SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1533 (95), Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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TITLE: Former Cop Visits City To Campaign For Reform
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alexei Dymovsky, the police officer who was fired and sued after he spoke out against police corruption in his YouTube address to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month, announced the creation of a grass-roots movement for police reform in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Later in the day, his bodyguard and two supporters were detained as they drove in a car in the city, having been followed by unmarked cars, he said. They were released on Monday.
Called White Ribbon — a reference to the samurai moral code — the movement opened its first branch in St. Petersburg, where it was showcased at a news conference on Sunday.
“The movement’s goals are the protection of citizens’ interests, ensuring that officials enforce the law, and the reform of the Interior Ministry system,” Dymovsky said by phone on Monday.
Earlier, Dymovsky spoke against quotas for the number of criminal cases to be prosecuted, which he said leads to police officers fabricating evidence, and low wages in the police force, which lead to corruption and crime. He distanced himself from political movements and any forms of radicalism, saying that all his activities would be within the law.
Dymovsky, who was a police major from the southwestern port city of Novorossiisk before being fired on Nov. 8 — three days after his Nov. 5 video appeal — also gave out his mobile phone number and asked the public to report instances of police corruption and violations directly to him.
Several other police officers from different cities have followed suit and also made video statements, which can be viewed at Dymovsky’s web site, http://dymovskiy.name.
The police have been at the center of attention in recent months following a series of high profile cases. The most publicized case involved Major Denis Yevsyukov, a Moscow police chief who went on a shooting rampage in a Moscow supermarket killing two and wounding seven on April 27.
The gun Yevsyukov used had been recorded as missing from a criminal inquiry in Chechnya since 2000, according to investigators. His deputy was arrested and charged with illegal firearms trafficking in May.
Dymovsky suggested Sunday’s surveillance and detentions in St. Petersburg were part of “someone’s game.”
“They [Dymovsky’s bodyguard and supporters] were held in some building through the night — from what I understood, by FSB (Federal Security Service) men,” he said.
“It was done to cause some scandal on the web — they waited for me to start sounding the alarm in order to save [the detained supporters]. When a big commotion had kicked off, they let them go.”
Dymovsky added that the three detained supporters were treated well, though no reason was given for their detention.
The car that Dymovsky was in was also followed, he said. The FSB’s press service did not answer the phone when called on Monday.
A series of rallies in support of Dymovsky, who found himself under pressure after his video appeal, were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and several other cities on Nov. 28.
TITLE: Fireworks Banned After Fire Kills 113
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu banned fireworks at many New Year’s festivities and President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a review of fire safety legislation after a pyrotechnics show ignited a fire at a Perm nightclub that killed at least 113 people.
A Perm court on Sunday night sanctioned the arrest of four people on charges of causing multiple deaths by negligence and breaking fire safety rules in the blaze early Saturday at the Khromaya Loshad (Lame Horse) nightclub in central Perm.
The jailed suspects include nightclub owner Anatoly Zak, managing director Svetlana Yefremova, art director Oleg Fetkulov and Sergei Derbenyov, the businessman who installed the pyrotechnics blamed for the fire, officials said.
The charges carry a sentence of up to seven years in prison.
The court decided to hold off from charging a fifth suspect, the owner of the rooms rented by the club, because he is fighting for his life in the hospital after sustaining serious injuries in the fire.
The suspect was among 123 people being treated in hospitals in several Russian cities late Sunday. Many of those hospitalized were in serious condition, and the 112th death was a man who died Sunday night after being airlifted to a Moscow hospital.
Shoigu denounced what he described as the improper use of pyrotechnics in the nightclub, which was celebrating its eighth anniversary.
“The pyrotechnics installed on the stage had no right to be used in any possible way,” Shoigu said Saturday.
He ordered a “categorical ban” on fireworks at events with mass attendance until legislation regulating their use can be improved. Fireworks will be prohibited “in places of mass gatherings of people during the New Year’s and Christmas holidays,” including by “showmen and artists who like them,” Shoigu said.
Shoigu’s ministry could not be reached for clarification on the ban Sunday evening.
Prosecutor General Yury Chaika ordered regional prosecutors to check all stores and warehouses with pyrotechnic products for compliance with safety rules.
Shoigu said the fire, which started at about 1 a.m. Saturday, began when fireworks hit the low ceiling and spread rapidly because of open windows and doors. People could not get out in the dark because the club had only one exit, accessible through a narrow staircase, he said.
An amateur video posted on the RIA-Novosti web site from the night of the fire shows the emcee standing in the club with a microphone, saying to two young women, “You are beautiful, you are desired, you are charming.”
The footage then shows sparks behind the wooden decorative paneling of the ceiling, as somebody yells, “We are on fire!” People start to push their way toward the exit as the fire spreads rapidly across the room. People who made it out into the street can be seen stripping off their burning clothing.
A total of 282 people were invited to the nightclub’s birthday celebration Friday night, Shoigu said.
Khromaya Loshad’s web site was down Sunday, but a cached copy advertises birthday festivities on Dec. 3, 4 and 5. “Free entrance before midnight to those wearing a birthday suit!” the advertisement says.
Witnesses saw nightclub owner Zak and managing director Yefremova flee the Khromaya Loshad together as a panicked crowd stampeded the club’s single exit, news reports said.
Zak’s lawyer, Igor Kashin, denied that his client owned the nightclub and said he was merely a friend of the director, Interfax reported. Zak was ranked as the 34th richest person in the Perm region last year by the regional news portal 59.ru.
Fire safety inspectors slapped the nightclub with two fines, for 1,800 rubles ($60) and 1,000 rubles, during a check a year ago, Shoigu said.
“We give out fines but can only close these kind of venues through a court decision,” he said at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova.
Medvedev criticized the party’s organizers for not heeding the fire safety warnings and fines and called for them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“They have neither brains nor shame,” Medvedev said.
He demanded a review of fire safety legislation. “We should think about legislation regulating such events. It should be stricter,” he said.
The Investigative Committee said no traces of explosives were found at the nightclub, ruling out a terrorist attack as the cause for the fire.
The nightclub did not have an automatic fire extinguishing system, and most people died from smoke inhalation, the head of Perm’s branch of the Investigative Committee, Marina Zabbarova, said Sunday.
The Emergency Situations Ministry sent six planes and six helicopters to Perm, along with medicine and teams of doctors.
Eighty victims in critical condition have been airlifted to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk, the Health and Social Development Ministry said.
Perm is a regional capital with a population of slightly less than 1 million.
Medvedev declared Monday as a national day of mourning, with flags lowered to half-mast and entertainment shows canceled on television and in theaters.
The first funerals were held Sunday as three people were buried at a Perm cemetery where city authorities allocated space for the fire victims, city administration spokesman Andrei Kamenskikh said.
The fire places the spotlight on serious problems like corruption and unprofessionalism among people who are responsible for fire safety regulation, State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov said. “Retirement homes that regularly have fires cannot afford to bribe fire safety officials, but nightclubs can,” Gudkov, a member of A Just Russia, told Interfax.
A fire at a nursing home in Podyelsk, in the republic of Komi, killed 23 people on Jan. 31, while 94 died in fires at two nursing homes in 2007.
More than 17,000 people die from fires yearly in Russia, and there have been several fires in nightclubs linked to negligence in recent years. In 2007, two bartenders caused a fire in a Moscow strip club killing 10 people when they threw a lighter at an ashtray full of alcohol. Last year, a short circuit gutted the well-known Diaghilev club in a fire that injured four people.
TITLE: Burns Victims Flown to St. Petersburg for Treatment
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At least 28 people who were seriously injured in the deadly fire at a Perm nightclub on Friday remained in two St. Petersburg hospitals Monday.
The injured people were taken from Perm to St. Petersburg on two special planes during the weekend. Almost all of them are breathing with the help of artificial ventilation machines.
The city’s Military Medical Academy said its burns injuries unit received 11 people from Perm. By Monday, some of them had seen some small improvement, but most were in critical condition, the academy said, Interfax reported.
Vladimir Kotsur, head doctor of the Dzhanelidze Paramedic Scientific Research Institute, said 17 people injured in the fire were being treated in his clinic. He said all of them were in critical condition.
Two more victims of the blaze who were also being brought to St. Petersburg did not survive the flight and died on the journey. Their bodies were sent back to Perm, Fontanka reported.
One man who had 70 to 80 percent burns died in a St. Petersburg hospital last night, the news portal reported.
Relatives of those hospitalized in St. Petersburg have started arriving in the city.
The biggest fire in Russia’s recent history occurred in the “Khromaya Loshchad” (Lame Horse) nightclub in the Urals city of Perm on Friday night. At least 113 people died in the blaze, and more than 100 injured were taken to hospitals in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk as well as in Perm itself. Most are in critical condition due to massive burns and smoke inhalation.
Sixty-five injured people were taken to Moscow, seven people were taken to Chelyabinsk and 21 remained in Perm.
People wishing to provide financial help to the relatives of those who died in the fire can send the money to an account opened by the Perm Social Support Foundation, Interfax reported. Details of the account are available at www.perm.ru.
The fire was ignited by fireworks set off inside the club during the celebration of its eighth birthday.
In the wake of the tragedy, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko ordered the fire safety of city venues at which large-scale events are held to be checked.
The governor also demanded that the owners of such buildings take tough measures to meet safety standards.
“In the event that those demands are not met, we’ll appeal to the courts to consider closing such places,” Matviyenko said, Interfax reported.
“Today we have a day of mourning for the victims in Perm. We are mourning together with the relatives of the victims. But this tragedy should be a lesson for everyone,” the governor said Monday.
City Hall is planning to ban the use of fireworks at large-scale events in enclosed spaces.
Matviyenko also ordered checks at places where fireworks are stored and sold, with regard to the goods’ adherence to state standards.
“We know that there have been cases in the city in which illegal and poor quality goods were sold that could cause damage to the health of our citizens,” the governor said, Interfax reported.
Matviyenko said it was also necessary that the unregulated use of fireworks in outdoor public places be banned.
TITLE: Negotiators Press On Despite Pact Reaching Expiry Date
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Barack Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this week without achieving a key step toward his vision of a nuclear-free world, which helped him win the award in the first place.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expired Saturday after Russian and U.S. negotiators in Geneva failed to reach an agreement on a replacement, despite past promises by Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev that the deadline would be met.
Political analysts disagreed Sunday on who was to blame and whether a new treaty could be signed by year- end.
The White House and Kremlin said in a joint statement Friday that talks would continue and that both sides remained committed to a new treaty “at the earliest possible date.”
Medvedev and Obama agreed in a telephone conversation to give negotiators an additional push, the Kremlin said in statement posted on its web site Saturday. It did not say when the conversation was held.
The Foreign Ministry said security would not be reduced because Moscow and Washington would continue to cooperate “in the spirit of the treaty.”
But the expiration deals a blow to those in the Obama administration who hoped to achieve at least this one tangible step before the president receives the world’s most prestigious peace award.
The new START treaty significantly cuts the number of nuclear warheads and long-range launchers held by the two countries from about 2,200 now to between 1,500 and 1,675. Given that Moscow and Washington control the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals, it is seen as a key incentive for other nuclear powers to cut back.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee mentioned Obama’s commitment for nuclear nonproliferation when it announced its decision in October.
Obama will travel to Europe this week and receive the award in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Thursday.
The Kremlin and White House officials frantically tried to broker a signing ceremony for the new START treaty during Obama’s visit to Oslo, news reports said.
The Czech Foreign Ministry even said Prague was ready to host a summit between Obama and Medvedev if asked, Reuters reported. Obama first announced his vision of a nuclear free world in a speech in Prague in April.
But an unidentified White House official told The New York Times late last week that “it is not going to happen next week” and the negotiators were aiming for a deal at the end of the year.
The report also said negotiators have agreed on a mostly complete text and haggling was confined to technicalities over verification and monitoring.
Kremlin spokespeople were unavailable for comment Sunday.
Russian analysts said the technicalities might ultimately become major stumbling blocks.
Anatoly Khramchikhin, an analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the time for signing the agreement was running short.
“It is either this year or never,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
The political impetus might be lost if talks run into next year, he said. “It is just very hard to bring the interests of both sides into one place,” he said.
His comments were echoed by Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security.
“Both sides want to get this thing done by the end of the year,” he said, adding that U.S. officials were prepared to negotiate between the Dec. 25 Christmas holidays and New Year’s.
TITLE: Oligarch Prokhorov Offers To Sponsor Avrora Cruiser
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the country’s Defense Ministry decides the fate of the legendary Avrora Cruiser, billionaire tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov has offered to become a patron of the historic vessel if it is handed over to the St. Petersburg government.
The Avrora is currently part of the Russian Navy, but it may soon be turned into a branch of the Russian Naval Museum.
Intriguingly, debate about the future of the Avrora was prompted by Prokhorov, who is president of the Onexim group, one of Russia’s largest private investment funds, having rented the ship — an icon of the 1917 Revolution — for the birthday party of Russian Pioneer magazine, which he owns, during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June.
A video of the birthday celebrations that was posted on the magazine’s web site and then reposted in thousands of blogs received widespread circulation on the Internet and was widely criticized.
During the party, the ship was transformed into a nightclub, with huge speakers installed on the upper deck. A number of the Economic Forum’s VIP guests, including Prokhorov himself and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, were present at the party.
Popular rock singer Sergei Shnurov and his musicians performed on a stage constructed on a barge berthed alongside the Avrora. At the end of the party, some of the guests even jumped into the cold waters of the Neva River for a swim.
Prokhorov is now offering to come to the rescue of the troubled ship.
In an open letter he sent to Matviyenko and the Russian Navy authorities, the magnate expresses his concern at the possibility that the heroic vessel could be turned into an entertainment venue.
“A fierce discussion has been unfolding in the media of late concerning the possible decommissioning of the Avrora from the navy and the handing over of the vessel to the St. Petersburg government,” reads Prokhorov’s appeal, published on the Russian Pioneer web site.
“I see it as a potentially dangerous situation, as the Avrora cruiser, which has already become a popular venue for various festivities and location for film and music video shoots, could be fully transformed and degenerate into an entertainment venue. This scenario should be avoided, as it would harm the feelings of Russian patriots, veterans and the residents of St. Petersburg.”
If the naval authorities decide to decommission the vessel, Prokhorov said his charitable foundation would provide the necessary funding to carry out the transfer of the cruiser to the city authorities.
Earlier this month, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the chief commander of the Russian Navy, issued a special decree banning any entertainment or other events not directly connected to naval activities on board all of the vessels of the Russian Navy.
The decree followed an investigation into the circumstances of the infamous Russian Pioneer party.
“The investigation has shown that the permission that was granted by the naval authorities to allow the Russian Pioneer party contravened both the army charter and the Russian legislation on protecting [the country’s] historic heritage,” said Alexander Kalinos, an aide to the Chief Military Prosecutor.
“That entertainment event created a potentially risky situation, in which cultural valuables on board the cruiser could have been damaged.”
TITLE: Nevsky Express Cars Replaced
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian Railways, or RZD, replaced all of the 61-4192-model passenger carriages previously used on the Nevsky Express train for carriages of another design from Saturday, Interfax reported.
The company said it did so “to provide reassurance to train passengers and to put their minds at ease.”
From Saturday, the Nevsky Express train will use carriages with compartmented seating rather than open seated cars on its route between St. Petersburg and Moscow. The train car meets all the safety and comfort requirements, RZD said.
Last week the Russian Federal Transport Service, or RFTS, ordered RZD to temporarily stop the use of the 61-4192-model cars on high-speed trains after the Nevsky Express train was derailed on Nov. 27. RFTS ordered that they should not be used “until the reasons [for the crash] have been established and measures taken to fasten the seats to the floor more securely.”
In addition, alterations to the cars are required in order to prevent luggage falling from overhead racks, and testing should be carried out, RFTS said.
RZD has disputed the order and submitted an appeal to Moscow’s Arbitration Court, Interfax reported.
RZD said that after the train crash, it checked all the fastening units in the cars together with the Tverskoi Railway Carriage Production Plant that produced the cars.
No violations were found. The cars of the 61-4192-model meet all the safety requirements imposed on railway transport, RZD said.
As a result of the train crash, which the authorities say was caused by a terrorist bomb planted on the line, the passenger seats in one of the most seriously damaged cars were torn from their fastening units. At least 26 people died in the crash, most of whom lived in St. Petersburg, and about a hundred more were injured. Many remain in local hospitals.
Meanwhile, on the evening of Dec. 17, RZD will launch a new high-speed train, the Sapsan, which will travel between Moscow and St. Petersburg, RZD’s press service announced.
The company has already put tickets for the train on sale.
Sapsan will travel back and forth between Moscow and St. Petersburg three times a day, in the morning, afternoon and evening. The morning and evening journeys will take three hours and 45 minutes, and the afternoon journey will take four hours and 15 minutes due to additional stops at Okulovka, Bologoye, Vyshny Volochyok and Tver.
The Sapsan is a high-speed train produced by the German firm Siemens. The train can reach speeds of up to 250 kilometers an hour and can carry 604 passengers.
TITLE: Dagestani Court Overturns Oct. 11 Election
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a highly unusual decision, a Dagestani court has overturned the results of a mayoral election in the city of Derbent, making a repeat of the vote a real possibility.
The ruling, made late last week by the Derbent City Court, also sends a strong message to the Kremlin, which must soon decide whether to re-appoint Mukhu Aliyev as the president of the volatile North Caucasus republic.
In the Oct. 11 vote, Aliyev had backed incumbent Mayor Felix Kaziakhmedov, who was also United Russia’s candidate. Kaziakhmedov won the election with 67.52 percent of the vote.
The election was marred by violent protests that prompted presidential envoy Vladimir Ustinov to fly to the city to restore order.
OMON riot police officers reportedly used tear gas and even shot at voters, wounding one, to prevent them from entering polling stations to vote. Only 23 of 36 stations opened after local election officials said they had received threats and could not guarantee security.
Yet Dagestan’s election committee later declared the vote to be fair and proclaimed Kaziakhmedov the winner.
The election in Derbent, which has a population of about 100,000 and claims to be the country’s oldest city, was seen by opposition politicians and independent election observers as the worst example of vote-rigging in Oct. 11 regional polls.
As a result, the State Duma’s three opposition parties decided to boycott the parliament and won a promise from President Dmitry Medvedev to review election laws.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that anyone unhappy with the Oct. 11 elections should turn to the courts.
It is extremely rare for Russian courts to overturn elections. In the past, such cases have been viewed as the result of Kremlin pressure to remove undesired candidates from elected office. This was the case when a Nizhny Novgorod court overturned the city’s 1998 mayoral election where the winner, maverick businessman Andrei Klimentyev, was later convicted on embezzlement charges.
The Derbent court ruling on Thursday was hailed as an important moral victory by supporters of Kaziakhmedov’s main rival, former Dagestani chief prosecutor Imam Yaraliyev.
“This was the only just decision the court could make,” said Nariman Abdumutalibov, deputy head of the Suleiman-Stalsky district council.
Yaraliyev, who got 27.7 percent of the vote, heads the administration for the district, located outside Derbent.
“This was a beastly, brutal vote. In effect, most of the voters were members of the OMON riot police units,” Abdumutalibov said by telephone from Kasumkent, the seat of the local administration.
Aliyev, however, indicated that the court ruling would be contested. “Not a single representative of the election committee was present at the court, and the judge did not discuss any of its documents,” Aliyev said Friday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Dagestani election committee chief Magomed Dibirov complained to the Kavkaz Uzel web site that the court had ignored a request by Derbent’s top election official to postpone the hearing because he was ill in the hospital.
A senior United Russia official said the party was waiting for a final court ruling. “We have a decision at the lowest level. … We will wait until it goes into force and then respect it,” party council secretary Vyacheslav Volodin said, Interfax reported.
Both sides may file a complaint within 10 days of the ruling. If not, a new election must be scheduled within three months, the Central Election Commission said in a statement.
Thursday’s ruling was prompted by complaints from Elkhan Kazimov and Salikh Ramazanov, two other candidates in the mayoral election. Each garnered less than 1 percent of the vote.
Yaraliyev had filed a separate complaint with the Derbent City Court, and it was unclear Sunday when it would be heard.
Political observers said Thursday’s ruling bodes ill for the Dagestani president because it signals that he lacks political control in the region.
Aliyev’s term expires in February. Medvedev has not given any indication whether he will be reappointed.
Aliyev said Friday that while Medvedev could pick from a “wide choice” of candidates, he was convinced that the president would make a decision “that will be supported by all Dagestanis.”
Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Kremlin probably had not made a final decision yet.
“This will be decided between the Kremlin, Makhachkala and the Dagestani community in Moscow,” Malashenko said.
United Russia last month presented Medvedev with a list of five presidential candidates, including Aliyev. A recent Kremlin reform allows the strongest regional party to forward at least three candidates for regional leader.
TITLE: New Mariinsky Label Scoops Nominations
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The first two classical recordings released by the newly founded Mariinsky label this year have been nominated for five prestigious Grammy awards.
The recordings up for nomination are “Shostakovich: Symphonies No. 1 and 15” (Valery Gergiev and Orchestra) and “Shostakovich: The Nose” (Valery Gergiev, Andrei Popov, Sergei Semishkur, Vladislav Sulimsky, Chorus and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater).
“The Nose” won nominations in the “Best Classical Album” and “Best Opera Recording” categories. In addition, James Mallison was nominated as “Producer of the Year” for his work on “The Nose.”
In the first nomination “The Nose” is competing with “Ravel: Daphnis Et Chloe” (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus,) “Bernstein: Mass.” (Marin Alsop, Asher Edward Wulfman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Morgan State University Choir and the Peabody Children’s Chorus,) and “Mahler: Symphony No. 8.” (Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony, Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Girls Chorus and San Francisco Symphony Chorus.)
“Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 15” received nominations in the “Best Orchestral Performance” and “Best Engineered Album, Classical” categories.
As “Best Orchestral Performance,” the Mariinsky’s offering is competing against “Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique” (Simon Rattle, Susan Graham and Berliner Philharmoniker,) “Bruckner: Symphony No. 5” (Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia Orchestra,) “Ravel: Daphnis Et Chloe” (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus) and “Szymanowski: Symphonies No. 1 and 4” (Antoni Wit, Jan Krzysztof Broja, Ewa Marczyk and Marek Marczyk; Warsaw Symphony Orchestra.)
The brainchild of the company’s artistic director Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky record label released its first CD, “The Nose” in May 2011 to rave reviews from the international media.
No other Russian orchestra or theater can boast its own record label. To date, the label has issued three recordings, including, in addition to the two Shostakovich releases, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
The label will release its fourth CD in February, featuring pianist Denis Matsuyev and the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gergiev in a program featuring Rachmaninoff’s “Third Piano Concerto” and his “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
TITLE: MK Loses Web Site
In Mystery Attack
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Unidentified hackers destroyed the web site of Moskovsky Komsomolets in a mysterious attack, said editors for the popular national tabloid.
A virus coming from a server based in South Korea “erased” the contents of the web site in 10 minutes, MK web editor Albert Shchegrov said by telephone Friday.
“The virus penetrated the site’s structure, discovered gaps in it, and made the program that protects the site destroy it,” Shchegrov said.
He said editors determined that hackers had caused the site to go down on Thursday, four days after the attack.
The site came under attack during the last weekend in November, and its archive of articles, photos and videos was destroyed, MK editor-in-chief Pavel Gusev told The St. Petersburg Times. Online readers were only able to access daily news on the web site last week.
Gusev said the site should be completely back online this week, except for photo and video materials that were not saved elsewhere and have been lost forever.
MK had planned to open a new web site last week, and the launch has now been delayed for a month, Gusev said.
Gusev said he had an idea about who was behind the attack but didn’t want to voice it yet. MK lawyers will file complaints about the attack with several law enforcement agencies, he said.
Meanwhile, a former MK editor suggested Friday that the site’s problems were linked not to a hacker attack, but to a mistake by its administrators.
“Unprofessional” workers “killed” the newspaper’s archive, Alexei Krasnov, a manager of the newspaper’s Internet projects from October 2008 to July, said in a comment posted on the Roem.ru forum.
Krasnov, reached on his cell phone, refused to elaborate on his post.
Gusev denied the accusation. “I don’t think Krasnov’s opinion is right,” Gusev said. “He was fired, so he may be holding it against the newspaper.”
Moskovsky Komsomolets is one of the few major dailies relatively free of outside interference, with most of its stock owned by Gusev, who has been the editor since 1983 and oversaw its privatization in the early 1990s.
Gusev enjoys warm relations with Moscow City Hall, and the paper, which has turned increasingly tabloid-like in recent years, refrains from criticizing Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s policies.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets publishing house will celebrate its 90th anniversary this week.
Hackers have attacked other Russian media in the past. In May 2007, the web sites of the Kommersant daily and Ekho Moskvy radio went offline for a couple days after unidentified hackers targeted them in so-called Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attacks, where a network of computers that have been covertly infected to run malicious software bombards a web site with requests from thousands of computers across the globe, thus making it inaccessible to legitimate web traffic.
TITLE: Tikhonov, ‘Shtirlitz’ Actor Dies Aged 81
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Film actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, known for his roles as the Soviet spy Shtirlitz and a Russian prince in War and Peace, died Friday. He was 81.
Tikhonov died in a Moscow clinic, days after a heart attack, the Russian Cinematographers’ Union said.
“He was an actor who became part of our national psyche,” movie director Sergei Ursulyak said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Tikhonov was known in the West largely for his role as a Russian prince in the 1967 Oscar-winning film version of “War and Peace.”
But Tikhonov is best known at home for the 1973 television series 17 Moments of Spring, where he portrayed the historical Soviet spy Max Otto von Shtirlitz, who thwarted Nazi negotiation attempts with a U.S. operative.
“This role personified an ideal Soviet spy — smart, refined, intelligent,” Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Sergei Ivanov told Itar-Tass.
The role won Tikhonov immense popularity and government awards, including a KGB medal. It also spawned a genre of popular jokes, where Tikhonov’s character is twisted between Soviet reality and the fictional Third Reich.
Tikhonov was born in 1928 into a poor family in the Moscow region and worked as a lathe operator before becoming an actor.
He first starred in the 1948 Soviet propaganda film The Young Guard.
With his brooding good looks, Tikhonov became a darling of the Soviet film industry, appearing in more than 50 films where his characters often portrayed Soviet heroes who fought for the triumph of Communist ideas by overcoming moral dilemmas.
Then-President Vladimir Putin decorated him with an Order for Service to the Fatherland medal on his 75th birthday on Feb. 8, 2003.
On Friday, Prime Minister Putin described Tikhonov as a legend, and President Dmitry Medvedev said “we cannot imagine Russian culture without him.”
Tikhonov’s last role was a cameo in the upcoming film Burnt By the Sun 2, a sequel to the 1994 Oscar-winning drama about Stalinist purges.
The actor is survived by a daughter and four grandsons.
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: Israeli Minister Praises Visa-Free Regime With Russia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Israel’s foreign minister has praised the visa-free system between Russia and Israel, telling Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that it has boosted ties.
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel’s right-wing ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, visited Moscow on Friday for a session of a Russian-Israeli intergovernmental commission, which mainly focuses on economic ties.
Lieberman, who was born in Soviet Moldova, lauded the commission for establishing a visa-free system between the two countries last year.
He said the measure would be likely to double the number of Russian tourists traveling to Israel to 400,000 this year.
The commission will invite business communities of both countries to its next session in April 2010 to discuss new initiatives such as measures to help protect Russian and Israeli investment, Lieberman said.
Putin praised Israel’s sizable Russian community — “something that unites us with you like no other country” — and Lieberman as its vocal representative.
“We are very happy that people from the Soviet Union build such a brilliant political career,” Putin said, referring to Lieberman.
Lieberman spoke with Putin in flawless Russian, throwing in a few words of English.
Lieberman and Putin did not discuss Iran or any other foreign policy issues on the record. Foreign policy is President Dmitry Medvedev’s portfolio.
TITLE: Four Hours of President Putin and ‘Stupid Questions’
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rostov resident Tatyana Romanenko probably had a dream birthday on Thursday, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bestowed his congratulations on her in a nationally televised show.
Romanenko, who turned 55, asked Putin for his best wishes in one of the more than 2 million e-mails, phone calls and text messages received by his aides in the run-up to his call-in show. Putin, known to send birthday wishes only to his peers, like Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko or prominent arts and political figures, read out the request from a blue folder where he kept a few messages that he had personally chosen.
“Dear Tatyana Nikolayevna! With all of my heart, I congratulate you on your 55th birthday and I wish you success,” he said with a smile, drawing applause that prompted him to add, “And everyone gathered in this audience is joining my congratulations.”
During the record-length show, Putin mixed long discussions of the economy and social benefits with other light-hearted comments, including a promise to provide a computer for every student in a school and the rejection of a proposal to become a “citizen of planet Earth.”
In one minor setback, Putin’s remarkable memory for names and figures failed him when he mistakenly identified one of the owners of struggling automaker AvtoVAZ, to which he devoted a large segment of the show.
He noted that France’s Renault holds a blocking stake in AvtoVAZ, as does state corporation Russian Technologies. Then, speaking hesitantly, Putin said the third 25 percent stake belonged to investment bank Renaissance Capital. In fact, it belongs to its rival, Troika Dialog.
Spokespeople for both banks declined to comment on the mistake.
The show lasted four hours and one minute and featured questions from stiff-looking workers at plants that Putin has visited this year, including the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower station. He visited the giant dam in Khakasia after 75 people were killed in an accident in August.
Whenever a television presenter asked for questions, just one or two hands would rise among the assembled workers, and then someone would ask a question — usually starting with lavish praise for the prime minister’s efforts to help his or her company. Otherwise, people stood virtually motionless, shoulder to shoulder in a tight crowd, despite the mostly spacious premises of their plants.
A number of the people who asked questions via video link had previously met Putin during his visits. The audience in Gostiny Dvor, where Putin took questions, was filled with employees of Russia’s “main industries” and university students, according to television anchors.
Putin said he stayed up late the previous night to see questions streaming in via the Internet and text messages. Questions continued to pour in during the show, some of them appearing on the ticker line in the audience, asking him casual things such as what Pokemon character he preferred or pleading for help becoming a singer.
Putin did promise assistance in one case.
“Our school has three computers. Could you allocate us some money?” ninth-grader Tatyana Kapnitskaya asked in a written question.
Putin responded that he would act as a good magician from popular Oriental tales for children.
“As you have reached me, I consider it my duty to respond to your request,” he said.
Putin joked in response to a question about why he appears happier with tigers and leopards than in the company of his ministers.
“The more I know people, the more I like dogs,” he said, before quickly adding that, in fact, he did not think badly about his ministers or friends. “I simply like animals.”
Putin said he thinks of each and every day as his happiest. “The fact that we live is already happiness given to us by the Almighty,” he said.
There was also a display of modesty by Putin, whom Forbes recently ranked as the world’s third-most powerful person. Fielding a question about why great people experience depression and how Putin fights the disease, he said he did not consider himself great and therefore had no depression.
In one of the more colorfully delivered questions from a factory floor, an AvtoVAZ worker responded to an earlier question about why the state was sinking so much money into a bad carmaker. Many Russians ridicule the company’s Lada brand, saying the cars are notoriously poor quality.
“We actually make beautiful cars,” the worker said. “It’s a maneuverable and practical car.” She contradicted herself a moment later, adding, “Yes, in fact, the quality leaves much to be desired, but we need to buy better parts and update our models for it to be better.”
Putin also reacted to a recent drunk driving accident in Switzerland that left an elderly German man badly injured and led to charges against a young Russian who had been behind the wheel of an expensive Lamborghini.
The case shows that Russia has a problem of nouveau riches boasting their wealth, Putin said, likening them to Soviet people who wore golden teeth crowns as a sign of affluence.
“These Lamborghinis and other expensive knickknacks are those golden teeth that I mentioned,” he said. “These people that show off and make a parade of their wealth while millions of Russians live rather modest lives are no different.”
Closer to the end, Putin began answering questions from his blue folder, appearing to have selected most of them for fun. One of them was, “Do you skip stupid questions?”
“I want to ask the author of this: Which category of questions does he think his question belongs in?” Putin replied.
Ending the show, he quoted from another message, “If you want to enter eternity as a citizen of planet Earth, call this contact number.”
This gave Putin a chance to conclude the event on a patriotic tone, just like he did last year, when he proclaimed his love for Russia.
This time he said, “I am proud to be a citizen of the Russian Federation. It is quite enough. Thank you very much for the offer.”
Highlights From Putin’s Call-In Show
On whether he plans to leave politics
“Don’t hold your breath.”
On whether he will run for president in 2012
“I will think about it. There’s plenty of time. … It’s only 2009. The biggest mistake would be to subordinate current work to the interests of a future election campaign.”
On when Mikhail Khodorkovsky might get out of jail
“Unfortunately no one remembers that one of the Yukos security service chiefs is now in prison. … It is clear that he acted in the interests of and on the orders of his bosses. … There are at least five proven murders.”
On his tandem with President Medvedev
“Good. We graduated from the same university, had the same teachers, who not only gave us the same knowledge but a common approach to life. Those common principles allow us to work efficiently today.”
On Ukrainian Prime Minister Tymoshenko
“I’m not supporting Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s presidential election. … On a party level, we have special relations with the Party of Regions.”
On terrorism
“We have done a lot to break the spine of terrorism, but the threat has not been fully liquidated. … The threat of terrorism remains very high.”
On the Caucasus
“Do events in Ingushetia, Dagestan and other regions signal the start of a new war in the Caucasus? No.”
On the financial crisis
“The peak of the crisis has been overcome. … Exit from the crisis requires time, strength and considerable funds.”
On state corporations
“They are neither bad nor good. They are a necessity.”
On AvtoVAZ
“We must not lose this [Lada] brand, even if the share of our foreign partners changes.”
On the World Trade Organization
“Accession to the WTO remains our strategic goal, but we have the impression that for some unknown reasons some countries, including the United States, are hindering our accession to the WTO.”
On police
“It’s unacceptable to tar all policemen with the same brush, but the reaction to any negative incidents should be particularly quick and severe.”
On mortgages
“We will support the mortgage market. We will provide an extra 250 billion rubles to help bring interest rates on mortgage credits to 10 to 11 percent as the first step.”
On one-industry towns
“If the situation demands, I will come to you and to any other spot in the country. It is my duty.”
TITLE: Forum To Focus On Gas Prices
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: CAIRO, Egypt — The Gas Exporting Countries Forum meeting next week will discuss ways of stabilizing gas prices, Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said on Friday.
“Limiting the supplies in most of the contracts is impossible because they are long-term contracts,” al-Attiyah said. “But we are going to see and discuss how to stabilize the gas price. Gas should have a premium. It is a clean fuel, it’s a choice fuel.”
Utilities such as E.On and GDF Suez buy most of their gas under supply contracts linked to the cost of crude-oil products that are valid for as long as 30 years. The accords have take-or-pay clauses requiring them to take minimal volumes or pay a penalty.
Demand for gas in Europe dropped by a “record” 5 percent to 7 percent this year, Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said last month. Gazprom is the world’s biggest gas producer and Europe is its main market.
A bloc of gas producers is a reality as Russia seeks to limit oversupply of the fuel, Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates, said at a conference.
Qatar will host a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum of 11 nations on Wednesday to discuss sagging world markets.
TITLE: Border Town Business Continues to Grow
AUTHOR: By Elmira Alieva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite the global economic crisis, Russian entrepreneurial activity in Finnish border territories, close to St. Petersburg, continues to develop steadily.
The Kotka-Hamina region, Lappeenranta, Lapland and other Finnish territories close to the Russian border continue to accumulate Russian capital, according to the Kotka-Hamina regional development company Cursor.
Attracted by numerous advantages such as good traffic connections, stable and functional infrastructure, security, low interest rates on bank loans and the opportunity to enter the EU market, Russian businesspeople are pouring significant investment into Finland — almost 10 percent of the companies founded in the Kotka-Hamina region include Russian capital.
During the past 10 years, Finland has become a priority destination for investors from Russia’s northwest. In 2001, only 10 Russian companies had been set up in the Kotka-Hamina region. In 2008, this figure grew to 66 out of 420 new firms opened in the region. A relatively new trend is the influx of Moscow capital to the Finnish market.
“The crisis has had a positive effect on Russian-Finnish business contacts, because it prompted the disappearance of so-called daisy enterprises — companies that didn’t have their own business idea and that existed at the cost of other businesses,” said Alexei Kantonen, a representative of Cursor.
Alexei Varshavsky, general director of the St. Petersburg business contacts center Bizkon, said that the recession had harmed numerous Russian companies in Finland, but had also stimulated additional interest from Finnish partners. “For instance, one Finnish company is seeking a Russian cardboard supplier, because it is too expensive to produce it in Finland now,” he said.
Russian-Finnish business activity has intensified, according to Alexei Ulanov, general director of the St. Petersburg foundation for the support of industry. He said that Finland’s use of technology is advanced, and Russian and Finnish entrepreneurs have the opportunity to share their knowledge. “The crisis means a change of direction,” he said. “Those who change direction will survive in the cruel world of the market.”
“To establish a successful enterprise in Finland, first of all it is necessary to choose the correct sphere of business,” said Kantonen.
Leisure and business tourism, logistics and the construction industry, along with consulting, auditing, real estate, legal services and retail attract the most Russian investment in Finland. Russians have set up new restaurants, spa centers and retail stores in Finland.
Finland is also a destination for more substantial Russian projects. “Two St. Petersburg companies intend to launch plants for machinery construction, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering in Finland,” said Ulanov.
For those planning to open a business in Finland, especially in the Kotka-Hamina region, Bizkon and Cursor together offer information about the regional economy and provide consultations on business opportunities in Finland.
“Several years ago there was no information available in Russian about doing business in Finland,” said Kantonen. “Now the situation has changed. Extensive consultations are available in Russian.”
To stimulate Russian-Finnish business dialogue, the Russian hotel management group Turris is set to create a Russian-Finnish center of business contacts that will operate in the Hotel Baltiets in the village of Repino outside St. Petersburg, and in the Hotel Leikari, which is the leading conference hotel in southeast Finland.
“On March 12, 2010 there will be an exchange of subcontracts in St. Petersburg,” said Ulanov. “About 19 Finnish companies participated in the October exchange; the preliminary volume of orders totaled 525 million rubles ($17.6 million.)”
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: MTS Relents On Fines
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems will cut the size of penalties for subscribers who don’t make regular calls after customers complained, Vedomosti reported.
MTS is Russia’s largest cellular operator, and initially planned to charge accounts that lie dormant for five months a monthly fee of 10,000 rubles ($339); it will now charge 100 rubles a month from Dec. 15, the newspaper said, citing Chief Executive Officer Mikhail Shamolin.
Dalsvyaz Income Rises
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Dalsvyaz, the dominant fixed-line phone company in Russia’s Far East region, said net income rose 25 percent in the first nine months of the year to 1.94 billion rubles ($65.8 million).
Revenue increased 6.5 percent to 12.74 billion rubles versus 11.96 billion rubles in the same period last year, Dalsvyaz said on its web site Monday.
Sberbank Suffers
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, said third-quarter profit declined 82 percent as it set aside funds to cover delinquent loans.
Net income in the period through Sept. 30 plunged to 4.25 billion rubles ($144 million) from 23.2 billion rubles in the year-earlier period, the Moscow-based bank said Monday in a statement on its web site. Overdue debt accounted for 7.9 percent of total lending, compared with 1.8 percent at the start of the year and 6.4 percent after the first six months.
Bad-loan provisions were “the main factor influencing net profit for the nine months of 2009,” state-run Sberbank said in the statement.
Mail.ru Talks to Google
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mail.ru, the Russian internet portal controlled by Facebook investor Digital Sky Technologies, is in talks with Google to use its search engine, Vedomosti reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter.
Mail.ru plans to let its current contract with Yandex lapse this month because Russia’s largest search engine asked the portal to add its brand on the web site, the newspaper said, citing the person.
Vedomosti said that Vladimir Dolgov, head of Google in Russia, and a press official at Mail.ru declined to comment.
VEB Considers Assets
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state development bank, said it may reduce the number of United Co. RusAl assets it holds as collateral for a $4.5 billion loan, Interfax reported.
The value of RusAl’s assets has risen in value since the loan was given last year, the Russian news service cited VEB chief Vladimir Dmitriyev as saying in Moscow on Monday.
VEB may also help fund AvtoVAZ’s 30 billion-ruble ($1 billion) investment program, RIA Novosti cited him as saying.
Japanese Seek Partner
TOKYO (Bloomberg) — Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s retail banking unit will tie up with a state-backed Russian lender to provide information for Japanese companies investing there, Nikkei newspaper said. The alliance will aim to encourage projects by Japanese businesses to find natural resources in Russia, the report said.
TITLE: Inflation Falls To 2-Year Low
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The inflation rate fell to the lowest level in more than two years last month after the deepest recession on record blunted demand, according to data released Friday.
The rate fell to 9.1 percent from 9.7 percent in October, the State Statistics Service said. That compares with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 18 economists for 9.3 percent. On the month, prices rose 0.3 percent after failing to grow in the previous three months.
Slower inflation has allowed the Central Bank to cut its key rates for a ninth time since April in an effort to spur lending and underpin the recovery. The economy shrank a record 10.9 percent in the second quarter and 8.9 percent in the third as companies struggled to raise funds and consumer lending declined.
Lenders’ corporate loan books fell 0.5 percent in October, after declining 0.7 percent in the previous month, according to data published on the Central Bank’s web site Thursday. Lending to consumers dropped 0.7 percent for a ninth consecutive monthly decline.
Russian service industries from banks to mobile-phone retailers grew for a fourth month in November, while sluggish lending and rising unemployment restrained demand and curtailed an acceleration in the rate of expansion.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index retreated to 53.3 from 54.3 in October, VTB Capital said in an e-mailed statement Dec. 3. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.
TITLE: GM Plant Instates Weekly ‘Cleaning Day’
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s General Motors plant is shutting down one day a week to avoid overproduction.
The local GM plant stopped its conveyer last Thursday and announced a “non-production day,” a company representative said. Employees were on site at the time, preparing to launch the new Opel Astra model, he said. The factory has been holding an “off day” approximately once a week since October in an effort to match production levels to consumer demand, explained the representative, adding that employees receive full pay during these periods.
An employee of the plant confirmed that the conveyer is periodically turned off; in the meantime, employees attend training sessions and clean up their work areas. Last week, however, a lack of parts kept the factory from operating for at least Monday through Wednesday days, he said. The plant representative declined to comment, stating that the conveyer was running on Monday and Tuesday. When asked Thursday if the factory would be operating that day, the representative would not say.
Mikhail Logutenko is no stranger to the factory’s auto part problems. Logutenko, who manages Laura, a local car dealership, said the Chevrolet Cruze models sometimes arrive from the plant missing small parts. Since the Cruze is a new model, GM has not had enough time to work out deliveries and logistics, the dealer explained. Logutenko added that he occasionally has a deficit of Cruzes — the model is in demand, so the plant could produce more of them.
The manager of one of GM’s partners said that deliveries of spare parts, which pass through the St. Petersburg port, arrive regularly and are not subject to any delays.
The GM plant in St. Petersburg’s Shushary industrial zone opened in November last year. The factory produces Chevrolet Captiva and Opel Antara sports utility vehicles and began manufacturing Cruze sedans in September 2009. Building the plant, which has an output of up to 70,000 cars per year, cost the American automaker $300 million. In addition to a three-week vacation in June, the factory stopped production in July and August. According to a source close to the company, it manufactures between 60 and 90 cars per day in one shift.
Oksana Pochtivaya, human resources director for Avanta Personnel, believes GM is choosing not to instate a shortened working week. This would require salary cuts, and the company does not want to cause a dispute with its workers, she said. Pochtivaya noted that the company had difficulty staffing its local plant in 2007 and 2008, and is now doing its best to retain its employees. Staff turnover at the plant is very slow, she added. A human resources specialist from one of the auto plants said that cleaning days are not unusual in the industry at present.
According to data from the European Business Association, GM sold 297,725 cars in Russia during the first 10 months of 2009 — a 44 percent decrease from the same time period last year.
TITLE: Belarus Offers Reassurance Over Customs Union
AUTHOR: By Aaron Mulvihill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Belarus on Friday downplayed fears that a new customs union with Russia and Kazakhstan will lead to widespread duty hikes but said an agreement on oil tariffs remains a sticking point in negotiations.
“Significant changes to customs tariff regulation in Belarus, in connection with the introduction of the single customs tariff on Jan. 1, 2010, are not expected,” Belarussian Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov told the country’s parliament, Interfax reported.
The unified tariff system will affect only 34.1 percent of the total volume of goods imported into Belarus, he said.
Only 6.7 percent of the country’s tariffs are expected to be increased, Kobyakov said, adding that there would be few changes because Belarus has already harmonized 95 percent of its customs tariffs with Russia.
Negotiations on the harmonization of oil tariffs among the three countries are ongoing, Kobyakov said, and a deal has yet to be struck on the delivery of Russian oil to Belarus in 2010.
“[The oil tariffs] issue must be resolved before July 1, 2010,” he said.
Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Wednesday that the continuation of favorable oil contracts with Belarus would hinge on Belarus granting Russian investors access to its oil infrastructure. Government sources told Interfax that the proposition amounted to “blackmail.”
Kobyakov said Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin would soon visit Minsk to discuss the privatization plans. “At the moment, a working group led by [Belarussian First Deputy Prime Minister] Vladimir Semashko and Igor Sechin is carrying out active consultations.”
Negotiations are meanwhile underway between Belarussian and Russian companies to increase oil transit volumes through Belarus.
Parts of Central and Eastern Europe suffered energy shortages in January 2007 during a dispute between Belarus and Russia over transit fees. “There is enough time, I think, to reach a deal,” said Kobyakov. “The heads of government are willing to negotiate.”
The most difficult stage of customs union negotiations concerned automotive tariffs, Kobyakov said. Belarus agreed to increase tariffs for dealers to match Russian levels. For Belarussians, this will mean a considerable hike in the price of foreign-made cars.
Russian dealers have expressed concerns that opening the borders could lead to a flood of used cars from Belarus in the first half of 2010, as individuals will not be subject to the same tariffs as companies over the period. The unification of duties for private individuals will need to be agreed to under a separate deal by July 1, 2010.
In return for Belarus’ tariff hike, Russia will raise duties on trucks, combine harvesters, machinery and electric motors. The three sides are scheduled to meet in St. Petersburg on Friday to discuss technical and health regulations for the customs union.
TITLE: Ministry Proposal Could Halve Governors’ Salaries
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Finance Ministry proposal could cut by half the salaries of some regional governors, as the federal government tightens control over the regions while trying to rein in excess spending.
The proposed legislation, which could come into force starting next year, would amend a law on the organization of political power in the regions by giving the federal government the power to set salary caps for governors. The salaries of other regional officials would be prohibited from exceeding those of the governor, who would receive the authority to set salary caps for municipal officials in the region, according to the draft of the law, which is posted on the Finance Ministry’s web site.
The law is currently “in the process of being approved,” a ministry spokeswoman said without providing details.
Governors earn up to 352,000 rubles ($11,900) per month, a figure that surpasses President Dmitry Medvedev’s salary of 244,000 rubles and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 204,000 rubles per month, and is more than double the 164,000 ruble salary of other ministers, according to a Finance Ministry commentary on the law.
There is a “lack of correlation” between the salaries of top regional officials and “their accomplishments and the fiscal capabilities of regional budgets,” the commentary says.
The legislation falls in line with other moves made in recent years to include top regional officials in the so-called power vertical. “In essence, this measure recognizes governors as the top federal authority in the regions, rather than as representatives of the regional political elite,” said Nikolai Petrov, a regional analyst at the Carnegie Center.
And the timing for such a law couldn’t be better, as the recession has aggravated popular anger at the disproportionate earnings of government officials — ensuring that the governors don’t protest the law publicly, he said.
Federal officials’ wages often compare unfavorably with those of regional officials. Nevertheless, high salaries in rich regions are not a problem for the federal budget, said Rostislav Turovsky, an independent political analyst. “Limiting salaries would only make sense in subsidized regions,” Turovsky said, referring to regions that take more from federal coffers than they contribute.
In the first half of 2009, salaries of regional government officials were on average 40 percent higher than those of federal government officials in the same region, according to the State Statistics Service. The disparity reaches 143 percent in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district and is also large in the Sakhalin, Tyumen, Leningrad and Krasnodar regions.
Valery Zubov, a Just Russia deputy and former governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, said the idea is “rational” and “logical,” but too late in coming. “When I was governor, the salaries in our region, which had more money than most other territories in the country, were among the lowest,” he said. “That was annoying.”
TITLE: Economy Contracts at Slowest Pace in 12 Months
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The economy contracted last month at the slowest pace since December 2008, VTB Capital said Friday, as rising commodity prices helped exporters and a stronger ruble supported the domestic economy.
Gross domestic product shrank 2.5 percent in November from a year ago, compared with a revised decline of 4 percent in October, VTB Capital said in a report.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia’s economy will shrink 8.5 percent to 8.7 percent this year, marking the country’s worst contraction on record. Output shrank an annual 10.9 percent in the second quarter easing to 8.9 percent in the three months through September. The pace of the decline has slowed after Urals crude, Russia’s main export, surged 82 percent this year.
“The rate of decline in Russian GDP continued to moderate in November,” Alexandra Yevtifyeva, a senior economist at VTB Capital, said in the report.
At the same time, “inflationary pressures continued to abate as growth subsided in the manufacturing sector and output prices declined in the services sector, suggesting that inflationary expectations remained muted,” she said.
Inflation slowed to an annual 9.7 percent in October from 14.2 percent a year earlier, the statistics office said Nov. 3. The ruble has gained 8.9 percent in the past three months, making it the second-best performer of the 26 emerging market currencies tracked by Bloomberg in the period.
VTB Capital calculates the indicator by using output measures from its Purchasing Managers’ Indexes, which are surveys of business conditions in manufacturing and services industries.
TITLE: Duma Mulls Ad Ban on Historic Objects
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin and Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The State Duma is considering a bill that would ban advertisements from historic buildings. If the law is passed, the center of St. Petersburg will be left with almost no large-format advertising space.
The bill, which would amend the law concerning “monuments of historical and cultural legacy of the peoples of the Russian Federation,” was brought before the State Duma in August 2008, according to the Duma’s web site. Among other things, the legislation completely bans ad structures from being placed on objects of cultural legacy. The State Duma committee on culture has already approved the bill and is collecting feedback from authorities and subjects of the Russian Federation through the end of this month, said Galina Semyonova, one of the committee’s advisers. The committee is planning for the bill’s first reading in January, she said.
In June 2006, City Hall banned advertisements from being placed on monuments without first being coordinated with the Committee for the State Usage and Protection of Monuments (KGIOP). Early the following year, officials began their battle with advertising structures in the city center. Banners and large-format billboards on Nevsky Prospekt and Ligovsky Prospekt were among the first of approximately 500 advertising structures that were taken down.
Obtaining permission to place an advertisement on a historic building — or anywhere in the city center — is practically impossible, said an employee at one advertising agency, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to Igor Ananskikh, manager of Ruan, display screens are just about the only advertising option left on buildings downtown, in addition to light boxes, public transport stops, and concrete pillars. Ananskikh estimates that St. Petersburg’s historic center is home to no more than three to five percent of the city’s outdoor advertisements. Before the massive dismantling in 2007, 15 to 20 percent of the market was located downtown, said the agency employee.
According to Vladimir Ryabovol, head of News Outdoor’s St. Petersburg branch, the bill reinforces norms already accepted in the city. There should not be ads on architectural monuments, he said, adding that an exception could be made for wraps and barriers put up during building restoration. “An advertisement is more visually appealing than dirty green netting,” Ryabovol said.
The rare cases approved by the KGIOP do not allow for a substantial increase in the number of advertising structures, said Mikhail Patsionko, the president of Taler. Building facades were very attractive for advertisers — they took up all available space and turned the city into one big billboard, Patsionko said. With the onset of the economic crisis, the need for additional space has abated and even available slots do not get filled, he said.
Tretiy Glaz, the company whose screens are installed on buildings on Sennaya Ploshchad and Nevsky Prospekt, declined to comment for this story.
TITLE: OOO Deadline Extended
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma is planning to extend indefinitely on Wednesday the deadline for about 90 percent of the country’s companies to reregister their incorporation papers, a requirement that caused “gigantic” lines and “fistfights” outside government offices, a lawmaker said.
Enacted earlier this year, the law, which improves the rules for the so-called OOO — or limited liability — corporation, prescribed that such companies bring their papers into compliance by Jan. 1, 2010. As of the end of October, no more than 10 percent of them could have done so, said a statement from Duma Deputy Kira Lukyanova of the A Just Russia faction.
The Duma last week overwhelmingly supported her proposal to remove the deadline and allow these companies to amend their incorporation documents when they need to be changed for any other reason, the statement said. It will review the amendment in second and third readings Wednesday.
The current law doesn’t stipulate any punishment for missing the deadline. Based on their “bitter experience of dealing with officials,” businesspeople feared reprisals anyway and thronged to the Federal Tax Service offices to file amended documents for registration, the statement said.
The law required limited liability companies to change their incorporation papers to safeguard the interests of creditors and partners if one of the owners leaves the business, the statement said.
TITLE: Medvedev Agrees On Raft of Deals in Italy
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev made his third trip to Italy this year on Thursday, discussing energy and politics with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The set of 19 deals resulting from the meeting in Rome looks similar to the package resulting from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to France. The documents include agreements on cooperation in culture, transportation, education, alternative energy, agriculture and space.
Tire maker Pirelli and Russian Technologies put some finishing touches on their pending agreement to jointly build a tire-producing factory in the Samara region, home of Russian auto giant AvtoVAZ. The deal established the 50-50 joint venture that will start building the plant in the second half of 2010 and “acquire an already existing factory, which is currently being identified” among several potentials.
The venture’s goal is to produce at least 4 million tires annually within five years. Total investment “will amount to about 300 million euros [$453 million],” the companies said in a joint statement.
Among other deals, Italy’s Eni, Gazprom and Electricite de France signed a memorandum of understanding to bring EDF into the South Stream gas pipeline as a shareholder.
The three companies will sign a final agreement in the next three months, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said. EDF will join the project with a stake of “at least 10 percent and maybe more” in the first half of 2010, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said, without elaborating.
Berlusconi said at the news conference that South Stream would not compete with the Nabucco pipeline. “I guarantee that all of Europe — the Balkans, and Italy — will continue taking gas from Siberia,” he said.
Aeroflot signed a memorandum of understanding with Alitalia agreeing to increase the number of flights between the countries. “We are also interested in developing African destinations, which is what we will do through Italy, while [Alitalia] is asking to increase flights through Russia to Southeast Asia,” Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said.
Sibur, Russia’s largest petrochemicals company, signed a four-way memorandum of understanding to develop a chemical facility in Tobolsk, in the Tyumen region, that will annually produce up to 500,000 tons of polypropylene, which is used in a number of industries.
Vneshekonombank will provide 1.4 billion euros out of the 2 billion euros needed to build the factory and a complex to capture associated gas under a guarantee from Italian insurance company Sacci, while Italian construction firm Maire Tecnimont will provide engineering services, VEB said in a statement.
The polypropylene facility is expected to become Europe’s biggest and produce 40 percent of Russia’s needs for the product, VEB chief Vladimir Dmitriyev said.
TITLE: Defense Agreement Signed
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and its largest arms customer, India, signed an agreement on increasing defense cooperation Monday.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh oversaw the signing of the agreements that run from 2011 to 2020, according to the Kremlin press service. Under one accord, Russia will service weapons systems delivered to India. The two countries also agreed to develop and produce a multi-purpose transport airplane.
India is Russia’s largest arms client, Sergei Chemezov, chief executive officer of Russian Technologies, told reporters on Aug. 6. Russian Technologies controls Rosoboronexport, the state-owned arms exporter.
Russian-Indian trade volume reached $7 billion last year, the Russian presidential press service said in an e-mailed statement Sunday. It rose by 8 percent in the first nine months of this year, it said.
“Strengthening of relations with India is one of the external politics priorities for Russia,” the presidential press service said. “Similar approaches to global and regional problems and concurrence in the long-term national interests of both countries are a reliable basis for further deepening of bilateral ties.”
Current joint projects include construction of a nuclear power station in Kudankulam in the Tamil Nadu state in India’s south, the participation of India’s ONGC in the exploration of the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas field and the transport aircraft, the Russian presidential press service said.
TITLE: Deripaska Praises Putin, Speaks Out on Economy and Aluminum
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Billionaire Oleg Deripaska said Thursday that Russia needed to reduce its reliance on foreign borrowing and exports and focus on building a more stable domestic market to stimulate economic growth.
“I don’t believe in export-engine growth,” Deripaska said in an interview. “It’s important for us to find a new growth model. In the past, we borrowed a lot from abroad. We need more stable growth on the domestic market.”
The government’s anti-inflation drive, which helped the Central Bank reduce rates nine times since April, will be key to reviving economic growth from next year alongside a revival in domestic lending, Deripaska said.
“There’s a lot of improvement in Russia,” Deripaska said, praising the work of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev since the start of the economic crisis. “Still, it will be a very challenging 18 months ahead of us.”
He also said his United Company RusAl, the world’s largest aluminum producer, would not restart shuttered capacity while demand for the lightweight metal is still recovering.
“Our policy is very responsible,” said Deripaska, RusAl’s majority owner and chief executive.
RusAl and competing aluminum producers cut output this year after commodity prices slumped. RusAl, which is seeking to sell shares in an initial public offering in Hong Kong this month, said in February that it would curtail 500,000 tons of annual output, or 11 percent of total capacity.
Aluminum has declined 36 percent from a record $3,380 a ton in July 2008.
But commodity investors have “realized that aluminum is the best hedge against the dollar and energy resources,” Deripaska said. “People don’t believe in the dollar, and commodities benefit.”
Russian aluminum demand is rebounding and will rise 15 percent to 20 percent next year, said Deripaska, who also controls automaker GAZ Group.
“There is a new stimulus program more or less, cash for clunkers, which will create a lot of demand for our commercial vehicles,” he said.
? RusAl said in a statement that co-owner Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to exchange $1.82 billion of the company’s debt for a 6 percent stake as part of a $16.8 billion restructuring.
The deal with Prokhorov’s Onexim Group, boosting his stake to 19.2 percent, will cut the cost of servicing RusAl’s debt, the statement said. Deripaska will own 53.4 percent after the deal.
The accord values RusAl at $30.3 billion, Bloomberg calculations show.
The remaining $880 million of RusAl debt held by Prokhorov will be restructured on the same terms applied to international lenders — on a “pay-if-you-can” basis for the first four years and a refinancing over the following three.
RusAl’s restructuring is the biggest in Russian corporate history, involving more than 70 domestic and foreign banks. It cuts total debt to $14.9 billion and removes a barrier to the IPO.
Under the restructuring, RusAl said it would pay a reduced interest rate of 8 percent to 9 percent on $2.1 billion of loans with Russian banks including Sberbank, VTB Group and Gazprombank.
TITLE: KD Avia Managers Arrested Over Collapse
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two senior KD Avia managers have been arrested on suspicion of driving the Kaliningrad-based airline to bankruptcy, investigators said.
KD Avia chairman Sergei Grishchenko and executive manager Leonid Itskov face charges of abuse of office and the deliberate bankruptcy of a company, the Interior Ministry’s southwestern regional branch said.
The airline has been grounded since September, when the Federal Air Transportation Agency annulled its flight certificate after learning that it had posted operational losses of 2.8 billion rubles ($96 million) for the first six months of the year and had significant debts to foreign and domestic airports, air navigation services, employees, leasing companies and the Pension Fund.
Grishchenko and Itskov were detained Nov. 30 in Kaliningrad in connection with an investigation into premeditated bankruptcy that was opened Sept. 9. A Kaliningrad court sanctioned their arrest Monday.
The Interior Ministry accused KD Avia management of carrying out deals without evident profit, resulting in massive debt.
“Investigators detected that KD Avia management carried out more than 2,000 operations worth 25 billion rubles from 2005 to 2008,” it said in a statement.
However, KD Avia has not been declared bankrupt. An arbitration court is to consider the airline’s bankruptcy status Jan. 26. If found guilty of deliberate bankruptcy, both managers face up to six years in prison.
TITLE: EU Member States Resist Gas Proposal
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — European Union nations resisted a push by EU regulators for more powers during natural-gas market emergencies, questioning the need for a centralized authority to handle any cutoff in shipments from suppliers such as Russia.
Governments criticized a draft EU law that would scale back national sovereignty over energy policy by obliging countries to cooperate in the event of a gas-supply disruption and handing the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s regulatory arm, an oversight role.
“There is too much responsibility given to the commission,” Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Maria van der Hoeven, who also handles energy matters, told a meeting with her EU counterparts Monday in Brussels. U.K. Minister of State for Energy Philip Hunt said: “Questions of energy security go to the heart of a member state’s responsibility” and “we remain to be convinced that such powers are required” at EU level.
TITLE: Nabokov’s Manuscripts Don’t Burn
AUTHOR: By Nina L. Khrushcheva
TEXT: There is, of course, pure fiction by Vladimir Nabokov — “The Gift,” “Lolita” and “Ada.” His novels were biographical and nonbiographical at the same time. He never wrote about politics, yet he did. Then there is his own fiction of his own writing and his own past — “Speak, Memory” and “Strong Opinions.”
And now there is “The Original of Laura: A Novel in Fragments,” which has encompassed all these fictions. Nabokov’s most final and yet most unadorned work — 275 pages of the writer’s signature plain index cards written from 1975 to 1977, the last years of his life. It is a carcass of the books that he had already written, a conclusion to all those books, a poetic medley.
First, the volume itself is fiction, and the most beautiful book that I have ever seen, designed by U.S. author and graphic designer Chip Kidd: a simple black cover, bold white letters vanishing gradually. It is an exit, a preface, a conclusion and an entrance into what we have already read.
Then there is the history of the publication — also a piece of fiction. Nabokov, who by his own admission has “rewritten, often several times, every word I have ever published,” resolutely guarded his authorial image. He endlessly wrote forewords and afterwords to his novels, and he naturally wouldn’t want any book to be published unfinished, imperfect, without having the last word.
Nabokov passed away in 1977. Knowing the end was near, he ordered Vera, his trusted wife, to burn the unfinished manuscript. Vera, who twice saved “Lolita” from incineration, didn’t fulfill Nabokov’s wishes, and the difficult job fell on their son, Dmitri. The story goes that after years of hesitation Dmitri finally made a decision to publish “Laura,” purportedly after his father’s ghost appeared before him requesting the publication.
Some cynics claim that the Nabokov estate assisted in creating the fiction around Nabokov’s fiction — to burn or not to burn. In this way, a controversial — and thus profitable — publication was a sure thing.
But we should never believe that the work of art exists purely because of physical, commercial reasons. Indeed, when Nabokov gave up his native Russian for writing in English, this move was explained by his geographical relocation to the United States from war-torn Europe. He, it is said, had to write in English to get published and to ease up his familial responsibilities. Maybe this is true, but how many other immigrant writers faced with the same choice have remained national authors (even without a nation), not international luminaries.
In short, no event in a writer’s life is random. Certainly not in Nabokov’s case. In fact, he moved from Russian into English not because he needed to earn a living in a foreign land but because at the time he had nothing to say to his native one. Furthermore, such different writers as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Isaac Babel both insisted, “Nabokov is lost to Russian literature.” Instead, Nabokov was gained by American literature. Imagine the world today without “Pnin” or “Pale Fire.”
Now we are fortunate to have “Laura.” In his introduction, Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, wrote that his father wouldn’t have been against his decision to publish “Laura.” Dmitri wrote that he “could no longer even think of burning ‘Laura,’ and [his] urge was to let it peek for an occasional instant from its gloom.” Thank you, Dmitri Vladimirovich!
“Laura” is the origins of Nabokov’s fiction — drafts, scales, drawings. Alexander Pushkin, Ludwig van Beethoven and Peter Paul Rubens also labored over the completion of their final masterpieces. We have the published “Pushkin’s Unpublished Diaries” and exhibits of Ruben’s sketches. “Laura” is the start and the successor of “Lolita” — that same theme of nymphomania, Humbert H. Humbert (now “pathetic and harmless”) and Flora, Laura, (Lolita?) all grown up. There is a wallpaper pattern straight out of “Pnin,” a feverish childhood dream of a monster, which in “Laura” is bravely erased: “Finally it gave up — as some day life will give up — bothering me,” the origins and the deletion, all at once.
You may recall the illustrious chronophobiac’s account at the beginning of “Speak, Memory” who experienced something like panic when he looked for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin. Even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.
Nabokov, preserved for posterity by his books, was certain that life wouldn’t go on without him after his death — but before birth. His nativity alone guarantees his posthumous existence.
“Laura” is an empty pram, now also a coffin. It is filled with Nabokov’s genius, the draft written after the fact, the beginning and the end to his fiction, an outline and a conclusion to his life: “Dying is fun.” The first and last index card affirms, “Efface, expunge, delete, rub off, wipe out, obliterate.”
We collect artists’ scrapbooks and poets’ sketches. Nabokov’s own notebooks are guarded by the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. We are grateful that Nikolai Gogol’s second volume of “Dead Souls” — at times filled with didactical treatises, spiritual and religious preaching — survived the author’s distraction as evidence of his (imperfect) genius.
As every reader of Mikhail Bulgakov can confirm, “Manuscripts don’t burn.”
Nina L. Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at The New School in New York. She is the author of “Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics.”
TITLE: In Search of a Russian Ataturk
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Russia has found a great way to be complacent about its deficiencies. No matter how extraordinary or hair-raising events are in Russia, parallels can be found with events and trends in the West.
If election fraud is alleged, the recount in Florida during the 2000 presidential vote is mentioned in response. The war in Chechnya can be compared to the invasion of Iraq, while the recent attack on the Nevsky Express fits in with international terrorism.
In the West, these examples represent isolated defects of functioning societies. In Russia, however, they paint a picture of national decay.
Take demographics. While Italy and Spain have a low birth rate, in Russia it goes hand-in-hand with high mortality and low life expectancy. Despite an influx of immigrants, the Russian population is falling rapidly, and the countryside is dotted with ghost villages.
Corruption is also a breed apart. Even in the most corrupt Western countries, officials still work for the state. In Russia, the state seems to exist for the benefit of bureaucrats, and most laws passed by the State Duma make it easier to take bribes, pillage government funds and stifle economic and social development.
Between 1914 and 1953, Russia and the Soviet Union suffered bloodletting on an unprecedented scale. World War I, the Civil War, relentless state terror and World War II, in which Stalin and Hitler combined their efforts to murder tens of millions of Russians, damaged the social fabric, destroyed the best and the brightest, and turned survivors into a quivering herd. It might have been too much for any people to bear. We may now be witnessing the death throes of a once-great nation.
Indeed, Russia’s recent history looks like a steady downtrend. The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan marked the peak of its geographic expansion, after which the Soviet empire began to crumble. First came the loss of Eastern Europe and, soon thereafter, the dissolution of the old Russian Empire. Then it was the superpower status and global influence that disappeared. Now, Chinese migrants are encroaching on depopulated Eastern Siberia, while Beijing wins concessions to explore Russian natural resources that Moscow can’t do on its own. What commodities Russia is still able to produce independently are wasted. While record oil prices brought wealth to oligarchs and state officials, for the average Russian they meant only high inflation. Moreover, the police, the military, health care, education and social services have become degraded.
The Ottoman Empire, which Tsar Nicholas I once called “the sick man of Europe,” decayed in a similar fashion in the 19th century. Wars erupted across Europe as a result, but Turkey was saved from a national catastrophe by liberal reforms enacted by Mustafa Kemal Atat?rk, a military officer and an admirer of the Enlightenment.
Unfortunately, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin didn’t become such a modernizer. He rose to power suddenly and had to rely on his former siloviki colleagues. Russia’s decay only accelerated on his watch. Yet, he can still become a Russian Atat?rk. Putin is still Russia’s most powerful man. He is both admired and feared. Although Medvedev is a political lightweight and relies on Putin’s protection, he has started to make tough decisions like firing incompetent bureaucrats.
Whether Putin planned it this way or it happened by accident, Russia’s ruling tandem may yet bring about a national revival. But they will have to ram it down the throat of the boggy system over which they preside.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: Double Date Tour of Russia Begins Whitney’s Comeback
AUTHOR: By Ksenia Galouchko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Multiple Grammy award-winner Whitney Houston starts her worldwide comeback in Moscow on Wednesday, followed by a concert at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
Houston’s Russian concerts will serve as a rehearsal for the pop diva’s World Tour, which starts in Japan in February 2010.
The pop singer has a new album, “I Look to You,” following a long period of drug abuse and a much-publicized divorce from singer Bobby Brown.
“This is my first full tour since the ‘My Love Is Your Love’ tour in 1999, and I am so excited to be performing for my fans around the world after all this time,” Houston said in an official statement.
Houston’s return to the spotlight was marked with an interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and more exotically by her performing a concert in Astana, Kazakhstan in July on President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s birthday, which was broadcast on national television.
At the time, Kazakh bloggers expressed their outrage that the concert was given only to a “select few” and that Houston’s voice was nowhere near her predrug Bodyguard-era mastery.
Houston retains many fans in the former Soviet Union because of the huge popularity of the film The Bodyguard, which was seemingly played on a loop for much of the 1990s.
Members of Whitney’s Moscow fan club said they are planning on occupying major Moscow hotels on Dec. 9 in an effort to catch a glimpse of their idol.
Houston spoke of her drug addiction on “Oprah”: “He [Brown] was my drug. I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together. You know, we were partners. And that’s what my high was. Him. He and I being together.”
“I wanted to stop at that point. I mean, the drugs, the whole thing. I wanted it all just to stop. And he just wanted to continue,” Houston said on the talk show.
Despite the new album’s success in the United States, selling 305,000 copies in the first week and topping the charts, music critics have unanimously spotted a significant drop in Houston’s voice quality that could prevent her from performing the legendary high-pitch notes in “I Will Always Love You.”
The producer of “I Look to You,” Clive Davis, who discovered Houston and introduced her to the American public 25 years ago, said in an interview on “Good Morning America” that Houston “still stands for the best of song writing, the best of singing — and we know the public wants it.”
“You won’t forget it after you hear it,” Davis said. “There is a song on this album which is called ‘I Didn’t Know My Own Strength,’ and it really speaks for Whitney. She tumbled, but she didn’t crumble.”
Whitney Houston plays the Ice Palace, Prospekt Pyatiletok 1, on Saturday. Tel: 718 6620. M: Prospekt Bolshevikov.
TITLE: Obama’s Climate Push Plays Catch Up With Execs
AUTHOR: By Kim Chipman and Todd White
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has given fresh impetus to climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen, corporate leaders supporting an agreement to control greenhouse-gas emissions are pressing anew for action.
Two weeks of talks among 192 nations open today in the Danish capital, and Obama’s decision to show up on the final day helps ensure “an ambitious outcome,” United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer told reporters in Copenhagen on Sunday.
The International Energy Agency, a trade group for the U.S. and 27 more oil-consuming nations, and companies from Allianz SE to Coca-Cola Co. say envoys can agree to halt the growth of emissions within 10 years and keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius.
“We need a signal at Copenhagen to cap emissions by 2020 and a 2-degree scenario,” Fatih Birol, chief economist for the group, said in a phone interview. “All the measures we suggest will bring energy security, because we’ll use less oil” and more clean energy, said Birol, who plans to visit Copenhagen for the second of the two weeks of talks.
World leaders already have said the talks will fail to reach the original goal of completing a treaty, a deadline moved to next year. While Obama and de Boer didn’t specify how much can be achieved in Copenhagen, company executives and lobbyists say they want quantifiable goals that have been sought for years by environmentalists and scientific groups.
GE, HSBC, Nike
Supporters of the temperature and 2020 targets include 850 business leaders who signed this year what’s called the Copenhagen communiqu?, a project by the University of Cambridge in the U.K. Signatories include General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, BP Plc CEO Tony Hayward, HSBC Holdings Plc Chairman Stephen Green, Nestle SA CEO Paul Bulcke and Nike Inc. CEO Mark Parker.
Executives from many of these companies will join the 15,000 delegates who will come to the city’s Bella convention center today for talks through Dec. 18. Some 34,000 people have asked to attend, the UN organizing agency said on Sunday.
“Climate change is higher on the agenda than ever,” Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said during the opening session on Monday.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs announced on Dec. 4 that Obama will show up for the conclusion of the talks, when most of the 100 or so heads of government will arrive and help guide final decisions. Earlier Obama had planned to stop by on Dec. 9. “There is progress toward a meaningful Copenhagen accord,” Gibbs said.
Obama found after speaking with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders that there’s an “emerging consensus” to provide $10 billion a year by 2012 to help poor countries deal with global warming.
‘Fair Share’
“The United States will pay its fair share of that amount and other countries will make substantial commitments as well,” Gibbs said in the statement. The administration also believes longer-term financing should be considered in Denmark, he said.
Negotiators in the Danish capital must provide companies with the certainty they need to make annual investments that may rise to trillions of dollars, said John Hawksworth, chief of macroeconomics at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London. Businesses need to know the scale of planned carbon cuts in order to gauge how expensive tradable carbon allowances will become, he said.
“The fundamental thing is to come up with a deal on the intermediate targets for 2020,” Hawksworth said in a telephone interview. “Once you’ve got the price on carbon, that sends the signal that businesses need in order to make the long-term investments in low carbon technologies and processes.”
Allianz, Europe’s largest insurer, supports the 2-degree limit as well as financing for developing countries to adapt to climate change, said Nick Tewes, a spokesman. By limiting the risks associated with climate change, the insurer will also minimize its potential claims, he said.
U.S. Chamber’s Opposition
Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, said on Nov. 26 that climate change is “one of the biggest challenges facing mankind” and must be fought with ambitious targets to curb a costly rise in natural catastrophes. The company said that a “binding commitment” needs to be defined in Copenhagen that limits global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
Those on the other side of the issue also will be in Copenhagen, including representatives of the Washington-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest U.S. business-lobbying organization. The group has questioned mandatory emissions cuts as part of an international accord and is calling for an emphasis on clean-energy technology.
The Chamber is fighting against U.S. legislation, which passed the House and has stalled in the Senate, to require a cut in greenhouse-gas pollution. It would cap emissions and set up a market to trade pollution allowances.
$10.5 Trillion Cost
The Paris-based IEA estimates that efforts to keep warming to less than 2 degrees since industrialization will add $10.5 trillion to the investment needed by 2030 to upgrade power stations, pipelines and refineries. The IEA also backs keeping the concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million, compared with about 385 now.
Amsterdam-based Greenpeace has called for an increase of no more than 2 degrees for at least seven years, said Kaisa Kosonen, a climate adviser for the environmental group. Greenpeace calls for global emissions to peak by 2015, five years earlier than the corporations.
Enel SpA, Italy’s largest utility, wants competitors around the world to accept CO2 regulations similar to those the Rome-based company already faces in the European Union.
“In order to get these targets, for 2 degrees of 450 parts per million, and emissions cuts, you need private investors like us,” said Simone Mori, head of regulation and environment at Enel, who may travel to Copenhagen.
Opponent Inhofe
The two-degree target has been a goal for the 27-nation European Union since 1996. In July, major greenhouse-gas polluters including the U.S., China, India and Japan signed up to the target, which has also been discussed in the UN negotiations as a possible long-term “shared vision.”
The move marked the first time developing nations had set such a target to fight climate change.
The talk of momentum doesn’t sway one of the U.S. Congress’s biggest climate-change skeptics, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who will also be in Copenhagen. He says the meeting is doomed, even with Obama’s entourage attending on the last day.
“No amount of lofty rhetoric or promises of future commitments can save it,” Inhofe said in a statement. That’s in part because legislation pending in the Senate to cap emissions “is dying on the vine.”
TITLE: U.S. Student Gets 26 Years in Prison for Murder
AUTHOR: By Alessandra Rizzo and Marta Falconi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PERUGIA, Italy — Amanda Knox sought comfort from visiting family members on Saturday on her first day in prison since being convicted of murdering her British roommate.
The family of victim Meredith Kercher said the verdict brought a measure of justice. However, they said, it was not a time to celebrate.
Knox, a college student from Seattle, was tired and upset following the midnight verdict and sentence of 26 years in prison, according to family members and a lawyer who saw her.
“Amanda like the rest of us is extremely disappointed, upset about the decision,” said Knox’s mother, Edda Mellas, after the visit to the prison just outside Perugia. “We told her that she’s gonna get out of here. It’s gonna take a little longer.”
Knox and Kercher’s families came to this central Italian town for the verdict, which was announced at around midnight after 13 hours of deliberations. The court also convicted Knox’s co-defendant and former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and gave him a 25-year jail term for the murder.
Knox and Sollecito are appealing the verdicts.
“She couldn’t sleep all night,” said lawyer Luciano Ghirga, who spent an hour with Knox at her jail just outside Perugia on Saturday morning. “She’s worried for her parents, too, but she is keeping the faith needed for the next steps.”
Ghirga said Knox was kept under strict surveillance. He denied reports that she had been put under suicide watch, which is the standard practice in such cases.
Kercher, 21, was Knox’s roommate while they studied in Perugia.
Her body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, at the apartment they shared. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was murdered the previous night.
“Meredith still leaves a big hole in our lives and her presence is missed every time we meet up as a family,” John Kercher Jr., one of her brothers, told a press conference in Perugia.
Kercher’s sister, Stephanie, said the verdict “does bring a little bit of justice, for us and for her.” But she added: “Life will never be the same without Mez.”
The prosecutors said they were satisfied with the ruling and would not seek to appeal, even though the court did not grant their request for life imprisonment. Prosecutor Manuela Comodi said that the verdict “recognizes the defendants are guilty of all the crimes they had been charged with.”
In an interview with ABC News in the hours that followed the verdict, Curt Knox said he was “stunned.”
“I just looked at them; I looked at the jurors,” he told ABC. He then said he thought to himself: “How could you even do this with what was presented in the court of law?”
Knox’s families and her supporters have long sought to cast doubt on the Italian justice system, contending the prosecution’s case largely rested on character assassination.
The prosecutors say on the night of the murder, Nov. 1, 2007, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has also been convicted of the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.
The prosecution says Knox and Kercher started arguing and the three brutally attacked and sexually assaulted the Briton. They were acting, according to the prosecution, under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.”
They presented DNA evidence they said was linked to Knox and Sollecito, though these claims were disputed by the defense.
“You have to agree with the verdict. You have to go with the evidence, there’s nothing else,” Arline Kercher, the victim’s mother, said of the verdict.
As part of the ruling, Kercher’s parents were awarded $1.5 million each in compensation, while $1,200,440 were granted to Kercher’s two brothers and sister each, said the family’s lawyer, Francesco Maresca. He said this was only an initial sum. Maresca asked for a total of $38 million from Knox, Sollecito and Guede, and he said this request would be discussed in a separate civil proceedings.
Kercher’s family, however, stressed that they were not expecting to receive any money, but the high compensation was a symbol of the gravity of their crimes.
The pair was also convicted of illegally carrying a weapon — the knife — and of staging a burglary at the house where the murder occurred by breaking a window, supposedly in an effort to sidetrack the investigation.
Knox also was convicted of defaming a Congolese man whom she initially accused of the killing. He was jailed briefly but was later cleared. Knox said during the trial that police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.
TITLE: Lost Son Returns To
Killing Fields Of Iraq
AUTHOR: By Yahya Barzanji
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HALABJA — Six families nervously awaited the DNA tests on the young man who returned from Iran. They wondered: Could this be their son who was just an infant in 1988 and somehow lived through a deadly chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s regime?
There was absolute silence as the judge announced the lab results. The man, who called himself Ali, was deemed to be the sole surviving child of 58-year-old Fatima Mohammed Salih, who had lost her husband and all her other six children in the poison gas clouds that covered the mostly Kurdish city of Halabja.
For the first time in more than two decades, they embraced.
“I’m in a dream,” said 21-year-old Ali Pour as he comforted the weeping woman.
The reunion on Friday in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region was a rare event for Halabja: a moment of joy from the day the city became an open cemetery for an estimated 5,600 people, killed when lethal gas was dropped by Saddam’s military.
It was part of Saddam’s brutal 1987-88 campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion. Nearly 200,000 people died in Baghdad’s scorched-earth offensive.
The alleged mastermind of the Halabja attack, Saddam’s cousin known as “Chemical Ali” Hassan al-Majid, is among regime officials who have been sentenced to death for the Kurdish crackdown and other crimes. The trial specifically on Halabja is still under way.
It’s the only known case of a long-lost child from Halabja being definitively reunited with a relative. The assistant chief of the Directorate of the Martyrs of Halabja, Abdul Rahman Yasin, said 41 names — children at the time of the attack — are still registered as missing.
“I wonder if it is a dream or a gift from God,” said his newfound mother.
She repeated her son’s birth name: Zimnaku Mohammed Saleh.
She then recalled the day Halabja was attacked. The family was at home. There was utter panic. They first ran into the streets and then went back inside.
“We didn’t know where to go,” she said. “Zimnaku, the 4-month-old, was on my lap and suddenly my older son screamed saying, ‘Mother, I feel like I’m burning.’ I tried to help him and my other sons, too, but it was in vain. I saw them dying in front of me. I collapsed and the next thing I remember is lying in a hospital bed in Tehran.”
As Ali Pour learned the fate of his Kurdish family, his own story was told through translators. Pour speaks only Farsi and knows only life in eastern Iran — far from the Kurdish region that straddles Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
“The baby Ali survived for three days,” said his adopted uncle, Habib Hamid Pour.
He was found by the Iranian military, which had moved into Halabja after the gas attack. It was the closing months of a horrific war between the two countries that began in 1980 and many of the Halabja survivors were taken to Tehran.
TITLE: Thousands Protest in Iran, Battling Police
AUTHOR: By Ali Akbar Dareini
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN — Security forces and pro-government militiamen clashed with protesters shouting “death to the dictator” outside Tehran University on Monday, beating men and women with batons and firing tear gas, on a day of nationwide student demonstrations, witnesses said.
Thousands of protesters demonstrated in the streets outside the campus in support of students inside. As they chanted “death to the dictator,” riot police and Basij militiamen charged the crowds, the witnesses said.
The plainclothes Basijis beat protesters on the heads and shoulders as the crowd scattered, then regrouped on nearby street corners. Nearby, protesters and Basijis pelted each other with stones, the witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Pro-reform campus groups have called for students across the country to turn out Monday for massive rallies at universities against Iran’s clerical leadership — the first major protest in more than a month. The opposition has been struggling to maintain its presence on the streets after security forces crushed massive rallies that erupted over Iran’s disputed presidential election in June.
While turmoil erupted in the streets outside Tehran University on Monday, authorities took dramatic steps to close the campuses to the outside world.
Cell phone networks around the universities were shut down. To hide anything going on inside, the fence around Tehran University was covered with banners and signs bearing quotes from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and messages marking an important Shiite occasion celebrated on Sunday. Police and members of the elite Revolutionary Guard surrounded all the university entrances and were checking IDs of anyone entering to prevent opposition activists from joining the students, witnesses said.
Footage posted on YouTube purported to show a march by thousands on Monday inside Tehran University. The young men and women were shown chanting “death to the dictator” and slogans against the Basij as they marched through the campus. There was no sign of security forces, and the students marched without frictions. The authenticity of the footage could not immediately be confirmed.
At Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, Basiji militiamen entered the campus and tried to break up a march by several hundred students, witnesses said. The Basijis pushed and shoved the students, dragging some away.
The potential for violence inside the campuses was high. Some 2,000 students were brought into Tehran University early Monday — obstensively to hold a celebration for the Shiite holiday, but such hard-line students are often used to crush pro-reform rallies on campus.
Journalists working for foreign media organizations are banned from covering Monday’s planned protests. They were told late Saturday by the Culture Ministry that their press cards would be suspended for three days starting Monday.
Government opponents were hoping for a large turnout for Monday’s demonstrations to show their movement still has momentum despite a series of government crackdowns since the election, which the opposition says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by fraud.
TITLE: China Closes More Video
Sharing Sites
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SHANGHAI — Chinese regulators have closed down hundreds of video sharing websites in a new push to control Internet content, reports said Monday.
Several well-known websites were either closed down or ordered to delete all links to downloaded films or TV series in the past week, the China Business News said.
Most content offered by peer-to-peer websites violates copyright and is not “above board”, the business daily said.
BTChina, a popular video sharing website, said in a notice on its website that the State Administration of Video Film and Television ordered it to shut down because it has no licence to provide audio and video content.
UUbird.com, a similar website, said in a notice it would delete all links for downloading TV series and films by mid-February “to firmly support and comply with the state’s laws and regulations”.