as a whole. Also on view are rare letters that were recently acquired by the museum. The letters written by Trotsky in the early 1930s to his son, Lev Sedov, were discovered during a journalistic investigation and given to the museum; they are on display for the first time. 
The exhibition concludes with an engraving by Vladimir Kibalchich, also known as Vladi, a Mexican artist of Russian origin and descendent of a prominent member of the terrorist organization, Narodnaya Volya. The engraving, titled “Memories of Trotsky, No. 3,” was inspired by the artist’s memories of Trotsky, whom he encountered in Mexico as a child, and by Trotsky’s horrible demise. The print shows Trotsky’s office in chaos, with papers, shoes and a desk flying through the air. It is an appropriate metaphor for a man whose life saw such highs and lows, whose work was celebrated then censored, and whose exile banished him from the country that he was instrumental in founding. 

“Revolutionary Lion” can be seen until Dec. 9 at the Museum of Political History, Ulitsa Kuibysheva 2-4, www.polithistory.ru. Information available in Russian only.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: <strong>Marc Almond</strong> returns to St. Petersburg to give a glimpse of his second “Russian” album, called “Orpheus in Exile.” 
Due to perform at Zal Ozhidaniya on Sunday, Almond will pay homage to the late St. Petersburg-born Russian singer <strong>Vadim Kozin</strong>, who was arrested and sent to the gulag as part of Stalinist political repression in 1944.
Before his arrest, Kozin was a highly popular tenor singer in the Soviet Union. Kozin’s Russian biographies say he performed alongside Marlene Dietrich for Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference concert in 1943. It is not clear, however, whether such a concert ever took place. 
Released in 1950, Kozin was again arrested after what many believed to be police provocation involving a male prostitute nine years later. Upon being released he chose to remain in Magadan, and died there at the age of 91 in 1994.
Almond’s first Russian foray was “Heart of Snow” in 2003. It was an album of Russian songs performed with Russian artists such as the late Soviet pop-folk diva Lyudmila Zykina and Akvarium’s frontman Boris Grebenshchikov.
Barcelona-based <strong>Brazzaville</strong> is another frequent visitor to Russia, so frequent that it even has a cover of a Kino song.
But frontman David Brown claims that the upcoming concert at Glavclub on Saturday will be very different.
“I am bringing some really special friends along on this tour,” he wrote in an email.
“David Ralicke (sax and trombone), Mike Bolger (trumpet and keys) and Kenny Lyon (guitar) from the original Brazzaville band are coming all the way from Los Angeles. And from Barcelona, I’ll be bringing Maria Pi Sunyer (back-up singer on the last three albums), Brady Lynch (bass) and Ramon Aragall (drums).”
He added that Brazzaville’s new album, “Brazzaville In Istanbul,” is already out in Turkey and would soon be released in Russia and Europe.
A new sight in St. Petersburg is These <strong>New Puritans</strong>, an avant-rock band from the U.K. The band formed in Southend-on-Sea, England in 2006 and will release its new, second album in January 2010.
“I want to do all things,” These New Puritans vocalist, instrumentalist and songwriter Jack Barnett told Drowned in Sound.
“Lots of our songs do different things. ‘Elvis’ is a pop song, and we’re releasing it because we can be a pop group. It’s just funny; we’re not new-rave. There are many things that could offend me more…”
The band also features his twin brother George Barnett on drums, Thomas Hein on bass and sampler and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson on keyboards.
Local highlights this week include <strong>La Minor</strong>, the excellent urban folk band which will mark its vocalist Slava Shalygin’s birthday with a gig at Griboyedov on Friday.

<em>— By Sergey Chernov</em>

TITLE: India through the ages
AUTHOR: By Alex Dizer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new exhibition at the Stroganov Palace titled “The Modern Art of India: Pictorial Trajectories,” traces the development of modern Indian art with selected pieces from the late 19th century through to the beginning of the 21st century. 
It is the first time in several decades that an exhibition focused solely on Indian art has been displayed in St. Petersburg and offers a rare opportunity to see works by internationally acclaimed Indian artists first hand, and to get acquainted with lesser-known names. 
The exhibition, which is part of the Year of India in Russia, is ordered chronologically, starting with colonial Indian art. After the British colonization and the dissolution of India’s princely courts, Indian artists lost much of their patronage. During the Company Period, when the British East India Company effectively ruled the country, Indian artists began to learn Western art techniques to replace the traditional styles in order to cater to the new market of British officials. It was not until Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) that these two artistic traditions were successfully combined in a Pan-Indian style, using oil on canvas to paint icons from Indian mythology with western realism. 
Moving into the 20th century, Indian artists broke away from Western influences, reflecting the growing opposition toward British occupancy. As a result, individualism and modernism with origins based in more traditional Indian styles became more popular. Artists such as Abanindranath Tagore used ancient murals and medieval Indian miniatures rather than British icons for inspiration in order to express notions of nationalism and swadeshi (self-rule).
As the 20th century progressed, India’s turbulent political and cultural backdrop as it faced the challenges of modernization and reform offered further inspiration for artists. Mataji by Anjolie Menon, who was awarded the Padma Shree award in 2000 for exceptional contributions to Indian art, captures the difficult social transformation in a stoical elderly woman, knitting with red thread while looking out of an open window.
 Indian art has entered the global market at full speed. It currently boasts an annual growth of 30 to 35 percent and is the fourth most buoyant art market in the world, according to the exhibition’s curator, demonstrating how far the Indian art industry has developed since the Company Period and the extent of its international importance today.
The exhibition, although only encompassing four rooms, contains a wide variety of artistic styles and offers an insight into the artistic development of the country since the 19th century. As art is a creative response to surrounding cultural phenomena, the exhibition also offers an introduction to the historical and political development of India. 
Other events scheduled in St. Petersburg as part of the Year of India in the upcoming months include cinema screenings and a martial arts performance. Visit www.indianconsulate.ru for more information.

“Modern Indian art: Pictorial Trajectories” runs through February at the Stroganov Palace. Open daily, except Tuesdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tel: 595 4248

TITLE: Trout Triumph
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Following its success with the Stroganoff Steak House and Russian Vodka Room No. 1, the Svoi V Gorode restaurant group has opened Fish House, an upscale modern restaurant on Pereulok Grivtsova.
Located on the ground floor of the Bolloev Center, a newly built office complex that has won plaudits for its sympathetic neo-classical architecture, Fish House is easily spotted from the street because there are fish painted on its windows, suggesting a giant aquarium. Inside, a large open-plan dining area, seating 100 people, also celebrates the fishy theme with depictions of fish swimming along the walls. In case you hadn’t got the point, the Fish House logo adorns the tableware and even the ashtrays that are set neatly on cream tablecloths, and a couple of aquariums glow and bubble at the back of the dining hall. Otherwise, the interior is relatively understated — for what is, essentially, a fancy “theme restaurant” — based on exposed wood and shades of gray, beige and powder blue that vaguely suggests a friendly fisherman’s cottage on old Cape Cod, if you were to turn that cottage into a tony restaurant in new Russia.
Accordingly, the hostess and wait staff at Fish House offer a commendably warm welcome. English-language menus are delivered without a fuss to non-Russian speaking guests, and inquiries about the dishes on offer and the ingredients they contain will be met with strenuous helpfulness.
On a recent lunch date, however, it was surprising and something of a pity that the classic Russian fish soup ukha — surely a must for the Fish House menu — was off, as in unavailable. Solyanka, another classic Russian soup that usually has meat in it but here features fish, was offered as a replacement starter (390 rubles, $13.50).
Fish House favors the fashion for oversize crockery, and the large soup bowl in which the helping of solyanka was served made it seem a bit paltry. But it was an illusion: The soup was hearty and warming, balancing salty and lemony flavors infused into a tomato base that was packed with olives and large chunks of sterlet, pike-perch and halibut.
Complimentary breadbaskets with a choice of just-baked pumpernickel and white breads arrived to much acclaim, although the foil-topped packets of liquefied butter that went with it weren’t in keeping with the classy feel of the place. 
Another good starter is the British classic Fish and Chips (230 rubles, $10). Although the generous helping of chips (French fries) were not hand-cut, a large pile of breaded strips of pike-perch with a pot of tartar sauce made the dish a winner that would suffice as an entr?e rather than a hot starter in a light lunch.
As befits properly posh restaurants, the menu selection is not vast but features dishes made from the all-time favorite edible aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates such as salmon, cod, herring, lobster, scallops and mussels. There is also a fine wine card.
A pasta dish with salmon (430 rubles, $15) was acceptable but not amazing, and it again seemed like an undersized portion compared to the hubcap-sized plate on which it was served.
A more impressive entr?e was a pan-fried river trout served with a white wine, cream and leek sauce (690 rubles, $24). Served with a small helping of al-dente char-grilled mange tout, French beans and cherry tomatoes, the trout was a triumph of flavors with its flakey flesh delicately perfumed with garlic and rosemary and complemented by the wonderfully rich sauce. 
That’s the good news. The bad news is that when asked for a fish knife with which to tackle the whole trout sizzling on the plate, the waiter nervously explained that Fish House doesn’t have any. Or didn’t have earlier this month. The waiter said the new restaurant was waiting for them to arrive and apologetically produced a steak knife as an alternative — a curious turn of events as there are certainly no beefsteaks on the menu at Fish House!

TITLE: Mariinsky Stars Welcome Guests at the Royal Ballet
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Royal Ballet in London has invited two Mariinsky ballerinas as guest dancers this year. Following Yekaterina Osmolkina’s guest appearances in “Swan Lake” in March, another star, Yevgenia Obraztsova (who was in Cedric Klapisch’s 2005 film “Russian Dolls” as well as in Bertand Normand’s 2006 film “Ballerina”), appeared in “The Sleeping Beauty.” 
Last Saturday, for her second and final performance, Obraztsova was superb and showed herself to be fully at home in The Royal Ballet’s production of “Beauty.” This production was premiered in 2006 to celebrate the illustrious British company’s 75th anniversary and artistic director Dame Monica Mason based it on the company’s landmark 1946 production by Dame Ninette de Valois which reopened the Royal Opera House after the Second World War. This production is far superior to the Soviet production by Konstantin Sergeyev that is danced by the Mariinsky Ballet this year, and which was also shown at Covent Garden last summer during their London tour. Sergei Vikharev’s reconstruction of the original 1890 Imperial Ballet version of “Beauty,” which is, unfortunately, seldom danced by the Mariinsky, is still the definitive production of this classic.
Obraztsova was a classically pure Aurora in the best of Mariinsky traditions. Every element of her dancing was perfectly pitched, as well as being rich in detail. Her dancing maintained the complex balance required by the Rose Adagio in Act 1. In the Act 2 vision scene, she was warm and tender, giving an exquisite solo, and in the final wedding act she was radiant in the grand pas de deux. 
She was strongly partnered by the Royal Ballet principal David Makhatelli, although he was not as technically polished, his solo lacking precision. Earlier last week the Royal Ballet star Alina Cojocaru (a favorite of St. Petersburg audiences and a regular guest with the Mariinsky) also gave a superlative performance with her regular partner Johan Kobborg, which was even more satisfying than the Obraztsova/Makhatelli performance. These “Beauty” performances were splendidy conducted by another Mariinsky guest, Valery Ovsyanikov.
Another significant ballet program was staged at the Mariinsky Theater the week before. The Mariinsky Ballet revived Balanchine’s 1952 masterpiece “Scotch Symphony” after a gap of more than 15 years. This staging was by Ben Huys, a former New York City Ballet dancer. Balanchine staged this ballet to music by Mendelssohn following his visit to the Edinburgh Festival. The great choreographer, captivated by the Scottish landscape and the theatricality of the military parades of the Scottish regiments, created a very poetic ballet. 
Alina Somova was expressive in the lead role, while Alexander Sergeyev was full of passion as her cavalier. The Mariinsky corps de ballet was wonderfully alive and vibrant, illuminating the engaging patterns choreographed by Balanchine. The whole cast was triumphant in the final joyful movement. 
“Scotch Symphony” and another Balanchine masterpiece, “Theme and Variations,” were the first two Balanchine ballets to be staged in Russia — the Mariinsky (then known as the Kirov) Ballet staged them under former artistic director of ballet Oleg Vinogradov. 
Fittingly, this new program also included “Theme and Variations,” Balanchine’s fantasy on “Sleeping Beauty.” Viktoria Tereshkina danced the demanding lead role gloriously, and Vladimir Shklyarov was, as usual, technically dazzling.
This excellent program was completed by “In The Night,” created by Jerome Robbins, the second greatest New York City Ballet choreographer after Balanchine. A chamber ballet set for three couples, it depicts the three stages of a woman’s relationship with her lover, danced by three different female dancers. 
In the first passionate duet, Maria Shirinkina and Filipp Steppin were youthful and flowing. In the aristocratic second duet, Konstantin Zverev danced with a noble bearing, partnering a radiant Maya Dumchenko. And in the emotional final duet, Mariinsky prima ballerina Uliana Lopatkina was excellent. The ending was moving, with the three different couples uniting on stage and greeting each other. 

The Mariinsky Ballet will depart early next week for a three-week tour to Japan.

TITLE: Michelin-Starred Chef to Create Gourmet Meal at Cote Jardin
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Marc de Passorio, a distinguished chef with extensive international experience, is bursting with pride over his restaurant’s first Michelin star, which was awarded in March this year.
“They woke me up at five or six in the morning with the news about the award and I just jumped out of bed and exclaimed I could not believe it,” Passorio, who runs “M de Passorio” restaurant at Hostellerie du Vallon de Valrugues in Saint-Remy de Provence in France, told The St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday. “Then I met my staff in the kitchen and told them we can really be proud of this star — it is ours and ours alone; it is not because we were involved with any of the big names.”
In addition to the prestigious Michelin star, Passorio’s restaurant has been awarded 16 points by the respected Gault&Millau restaurant guide.
“It is much more challenging indeed to create your own cooking style, your own team, your own venue — but the success, when it comes, is so much more enjoyable when you know you have never exploited anyone’s name or ideas,” Passorio said.
Passorio is in St. Petersburg this week to treat the city’s gastronomic community to a gourmet dinner at Novotel’s Cote Jardin restaurant on Friday. The chef, who once prepared a formal dinner for Vladimir Putin back when Putin was president, will serve up an exquisite menu, including tartare of fresh sea scallops from Mont Saint-Michel’s Bay with grilled hazelnut oil and coconut emulsion, homemade lightly smoked duck foie gras, Mediterranean red tuna “a la Plancha” and shoulder of Alpine lamb confit.
His signature style fuses regional products with a touch of exotic flavor to create a unique and inspired dish. “This is how it works: I take an aubergine [eggplant] thinking what they would have done to it in Russia, India or Italy, and then an association gives me an idea,” Passorio explains.
The chef’s favorite ingredients include zucchini, eggplants, tomatoes and other vegetables. He does his own shopping at his favorite local market, and his restaurant’s main supplier is a trader from that market whom Marc has known since his childhood. “We both remember the times when I shopped there with my parents,” Passorio recalls. “Sometimes he would greet me, tongue-in-cheek, with something like, ‘Oh, nice to see the little one again.’”
The cooking bug hit Passorio during one such fondly remembered food shopping pilgrimage to the market that he recalls well. “I wanted to be a cook when I was seven years old,” he remembers. “I was very curious about playing with flavors and ingredients, and it occupied much of my time in my childhood.”
“It is very good for business — any business, come to think of it — to have these old connections dating back many years,” he continues. “You know they won’t cheat you and you can rely on them 100 percent.” 
For Passorio, true success in the kitchen depends on one’s hands and creativity. He believes a good chef will always come up with an excellent meal using the ingredients available to them at any given moment, regardless of the country in which they are in.
“For example, four or five years ago I served cold borshch with tongue and foie gras at a dinner at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin and some 250 guests,” Passorio recalls. “My idea was to offer a fresh twist on a traditional and much-admired local dish.”
The big names on the French gastronomic scene have been generous to Passorio.
“Marc is a unique chef who has had a passion for cooking from a young age,” says renowned chef Joel Robuchon. “His inventive cooking is linked to the memories of his grandmother or discoveries from his travels. Marc achieves a perfect blend, combining traditional basics and exotic flavors.”
Born in Cameroon, Passorio followed in his parents’ footsteps by studying at a Hotel Business School on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. After spending some time in India, Vietnam and other exotic destinations, he came to France to train in Nice, Toulouse and the Loire until he settled in Provence. Passorio also has two years of experience at the Moscow restaurants Le Nostalgie and La Maree, but his strongest link with Russia is undoubtedly his wife Tatyana, who also works in his restaurant. Every year, the couple invites guests to a Russian-inspired dinner on New Year’s Eve.