SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1542 (3), Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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TITLE: Conscripts Withdraw Hazing Claims
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Three recruits serving at the Kronshtadt military base just outside St. Petersburg who contacted the Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group earlier this month to complain about brutal hazing have withdrawn their claims.
Pavel Gavrilov, Ilya Smorodin and Alexei Voitov had reported that beatings, torture, humiliation and financial extortion had been carried out by senior recruits. The parents of the three conscripts, who visited their sons where they were serving, demanded that the military prosecutor’s office conduct an investigation into the claims. The mothers told Soldiers’ Mothers that they had found their sons to be in poor health and in a desperate psychological condition.
An appeal made by the organization was successful and a criminal investigation was launched
However, the human rights group reported on Monday that the mothers have withdrawn their claims at the request of their sons. Furthermore, they had ended their contacts with the human rights group.
“There is a straightforward explanation for this sudden change of behaviour: the investigators had a serious talk with the recruits,” said Viktor Andreyev, a lawyer representing Soldiers’ Mothers. “The victims admitted to us that it had been recommended to them that they stop cooperating with our organization because such contacts would undermine the integrity of the investigation. Cornering victims like that is appalling.”
“The investigators’ strategy is good news for the Kronshtadt military garrison: one of the cases has already been closed,” the lawyer added. “It looks like everything is going to be quietly hushed up within a short time.”
This is not the first time that the Kronshtadt military garrison has found itself in the middle of a hazing scandal.
Information about several incidents has featured in the media since 2005.
Recruits who have dared to contact human rights groups in the past have complained that they were subsequently despised by the other sailors for criticizing their navy units and unveiling the truth about hazing. 
Typically, Soldiers’ Mothers or recruits’ relatives have heard about beatings from short text messages received by mobile phone. 
“Some of the texts sound really desperate, they are literally SOS messages,” said Ella Polyakova, the chairwoman of Soldiers’ Mothers. “They have even asked us straight: ‘please come and save us.’”
Polyakova is concerned, however, that in the majority of cases the reports lead nowhere as recruits often withdraw their claims or change their testimonies during the investigation.
“Look at all recent hazing scandals and you will see that officers routinely escape punishment,” she said. “It has become a trend. Recruits are more vulnerable and deprived than the officers and laying the blame on recruits in full kills two birds with one stone: the corrupt system is protected, while the human rights groups and the relatives are presented with a nominal figure to blame.”
In an earlier incident, 12 marines deserted from their military unit in Lomonosov and contacted the Kronshtadt garrison prosecutor’s office complaining about bullying and persistent physical abuse. During the following investigation forensic experts found bruises and further evidence of beatings on the bodies of seven sailors.
In June 2005, in a unique case of soldiers being punished for hazing, the military court of the Kronshtadt garrison declared two navy conscripts guilty of beating other recruits and gave them jail sentences.
Ivan Arsakov, 20, received 3 1/2 years in jail while Viktor Fyodorov, 21, received a one-year suspended sentence. 
Arsakov was also sentenced to pay around 20,000 rubles ($665) in compensation for physical and mental harm to his victims, and Fyodorov paid another 6,000 rubles.
The Defense Ministry estimates that between 500 and 1,000 recruits die from non-combat-related causes each year in Russia. 
But human rights groups contest official statistics and claim the actual number is as high as 3,000.

TITLE: President Stands By Political System
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday promised a few cosmetic changes to the political system but firmly defended the results of disputed regional elections in October and the country’s much-criticized election system. 
Medvedev, who articulated his allegiance to the course of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, spoke during the first meeting on Russia’s political system in at least a decade. The meeting of the State Council was attended by the leaders of all seven of the country’s registered political parties and a group of governors. 
“In general, the results of the regional elections reflect the real balance of the political forces and public sympathies in the country. This is an irrefutable fact,” Medvedev said. 
He said complaints about massive violations in favor of United Russia during the Oct. 11 elections — which prompted all of the parties represented in the State Duma except United Russia to stage a brief boycott and were well documented by the national media and independent observers — were “nevertheless unconfirmed.” 
Every party leader with the exception of Putin and Boris Gryzlov, who heads United Russia, spoke at length about the October violations, but Medvedev told the party leaders “to refrain from making sweeping accusations of the election system.” 
This suggests, said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst, that Medvedev does not want to be an independent politician. 
“He has indicated that the current electoral system suits him,” Oreshkin said by telephone. 
“If the president wants to act independently, he has to get support from the popular vote, which means that the electoral system should work honestly,” he added. “But Medvedev is not going to that in order to avoid a conflict with the ruling bureaucracy.” 
Under the current electoral system, fashioned by Putin, the country’s leadership views bureaucrats as its power base and appeals to them rather than to the popular masses, he said. 
Medvedev, who thanked United Russia for its work at Friday’s meeting, expressed bewilderment at the low level of public support shown to other parties. While United Russia dominates municipal and regional legislative bodies, the Communists on average hold only 2 percent of the seats there, and the Just Russia and Liberal Democrat parties have about 1 percent each, he said. 
“This is an astonishing situation,” Medvedev said. “It tells us that our parties, mainly the opposition ones, are working very badly on the municipal level and real political competition is absent there.” 
Election observers concur that the most blatant violations occur during local elections, which are controlled by local authorities who, in turn, are under pressure to secure high numbers for United Russia. 
Trying to sweeten the pill for other parties, Medvedev said Friday that he had sent a bill to the State Duma that fixes the entry threshold for parties participating in regional elections to 5 percent. 
The proposed threshold, however, may not help opposition parties in regions where election officials manipulate the results according to the wishes of regional bosses vying to please the Kremlin. For example, Kabardino-Balkaria set the threshold at 7 percent for its regional legislative elections last spring, and the Communists slipped in with 7.02 percent of the vote while the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDPR, got left out with 6.95 percent. 
Both Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin warned the party leaders Friday to preserve political stability in Russia. Putin even urged the leaders not to copy Ukraine’s model of democracy, where tough competition among politicians for popular support has effectively led to political paralysis. 
“We have to think constantly about how to develop the Russian political system, but we have to act carefully and shouldn’t allow the ‘Ukrainization’ of our political life,” Putin said. 
Putin also said Russia should refrain from the another extreme, the “totalitarianism and despotism” that have emerged in other former Soviet republics. He did not identify any countries. 
The party leaders, who were asked earlier this month to prepare proposals for Friday’s meeting, offered a number of ideas, not all of which were related to the political system. 
Speaking for his A Just Russia, a Kremlin project aimed at collecting votes from left-leaning Russians, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov called for reforms to the Interior Ministry and for the State Duma to have more clout over the executive branch of government. 
On the elections, Mironov said A Just Russia wanted to ban early voting and balloting outside of polling stations; to allow voters to track their own votes on the Internet; and to change the current system where regional leaders appoint members to a regional election committee to one where each committee has an equal number of delegates from all political parties. 
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov called for parties to receive better representation on state television, but he mainly spoke of how regional elections are unashamedly rigged in favor of United Russia. 
Gryzlov, who opened his remarks by saying his United Russia would not let anyone destroy Russia’s “developed political system,” proposed that all regions have only one chamber of parliament and that the number of lawmakers and federal officials be slashed by 20 percent in the regions. 
LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggested that no civil servant be allowed to hold the same post for more than 10 years and that no political party be permitted to hold more than 40 percent of the seats in a legislative body. 
“Then we will have a stable, healthy democracy, and we will ruin the appetite to return to a one-party system,” he said. 
He also supported a ban on early voting. 
The current political system was sharply criticized by Yabloko chief Sergei Mitrokhin, who compared it to the Soviet system and said it is “aimed toward the degradation and stagnation of the country.” Mitrokhin called for a free media, agreed with Mironov’s idea about reforming election committees and suggested making vote rigging a crime punishable by prison time.

TITLE: Interior Ministry Plans Mental Checks for Police
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Ustinova
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia plans to resume the Soviet-era practice of screening police officers for mental maladies amid a surge in violent crime by on- and off-duty cops.
The Interior Ministry will resume testing employees and job applicants for psychological disorders, after ending the practice amid budget cuts in the years following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in the official government newspaper, Rossiisskaya Gazeta.
“If we resume testing, we’ll find that at least a third of all active police officers have some kind of mental pathology,” said Mikhail Vinogradov, who ran the Soviet Interior Ministry’s psychological testing unit from 1976 to 1987. Many unqualified applicants get hired through bribes or nepotism, Vinogradov, who now heads the Moscow Center for Legal and Psychological Assistance in Extreme Situations, said by phone on Monday.
The Kremlin has intensified efforts to force reform at the Interior Ministry since a police major killed three people during a shooting spree at a supermarket in southern Moscow last April, following a fight with his wife at his birthday party.
In October, a police officer in Siberia shot his girlfriend to death and then a taxi driver before committing suicide. Last month, a Moscow officer shot the driver of a snowplow after sideswiping his car, leaving the man to die from blood loss. And last week a Siberian cop beat to death a drunken journalist, saying he was “stressed out” over having to support the two families he has with different women.
“The ministry is working on a methodology to detect early symptoms of stress and to provide psychological support,” Nurgaliyev said in the Rossiisskaya Gazeta interview, which was published Jan. 22.
Nurgaliev said the new measures are part of a wider reform designed to reduce corruption and shrink the ministry’s 1.4 million staff by 20 percent. Job applicants may be forced to take lie detector tests, as well as psychological tests, and a “black list” will be compiled for those who fail to keep them from working in other areas of law enforcement.
The national police union, while agreeing with Vinogradov’s assessment that a third of all cops have mental problems, said the problem can’t be solved without tackling corruption.
“These psych tests don’t mean a thing, anyone can pay a bribe to pass them,” said Mikhail Pashkin, a spokesman for the union, by phone from Moscow.

TITLE: Tatarstan President Quits As Kremlin Revamps Regions
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova and Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a victory for a Kremlin determined to replace old-guard regional leaders with new blood, Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev announced Friday that he would step down after nearly two decades in office. 
The replacement of the deeply entrenched Shaimiyev, 73, when his fourth term expires in March comes weeks after President Dmitry Medvedev replaced Sverdlovsk’s long-serving governor Eduard Rossel, 72, and it raises new questions about the future of two other veteran regional bosses, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, 73, and Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov, 75. 
Shaimiyev asked Medvedev after a State Council meeting Friday not to appoint him to a new term as president after his current mandate expires March 25, the Kremlin said on its web site. The meeting was held at Shaimiyev’s request, it said. 
Shaimiyev explained that he supported Medvedev’s call in his state-of-the-nation address Nov. 12 for a new generation of leaders to step in, the Kremlin said. 
Medvedev also said last month that veteran leaders should not serve more than three terms. 
Shaimiyev said he recommended that he be replaced with Tatarstan’s prime minister, Rustam Minnikhanov, 52. 
Minnikhanov was among the three names that United Russia, the ruling party in Tatarstan’s legislature, put on a list of candidates to head the predominantly Muslim republic and submitted to Medvedev for his consideration last month. The other two names were Shaimiyev and the speaker of Tatarstan’s legislature, Farid Mukhametshin. 
Medvedev gave no indication about whether he would support Minnikhanov’s candidacy. 
Shaimiyev has been the first and only leader of oil-rich Tatarstan since the Soviet collapse in 1991. But he was a political heavyweight even before that, heading the republic’s parliament in Soviet times. 
Despite his background as a Soviet apparatchik and a leading member of United Russia, Shaimiyev has often spoken critically of the current political system and has denounced the abolishment of gubernatorial elections in 2004. 
The handover of power promises to be smooth in Tatarstan because Shaimiyev announced his intention to leave on his own without evidence of pressure from the Kremlin, said Alexei Titkov, an analyst at the Institute of Regional Politics. 
“It doesn’t look like a real shift of power,” he added. “Shaimiyev has built up a strong system that will likely be followed by his successor.” 
He noted that Shaimiyev is well past 70, the age when regional leaders usually retire. “It’s common practice for governors not to stay in office after 70,” Titkov said. 
But two powerful regional leaders who are still clinging to office despite their advanced age are Luzhkov and Rakhimov. Speculation about their jobs has swirled in recent years. 
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information, said the Kremlin would back Shaimiyev’s preferred successor because he was leaving quietly but predicted that it would be forced to push Luzhkov into retirement, most likely this year. 
“It should be done in 2010 because it would not make political sense later due to upcoming parliamentary elections,” Mukhin said. The next State Duma elections are scheduled for 2011. 
Georgy Bovt, a senior Right Cause party official who attended the State Council meeting Friday, said the future of both Luzhkov and Rakhimov depends on whether the Kremlin can “find a ruler who can replace them and be able to satisfy both the people and the elite.” 
“This is key in the case of Moscow’s mayor, who will be in charge of solid financial flows,” Bovt said, adding that Luzhkov enjoys popular support in Moscow. 
Shaimiyev’s preferred successor, Minnikhanov, was appointed prime minister in 1998 after serving as Tatarstan’s top diplomat and is the chairman of Tatneft, one of the biggest Russian oil companies. His biography on the republic’s official web site says he holds a degree in economics and likes motor racing. He has raced in several international rallies, including the Desert Challenge in the United Arab Emirates in 2007 and 2008, as a driver of a Tatarstan-made KamAZ truck. 
Speaking to journalists in Kazan on Saturday, Shaimiyev called Minnikhanov an “active” and “good manager.” 
Tatarstan has enjoyed broad autonomy since Shaimiyev and President Boris Yeltsin signed a power-sharing agreement in the 1990s that, among other things, allows the republic to keep the majority of profits from oil revenues.

TITLE: Saakashvili Praises Film
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has praised a Hollywood film being made about the 2008 Russia-Georgia war but mocked Russia’s efforts to produce a movie about the conflict. 
During a two-day state visit to Estonia, Saakashvili gave a lecture, insisting that the Hollywood movie “is not Georgian propaganda.” 
For director Renny Harlin, “it’s not just another story,” Saakashvili said in his first public comments last week about the film, which is currently under the working title “Georgia.” 
“He believes that it is what was exactly played out in Georgia. He brought in a big group of idealists,” Saakashvili said during his lecture at the Estonian Foreign Ministry. “These aren’t people who have come [to Georgia] for money. I don’t think they had a big budget in any case.” 
Harlin’s film is a story of an American journalist, played by Val Kilmer, and his cameraman traveling to Georgia and getting caught in the escalating tension between Georgia and Russia in August 2008. 
Russian media have questioned whether Harlin’s film will take the Georgian side in portraying the dispute, instead of portraying both sides of the five-day conflict. 
A recent Russian film used the fictional story of a nerdy American scientist and a blond Russian photojournalist to offer the Kremlin’s version of the war. 
Saakashvili also criticized Russia’s attempt to make its own film about the conflict, pointing to its failure to recruit renowned Serbian film director Emir Kusturica. 
		(AP, SPT)

TITLE: Prime Minister Calls For More Jobs in Caucasus
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared on Saturday that peace has returned to the North Caucasus and called for the region’s economy to be rebuilt.
Putin ordered Alexander Khloponin, a new deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, to improve the quality of life of its population by creating jobs, signaling a new approach to restoring stability — something that military force has so far failed to achieve.
“The bandits have been fended off. We did this together. … Together we won and returned the peace,” Putin said at a meeting in the Stavropol regional city of Pyatigorsk, which serves as the new capital of the North Caucasus Federal District.
President Dmitry Medvedev grouped the most troubled provinces together in the new federal district this week and appointed Khloponin, a former Norilsk Nickel chairman and Krasnoyarsk governor, as its head.
“Now we need to take the next step, which, as it turns out, is no less difficult,” Putin said.
Putin called for the creation of special economic zones to lure investors to the North Caucasus.
“We need to seriously improve people’s quality of life,” he said. “High unemployment, of course, discredits the government and creates the basis for extremist moods. So now it is vital to launch the mechanisms for the creation of new jobs … [and] new projects, stimulate the development of small and medium-sized companies, local industry, agriculture and infrastructure.”
Putin also ordered North Caucasus officials to ensure what he called the “normal work” of human rights groups operating in the volatile region.
“I ask the representatives of regional authorities … to do everything for the support of normal work and daily activity of rights-defending organizations in the Caucasus,” Putin said in televised remarks.
“Those who work within the framework of the law and help people,” he added.
The rights movement in the North Caucasus has been decimated in the last few years as fear of being the next target has driven out of the area those who fight for the accountability of the authorities. Leading rights group Memorial was forced to close its Chechnya chapter in the aftermath of the July slaying of rights activist Natalya Estemirova.
Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, urged President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday to end a wave of abductions in the North Caucasus and to prosecute Estemirova’s killers.
Lilia Shvetsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Putin’s history as a hardliner against dissent who restricted the work of nongovernmental organizations during his eight-year presidency cast doubt on the sincerity of his words.
“Who will believe that he wants to ensure the safety of rights activists?” she said.
But Memorial’s chief, Oleg Orlov, told RIA-Novosti that he welcomed Putin’s words.
“I hope that they are not empty words and that actions of some kind will follow them,” Orlov said. “It’s a signal, primarily to local authorities, that they should somewhat turn down their desire to crush any independent structure.”
(AP, SPT)

TITLE: Lavrov Sees Pact as Litmus Test
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new security pact sets a litmus test for the honesty of the West versus Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. 
The lukewarm reception of the pact by Western leaders can only be explained by an unwillingness to live up to earlier promises of a united Europe, Lavrov told reporters at his annual news conference in the Foreign Ministry. 
If NATO believes that the privilege of indivisible security only counts for its members, “all assertions and promises that there will be no more dividing lines in Europe were false,” Lavrov said. 
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said last month that the pact was not needed because sufficient legal documents had been signed to regulate security ties with Moscow. 
But Lavrov argued that the treaty was necessary to implement declarations made in the 1990s that “we are all friends, security is indivisible and nobody’s security can be enhanced at the cost of others.” 
Moscow has bristled at NATO’s expansion eastward into former Soviet territories, and ties with the alliance dipped to a post-Cold War low after the 2008 short war with Georgia, another NATO hopeful.
Lavrov also expressed frustration at Poland’s plans to station a U.S. Patriot missile battery near the Russian border. “If this is true, the question arises why it is necessary to do something that looks like Poland is bracing itself against Russia. I do not understand this,” he said. 
The Polish Defense Ministry said last week that a Patriot base manned by some 100 U.S. troops would be installed 60 kilometers from the border with the Kaliningrad exclave. 
The announcement was followed by national media reports that Russia would beef up its fleet in the Baltic Sea, but this was denied by the Defense Ministry.
Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position on sanctions against Iran, arguing that it would be wrong to push Tehran into a corner. “If our logic is to punish Iran … this will not be a sober approach,” he said, adding that sanctions could risk the work of international inspectors in Iran.
Moscow has watered down previous U.S.-led drives for sanctions against Iran, which is accused by the West of developing nuclear weapons.
Yet Lavrov said he was unhappy with Tehran’s dismissal of a UN-brokered proposal to send uranium for a research reactor abroad for processing.
Lavrov also said he hoped that a replacement for the landmark START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States would be clinched soon after talks resume early next month.
“The remaining questions, I hope, will be resolved rather promptly when the negotiations resume, and they will resume at the very beginning of February, I think,” he said.
Lavrov’s comments represented Moscow’s strongest public statement yet on the issue after negotiators failed to reach a deal before Dec. 5, when START I expired.
Last week, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, had two days of closed-door talks with a Russian team led by Nikolai Makarov, a deputy defense minister and chief of the armed forces’ General Staff.
Both sides agreed that negotiations should resume in Geneva in February.
On a more lighthearted note, Lavrov said he liked the new “Mult Lichnosti” cartoon show, despite the fact that he is prominent among those parodied on the program. 
“Not everything is unambiguous, but there are really good elements in it. I think that is useful,” he said. 
The program, which has been shown on state-controlled Channel One television since the New Year, features a bureaucratic Lavrov who dryly fends off the amorous advances of his U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton. 
Lavrov said he would not comment on how much he thought that the satirical character resembled him. “This is not for me to judge,” he said.

TITLE: Courts Move Toward Precedent-Based Law
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Kazmin and Filipp Stepkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Constitutional Court has decided that the Supreme Arbitration Court has the right to set legal guidelines, not just follow the law — a move that lawyers say is the first step toward a precedent-based system of law. 
The Constitutional Court has found that the Supreme Arbitration Court’s right to review a decision that has already come into force poses no contradictions to the fundamental law. This conclusion follows from a court decision announced Friday on claims filed by four companies: Karbolit, Respirator, Mikroprovod and Bereg. 
The firms had petitioned the court to declare as unconstitutional a number of articles in the Arbitration Procedural Code, which the Supreme Arbitration Court relies on to review decisions that have already gone into force but which face new circumstances. 
This mechanism received practical support in February 2008, when the presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court held that decisions made by the presidium in other cases could count as such a circumstance. At the time, this was perceived as revolutionary: Even lower courts did not always take into account the presidium’s rulings, said Dmitry Stepanov, a partner at Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners. 
The plaintiffs in Friday’s Constitutional Court case were among the first victims of the new development. Each of the companies had won lawsuits against Mosenergosbyt for charging too much for electricity. The electricity trader took advantage of the presidium’s decision in a similar case and won reversals on all of the lawsuits for a total of 42.8 million rubles ($1.4 million). 
The Constitutional Court’s recognition of such a right for the Supreme Arbitration Court is a significant step, Stepanov said. 
For practicing lawyers, the existence of a de facto precedent system has been recognized for some time, but academic lawyers and the Constitutional Court have urged judges to ignore the rulings if they diverge from the law, he said. 
Now it recognized that, despite all the stipulations, the Supreme Arbitration Court can review decisions that have already gone into force if they diverge with established practice, said Galina Akchurina, head of practice at FBK-Prava. 
In practice, an even stricter system of dependence on higher courts has developed, said Tamara Morshchakova, a retired Constitutional Court judge. 
But the fact that many judges are afraid of being dismissed if their decisions are overturned does not make it a system of precedent law, she said. 
Although the Constitutional Court has not forbidden the Supreme Arbitration Court from reviewing decisions already in force, it has tried to make it as difficult as possible, said Denis Shchekin, a partner at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners. The decisions of the presidium will have retroactive authority only when explicitly indicated. 
There must be a stipulation that the legal positions in a court decision can be used for reviewing decisions already in force, Stepanov said. The Supreme Arbitration Court has never made such stipulations before, so earlier decisions, according to the logic of the Constitutional Court, cannot be used to review a case. That does not mean that the court won’t find a way to get around this requirement by issuing other interpretations, he said. 
The chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court declined to comment, saying the Constitutional Court’s ruling had not yet reached the court. 
The Constitutional Court’s ruling also limited the number of cases that could be reviewed. Among such cases are all disputes with the state, including administrative and tax-related cases, and reviews of civil cases are possible only for defending the interests of the general public or the obviously weaker side, the Constitutional Court said in its ruling, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti.

TITLE: Chinese Cues Push Down Stock Market
AUTHOR: By Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Washington and Beijing played the leading roles in last week’s downturn on the Russian stock markets, and though the West delivered more theatrics, the East was widely credited with the performance of note.
Adding to the drama, there was some evidence of profit taking after a strong performance to start the new year.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s get-tough approach on banking, seen by some as a populist play in the aftermath of a string of political setbacks, pushed down global markets on Thursday and Friday. But the stage and the mood already were set for losses Wednesday, when China announced that it was moving to curb lending and tighten bank controls — a move based on worries that excess cash could spur inflation.
For the week, the ruble-denominated MICEX Index was down 2.9 percent, closing at 1410.38, and the dollar-denominated RTS Index was down 4.5 percent, finishing at 1489.46.
Obama said he wanted to limit the investment activities and size of banks, which had investors fretting that profits at U.S. financial corporations could shrink and the amount of capital available for investments could contract.
“We have to enact common-sense reforms that will protect American taxpayers and the American economy from future crises,” Obama told reporters Thursday.
Sberbank dipped 3 percent Friday and 1.8 percent for the week, while VTB shed 3.9 percent, sending it down 4.7 percent for the week. But analysts said Obama’s plan and U.S. economic indicators were not going to remain a big concern for Russia.
“They’re all short-term drivers,” said Kingsmill Bond, chief strategist at Troika Dialog.
He stressed that oil was still the key driver for the Russian market. “Right now the oil price is following the U.S. market,” but Asian growth leading to higher prices for oil is ultimately the stronger driver for Russian markets, he said.
Spot prices for Urals crude slid 3.6 percent Friday to close in Moscow trading at $71.19 per barrel, down 6.4 percent on the week.
And if the U.S. economy was big news for the Russian bourses, China will only get bigger. Some analysts said they thought that following developments in China was even more important for accurate stock watching than keeping an eye on the American markets.
China reported 8.7 percent growth in gross domestic product for 2009 on Wednesday, but it also announced a $300 billion reduction in bank lending and other limits on liquidity.
Liu Mingkang, the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission chairman, said the country’s banks were expected to reduce lending to 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) in 2010, from an anti-crisis stimulus level of 9.5 trillion yuan in 2009.
He also said steps were taken against banks that were extending too much credit or making bad loans, adding that “new leverage and liquidity restrictions would be imposed,” The Associated Press reported. Earlier this month, major banks in China were told to increase their reserve ratios, while China’s central bank increased some interest rates.
The result was investor fear of a reduction in China’s economic expansion, resulting in less demand for metals, oil and other raw materials — that is, Russian exports.
All eyes, then, will be on whether the booming economy actually does slow. With fourth-quarter GDP growth of 10.7 percent, China is poised to become the world’s second-largest economy later this year. It would unseat Japan, which in December revised downward its third-quarter growth to 1.3 percent, raising anew the question of whether the United States or China is more important for Russia.
Some analysts also saw profit taking as investors were eager to turn their gains on paper into real money.
“This negative news from the U.S. and China just coincided with some investors adjusting their portfolios,” said Renaissance Capital analyst Ovanes Oganisian. He said the process had begun in December.
Mark Rubinstein, deputy head of research at Metropol, also said investors recouping their money was the real mover. Last week, “profit taking was expected all across the board,” he said, especially in metals and mining — which did play out Friday.
Among the biggest losers was Novolipetsk Steel, which fell 3.4 percent after Goldman Sachs Group changed its recommendation to “sell,” Bloomberg reported. Severstal escaped the bank’s broader downgrade on the industry, gaining 1.6 percent after it was raised to “buy.”
The move to cash out of Russia also appeared to be a factor behind the latest numbers from fund tracker EPFR Global. Inflows for Russia equity funds were just $51 million for the week ending Wednesday, compared with $244.7 million in net inflows for the previous week.
EPFR data also showed decreases for China equity funds and commodity sector funds, “as restrictions on Chinese bank lending raised questions about future demand,” EPFR Global said in a report Thursday.
This year’s gains in both the MICEX and the RTS were slimmed over the past week, making room for catch-up starting Monday. The MICEX had been up 6 percent for the year through Jan. 15, but now is up merely 3 percent for the year, while the RTS nose-dived from a 7.9 percent gain through Jan. 15, to an increase of just 3.1 percent.
Whatever the outcome of this week, the past five trading days made one thing clear: The United States may be making a lot of noise in Russian markets, but it is China that investors really should be listening to.

TITLE: Investors Pour $2.2Bln Into RusAl
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Company RusAl raised 17.4 billion Hong Kong dollars ($2.24 billion) in its initial public offering in Hong Kong, giving the firm a valuation bigger than that of competitor Alcoa.
The company offered its shares at a price of 10.8 Hong Kong dollars ($1.39), in the middle of the price range that RusAl announced in its IPO prospectus in late December, Bloomberg reported, citing three sources close to the deal. RusAl said in the prospectus that it would place 1.61 billion new shares, or about 10.81 percent of its equity capital.
The sale values the company at $21.05 billion, higher than its main rival, U.S.-based Alcoa, which has a market capitalization of about $16 billion.
Such a valuation lands in the middle of the $18.7 billion to $24.7 billion price range estimated by four banks participating in the deal.
In December, RusAl shareholder Mikhail Prokhorov exchanged $1.82 billion of the company’s debt for a 6 percent stake. Under the current valuation, such a stake is worth $1.2 billion. The IPO brings former majority owner Oleg Deripaska’s stake to 47.59 percent.
The banks organizing the IPO valued RusAl at 11.7 times 2010 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, sources told Bloomberg. Aluminum Corporation of China, or Chalco, trades at 14 times its 2010 EBITDA, while Alcoa is valued at 7.7 times EBITDA. A RusAl spokeswoman declined to comment Friday.
“It’s a balanced price, and it could be considered adequate for the market, taking into account the increase of aluminum prices,” said Maxim Semenovykh, a metals analyst at Alfa Bank.
Aluminum prices rose steadily last year, from a low of $1,288 per ton in February to $2,230 on Dec. 31. The metal finished trading Friday in London at $2,231 per ton.
The IPO has attracted upward of 300 investors. Among the four cornerstone investors, which together planned to purchase about 39 percent of the offer, are NR Investments, U.S. hedge fund Paulson & Co., and three of Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok’s companies. State-owned Vneshekonombank also planned to buy 3.15 percent.
The successful listing in Hong Kong could encourage other Russian firms to follow suit, analysts said.
“RusAl’s IPO shows that there’s interest in Russian companies trading in Hong Kong not only from Asian investors but also from U.S. and European investors,” Semenovykh said.
The company will use the funds raised in Hong Kong to make a dent in its $14.9 billion debt, including $7.4 billion owed to foreign banks and $4.5 billion to Vneshekonombank.
RusAl’s shares are expected to start trading in Hong Kong on Thursday.

?? A unit of Credit Suisse Group, co-manager of RusAl’s IPO, has urged investors to shun the aluminum company over pollution concerns at Lake Baikal, Bloomberg reported. Clariden Leu’s emerging markets funds struck RusAl from their investment lists and canceled plans to buy shares after Deripaska’s pulp factory on the lake was allowed to reopen. The bank told clients considering RusAl shares to “take into account the business practices of its majority owner,” said Zina Psiola, who manages more than $200 million at Clariden.

RusAl spokeswoman Vera Kurochkina declined comment.

TITLE: Remaining Soviet Debts Settled
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia paid $1 million to settle the Soviet Union’s remaining debt to foreign banks, a decade after restructuring $31.7 billion of obligations to the so-called London Club of creditors.
Russia made the payments under an agreement reached late last year with creditors who didn’t participate in the four debt swaps Russia conducted after 2000, the Finance Ministry said in a statement on its web site Monday.
Russia turned $31.7 billion of debt to banks into so-called principal notes, or PRINs, and interest arrears notes, or IANs, in 1997. Three years later, it agreed to swap those notes for $21.2 billion of new dollar debt due in 2010 and 2030.
 “The London Club settlement probably won’t impact prices for Russian debt, but it will produce favorable background for the new sovereign Eurobond placement and thus it’s important,” said Nikolai Podguzov, a fixed income analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow.

TITLE: Profits May Rise at OGKs
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian wholesale power generation companies, or OGKs, may boost their combined net profit fourfold by 2015 as the government deregulates prices, demand resumes growth and generators reduce costs, Renaissance Capital said.
Aggregate net profit from Russia’s six OGKs is estimated at $806 million last year, Derek Weaving and Vladimir Sklyar, analysts with the Moscow-based investment bank, said in a note to investors Monday.
Russia broke up the state-run power monopoly, Unified Energy System, the world’s biggest utility by installed capacity, and sold off its thermal-generation, retail and services assets to foster competition in the industry. The country is now moving away from regulated pricing, with 60 percent sold at free prices as of this year, the analysts said.
“In our view, full liberalization will be achieved, on schedule, by 2015,” the analysts said.

TITLE: Sberbank Counts Cost Of $1.2Bln in Criminal Loans
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Voronova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — About 20 percent of loans given out by Sberbank in Moscow are overdue, primarily because of fraud at three branches where former managers gave out more than 35 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) in loans to criminals.
At the end of 2009, Sberbank’s consumer credit portfolio in Moscow was 74.8 billion rubles not including 19.5 billion rubles in overdue loans, which the bank counts separately, Maxim Poletayev, Sberbank president for Moscow, said Wednesday.
The lender’s corporate loan portfolio also suffered, he said. In addition to its 164 billion rubles in loans, the bank gave out 30.6 billion rubles in long-overdue loans to questionable companies.
The majority of the overdue loans were approved several years ago by three branches, which had overdue rates of 80 percent for their consumer loans and 65 percent for their corporate loans, Poletayev said.
From 2005 to 2007, the number and volume of loans sought using fake documents and approved by Sberbank grew steadily, Oleg Chistyakov, the bank’s deputy director for internal controls and audits, said in February 2008. In certain branches, more than half of the consumer credit portfolio was compromised, while the most blatant violations were uncovered in Moscow’s Lyublinskoye and Stromynskoye branches.
Poletayev said that of the 19.5 billion rubles in overdue loans to individuals, 15.5 billion rubles were from loans to criminals approved in the Stromynskoye, Lyublinskoye and Meshchanskoye branches. Of the 30.6 billion rubles in now-overdue loans, those three offices granted 19.9 billion rubles to questionable companies, he said.
Questionable loans comprise 17.3 percent of the Moscow bank’s overall portfolio. Without those loans, the lender’s overdue rate would be lower than average for Sberbank, Poletayev said.
In December, 4.5 percent of Sberbank’s loans were overdue.
He attributed the past violations, in part, to the weak oversight of Moscow branches. They were allowed to make decisions on large loans independently and their only internal security department was at the regional level, which oversees much of the Central Administrative District.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Beer Production Up</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian beer production increased in December from a year earlier, according to figures released Friday by the Federal Statistics Service.
Production rose 11.1 percent compared with December 2008, after a 3.7 percent increase in November, the service said Friday. Output rose 22.2 percent from November.
Russian beer output fell 4.8 percent in 2009 from a year earlier to 1.1 billion decaliters, according to the report.
Carlsberg’s Baltika Breweries is Russia’s largest beer producer, with 39 percent of the market by value in the first 11 months of 2009, followed by Anheuser-Busch InBev, with 16 percent, according to researcher Business Analytica. Heineken is third-largest, with 13 percent, followed by SABMiller and Anadolu Efes Biracilik & Malt Sanayii, with 10 percent each.

<strong>Poultry a WTO Issue?</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s unwillingness to allow U.S. poultry imports may make it more difficult for the country to join the World Trade Organization, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Russian restrictions jeopardizing 600,000 metric tons of U.S. poultry shipments this year are “not scientific,” Vilsack told reporters Friday in Washington. Russia’s entry into the WTO may be “tough, if you can’t recognize the value of science” in trade, he said.
U.S. and Russian consumer-protection officials failed to agree on ending Russia’s ban on U.S. poultry imports during talks in Moscow last week, the Health Ministry said Friday. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earlier said chicken meat from the U.S. is unsafe because of the amount of chlorine used in disinfecting poultry during processing.

<strong>Grain Stockpiles</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will probably have 10 million metric tons of grain stockpiles, bought to support farmers, when the government stops intervention purchases on Jan. 31, United Grain Co. Chief Executive Officer Sergei Levin said.
United Grain may ship as much as 4 million tons this year from the stockpiles, which have reached 9.7 million tons, Levin said in Moscow on Monday.
Russia will ship 100,000 metric tons of wheat to Cuba starting in February as the government seeks to unload stockpiles bought from farmers, Levin said. Russia is in talks to ship at least 300,000 tons of wheat to Bangladesh, he said.

<strong>Aeroflot Mulls Purchase</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Aeroflot, Russia’s largest airline, may buy 25.8 percent of its own shares from businessman Alexander Lebedev as early as Wednesday, Vedomosti said, citing unidentified government officials.
Lebedev may sell his stake at a 30 percent discount to market price, or for about $300 million, Vedomosti said.

<strong>Electricity to Belarus</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may sign a deal to sell electricity to Belarus this week, Russian state power company Inter RAO UES said.
Officials from the Belarusian Energy Ministry met representatives of Inter RAO in Minsk on Friday and were due to hold a meeting in Moscow at the weekend to approve the agreement, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement. Russia will also sell electricity to other countries using the Belarusian network, according to the statement.

TITLE: State Holding Could Raise $4Bln in Sell-Off of Assets
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Pismennaya
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Technologies is preparing to sell off noncore assets beginning this year, chief executive Sergei Chemezov told Vedomosti, and the state corporation will likely start with property held by AvtoVAZ.
“We have an interest in having a clear ownership structure for the state corporation’s holdings, allowing them to operate effectively in their core businesses and minimize costs not related to production, which will improve the companies’ financial results. Revenue from the sale of noncore assets will go toward financing and developing innovative programs and new, high-tech production,” Chemezov said. “In essence, this is our modernization budget.”
The state has handed over 443 businesses to Russian Technologies. The holding has calculated that it has more than 40,000 real estate assets, including some 1,500 that are not involved in firms’ core business. A source close to Russian Technologies’ supervisory board said there was no precise estimate for the noncore assets’ value, but that it was between $2 billion and $4 billion.
Assets are considered noncore if they are not involved in or set aside for a company’s main business, said Igor Zavyalov, a Russian Technologies deputy chief. “We’re also going to reclassify and sell ineffectively used assets, as well as shares, stakes and interests in other companies that belong to the companies but aren’t related to their core business,” he said.
Lists of noncore assets are being drawn up based on initial lists and analyses of companies’ effectiveness, Zavyalov said.
Russian Technologies has created a department for working with noncore assets, headed by VTB’s former managing director for construction, Oksana Lut.
“We’ll definitely invite independent appraisers and make sure all of the work related to handling the noncore assets is entirely transparent,” she said.
Decisions on what to do with the assets — including reclassification, renting or selling them, rebuilding or starting new construction — will be made after the analysis is complete. Decisions will be approved with the companies and holdings that are part of Russian Technologies, Lut said.
As an example, she offered the abundance of unused real estate held by Moskovsky Zavod Sapfir, which is part of the Optical Systems and Technologies holding.
Polina Grishina, AvtoVAZ vice president for corporate management, said the automaker also had many noncore assets, including about 90 real estate properties and roughly 30 stakes in companies. The offers will be made available on Group.avtovaz.ru ahead of auctions and tenders.
The sale will most likely begin in February, said an employee at one of AvtoVAZ’s shareholders. The carmaker is planning to earn about 700 million rubles ($23.5 million) from real estate sales in 2010.
The government expected that there would be quite a few noncore assets, a government source said. “It was impossible to hand over the core assets without the noncore assets. There were a lot of federal state unitary enterprises with neglected financial reporting,” the source said.
“The state corporation has been working on doing a serious inventory of assets for a year and a half, and it still isn’t done,” said Anton Danilov-Danilyan, a member of Russian Technologies’ strategy committee. “I’m officially announcing that the state corporation did not know exactly what it was being given.”
At the strategy committee’s last meeting, chaired by Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina, questions were raised about how to use the funds raised from noncore assets, Danilov-Danilyan said. “We reached the conclusion that first we need to clarify the strategy, and only then make use of these resources.”
It was initially assumed that the noncore assets would resemble aid for Russian Technologies and that revenue from them should go toward development, said the source close to the corporation’s supervisory board.
But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said since Russian Technologies is a state corporation, it would be incorrect to compare its revenue from the sale of noncore assets to a gift from the state to a private company.
If a company owes money to the federal budget, it is legally required to use revenue from the sale of noncore assets to first pay wage arrears, taxes and debts to counterparties, and only then to use them for investment, said Yevgeny Semchenko, a court-appointed receiver.
The procedure for selling such a large volume of noncore assets is fairly complicated, he said. It can take years, and Russian Technologies has many federal state unitary enterprises whose real estate is not registered and belongs to them only for management, Semchenko said. Often the state corporation does not have a controlling stake in the companies, which means that it needs other shareholders to make a decision on selling noncore assets, he added.
There is no sense in holding on to noncore assets, so Russian Technologies’ decision is a good one, said Yury Koval, a partner at BDO in Russia. “Today the market is no worse than yesterday, and tomorrow it won’t be any better than today.”

TITLE: Burger King Opens in Moscow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, opened its first Russian outlet in Moscow on Thursday as it seeks to capitalize on a booming fast-food market several years after its main competitors started operating in the country.
The fast-food chain opened its first restaurant in the Metropolis shopping mall in the northwest of the capital, and will open at least two more soon, including a branch in the Yevropeisky shopping center Jan. 25 and another in a Mega shopping center in Tyoply Stan.
Burger King will continue to open restaurants throughout 2010, the company said in a statement, but the firm would not disclose further details.
The opening comes long after McDonald’s entered the Russian market in 1990. McDonald’s has more than 240 restaurants in Russia, while domestic chain Rostiks-KFC has 170 outlets.
“Now is the appropriate moment to launch the brand on the Russian market in cooperation with the local partners,” said John Fitzpatrick, Burger King’s senior vice president for development and franchising in Eastern Europe. The company did a thorough study and sees the Russian market as “interesting and active,” he said.
Burger Rus, the restaurant’s Russian franchisee, is controlled by Alexander Kolobov, who founded the Shokoladnitsa coffee shop chain. He and partners Oleg Gurkov and Mikhail Serdtsev will operate the brand in Russia.
“We are looking forward to working together with Alexander and his team, and we are convinced that partnering with a local company will satisfy the expectations of our Russian customers,” said Yana Pesotskaya, general manager of Burger King in Russia.
Burger King operates more than 12,000 restaurants in 73 countries.

TITLE: Industrial Production Rises by 2.7 Percent
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Industrial production grew in December for a second month, the State Statistics Service said Friday, for the first consecutive increases in more than a year, which shows that the economy is recovering from its record contraction. 
Output at factories, mines and utilities rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the most since September 2008, after a 1.5 percent advance in November, the statistics service said. Production grew a nonseasonally adjusted 5 percent on the month. The median estimate in a survey of 12 economists was for an annual increase of 3 percent and a 5.1 percent jump on the month. 
Industrial production shrank 10.8 percent in 2009, the service said. 
A record drop in stockpiles last year means that the pace of orders and production may accelerate as demand stabilizes. Central Bank interest rate cuts and government stimulus spending last month spurred gains in manufacturing. 
The “macroeconomic outlook remains one of the most supportive in the world,” UBS analysts led by Dmitry Vinogradov said in a Jan. 18 report. “While we are concerned about fiscal and monetary tightening in most countries, in Russia we expect monetary easing and continued support from the fiscal side.”

TITLE: Profit Tax for Oil Considered
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry is considering a shift to a profit-based tax from current duties on crude exports and mineral extraction, as oil companies warn that high taxes may hamper output, an official said Friday.
The move to an “excess profit” tax is “a very long-term task,” Ilya Trunin, director of the Finance Ministry’s tax and customs department, said at a conference in Moscow. He criticized tax breaks that Russia has granted to some remote fields in eastern Siberia and the Arctic for creating fiscal risks.
The Energy Ministry said in June that half of Russia’s raw deposits are unprofitable to develop when oil trades at $60 per barrel under the current tax structure. President Dmitry Medvedev told international oil executives also in June that the country would return to discussing tax reform after the end of the global financial crisis.
Exemptions from export duties on crude oil pumped in eastern Siberia could cost the budget at least 120 billion rubles ($4 billion) this year, Trunin said. Rosneft, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz are developing fields in the region.
While a profit-based tax makes sense, the government has been slow to make the move because it is harder to administrate, said Alex Fak, an oil analyst at Troika Dialog.
Export duties and mineral extraction taxes currently are taken as a function of revenue and calculated through external oil prices and output volumes.

TITLE: Belarus Accuses Russia of Illegal Export Duties
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Belarus accused Russia of illegally levying export duties on crude oil deliveries into Belarus, Belta reported, citing a Belarus government official.
An agreement was signed under which there was to be no levy on crude oil from Jan. 1, the Belarus news agency said, citing Alexander Shpilevsky, head of the Belarus Customs Committee. Russia has gone back on that agreement, Shpilevsky said
Russia and Belarus are in dispute over the terms of crude supply after the expiry of a 2007 deal. Russia had halted crude deliveries to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline that year after accusing Belarus of illegally siphoning crude in retaliation for a new export tax on supplies to Belarus.
Belarus serves as a transit state for Russian crude to Europe. Russia also delivers crude to refineries in Belarus.

TITLE: Medvedev’s Battle Against Legal Nihilism
AUTHOR: By Yana Yakovleva
TEXT: After lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a pretrial detention cell in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, State Duma deputies and President Dmitry Medvedev started using the word “humanization” a lot. This word needs to be applied to the country’s corrupt and criminal law enforcement agencies. Magnitsky was denied medical care after he reportedly refused to give false testimony against Hermitage Capital head William Browder on trumped-up tax evasion charges and refused to withdraw his allegations that Interior Ministry officials stole $230 million in state funds.
The Magnitsky case received worldwide attention, but there are thousands of other businesspeople who are held in Russian pretrial detention centers on false charges. This is a common method that corrupt law enforcement officials use to extort bribes and seize businesses.
On Dec. 29, Medvedev signed a law to help reduce these abuses. Among other things, the law bans pretrial jailing of suspects in first-
offense tax cases. This is a good start, but much more has to be done to solve the deeper problem of jailing innocent people.
Russia has no mechanisms to protect individuals who are imprisoned on false charges. When victims file complaints, they are often punished by a corrupt system in which law enforcement officials protect one another at every level. The complaints get bounced around in a bureaucratic runaround, going from one prosecutor and investigator to another. The process ultimately ends with a pro forma letter assuring the detainees that all actions taken against them were in accordance with the law.
If this is the way that complaints are handled, then even the president has no chance of organizing an independent review of corruption cases in which he has taken such a strong interest in his battle against bureaucrats who “nightmarize” business.
It is clear why Medvedev has focused so much attention on this problem. By counting the number of people convicted for economic crimes in relation to the level of corruption in law enforcement agencies, it is easy to see that there is an inordinate number of innocent people who are sitting in Russian prisons. And the amounts of money extorted by corrupt law enforcement officials and investigators is growing daily, in some cases reaching as high as $15 million. Businesspeople are often forced to pay bribes to law enforcement officials as the only way to avoid having a false criminal case brought against them.
At a meeting with Prosecutor General Yury Chaika on the professional holiday honoring the employees of prosecutors’ offices, Medvedev reminded Chaika of the law that he signed limiting the use of arrests against criminals in tax-
evasion cases. It is notable that the president used that word “criminals,” which I doubt was a slip of the tongue. Until guilt has been proven in a court of law, nobody has the right to refer to that person as a criminal. What happened to Russia’s adherence to the principal of presumption of innocence? In Russia, when a person is arrested, it is often assumed that he is guilty. This mentality has to change if Russia wants to modernize or “humanize” its judicial system. Law enforcement officials and society as whole need to adhere to the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”  Once this is accomplished, the road will be paved for further “humanization” of the judicial system, such as reducing prison terms for those convicted of economic crimes and protecting the rights of prisoners and detainees.
It is a shame that Medvedev and the Duma are not doing more to solve the deeper problem of extortion and raiding by law enforcement officials. The most we can expect from these so-called reforms is that businesspeople held in jail on false charges might have their sentences reduced. To be sure, this is badly needed since the sentences that they receive on white-collar charges often exceed the sentences that cold-blooded murderers receive. But perhaps Medvedev and Russia’s lawmakers should aim a little higher and take measures so that these innocent people don’t end up in jail in the first place.

Yana Yakovleva, financial director of a Moscow-based chemical company, spent seven months in a pretrial detention center on charges of selling chemicals without a license, which were later dropped. She founded Business Solidarity, a nongovernmental organization that lobbies for legal changes and defends businesspeople against extortion, raiding and false criminal charges initiated by government officials.

TITLE: The New Emigration
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: In the 1970s, dissident balladeer Alexander Galich wrote a song about a KGB major who loses his passport and facetiously declares that he is Jewish. His commanding officer assumes that he wishes to go to Israel and tells him resentfully: “While all of us here, with blood on our faces / March in lockstep toward the bright future / You’ll be having a ball in Israel / Gorging yourself on matzos, you bastard!”
Soviet propaganda couldn’t decide how to portray Jews who were emigrating to Israel and the United States in the 1970s in growing numbers. On the one hand, they were disloyal, ungrateful rats who chose the easy life in the West over the difficult, glorious task of building communism at home. On the other, they were dupes who trusted bourgeois fairy tales and then endured untold hardships in the dog-eat-dog capitalist world.
In the early 1990s, the collapse of communism ushered in a brief period of openness, when Russians became interested in the outside world and fascinated by the emigre experience. That was when writer Sergei Dovlatov and singer-songwriter Willie Tokarev achieved their great fame. But lately, I have noticed that old Soviet attitudes have returned. 
Internet comments about my articles either brim with the kind of resentment that Galich satirized in his song, or they claim that when I criticize anything in Russia it is just an attempt to convince myself and others that my emigration wasn’t a huge mistake.
Russians are now free to travel, own property and live anywhere. Many have taken advantage of this freedom. Aside from the 20 million Russians left behind in former Soviet republics, the official data counts another 10 million living abroad. Since many Russians work, study or live in foreign countries temporarily, the actual number is probably much higher. As many as a quarter of all Russians live outside the country.
But they are very different from Soviet Jews, who were the last wave of traditional emigration. When my family left the Soviet Union in 1974, we knew that we would not be allowed back. 
The moment we stepped off the airplane in Vienna, our past lives ended. Communicating by phone was costly and complicated. No Soviet television was beamed abroad, and newspapers took days to arrive. Only a few friends risked getting our letters, and soon even that correspondence lapsed.
We were like 19th-century emigrants from Italy or Ireland who went to the United States and were not heard from for decades. Moreover, since there were so few Russian speakers around, we had little choice but to assimilate — very quickly. 
But today’s emigrants stay connected with their old motherland by e-mail, text messages and social networks as closely as if they never left. Air travel is affordable and easy. Since the world has shrunk, the old-style emigrant has disappeared.
But many people in Russia don’t get it. Nor do they realize that the millions of Russians living abroad are a potential catalyst for change at home. They are familiar with more than one culture and understand how the world works. They know that things should — and could — be very different in Russia, too. They could modernize Russia if they choose to come back. 
But they may also give up on their country and settle where they now live. This would be a catastrophe for Russia, since it would represent a loss of yet another layer of educated, employable and active people — of which the country has lost so many over the past century.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: Urgent Need for Tent Cities for Haitian Refugees
AUTHOR: By Vivian Sequera and Mike Melia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The collapse of much of Haiti’s capital has a large part of the nation struggling just to find a place to sleep.
As many as 1 million people — one person in nine across the entire country — need to find new shelter, the United Nations estimates, and there are too few tents, let alone safe buildings, to put them in.
It could take experts weeks to search out sites suitable for enough tent cities to hold earthquake refugees, according to the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.
“We also need tents. There is a shortage of tents,” said Vincent Houver, the Geneva-based agency’s chief of mission in Haiti.
Houver said Sunday that the agency’s warehouse in Port-au-Prince holds 10,000 family-size tents, but he estimates 100,000 are needed. The organization has appealed for $30 million to pay for tents and other aid needs and has received two-thirds of that so far, he said.
That leaves Jean Anthony and about 700,000 other people living on the streets of Port-au-Prince under whatever they can salvage. In his case, that’s a blue plastic tarpaulin for a ceiling and a faded pink sheet with a floral print border for two walls.
“I’m not sure what you’d call it, but it’s much more than terrible,” said Anthony, the 60-year-old owner of a collapsed restaurant. Thousands of people were camped around his family across from the National Palace on Monday, amid piles of trash and the stench of human waste.
Haiti’s government wants many of the homeless to leave the capital, a city of 2 million, to look for better shelter with relatives or others elsewhere. Officials estimate that about 235,000 have taken advantage of its offer of free transport to leave the city, and many others left on their own, some even walking.
An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 have returned to the region around the coastal city of Gonaives in northern Haiti, a city abandoned by many after two devastating floods in six years.
“Living in Port-au-Prince is a problem. Going to Gonaives is another problem,” said Maire Delphin Alceus. “Everywhere you go is a problem. If I could, I would have left this country and been somewhere else by now. But I have no way to do that.”
Her daughter, Katya, was among the thousands killed in Gonaives and the surrounding Artibonite area by the floods of 2004’s Tropical Storm Jeanne. The family moved to Port-au-Prince, where the earthquake killed her 26-year-old son and her half-sister, who provided for them by importing clothes and perfume from Miami for resale in Haiti.
What’s left of the family is back in Gonaives, which is overlooked by mountains denuded by over-farming and rampant tree cutting for firewood that have cleared a path for destructive floods.
“I’m scared, but I’m living by the will of God,” said Alceus, dressed in white after attending Sunday services at an evangelical church.
While more people left Port-au-Prince, the capital was shaken by yet another aftershock Sunday, one of more than 50 since the great quake Jan. 12 that has panicked survivors into running out into the street. Some just froze in fright Sunday. The U.S. Geological Survey said it registered 4.7 magnitude, but there were no reports of further damage.
More than 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the government, an official said Sunday, but she said that doesn’t count the bodies still in wrecked buildings, buried or burned by relatives or dead in outlying quake areas.
“Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble,” Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said. Asked about the total number of victims, she said, “200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?”
Lassegue said that the government’s figure of 150,000 buried from just the capital area was based on figures from CNE, a state company that is collecting corpses and burying them north of Port-au-Prince.
That number would tend to confirm an overall estimate of 200,000 dead reported last week by the European Commission, citing Haitian government sources. As of Monday, the United Nations was reporting at least 112,250 confirmed deaths, based on recovered bodies.
Relatives watched a team recover three bodies from the ruins of a downtown home Sunday, one of many sites where the sad work continued. All three were jammed into a single, roughly made coffin, all the family could afford. They paid a man with a pushcart to take the casket to a nearby cemetery for a burial without ceremony.
The final toll will clearly place the Haiti earthquake among the deadliest natural catastrophes of recent times. That list includes the 1970 Bangladesh cyclone, believed to have killed 300,000 people; the 1974 northeast China earthquake, which killed at least 242,000 people; and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with 226,000 dead.

TITLE: Death Toll In Jet Crash In Beirut Reaches 34
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Kennedy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT — An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut early Monday, setting off a frantic search as passenger seats, baby sandals and other debris washed ashore. At least 34 bodies were recovered.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Lebanon has seen stormy weather since Sunday night, with crackling thunder, lightning and rain.
“We saw fire falling down from the sky into the sea,” said Khaled Naser, a gas station attendant who saw the plane go down around 2:30 a.m., crashing into the frigid waters of the Mediterranean that had reached just 64 degrees (18 degrees Celsius) by Monday afternoon.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said terrorism was not suspected in the crash of Flight 409, which was headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“Sabotage is ruled out as of now,” he said.
Weeping relatives streamed into Beirut’s airport to wait for news on their loved ones. One woman dropped to her knees in tears; another cried out, “Where is my son?”
Andree Qusayfi said his 35-year-old brother, Ziad, was traveling to Ethiopia for his job at a computer company, but was planning to return to Lebanon for good soon.
“We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm,” Qusayfi said, his eyes red from crying. “But he insisted on going because he had work appointments.”
Zeinab Seklawi said her 24-year-old son Yasser called her as he was boarding.
“I told him, ‘God be with you,’ and I went to sleep,” Seklawi said. “Please find my son. I know he’s alive and wouldn’t leave me.”
The dead include several children, according to a Lebanese defense official who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak publicly.
The Boeing 737-800 took off around 2:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. EST) and went down 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) off the coast, said Ghazi Aridi, the public works and transportation minister.
“The weather undoubtedly was very bad,” Aridi told reporters at the airport.
Pieces of the plane and debris were washing ashore in the hours after the crash, including passenger seats, a baby sandal, a fire extinguisher, suitcases and bottles of medicine.
The wife of Denis Pietton, the French ambassador to Lebanon, was on the plane, according to the French embassy.
Helicopters and naval ships were scrambled for a rescue effort as waves reaching 1.5 feet (a half-meter) slammed into the shore. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced a day of mourning and closed schools and government offices.
A statement from the defense ministry in Cyprus, which sent reinforcements to help in the search, said 34 bodies have been recovered so far.

TITLE: Unraveling Belfast Government Faces ‘High Noon’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBLIN — The British and Irish prime ministers say they are traveling to Belfast Monday to lead negotiations on preventing Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government from collapsing.
Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen made the joint statement following their own London talks and immediately after both men talked by telephone with the feuding leaders of the Catholic-Protestant coalition in Belfast.
The major Irish Catholic party, Sinn Fein, is warning it will withdraw from the 2 1/2-year-old coalition — triggering its collapse — unless the British Protestant side stops blocking efforts to give the coalition control of Northern Ireland’s justice system.
“We believe that there is a chance that progress will be made,” Brown told journalists with Cowen at his side.
Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government teetered on the brink of collapse Monday as the British and Irish governments prepared to intervene directly to keep the Catholic-Protestant coalition alive.
The major Irish Catholic party, Sinn Fein, warned it would withdraw from the 2 1/2-year-old coalition — triggering its collapse — unless the British Protestant side stops blocking efforts to give the coalition control of Northern Ireland’s justice system.
Their long-simmering argument over this issue appears to be coming to a head this week as political tensions rise in expectation of a British general election soon — and both sides increasingly adopt tough positions to appeal to their own voters.
The British and Irish governments mulled whether to attempt another direct intervention in Belfast, brokering negotiations between the two sides.
“We are in a serious situation. We’ll do everything we can to assist the parties,” Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said before meeting his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, in London.
“I am confident that when we get people together, we will be in a position to move it forward,” Brown said. “I am prepared to spend a considerable amount of time over the next few days making sure that we make the progress that is necessary.”
The Belfast coalition was the central achievement of Northern Ireland’s U.S.-brokered 1998 peace accord. But it is threatening to unravel before the United Kingdom’s mid-2010 general election — the event overshadowing all political calculations in Northern Ireland.
The feuding chieftains of power-sharing, Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson and Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness, also held face-to-face talks Monday in Belfast that aides on both sides half-jokingly branded “High Noon.”
“I am still determined to make this place work,” McGuinness told reporters at Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast as he headed into talks with Robinson. But he accused the Democratic Unionists of failing “to deliver and honor their commitments.”
A breakdown looks more likely than a breakthrough because of the bad blood between them and the looming electoral test they both already face as members of British Parliament. Their deteriorating relations come against a backdrop of continuing violence by Irish Republican Army splinter groups.

TITLE: French Call For Veil Ban Inside Public Buildings
AUTHOR: By Elaine Ganley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — A French parliamentary panel will recommend a ban on face-covering Muslim veils in public areas from hospitals to schools but will stop short of pressing for the garb to be outlawed in the street, the panel’s president says.
The 32-member panel’s report due Tuesday culminates a six-month inquiry into the wearing of all-encompassing veils that began after President Nicolas Sarkozy said in June that they are “not welcome” on French territory.
Andre Gerin, a Communist lawmaker who heads the multiparty panel, said the report contains a “multitude of proposals” to ban such garb in places like schools, hospitals and other public buildings, but not private buildings or on the street. He said the proposals would cover “domains that concern everyday society,” a phrase that would seem to include public transportation, although he did not mention that specifically.

TITLE: Fun in Finland More Than Just Skiing & Saunas
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finland remains as popular a destination as ever for St. Petersburg residents, with many having chosen to spend the extended New Year break in Russia’s friendly neighbor. While shopping in Helsinki is nearly always somewhere on the agenda, many also choose to take part in more physical outdoor activities. In addition to the ever-popular skiing and snowboarding, traditional Finnish activities are proving increasingly popular with Russian tourists.
For many Soviet children, the reindeer is associated with Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” in which the animal carried Gerda to the Snow Queen’s palace. More recently, reindeer have become better known in Russia for pulling Santa’s sleigh across the sky and helping him to deliver Christmas presents. It is perhaps not surprising then that tourists of all ages are eager to meet real reindeer in Finland and enjoy a bracing ride on a sleigh pulled by reindeers. 
Reindeer safaris have recently become popular with tourists in the northern regions of Finland. In Finnish Lapland, visiting a reindeer farm to listen to various stories and legends about reindeers is considered a must. According to the VisitFinland.com web site, there are 230,000 reindeer in Finland.
“Tourists are interested in unusual things and activities they cannot do at home,” said Svetlana Kokozina, sales manager at Voyage Line travel agency. “That’s why the most popular activities are reindeer sledding and riding snowmobiles.”
In order to enjoy the sensation of feeling like Santa traveling in a sleigh pulled by Rudolph, people must first undergo some training. First, tourists are provided with a special outfit, and can feed the animals. The next step is a short lesson in commanding the team of animals. The main points for drivers to remember are not to touch the bridle unless they are ready to set off, and to pull the bridle to the left in order to turn right and vice versa. Those who complete this training are awarded a reindeer sleigh-riding license valid for five years. Then they are ready for the reindeer journey, which can last from 10 minutes to a whole day. The price also varies, the average is about 50 euros for a 4-hour trip.
Reindeer sledding tours often include the option of snowshoe walking, another Finnish pastime. The shoes, which resemble huge tennis rackets strapped to one’s feet, make it easy to move on hilly terrain, regardless of how much snow there is. Years ago, they helped people to go beyond the Arctic Circle. Nowadays they have become a form of entertainment for tourists, like many other winter activities in Finland.
“Most of these activities have existed in Finland for many years, but now, due to demand, Finnish companies have started to offer them to tourists,” said Sergey Korneyev, director for the northwest of the Russian Tourism Industry Union.
Another traditional Finnish activity that is popular with tourists is dog sledding, which costs about 25 to 40 euros. Traveling in the company of animals provides a unique experience of being close to nature, according to the representatives of Finnish companies. 
Dog sledding begins with an introduction to the dogs. Huskies are very friendly, even to strangers, and are always eager to start the journey. A standard team consists of eight or nine canines, most of which form pairs in the team. The dog at the front of the team is the most intelligent one and will literally know their left from their right while the others simply follow the leader. The driver controls the team by shouting “left,” “right” or “straight on.” The dogs can reach amazingly high speeds over even the deepest snow. In the event of a snowless winter, the dogs can pull a sledge on wheels. 
“Tourists try activities they cannot find at home,” said Kokozina. “They are on holiday here, so they allow themselves to do things they wouldn’t usually do.” 
The interest in traditional Finnish activities emerged among Russian tourists just a couple of years ago.
“Russian tourists have already traveled a lot on the usual routes and are now seeking something original, unusual and authentic,” said Korneyev. “They need an interesting cultural program.
“There is a new generation of tourists who prefer active tourism. They need to keep moving, and at the same time want something specific to the culture of the country they are in.”
Activities involving animals are especially popular for family holidays.
Although horse riding is not a traditional Finnish activity, the Finns have made it interesting and unusual. The beast of choice is the small, almost pony-sized Icelandic horse, which has a heavy winter coat that provides extra insulation in cold temperatures. The legs of such horses are short and very strong, and they can climb paths in frozen winter forests that other horses will never tackle. The horses are suitable for beginners as well as experienced riders. Trips cost on average 35 euros for a one- to two-hour trip. 
Those who are not tempted by the idea of horse riding in the hills can always go for the more traditional options of downhill skiing or snowboarding.
“Our [Russian] tourists prefer Finnish resorts because everything is very straightforward, convenient and peaceful here,” said Kokozina. “There are not many people and no queues, and there are many different slopes of various heights.”
The average cost of a ski-pass is 17 to 34 euros per day, while ski equipment rental costs from 26 to 39 euros per day. Snowboarding equipment rental costs about 38 euros per day.
The ski season in Finland usually lasts from the end of November to April. More and more Russians are now choosing to go cross-country skiing. One of Finland’s most popular sports, for many years it was not popular in Russia.
“Cross-country skiing is undergoing a revival now,” said Korneyev. “Most Russians tried it for the last time at school, but now even in the Leningrad Oblast it has become very popular.”
There are tens of thousands of kilometers of marked and well-maintained ski trails in Finland. Information about Finnish ski resorts is available at the web site of the Finnish Ski Area Association, ski.fi.
Those who prefer less active sports activities can try winter fishing. Fishing is an integral part of Finnish culture — almost half of all Finns go fishing at least twice a year and there are about 1,500 fishing farms. 
“Fishing and hunting are regulated by law in Finland,” said Kokozina. “Fish can only be caught for free using a standard rod. The use of all other fishing equipment requires the payment of fees — a state duty of about 25 euros per year and sometimes private fees of about 13 euros to the lake owner — and purchase of a license.”
Winter activities are supported by the Finnish Tourist Board. According to the board, 9.7 million euros have been assigned from the state budget in 2010 to boost tourism to Finland. Demand from Russia’s northwest certainly shows no sign of abating, and with all the traditional tourist temptations on offer, as well of course as tax free shopping, it looks set to continue to grow.

TITLE: Finnish Border Hit by Long Lines
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: According to official statistics from the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg, 2009 set records in terms of the number of visas issued to St. Petersburgers, with a grand total of 542,560.
The total number of Russians driving to Finland in their own cars each year is also on the increase, with many of them going on shopping trips. According to a survey carried out by STOP in Finland magazine, shoppers from the northwest of Russia not only buy clothes, furniture and electronics on these trips — some buy considerable quantities of food in Finland, particularly children’s foodstuffs and pet food. 
Needless to say, the speed and convenience with which Finland can be reached from St. Petersburg are its main advantages. The journey to Helsinki can take from five to six hours, although in the event of queues at the border it is more likely to take eight to 10 hours. During holidays the situation at the border dramatically worsens, with average waiting times of five to six hours during the New Year holiday period and hundreds of cars queuing there at any one time. 
On Jan. 3, for example, there were around 500 cars at the Torfyanovka checkpoint and about 400 at the Brusnichnoye checkpoint, many of them carrying families with young children. The checkpoints provide minimal toilet facilities which cannot be accessed from the back of the lines, and drivers risk running out of fuel if they keep their engines running to warm their cars. 
Nikolai Vragov, spokesperson for the Northwest Customs Service, said that the needs of tourists had been met during the winter holiday period.
“Throughout the holidays and even before them the Russian customs service worked to the benefit of tourists and to the detriment of trucks on the border,” Vragov said. “All the work was aimed at helping car passengers — usually, two thirds of the work is devoted to goods and cargo shipping and a third is devoted to passengers. Our priority has been to concentrate on the needs of the general public.”
Vragov noted, however, that increased flows and rising numbers of tourists coming from further afield have caused delays. 
“The problem lies in the increasing numbers of tourists going to Finland, particularly during the New Year holidays and at weekends. You just have to look at the license plates — there are a great many cars from Moscow. Many people from Moscow now own cottages in Finland,” he said.
According to statistics from the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg, 170,000 Moscow inhabitants were issued Finnish visas in 2009. 
“You see the same situation on Friday evenings on the way to Finland and Sunday evenings on the way back to Russia,” said Vragov. “People visit Finland as though they’re going out to the countryside. On most days of the week, on weekdays, there are no queues at the Russian–Finnish border.” 
Many who have recently crossed the border would disagree with this optimistic take on the situation at the Russian-Finnish border crossings. The Suomiclub website surveyed travelers and found that 27.7 percent of drivers spent less than an hour going through both the Russian and Finnish checkpoints, 17.7 percent spent two hours in lines, 16.1 percent queued for up to four hours, and 12 percent spent more than six hours crossing the border. 
Those taking part in the survey said that the bottlenecks in the process were in front of the Russian checkpoints, with lines stretching back for kilometers, while passing through the Finnish checkpoints could be done in minutes. 
“There’s a huge volume of formalities to go through in the process and the Finns have been able to organize the process of crossing the border in a far better way,” said Sergey Korneyev, director for the northwest of the Russian Tourism Industry Union.
“Most of the jams appear on the border during rush hours and our services are incapable of dealing with it, especially with the numbers of tourists going up so quickly. The organized flow of tourists going on package tours is falling and more tourists are traveling to Finland in their own cars.”
Independent trips are now well-established among local tourists, Korneyev said. 
“A trip to Finland is becoming so commonplace that tourists don’t even plan them beforehand. They just find an appropriate time in their schedule and go,” said Korneyev.
Among complaints, tourists crossing the border cite excessively long breaks between shifts, crashed computers and electricity power cuts. Many have to wait for long periods for customs inspections of their cars. 
“Tourists mostly identify the problem as being in the human factor,” said Svetlana Kokozina, a sales manager at Voyage Line travel agency. “According to the rules, all the ‘windows’ should be open to process your documents, but in reality there might be just one operating. On the Finnish side, however, the greater the number of people and cars passing through, the more ‘windows’ they’ll open,” said Kokozina. 
“Even on normal days when there are no holidays, there is at least a small queue at the border,” she said.
Others have noted that tourists themselves often prolong the process, some only beginning to fill in the declaration forms when they reach the checkpoints, rather than doing it in advance.
“Some tourists just don’t know that they need to fill the documents in beforehand. Maybe they should be better informed,” said Korneyev.
Customs Service representatives advise travelers to print off blank declaration forms from the Internet in advance, though this has proved problematic in the past. 
“There were incidents when the printed declarations did not correspond to the declarations required at the border,” said Korneyev.
Huge delays at the border can create a variety of problems for tourists, especially when they have tickets for the ferry to Sweden or have a reservation for a cottage and have to pick up the key from the owner by a certain time. 
“These queues only come as a surprise to tourists who are traveling to Finland for the first time,” Kokozina said. “Experienced travelers leave home well in advance and spend the night in a hotel on the way, ensuring that they’ll reach their final destination in good time.”
Many tourists are now opting for the Svetogorsk checkpoint. Although a less direct route, it has modern equipment and the lines are shorter. Additionally, the road leading to it used to be in a poor condition but has now been repaired. 
“The mode of transport and the route you take is a matter of taste,” said the Customs Service’s Vragov. “If you don’t like the queues at Torfyanovka but you don’t want to go to Svetogorsk, then you can travel to Finland by train or by plane.” 
Another option for those wishing to travel to Finland by car will be a ferry service between St. Petersburg and Helsinki that will begin operating in April. The Princess Maria ferry will be able to take 1,638 passengers and 395 cars on each trip.
“It will make the journey five times a week — it’s a convenient alternative and the prices for such ferries are usually very reasonable,” said Korneyev.

TITLE: Austrian Capital Preserves Imperial Ambience
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It’s midnight at the Vienna Airport Hotel. A group of wet, disheveled and strange-looking people, one with his head covered with a towel, walking through the lobby looks a little out of place in the quiet setting. But when several tired Russian business journalists try to head to their rooms, they are stopped by a short but muscular man with a mustache. 
“Don’t move! Stay where you are!” the man hisses, while starting to assume what appears to be a martial arts combat stance, but after the mysterious group disappears down a corridor, he follows them briskly. It takes a while to dawn on one of the shocked journalists that the men were in fact Metallica, whose bodyguard had unwisely mistaken the reporters for fans seeking autographs.
“Metallica Performed a Black Mass in Vienna,” read the headline in Osterreich (“Austria,”) the free daily local newspaper picked up the next morning, preceding a review of the previous night’s stadium concert where the metal band had played to thousands of Austrian fans — an effort that might have affected its personnel’s thought processes.
Osterreich is the rival to Heute (“Today;”) both papers are widely available all over the city, including on the Vienna Metro (U-Bahn,) where they are frequently left behind.
The metro, which has 76 stations, was officially opened in 1898, electrified in 1925 and has been modernized since 1976. A single-journey ticket for the metro or any other public transport costs 1.70 euros, or two euros if bought onboard the bus or tram.
The Vienna Metro has proven popular with suicides, although a scientific report claimed that the introduction of media guidelines regarding the reporting of suicides in 1987 led to a 75 percent decrease in the rate of subway suicides. 
However, residents of Vienna say they do still happen, and that a metro announcement that a train has been delayed for technical reasons is generally interpreted as news of another despondent person choosing to end his or her life.
The metro is just one part of Vienna’s well-developed public transport network. Almost any destination in the city can by reached by metro, as well as by bus, train or tram. Vienna’s public transport company, Wiener Linien, operates five underground lines, 31 tram routes and 80 bus routes. 
While the St. Petersburg authorities are gradually scaling back the city’s tram lines, claiming that trams hinder car traffic, a tram ride is a pleasant and convenient means of transport in Vienna and it does not seem like the city will ever reject it. Visitors can take the yellow Vienna Ring-Tram around the most beautiful parts of the city. A round trip takes 24 minutes and cost six euros (four euros for children.) 
The trams run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (7 p.m. in the summertime.) During tours, passengers are provided with information about the city’s sights via LCD screens and headphones. Seven languages, including English and Russian, are available.
The Vienna tram museum has 100 original vehicles on show, including a horse-drawn trolley dating from 1868 and a steam tram set from about 1885. Like the tram itself, its St. Petersburg counterpart, the Museum of Electric Transport of Vasilyevsky Ostrov is endangered due to plans to hand over its premises to a new hotel and other commercial buildings.
Vienna is similar to St. Petersburg in many ways, though there has been a greater effort to preserve historic buildings there than in the Russia’s northern capital in recent years, says one Russian resident who moved to Vienna from St. Petersburg. 
The Austrian capital, whose historic center, with its architectural ensembles including Baroque castles and gardens, as well as the late-19th-century Ringstrasse lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks, is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, has also raised objections regarding its cultural heritage.
Last year, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee asked the Austrian authorities to halt the construction of the 100-meter-tall building of the Vienna Central Train Station project. Although the planned height had been reduced to 88 meters early last year, the committee warned that it would protrude above the trees on one side of the Belvedere Palace Park and urged the authorities to conduct a comprehensive visual impact assessment of the entire project.
Just 56 kilometers away from Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia, Vienna was the West’s reluctant frontier, facing the Iron Curtain directly. During the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague, Austrian politicians avoided irritating the Kremlin, as the Soviets accumulated a tank force on the border, and Soviet aircraft violated Austrian air space.
Today, Vienna International Airport (Flughafen Wien) is the point that connects western and eastern Europe. With a network of 48 destinations in eastern Europe, Vienna ranks ahead of the significantly larger Frankfurt Airport, making it a viable international hub for travel to the region. 
Vienna International Airport increased its range of eastern European destinations in 2008 to include Nizhny Novogorod and Sochi in Russia, although Kaliningrad was dropped from the flight schedule. From St. Petersburg and back, this journalist traveled on a small Austrian Arrows Fokker twin-engine jet, made in the Netherlands and not produced since Fokker went bankrupt in 1996. 
Operated by Tyrolean Airways, an airline based in Innsbruck, Austria, flights take around two hours and 40 minutes, and include drinks and refreshment. 
Just across the street from the airport building, the NH Vienna Airport Hotel is likely to be convenient for visitors traveling to Vienna on business — like Metallica. 
Both the airport and hotel offer plenty of space for meetings and conferences, including an eavesdropping-proof presidential conference room. The state-of-the-art City Airport Train (CAT) reaches the city in just 16 minutes and costs six euros. Cheaper buses are also available.
Despite its relatively high suicide rate, Vienna is one of the world’s most attractive cities in which to live — placed sixth in the world, according to a survey provided by Vienna Tourist Board.
Number one worldwide in quality of living (followed by Zurich and Geneva,) according to Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey (April 2009), Vienna mainly attracts middle-aged, educated and well-off visitors, the average being a 41-year-old with a monthly income of around 3,000 euros. The average visitor spends around 286 euros a day during his or her stay.
The Austrian capital is also ranked sixth worldwide in personal safety (behind Luxembourg, Bern, Geneva, Helsinki and Zurich,) according to Mercer’s 2008 Personal Safety Ranking, and the second cleanest city in Europe (after Riga in Latvia, surprising as it may be), according to IBAL (Irish Business Against Litter, 2007.)
During World War II, Vienna officially became part of “Greater” Germany after the 1938 Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to the German Third Reich by the Nazi regime. The city survived the Allied air force bombings and the Vienna Offensive, which was launched by the Soviet Third Ukrainian Front in order to capture the city and lasted for 10 days in April 1945.
The “Battle for Vienna” that left 17,000 Soviet soldiers dead was commemorated by the giant Red Army Monument (Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee), built by the Soviet army using the labor of POWs and locals on Schwarzenbergplatz in 1945. The memorial includes a triumphal arch and is dominated by the figure of a soldier with a Shpagin submachine gun on his chest. The soldier wears a golden helmet and holds a Soviet flag and a golden Soviet coat of arms. 
In May 2007, at the height of the anti-Estonian campaign in Russia that followed Tallinn’s move of the Bronze Soldier monument from the city center to a military cemetery, Vienna was visited by Russia’s then-president Vladimir Putin, who explicitly thanked Austria for keeping the monument in place after the Soviet army went home in 1955.
However, the totalitarian-looking monument, on which is engraved the text of Stalin’s declaration congratulating the troops that took the city, has been seen as controversial in the decades that followed its erection. The offensive names it was given by local residents include “Looter’s Memorial” and “Memorial to the Unknown Rapist.”
Post-war Vienna, which was then occupied and divided into five zones — four governed by one of each of the victorious Allies plus a jointly-administered international zone — was the location for the filming of “The Third Man,” the classic 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. 
Based on Graham Greene’s novella, the film is considered to give a highly accurate representation of Vienna during that period and could be used as a guide around Vienna. 
Unsurprisingly, it is now the subject of a tour in which tourists are led around the places where shooting took place. 
The film’s climax is a shootout in the city’s sewers, and a tour of the sewers is also available as part of the cult of “The Third Man,” starting from the star-shaped manhole cover on Karlsplatz/Esperantopark. There is also a Third Man Museum (Pressgasse 26), while the film itself can be watched at Burg Kino (Opernring 19).
Many historic buildings were destroyed during WWII, but extensive restoration work was conducted after the war, and the city has succeeded in preserving its character.
In the early 20th century, Vienna was home to all kinds of politicians, some of whom were rather ominous — a fact epitomized in an etching that surfaced last year and went to auction. Taken in Vienna in 1909, it allegedly shows the then-artist and future German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler playing chess with the then-political exile and future Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin. Many doubts have been expressed about whether it was really Lenin in the image, however.
Leon Trotsky spent seven years in the city from 1907 to 1914 hiding from the tsar and publishing Pravda (“Truth,”) the banned communist newspaper that was smuggled into Russia and whose name, to Trotsky’s dismay, was stolen by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1912.
Political protest traditions are very much alive in Vienna today. During a visit last year, a right-wing rally protesting the planned extension of a mosque and a left-wing counter-rally protesting the first took place simultaneously in close proximity of one another. As a result,  the Ringstrasse, a circular road surrounding the Innere Stadt (Inner City) district, was closed, which led to major traffic jams in the city center.
Unlike St. Petersburg, it did not occur to the Vienna authorities to banish the protesters to the city’s outskirts, ban the rallies altogether or send riot police to thwart them. The group of visiting Russian journalists that happened to be on a tour bus at that time spent most of the tour sitting in jams, listening to local guide Anke’s passionate tales about one of Austria’s best-loved historical characters  — Princess Sissi.
Known properly as Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Sissi’s life was full of both melodrama and rebellion against court conventions, which made her a heroine of many films and theatrical productions. Most famously she was represented in Romy Schneider’s film trilogy “Sissi” (1955,) “Sissi – The Young Empress” (1956) and “Sissi – The Fateful Years of the Empress” (1957), with a total running time of five hours.
Sissi’s life ended tragically if spectacularly — she died after being stabbed with a triangular file by the young anarchist Luigi Lucheni in 1898. For Lucheni, the murder represented propaganda of the deed, a philosophy advocating spreading beliefs through direct action. After Lucheni’s alleged suicide in a prison cell, parts of his body were preserved for scientific purposes.
Taking a bus tour might not be the best idea in the warmer seasons; due to the abundance of trees and bushes in the city, some buildings were hidden by the leaves, and Anke would repeatedly ask the visitors to believe that the invisible architectural objects she was talking about were also beautiful. 
Vienna is famous for, among many other things, its coffee culture and cafes. Of dozens of traditional cafes scattered around the center, Cafe Hawelka (Dorotheergasse 6) is highly recommended. 
Opened in 1939, it has provided a refuge for generations of artists, writers and musicians. Its specialty is Buchteln — sweet dumplings made of yeast dough, filled with jam and baked in the oven.
Vienna’s most famous dessert, however, is Sachertorte, a chocolate cake invented by Franz Sacher in 1832, which can be sampled at most cafes. 
The staples of Austrian food — influenced by Hungarian, Czech, Jewish, and Italian cuisines — is Wiener Schnitzel with French fries and Burenwurst and a variety of sausages, all available everywhere, from top notch restaurants to street schnitzel stands. An interesting place in which to try traditional Austrian food is Zwolf-Apostelkeller (Twelve Apostles), a restaurant that has been located in medieval cellars since 1952.
Vienna’s popular drinks include a variety of wines and shnapps. Naturally, a shnapps museum also numbers among the city’s hundreds of museums. Called Old Vienna Schnapps Museum (Wilhelmstrasse 19-21,) it is still a functioning distillery where visitors can sample drinks such as Williams Pear Brandy, Wiener Blut Liquer or Absinthe Mata Hari.
Vienna’s beer industry includes a number of microbreweries and one large brewery, Ottakringer. Founded in 1837, its most popular brand is Ottakringer Helles, a light beer with an alcohol content of 5.2 percent. According to locals, the average price for half a liter of beer on tap is three-and-a-half euros, four euros is considered “expensive,” while five euros — the price at Airport NL’s hotel bar — is seen as over the top.
There are however plenty of less expensive, easy-going youth-oriented pubs with rock music in Vienna such as Pappala Pub (Wahringer Gurtel Stadtbahnbogen 157.)

HOW TO GET THERE
Directs flights to Vienna from Pulkovo 2 Terminal. 

WHERE TO EAT
Zwolf-Apostelkeller (Twelve Apostles), Sonnenfelsgasse 3, 1010 Vienna, Tel.: +43-1-512 67 77. Traditional Austrian food and Viennese wines. 11 a.m.-midnight. www.zwoelf-apostelkeller.at

WHERE TO STAY
NH Vienna Airport (4 stars). Einfahrtsstrasse 1- 3, A - 1300 Wien/Flughafen. Tel. +43.1.701510. www.nh-hotels.com/nh/en/hotels/austria/vienna/nh-vienna-airport.html

The St. Petersburg Times was a guest of the Vienna International Airport, www.viennaairport.com

TITLE: A Spanish Roadtrip for Photographers
AUTHOR: By Alexander Belenky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Times photographer Alexander Belenky travels to Spain, via Finland, to see what the country has to offer and to take some professional snaps. 

Why do Russians love to travel to Finland?
Many Russians, Petersburgers in particular, love Finland — the lines of people queuing up for visas outside the Finnish Consulate have become a feature of the city’s landscape. The lucky recipients travel to Russia’s northern neighbor for a variety of reasons. The richer are visiting their own houses and dachas in Lappeenranta, Imatra or some other cozy little town not too far from the border. The less well-off head for the same places for the sales, buying not only clothing but also foodstuffs which are often of a higher quality and no more expensive than back in their hometowns. Some go for the downhill skiing — or fishing in the summer. Upon crossing the border you enter a different world, and not just because the landscape changes, the roads are better and the people speak a different language. Stress appears to melt away, and you find yourself in a mood of peace and calm. Once you’re in Finland, you get the feeling that you won’t come to any harm.
And with a Schengen area visa, you also have the opportunity to journey across Europe...

Why do Russians love to travel through Finland?
If you have a multi-entry Schengen area visa, then you will often find that it’s cheaper to fly to destinations in Europe via Finland. Budget airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair fly from Helsinki, and Finnair flights from the Finnish capital are often cheaper than direct flights from St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. 
The Finnish Consulate has two unwritten rules: Firstly, anyone receiving a Schengen visa from them must both leave Russia and return via Finland; secondly, you should spend more days in Finland than in other countries. If the rules are broken, Russians risk being denied a multi-entry visa next time round.
Flying to Spain
A friend of mine — also a photographer — received two free weeks’ accommodation over New Year at the Club La Costa near Malaga, Spain, for four people. Tickets were quickly bought over the Internet via Easyjet from Helsinki to Malaga via London, priced at 250 euros per person return. In order not to miss the morning flight we headed off early, leaving the day before. There were no queues on the border, it being Dec. 25. 
We stayed in the Eurohostel in Helsinki and were treated to a Christmas Day breakfast. Our first disappointment was that our passports were stamped when we left Finland for our connection at Gatwick Airport in London. The bad news continued at Gatwick, where our passports were filled with enough stamps to fill a collector’s album, and on arrival in Malaga yet more were added. The message is: If you’re Russian, don’t fly via London if you want to keep your visa slate clean!

In Spain
Pure delight: Sumptuous apartments, waves lapping on the beach nearby; it’s warm without being oppressive. This comes as a great relief after the frosts of St. Petersburg, but we’re not here for a beach holiday — we’re here to drive around the country and take photographs. In December and January, in the south the temperature is about 16 to 18 degrees Celsius, making for perfect driving conditions, and a rental car costs just 180 euros for 10 days. 
The route we chose took us to Tarifa, Gibraltar, Cadiz, spectacular Ronda, the small town of Mijas, also known as the “The White Village,” Antequera and El Torcal. We saw a monument to Columbus created by the ubiquitous Georgian-Russian sculptor Tsereteli, the yachts of the rich and famous in Marbella, the famed Mesquita mosque in Coroba, and the Alhambra and Generalife Gardens in Granada. Each day and each town brought something new. We didn’t make it to the bullfighting in Mijas, but the previous day’s rain had ruined the field and we were told that the bulls hadn’t been able to get up any serious speed. 
In the evenings we would return to our club and my friend would go for a winter swim — entirely possible in the Mediterranean. 
We split our costs, and tried not to spend too much, buying food in supermarkets and cooking in our apartments. Dishes sampled included paella valenciana or paella de marisco, tapas, croquetas and, of course, the renowned jamon. We particularly enjoyed the croquetas in the fishing tavern of Tarifa and the tapas in a small cafe in Fuengirola, where the landlord himself takes customer orders. On average, the dish of the day costs about 7 to 9 euros, including coffee and dessert. 
We saw in the New Year in Fuengirola on the town’s central square among a multinational crowd. Everyone was drinking, but there were no drunks; everyone was in good spirits without being over the top. Unforgettable!

Avoiding Trouble
Some advice for foreigners visiting Europe on Schengen visas via Finland: Remember that delays on the border can be lengthy, so do leave in good time for your flight or ferry. It’s best to tell the truth about your destination to the Finnish border guards — they’ll let you through in any event, and you can make up the days on a future trip to Finland.
When returning to Russia however, remove all airport luggage labels. And don’t drive too fast on Finland’s excellent roads!

Going on a Budget
The cost of such a trip isn’t excessive. The flights cost 250 euros per person, and four of us sharing the car, including fuel, worked out at 100 euros per person. Food in restaurants and cafes, shopping at the supermarket and tickets to the museums set us back another 160 euros per person. An unforseen bout of post-New Year’s shopping right at the end of our trip set us back another 120 euros. So, excluding accommodation, the grand total for our 10-day trip came to 630 euros per person.