SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1551 (12), Friday, February 26, 2010
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TITLE: Two Senior Policemen Fired Over Kidnapping
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two top Moscow police officials were fired Wednesday after officers under them were accused of kidnapping a Belarussian businessman and his son for ransom, sending what the Kremlin hopes is a stiff warning to police chiefs nationwide that they will be held accountable for the wrongdoings of their underlings.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev dismissed Colonel Vyachaslav Yakovlev and his deputy, Colonel Andrei Sidorenko, from their leadership of a department in the city’s police criminal task force, or MUR.
The officials were fired for their “weak organization of work with subordinates,” police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told reporters.
The statement echoed an October order by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to hold senior police officials personally responsible for the misdeeds of their subordinates and came just days after President Dmitry Medvedev fired several high-ranking police generals as part of a Kremlin drive to reform the corruption-tarnished Interior Ministry. The officials at MUR, a crown jewel of the Soviet police whose officers were often featured as valiant heroes in action films, were fired just hours after three subordinates were arrested on charges of kidnapping and extortion.
The three suspects, who were not identified, are accused of abducting a Belarussian businessman and his son in the city of Troitsk, near Moscow, on Feb. 20, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
Life.ru identified the suspects as a colonel and two majors.
Markin said the police officers had demanded more than 6 million rubles ($200,000) from relatives in exchange for the men’s release and had later reduced the ransom to 2 million rubles during negotiations.
The police officers were detained while receiving an initial payment of 1.4 million rubles ($50,000) in a sting operation, Markin said. A Moscow region court sanctioned their arrest Wednesday.
The fast turnabout time between the arrests and the dismissals signals that the Kremlin’s patience is wearing thin. Kolokoltsev, the Moscow police chief, was himself appointed by Medvedev after the president sacked his predecessor for the shooting rampage of a Moscow police major in a supermarket that killed two people in April.
Last week, Kolokoltsev dismissed another senior police official, Yury Bykov, a deputy department head in a city police precinct, after police broke up a criminal group that robbed cash carriers that included police officers who worked under Bykov.
Bykov’s dismissal, however, did not come immediately after the arrests but after another police officer in his department struck a woman in a drunk-driving accident last week.
Senior police officials in several other regions have also been dismissed over their subordinates’ actions in recent weeks.
The firings are helping mobilize the police force but are more of a Band-Aid approach than a long-term solution, said Mikhail Pashkin, head of the Moscow police’s independent trade union.
“It is a solution but not the right one,” he said, noting that a preliminary report from the Interior Ministry’s internal affairs department implicated police officers in more than 5,000 crimes nationwide last year.
TITLE: Prime Minister Threatens to Fine 4 Tycoons
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk and Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin scolded generating companies and threatened to fine four wealthy owners for failing to invest in new capacity during a visit to the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Station on Wednesday.
Putin said the giant energy holdings, which bought most of the country’s generating assets after they were sold off to private investors, have failed to live up to their end of the bargain by investing in increased generating capacity.
“TGK-4 does not even have working plans. The main shareholder there is Mr. [Mikhail] Prokhorov, who is feeling pretty well-off economically. He cashed out his assets. … He has the money and … is looking for ways to invest these funds,” Putin said at a meeting in the republic of Khakasia, in a village near the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam.
“At another company OGK-3, the main shareholder is Mr. [Vladimir] Potanin. He bought this company for 81.7 billion rubles ($2.7 billion), and he received [another] 81.7 billion rubles through an additional share emission — he essentially snapped up a valuable property for kopeks,” Putin said.
Other companies that the prime minister said were unable to meet their obligations are Senator Leonid Lebedev’s Sintez Group, which owns TGK-2, and Viktor Vekselberg’s Integrated Energy Systems, owner of TGK-5, TGK-6, TGK-9 and VoTGK.
The companies that purchased electricity assets from the dismantled UES signed an agreement with the government that they would use the funds raised through an additional share issue to increase capacity and, in exchange, the government agreed to move toward a system of market-based electricity pricing from the former system of fixed tariffs. But much of the money raised through the additional share issue has gone to other ends.
A total of 66 billion rubles of the 450 billion rubles raised through the additional share issues was used to purchase other noncore assets, Putin said, while another 100 billion rubles is sitting idly in their bank accounts. Only 270 billion rubles has so far been invested in increasing capacity.
In 2008, Potanin’s Norilsk Nickel, OGK-3’s main shareholder, bought a 25 percent stake of RUSIA-Petroleum, operator of the Kovykta gas-condensate field, for $576 million, as well as a 35 percent stake in US Plug Power for $33 million and a 100 percent stake in T-Invest for $3.2 million from Interros. Analysts at the time said the assets were overpriced.
The energy holdings “blame the crisis and the lack of demand … but when they are offered to build a power station in a place where there is guaranteed demand … in Sochi, for instance, they back out,” Putin said.
TGK-2, TGK-4 and OGK-3 all refused to participate in the project to build the Kudepstenskaya heating station near Sochi, each giving different excuses, he said.
Putin said the generators that continued to delay investing in new capacity would incur fines, and that the government could enlist the Prosecutor General’s Office to speed up the process, if necessary.
But not all owners of electricity assets came in for such harsh criticism. The foreign companies who bought stakes in some generators, including E.On, Enel and Fotum, have been praised by the government for adhering to their investment plans. Putin praised E.On on Wednesday, saying that while it raised 48 billion rubles through its share emission, its investment program has topped 95 billion rubles.
The energy holdings responded cautiously Wednesday, saying their investment programs had been delayed for reasons beyond their control.
“We have had some difficult projects whose realization is being delayed for objective reasons,” IES Holding said in an e-mailed statement.
Construction on their Novobogoslovskaya, Igumnovskaya, Novobereznikovskaya and Nizhegorodskaya stations have been delayed variously because of accidents on the planned site, land ownership disputes, a lack of demand and the difficulty of getting fuel supplies, IES Holding said, adding that the changes in its investment deadline were “approved by System Operator and are now in the process of approval in the Energy Ministry.”
Sintez Group managing director Andrei Korolyov said in a statement that the firm’s investment in TGK-2 was held up because it received less than expected in its additional share issue and had to use some of the money to pay off the generator’s debts. It also blamed the activities of “raiders,” referring to an ongoing dispute with a minority shareholder.
Prokhorov’s Onexim Group declined to comment.
Onexim’s TGK-4 said in November that it has reached an agreement with System Operator, the electricity market regulator, on pushing back construction on its eight new generating projects, which was “technically impossible to do” before the deadline because of falling demand.
The main reason that generating companies are not rushing to invest in new projects is that they are not sure that demand for electricity will rebound very fast, said Alexander Seleznev, a utilities analyst at UralSib.
In January, power consumption rebounded to its pre-crises level of 103 billion kilowatt-hours, pushed up by an unusually cold winter. “Investors are not sure they will get decent return on investments,” Seleznev said. “I wouldn’t judge by January’s energy consumption figures because they are largely affected by the unusually cold winter countrywide, I would look more closely at the March and April figures.”
In 2009, demand for electricity declined 4.6 percent to 964.4 billion kilowatt-hours countrywide as the recession brought down demand, System Operator said earlier this month, and could have been even lower if not for the cold winter, Seleznev said.
Putin visited Sayano-Shushenskaya to preside over the reopening of one of the dam’s 10 turbines after an accident in August crippled its generating equipment and killed 75 people.
He said the government would spend 10 billion rubles rebuilding the dam in 2010.
TITLE: New Custody Dispute Flares Up in Finland
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finnish police have opened criminal proceedings against Russian mother Inga Rantala, accusing her of assaulting her seven-year-old Russian-Finnish son Robert, who has been put in a children’s home by Finnish social workers.
The case of Rantala, a native of the Leningrad Oblast who is married to a Finn and lives in the Finnish town of Turku, was widely reported in the Russian media on Thursday, with reports broadcast on national television channels.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday, Rantala said that she had received court papers on Wednesday informing her that the Finnish side had decided to deprive the Rantalas of their parental rights.
The legal documents did not state when the official court hearing on the matter would take place, but did say that the Rantalas were not invited to attend the hearings, Rantala said in a telephone interview from Finland, where she has lived for the past nine years.
Rantala said that she hadn’t beaten her son and she couldn’t understand how the situation had arisen.
“I didn’t beat Robert, and nor did anybody else in the family,” said Rantala.
“On the contrary, Robert is a child who has received plenty of attention, whom we sent to a good school, and who attended hockey, skiing and swimming lessons. I can’t for the life of me understand what’s going on,” she said.
“What most worries me in this situation is my son, who for unclear reasons has been taken away from his family and home at the age of just seven, who is stressed out, and who has to go through all this questioning. If they think I’m guilty of something, let them put me in prison, but don’t let them torture my child,” she said.
Russian diplomats have begun negotiations with the Finnish side about the case, Rantala said. She said that when a Russian diplomat spoke to Robert, the boy said that he “wanted to go home to his mom and dad.”
Representatives of Finnish social services took Robert away from his parents on Feb. 4. Under the terms of their decision, the boy’s mother cannot see or call her son, while his father is allowed to visit Robert only in the presence of social workers.
The reason for the intervention of Finnish social workers was information they received from Robert’s schoolteacher, who said that on Jan. 28 the boy told her that his mother had smacked him the day before, Fontanka reported.
On Feb. 4, police questioned the boy, who cried and said that his mother had not beaten him and that he didn’t want to go to a children’s home, Fontanka quoted Johan Backman, head of Finland’s Anti-Fascist Committee as saying.
“They said that my husband has an alcohol problem, but it’s not true. He drinks beer sometimes, but who doesn’t?” said Rantala.
Russia’s Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, Pavel Astakhov, has promised to handle the case himself.
“I will personally monitor the situation,” Astakhov said. “We have already submitted a request to the Ministry of the Interior for more information. Finland’s authorities will have to provide all their evidence through the ministry’s channels,” Astakhov said, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Non-Combat Deaths Plague Russian Army
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fifty-eight young men died as a result of non-combat-related causes in the military detachments of the northwestern district in 2009, Igor Lebed, chief military prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District, said Thursday.
Nationwide, the figure totaled 273 deaths, according to the country’s Defense Ministry. Suicides account for more than half of non-combat deaths in the armed forces. According to statistics released on Thursday, 137 people committed suicide in the Russian army in 2009. A further 88 people died as the result of accidents, 20 died in traffic incidents, 17 were murdered, seven died in incidents involving the misuse of weapons, and four died as the result of hazing.
The Defense Ministry estimated that on average, up to 500 recruits die from non-combat-related causes every year in Russia.
But human rights groups contest official statistics and claim the actual number is at least twice as high. Worse still, human rights groups insist hazing cases are often reported as accidental deaths.
The St. Petersburg Soldiers’ Mothers human rights organization said recruits are driven to suicide by hazing, violence and physical abuse. Some of the letters kept at the organization’s headquarters were written by recruits who later committed suicide.
These letters are sometimes brought to the pressure group by desperate parents wishing to sue the military authorities.
“Every month, deserters and their relatives flock to us with absolutely chilling stories of torture, forced prostitution and slave labor,” said Ella Polyakova, head of Soldiers’ Mothers.
Investigations into suicides and alleged abuses typically lead nowhere.
Obtaining evidence from a closed structure like the Russian army, which has its own military prosecution system, has proven difficult.
“It is a shame that the Russian armed forces are more concerned about their image — which they want to preserve at all costs — than about establishing the truth and protecting the victims of abuse,” said Polyakova.
“Unfortunately, in Russia, victims’ testimonies are not treated seriously enough,” she said. “Even if we submit a whole pile of testimonies, the prosecutors can easily refuse to open a criminal case, claiming that there is not enough evidence.”
“Basically, what happens is that the prosecutors weigh the testimonies of the deserters against the word of the officers; needless to say the victims do not stand a chance,” Polyakova added.
TITLE: Russia, EU Look to Lift Visas
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A daunting amount of work is necessary to achieve visa-free travel between Russia and Europe, but Moscow is promising maximum cooperation with Brussels on that issue, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and new EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday.
A European initiative to lift travel restrictions could be put into practice “in a short time,” Lavrov told reporters at a joint news conference with Ashton, Interfax reported.
“We are ready to introduce visa-free travel with Europe tomorrow,” he said, adding that technical hurdles should be moved out of the way during expert consultations “in good time.” Afterward, a time frame for agreements could be set.
Ashton, who was on her first visit to Moscow, cautioned that the process was just beginning.
“There is a substantial amount of work to be done,” she told reporters at a separate briefing late Wednesday.
She refused to elaborate or give a time frame.
Spain, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, announced last month that the EU would start a process to ultimately lift visa requirements. But similar attempts have yielded few results in the past, mainly because of technical difficulties and fears among EU members of a mass influx of refugees.
Migration rules are stringent on both sides, although Russians must undergo interviews and demonstrate that they have sufficient funds for travel before obtaining visas to the EU’s border-free Schengen zone. Europeans wishing to travel to Russia are spared those procedures but face stiff bureaucracy, having to register and deregister if they spend three or more working days at any place in the country.
Asked if registration rules might be eased during visa negotiations, Lavrov denied that the rules posed a bureaucratic burden.
“There is no registration requirement. There is a notification requirement that involves no permits. You fill out a simple form and send it stamped by post to the nearest migration service office. … If you stay in a hotel, you do not have to do anything,” he said.
Yet the registration process, which is the bane of foreign visitors, has been further complicated with the introduction of a fee in late January. A registration now costs 2 rubles for each day of the visit, with a ceiling at 200 rubles ($6.50). “You must present a receipt from Sberbank showing that you have paid the fee,” said Alexei Filipenkov of the Visa Delight agency.
Ashton has faced a series of challenges since assuming her job in December, when the Lisbon Treaty amalgamated the jobs of high representative (formerly Javier Solana) and external relations commissioner (formerly Benita Ferrero-Waldner).
Brussels has been awash with reports about doubts on whether the comparably unknown British Labour politician, who served as EU trade commissioner for just a year, has enough international experience for the job.
Questions have also been raised on the rotating presidency’s future role in foreign policy, and critics have said Spain stole the limelight from the high representative’s first weeks in office.
TITLE: Grozny to Stage Street-Racing Contest Named After Kadyrov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A street-racing tournament named after Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov will be held in Grozny next weekend, the Chechen government said Wednesday.
More than 30 drivers have applied to participate in the one-kilometer race on Saturday night, which is open for everyone to participate in or watch, the Chechen government said in a statement.
Drivers will have to pass a medical examination, while their cars will undergo technical checks, said the statement posted on its official web site.
The event will be held away from residential areas.
Kadyrov is known as a street-racing fan and has a large stable of cars, including the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead, Audi R8, Porsche Cayenne, Mercedes-Benz SL and Lamborghini Reventon. Early last year, a video showing a fast-moving Kadyrov motorcade of 56 elite foreign-made cars circulated on the Internet.
In April 2008, a convoy of military vehicles hunting rebels failed to yield to the Kadyrov motorcade, causing a crash and a subsequent clash in which at least two people were shot to death.
TITLE: Accident in Irkutsk Causes Public Outrage
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Irkutsk police said Wednesday that a driver who showed more concern about her car than two women whom she critically injured in a crash in December faces possible criminal charges.
Public indignation has been growing about the incident after local media reported Sunday that police were treating the 28-year-old driver, Anna Shavenkova, daughter of the Irkutsk region’s election committee chairwoman, as a witness in their investigation.
Shavenkova plowed her car into two sisters on a sidewalk in the city of Irkutsk on Dec. 2. A security camera on a nearby building taped Shavenkova getting out of the car to look for possible damage to the hood, paying no attention to the seriously injured women lying nearby. One of the women later died in the hospital.
The video has been posted on YouTube.
Police said in a statement Wednesday that Shavenkova, an adviser with the ruling United Russia party in the local legislature, was now considered a suspect and might be charged with vehicular manslaughter.
If charged and convicted, Shavenkova faces up to five years in prison.
But local news web site Babr.ru, which first reported that Shavenkova was being treated as a witness, said police had failed to test her for signs of alcohol consumption.
Radio Liberty reported Wednesday that police have not been able to interview Shavenkova because she has sent them a doctor’s note saying she is pregnant.
TITLE: The 2nd Superpower
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Few people around the world foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union or the demise of communism. But back in 1981, Robert Tucker, a prominent neocon and an old-school U.S. isolationist, surprised our graduate seminar at an international affairs school by suggesting not only that the Soviet empire might be on its last legs, but that if and when it crumbled it would not be such a great thing for the United States.
Having just emigrated from the Soviet Union, I was convinced that communism would endure forever and that the old men ruling the Kremlin were winning the Cold War. But if the Soviet Union were to disappear, I didn’t think there would be much to regret.
Tucker had a different view. “The superpowers balance one another out and each keeps the other side connected to reality,” he explained. “Think of the follies they would commit if all that power were left unchecked.”
These days, I get a sense of unreality whenever I travel around the United States. There has been an extraordinary expansion of the security establishment in the country. On each leg of a recent trip from New York to St. Louis, a federal marshal unobtrusively took up two front-row seats on a sold-out flight. Armed federal marshals on domestic flights were yet another layer of protection provided to us, after security had made us stand in line for an hour to make sure we had no shampoo bottles or nail clippers in our carry-on bags.
U.S. airports are now full of soldiers in uniform, resembling dust-covered construction workers in their desert camouflage and work boots, traveling home from foreign wars. Troops fighting overseas are yet another layer of protection for Americans, since they are “fighting terrorists over there so that we won’t have to fight them over here,” to use a ridiculous political cliche.
All this effort — and much else that remains concealed — to keep 100 passengers on a regional flight safe. In the old days, the Soviet Union never got as much attention from the U.S. government as a rag-tag gang of international terrorists, even though the Soviets had a global network of agents, client states and a vast nuclear arsenal that could annihilate the United States in 15 minutes.
Paranoia can be a national sickness. The U.S. government has successfully scared its people, and the people have sheepishly let their freedoms be restricted.
A recent Gallup poll measuring confidence in various institutions found that U.S. Congress now stands lower in the nation’s esteem than any other institution ever. While only 11 percent trust Congress, fully 82 percent have confidence in the military. By contrast, a recent Levada Center poll found that 57 percent of Russians wouldn’t want their relatives to serve, an interesting statistic since Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day on Feb. 23 has turned into a watered-down, all-encompassing Men’s Day.
A similar disconnect exists in attitudes toward the police. Last year, another Levada Center poll found that only 29 percent of Russians trusted the police. More recently, that number has fallen to just 1 percent. Russian policemen are notoriously corrupt and abusive, and a horrendous increase in police crimes against citizens has dampened public opinion further. In the United States, on the other hand, the already huge proportion of those who trust their police rose by 5 percentage points over the past two years, to 59 percent. It is not a healthy sign, either, and it surely conflicts with the United States’ self-image as a nation of ragged individualists.
The Soviet Union used to overspend massively on the military and the police. The United States is now squandering its resources on similar things, ignoring real economic and political challenges that it faces. But with Russia out of the running and China still too poor to be a genuine rival, there is no one to keep official Washington sane. Its politicians seem to believe that they have a huge margin for error.
An ideological gap separates neocon Tucker and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. But if the United States goes bankrupt chasing al-Qaida, Tucker may end up agreeing with Putin, who said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: The Olympic Sweatshop
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: I don’t like human rights, environmental activists or the Olympic Games. You might call me crazy for this belief. After all, these three things are beneficial to mankind, and most of their participants don’t make a lot of money.
Maybe I have been shaped by the fact that I was born in the Soviet Union, a country that was determined to bring peace and happiness to the whole world, and I’m a bit distrustful of these “do-gooders.” I prefer the guys who work for a profit, provided that the country is built in such a way that they contribute to the common good.
Take, for example, the noble task of helping refugees. In 1949, after the Arab-Israeli war that resulted in more than 400,000 Arab and Jewish refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was founded. That was 60 years ago. You’d expect the Jewish refugees, devoid of the UN agency’s help, to starve to death and the Palestinian refugees to be well off. But today there are no Jewish refugees, and the number of Palestinian refugees has grown to 4 million.
If you just look at the prominent headquarters of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, it is clear that the UN will never stop providing help for refugees. As long as the agency continues to operate, the supply of refugees will never end.
And consider the environment issue. Millions of people are dying from environmental poisons, acids and heavy metals. Who could argue against the fight against pollution? But the Kyoto Protocol does not limit pollutants. It limits completely harmless CO2. The concentration of CO2 in the Jurassic or Devonian periods was from seven to 12 times greater than today. And this is precisely because CO2 is an integral part of the biosphere. It can also be the source of a lucrative trade in carbon quotas.
The Olympic Games are watched by millions of viewers who celebrate the great physical achievements of the human body. But there is one big lie behind these wonderful athletic feats: The Olympic athletes are referred to as “amateurs.”
Is figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko an amateur? Is he just a faceless office clerk who dabbles in skating during his lunch hour?
The misleading word “amateur” simply means that the people who spend eight hours a day training for the Olympics have no income except for the small stipend given to them by Olympic bureaucrats. They are the slaves of the Olympic bureaucracy, both national and international. They are human fodder in the big bureaucratic sport industry. The cynical use of the word “amateur” is meant to conceal the fact that when an athlete doesn’t earn money after he succeeds, it means that somebody else is earning his money instead.
What are the dangers to open society that are most often discussed in the West? North Korea, Iran, terrorism, Russia and a few others. I think that the danger posed by rogue states is quite exaggerated.
The collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated that no dictatorship can compete in the long term with an open society. At the same time, however, the Soviet collapse paved the way for the emergence of the global bureaucracy, which, devoid of Communist predators, proliferated without any checks or controls.
The danger for the West can come only from within. Ultimately, its national bureaucracies must answer to its voters.
The global bureaucracy wants to succeed where the Soviet Union has failed. It is anxious to help the poor and save the planet — not by discovering and making a profit, but by regulating and distributing.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Going solo
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Laetitia Sadier is striking out on her own. With Stereolab — the seminal British-French band she fronts — on hiatus, and Monade — her own spin-off French outfit — disbanded, she has recorded a solo album called “The Trip,” to be released later this year.
Quite by chance, Sadier’s first ever solo performance was in St. Petersburg, when she played an impromptu concert at the now-defunct art club Platforma five years ago, when she came to the city to visit a friend during the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2004.
It is therefore fitting that her first “official” concert as Laetitia Sadier will also take place in St. Petersburg on Friday.
Sadier took time off from preparing for her local concert to speak to The St. Petersburg Times by phone from London.
Q: What kind of concert are you planning for St. Petersburg?
A: I don’t know, I never really know exactly. But I’m really looking forward to it, because the first concert I did on my own was in St. Petersburg. It was improvised, and Seva [Gakkel — a renowned local musician] found us a place — he lent me a guitar and an amp and it was a nice spontaneous surprise, so it’s nice, all these years later, to meet again with Seva and play another show.
I have a lot of new songs, so I will play them. I don’t know any Stereolab songs, so don’t expect many of those!
I’ll play some older songs from the Monade time and some of my new songs that I’ve just finished recording. I wrote some songs this summer and recorded them near Portland, Oregon in the U.S. with a friend called Richard Swift, who’s a great producer and has a great studio in his garage — somewhere between a super professional swanky studio and a DIY garage. We recorded some songs together there in the autumn. And I’ve finished mixing the stuff I recorded in the summer with my French pals Julian [Gasc] and Emmanuel [Mario from the French band Momotte].
So expect some new songs that no one has really heard before. Voila.
Q: Is it officially a solo album?
A: Yeah, it will be a Laetitia Sadier album. I decided to let go of Monade. I called it my project of autonomy. It was about becoming autonomous, and it was my instrument in becoming autonomous. It was a project that was very close to my heart. [The new album] is still part of the same project of development and becoming a better person, trying to let go of the ego. So it’s still a Monade project, it’s just it’s called Laetitia Sadier — for less confusion, possibly.
At the moment, I am playing on my own, although at the St. Petersburg show, I think Seva was talking about playing some cello with me on a few songs.
For the moment, I play alone and sometimes accompanied by a friend, but I would like to put a band together and release a record and do a tour of America, come to Russia, go around Europe. That’s the plan — to have a band. I know which people I want in my band as well.
Q: Have you moved back to London after living in France for a few years?
A: I moved to London in 1989 and lived there until 2002. Then I moved back to France for five years, and just over two years ago, I decided to move back to London. I really enjoy the city.
Given the fact that nowhere is perfect, I find London really suits me. There’s a lot going on, it’s an interesting city. It’s filled with many, many nationalities. I like certain aspects of Britishness — the way people think, their sense of humor, their sense of irony, it’s interesting.
I like the fact that there are a lot of parks in London — groomed parks, not wild nature. But if you want wild nature, you can also find it in London. Hampstead Heath offers its fair share of wild grass and trees, and there are even bits of forest. So I really like London, it’s a really good, big city.
Q: Both Stereolab and Monade were popular, except in your home country, France.
A: Yes, that’s a fact. People in America and even places like Japan, some parts of Europe — Italy, Spain, Germany, even the U.K. — we’ve had quite a good following. And then there are countries like Holland or France, which have been much more reserved in their response to Stereolab and Monade. I don’t know why, exactly.
Q: Could you tell us about your new songs — are they different from what you wrote before?
A: Some of them are quite political. I find there’s a lack of nerve. I mean, there’s a political crisis and we — people — can move in. We can move in during this kind of crisis, in this political void. So in some songs I talk about that. The album is going to be called “The Trip,” because of something very sad that happened in my family last year.
I wanted to open my outlook on life as a journey. I like this idea of a journey, and learning things along the way, developing and evolving. And, as I said, maybe dropping the ego a bit, and also becoming more aware that we’re all one.
And this ties in with studies dealing with shiatsu. I deal with people’s energy — the energy you need to lift an arm or get up in the morning and do stuff. It’s quite interesting how people like Einstein have come up with quantum mechanics which fit in with all this.
And we are all one. It’s just a massive ocean of information and we’re all part of it. So I was looking at that, at the same time as paying homage to the family member that I lost. The new album “The Trip” is basically about these ideas.
Q: What is your political stance?
A: That we can do much better than that. We’re so brainwashed and feel so powerless before our destiny. And we’re so depressed and suicidal, and we think, “We’re so bad, and this is so fucked-up,” that in the end we’re paralyzed, and we just let things drift. And in the meantime there are people who take advantage of the situation. There are people who take advantage of this crisis — financial, economical and environmental. But that’s at the cost of most of us — you and I included, because we don’t have big powerful corporations.
So I guess my political stuff has always been about placing the power back in our hands. But that means responsibility, and I think that’s where a lot of people have a problem. They don’t believe that they can be trusted with responsibility. But there’s no way around individual responsibility — which also means collective responsibility by extension. So that’s my political stance.
Q: Since your performances in Russia, both with Stereolab and solo, have you followed news from here?
A: Not a lot. I know that Russia is crippled with corruption, with mafia, with no trust — people can’t trust each other. And I think that will cripple society, when people can’t trust each other. Economically, it’s not really cool, either, it’s not very dynamic. I know the difference between rich and poor is very wide, but no, I don’t get much news from Russia.
Laetitia Sadier will perform on Friday at 8 p.m. at Chinese Pilot Jao Da. Ulitsa Pestelya 7. Tel: 2737487. Metro: Gostiny Dvor/Chernyshevskaya.
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Sting made the news on Sunday, when information about him accepting between $1.5 million and $3 million to play in Tashkent for Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s glamorous daughter and heir was picked up by the press.
The former Police singer and bass player is known as a human rights campaigner and Amnesty International supporter.
Karimov, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, is known as one of the world’s harshest dictators, who has used torture, media censorship and false elections to remain the country’s president-for-life since 1990.
Uzbekistan is a country in which children are employed to work on state cotton fields, and protest rallies are shot at (several hundred protesters were reported to have been shot and killed in Andijon in 2005).
Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who wrote about sweeping corruption and appalling human rights abuses in his 2007 memoirs, “Murder in Samarkand,” even reported cases of Karimov’s political opponents being boiled to death.
Tactfully, Sting’s official web site did not report the event — neither when it took place in October nor when the controversy arose on Sunday — but the singer reacted to media criticism with some remarks in his defense.
“I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that,” Sting was quoted as saying by The Daily Mail on Sunday.
“I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.”
Former ambassador Murray disagreed. “This really is transparent bollocks,” he wrote on his blog.
“He did not take a guitar and jam around the parks of Tashkent. He got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?”
Sting chose the wrong line of defense.
The Scorpions, after performing at the Federal Security Service’s 90th anniversary concert in the Kremlin (yes, the FSB sees itself as the heir to Lenin’s murderous Cheka) in 2008, said they did not know what the concert was about.
Anti-capitalist Roger Waters, whose 2008 concert on Palace Square was promoted as a “gift” from the Economic Forum and was attended by oligarch Roman Abramovich — who traveled to St. Petersburg on his state-of-the art, missile-proof yacht — said that the promoters hadn’t told him that his show was part of the forum.
“What Uzbekistan? What Karimov? I wasn’t told what it was about,” would be the right answer. Or does Sting still have some conscience left?
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Art in the Arctic
AUTHOR: By Alisa Ballard
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian viewers will have to wait till April 1 to see Alexei Popogrebsky’s Arctic thriller, “How I Ended This Summer,” which won two prizes at the Berlin Film Festival, a spokesperson for the film said last week.
Actors Sergei Puskepalis and Grigory Dobrygin shared the Silver Bear for Best Actor, and Pavel Kostomarov won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for his cinematography at the festival last week.
The film, more art-house than Hitchcock, can expect to get a wider release than would have been expected after its success, but Valeria Ovechenko from the Koktebel film company said there was no decision yet on how many prints would be distributed.
Popogrebsky is well-known for writing and directing award-winning artistic films, including “Simple Things” (“Prostiye Veshchi,” 2007) and “Koktebel” (2003). Veteran actor Puskepalis has previously worked with Popogrebsky, while “How I Ended This Summer” is Dobrygin’s cinematic debut.
The movie is the story of two men of different generations on watch at a Polar station on an island in Chukotka, Russia’s northeastern-most tip. When Sergei (Puskepalis) goes fishing and leaves his young recruit Pavel (Dobrygin) in charge, Pavel receives an urgent message about Sergei’s family. Psychological tension mounts as Pavel tries desperately to keep Sergei from finding out.
The film was inspired by the diaries of Nikolai Pinegin, who accompanied Arctic explorer Georgy Sedov on his fatal attempt to reach the North Pole in 1912. Pinegin’s book, “V Ledyanykh Prostorakh” (“In Icy Expanses”), was republished last year in Russian, though Popogrebsky has been fascinated with the story since he was a teenager.
During filming, he moved his actors and crew to Chukotka for three months.
“Members of the group had to travel the tundra with rain and snow falling on the roofs of their vehicles, go out in an inflatable boat 15 kilometers around the Arctic Ocean, lug heavy equipment across rocks and drive off white bears with firebrands … fortunately no one got hurt,” Popogrebsky said in a statement.
“All of my stories are honest. I live them for several years. They are sincere and made without commercial aim,” Popogrebsky told Metro newspaper after the film’s success in Berlin.
Internationally, the movie has received mixed reviews. “The Hollywood Reporter” called its story line a “puzzlement,” while praising its cinematography that “fool[s] you into thinking the place is a living, breathing menace.”
Variety magazine called the film “a terrific exploration of human fragility.” “On the strength of this, ‘Simple Things’ and ‘Koktebel,’ Popogrebsky is shaping up into one of Russia’s most talented, distinctive and potentially exportable directors.”
TITLE: France’s finest
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Upon entering the French restaurant Gavroche on a Saturday afternoon, we immediately felt very at home in what appears to be a bustling authentic French bistro, which is at once laid-back and busy.
The walls of the restaurant’s single, small, brightly lit room are adorned with retro black and white photographs of French films stars and views of Parisian streets. The venue is furnished with a splendid antique dresser and simple dark wooden tables.
Unlike its London-based Michelin star namesake, the local Gavroche doesn’t offer haute cuisine. Rather, this is a jolly French bistro serving hearty portions of home-cooked food.
Although the mushroom cream soup with cognac (250 rubles, $8.3) looked tempting, we decided to start with onion soup (250 rubles, $8.3) which proved a winning choice. Made with simple ingredients, the soup arrived in a large bowl and could have been a meal in itself. The rich brown bouillion with expertly caramelised onions was transparent and entirely free of the large patches of oil so often found in this dish at many local eateries.
Seafood, snails, duck, Provencal herbs and sundried tomatoes appear to be the chef’s favorite ingredients and have a strong presence in the menu, which offers a balanced choice of meat and fish dishes, as well as a tempting range of original risottos and pastas — made with snails, artichokes and sundried tomatoes — priced at 380 to 440 rubles ($12.50 to $14.50.) Some of the restaurant’s most tempting options include fried chicken with Provencal herbs and Dijon mustard served with ratatouille and butter sauce (520 rubles, $17.3,) hamburger with foie gras and French fries (1,300 rubles, $43.3) and duck leg confit in red wine sauce with prunes and mashed potatoes (480 rubles, $16). There is no need to order any side dishes at Gavroche, as each main course already includes a side.
We both opted for seafood dishes. Squid ink risotto with seafood, topped with finely grated parmesan (460 rubles, $15.3) was light yet full of flavor — definitely a dish for which both my guest and I will return. The chef avoided the many pitfalls that often destroy this delectable dish, whereby bits of overdone seafood arrive so rubbery that they appear to have been repeatedly boiled by seven different cooks, or the sauce is so heavy that you have to struggle to finish your portion.
Blue mussels in white wine sauce (480 rubles, $16) did not disappoint either. Large meaty mussels soaked in a lake of delicate sauce were soft, juicy and full-flavored.
The restaurant’s young waitresses are swift, tactful and helpful.
A rare case among St. Petersburg restaurants, the music — soft French songs — matched the ambience. You won’t hear the dreaded sound of loud pop in Gavroche — a common plight in the vast majority of local restaurants, regardless of the class of their cuisine.
For dessert, the chocolate mousse (230 rubles, $7.3) is highly recommended. The mousse, served with coulis and a ball of ice-cream on the side, is light, literally melting in the mouth and leaving a lingering milk chocolate flavor. Gavroche’s dessert list is not short of enticing offers, notably the chef’s creme brulee, strawberry soup and traditional French crepes to name a few.
Gavroche, which opened last month, has yet to pass the test of time, but this newcomer has arrived on the local gastronomic scene with all the attributes of a successful dining establishment. In true French style, its French chef charms guests with complimentary treats to accompany their meals. My dining companion and I enjoyed every bit of the zesty and tangy lime and mint sorbet that was served between the onion soup and the seafood main courses. Another winning feature at Gavroche is that generous portions of home-made bread accompany meals, and honey and lemon are brought to accompany tea (150 rubles, $5 per teapot), free of charge.
TITLE: Giant Elephants Take to the Ring at City’s Circus
AUTHOR: By Simon Eliasson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Enormous elephants, bears driving cars, and more traditional acrobatics performed at dizzying heights are all elements of “The mystery of the giant elephants” — the latest show to premiere at St. Petersburg’s Bolshoi State Circus on Feb. 12.
“It is definitely a success,” said Alexander Chervotkin, the new show’s director. “Every show since the premiere has been packed, and this new concept obviously doesn’t frighten an audience that is usually conservative,” he said.
The circus, built in 1878, was one of the first stationary circuses of its kind in Russia. The project was initiated and financed by the Italian horse trainer Gaetano Ciniselli, a celebrated circus name in Europe at the time. The circus has not been out of action ever since, with the exception of a couple of years during World War II.
The new concept, Chervotkin explained, is that the show is entirely based on the works of the English playwright William Shakespeare. The idea of using Shakespeare’s comedies as the basis for a theme emerged on a train between Moscow and Yekaterinburg about a year ago.
“The idea seemed great from the beginning,” said Viktor Savrasev, the circus’s stage director. “But we were worried that a conservative circus audience would not understand or appreciate the concept. It is probably the first time a circus show has been based on Shakespeare — at least in Russia,” he said.
“Hopefully, the show will inspire people to visit a bookstore to explore Shakespeare and other classic foreign writers,” he added.
According to the show’s organizers, director Grigory Gapanov immediately saw the potential of the idea.
“It was such a relief to get all this support from the management right from the start,” said Chervotkin.
Preparing a show of this magnitude takes a lot of time, which is something that the group never really had. Since Savrasev’s idea of including elephants in the show in March 2009, the workload has been intense. Contracting 58 performers and obtaining the necessary props and animals while completing all the required paperwork has been a struggle against time.
“The last performer only arrived on the same day as the premiere,” said Chervotkin. “We rehearsed all day, and had no problems during the show. These guys are real professionals.”
“The mystery of the giant elephants” will stay at the Bolshoi Circus until July 30, after which a tour is scheduled of Russia and the CIS. And after that?
“Who knows?” said Chervotkin. “Maybe we’ll go to Europe, or the U.S.”
TITLE: Pakistan and India Resume Negotiations
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: NEW DELHI — India and Pakistan held their first formal talks for 14 months Thursday, seeking to put their volatile relationship back on track after it was derailed by the devastating 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir met for three hours in New Delhi for talks that offered little hope of a breakthrough but carried vital importance for regional peace and stability.
Arguments over the agenda and a brief exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani border guards before the meeting augured badly for major progress, with the probable best-case scenario an agreement to keep on talking.
But the mere fact that the nuclear-armed rivals sat down together marks a step forward for two countries that have fought three wars against each other and are seen as vital in bringing stability to neighboring Afghanistan.
“I look forward to our talks,” Rao told reporters as she met Bashir at a former princely palace in the Indian capital. Bashir said he hoped for “a very good, constructive engagement.”
New Delhi’s offer earlier this month to resume an official peace dialogue that began in 2004 had taken many by surprise.
India has blamed the Lashkar-e-Taiba network for the Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people
India froze all discussions after the Mumbai carnage 14 months ago in which 10 Islamist gunmen targeted multiple locations in the country’s financial capital, killing 166 people.
India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militants and said talks could only resume if Islamabad took concrete steps to bring those responsible to justice and cracked down on militant groups on its soil.
Reflecting domestic political concerns and criticism from the opposition about the initiative, India had insisted that the focus of Thursday’s meet would be on tackling Pakistan-based militancy.
During the talks, the Indian side handed the Pakistanis the latest in a series of dossiers containing intelligence related to the Mumbai attacks.
“It is our core concerns about terrorism that we find the essential focus for the discussions,” Rao had said on Monday, adding that effective Pakistani action against militant groups remained an “absolute must” if normalisation was to proceed.
Pakistan had balked at the Indian emphasis on terrorism and made it clear that all issues between the rivals should be up for discussion, including the seemingly intractable dispute over Muslim-majority Kashmir.
The Himalayan region is held in part by Pakistan and India, but claimed in full by both. It has been the trigger for two out of the three wars the countries have fought since 1947.
Bashir met with senior Kashmiri separatist leaders on Wednesday, signalling Islamabad’s intention of keeping Kashmir on the talks agenda.
Both foreign secretaries, the most senior civil servants in their foreign ministries, were expected to brief the press separately later Thursday. There will be no joint statement.
Experts say Washington played a key role in nudging the two neighbors back to the table in an effort to keep a lid on South Asian tensions as it presses more troops into its fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Top leaders from both countries have met several times since the Mumbai assault during regional conferences, but Thursday’s meeting marked the first real move towards normalisation.
Indian politicians and newspapers were generally pessimistic on the likely outcome. “Talks low on hope,” ran the headline in the Times of India.
“I’m not very optimistic,” Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said Wednesday, while another senior government official highlighted a “trust deficit.”
Writing in English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn, guest columnist and retired Pakistani senior diplomat Tariq Fatemi said both sides needed to move beyond “talks about talks.”
“It is now incumbent on both Delhi and Islamabad to recognise that the international community is simply tired of their constant bickering and frustrated with their inability to resolve their differences,” he wrote.
The history of Indo-Pakistan dialogue is a long and patchy one, encompassing every form of contact from back-door diplomacy to prime-ministerial summits.
The only common factor has been the glacial pace of tangible progress in resolving the core disputes between two countries.
TITLE: Marjah
Taken By ISAF Troops
AUTHOR: By Alfred de Montesquiou
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MARJAH, Afghanistan — The Afghan government took official control of the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah on Thursday, installing an administrator and raising the national flag while U.S.-led troops worked to root out final pockets of militants.
The ceremony was held in a central market as U.S. Marines and Afghan troops slogged through bomb-laden fields in the north of the town. The Marines and their Afghan partners are trying to secure a 28-square mile (45-square kilometer) area believed to be the last significant pocket of Taliban insurgents in Marjah.
Militants and allied troops are still getting caught up in gunfights in some areas, NATO said.
But the number of residents returning has increased in recent days, shops have opened to sell telephones and computers alongside fresh fruits and vegetables, and officials hailed the installation of Abdul Zahir Aryan as the town’s administrator as a key sign of progress.
“Today’s event was the civilian Afhan government re-establishing itself officially in front of the local residents,” Harbinger, the senior U.S. government representative for Helmand province said. The Afghan army had previously raised the country’s green-and-red flag nearby, but that was only a claim of military control over that neighborhood, he said.
The ceremony opened with a reading from the Quran, and then Aryan and the Helmand governor pledged to those gathered that they were ready to listen to their needs and eager to provide them with basic services that they didn’t have under the Taliban.
NATO’s strategy is to drive Taliban militants from the town, which had served as a logistical base and drug trafficking hub, restore the Afghan government’s presence, and rush in public services in a bid to win over the confidence of local communities.
About 100 fighters are believed to have regrouped into the area known as Kareze, according to commanders with the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines Regiment.
In a sign that NATO’s push to win over the population may be gaining traction, bomb tips from residents have increased by nearly 50 percent, the alliance said.
As the offensive closes in on its second week, 13 NATO troops and three Afghan soldiers have been killed, according to military officials. Eighty NATO troops have been wounded, along with eight Afghans.
At least 28 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, according to the Afghan human rights commission.
The civilian toll has raised fears that NATO may lose the support of the population even as it drives out the Taliban. The deaths come although NATO has said its priority is protecting the civilian population and has adopted strict rules to prevent casualties.
A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry said both the Afghan government and NATO troops realized they had to be realistic and accept that there would be civilian deaths.
“Preventing civilian casualties is our biggest challenge,” General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters in Kabul. “You should not expect zero casualties, either from our side or from the international forces. That will only happen when the fighting is over. And we are all trying to make that happen.”
TITLE: NASA: Technological Advances Needed for Mars Landing
AUTHOR: By Seth Borenstein
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — NASA needs to go somewhere specific, not just talk about it, skeptical U.S. senators told the space agency chief Wednesday.
President Barack Obama’s proposed budget kills the previous administration’s return-to-the-moon mission, sometimes nicknamed “Apollo on steroids.” That leaves the space agency adrift without a goal or destination, senators and outside experts said at a Senate Commerce science and space subcommittee hearing, the first since Obama unveiled his new space plan this month.
On top of that the nation’s space shuttle fleet is only months away from long-planned retirement, an issue for senators from Florida, where NASA is a major employer. And while the new NASA plan includes extra money — $6 billion over five years — for private spaceships and developing new rocket technology, NASA shouldn’t be just about spending, the senators said. It should be about John F. Kennedy-like vision.
“Resources without vision is a waste of time and money,” Senator David Vitter, R-La., said, calling the Obama space plan a “radical change of vision and approach.” He vowed to fight the plan “with every ounce of energy I have.”
And former chief astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson said the new plan “has no clear path, no destination, no milestones and no program focus.”
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said after the hearing that critics were confusing the lack of a specific destination or timetable with the lack of a goal.
NASA has a goal, a big one, Bolden said. It’s going to Mars. But Bolden added that getting astronauts to Mars is more than a decade away and NASA needs to upgrade its technology or else it never will get there.
“We want to go to Mars,” Bolden said. “We can’t get there right now because we don’t have the technology to do it.”
That is why he said the new NASA plan invests in developing in-orbit fuel depots, inflatable spaceship parts, new types of propulsion and other technology.
Bolden would not even guess when NASA would try to send astronauts to Mars, but said the technology NASA is studying could cut the trip to the Red Planet from three months to a matter of days if it works. “We’re oh-so-close, but we’ve got to invest in that technology,” Bolden testified.
Former Martin Marietta chief operating officer A. Thomas Young said he worried about “no expectation of any human exploration for decades.”
That’s not what’s in the NASA plan, countered Miles O’Brien, a former CNN anchor who now is on NASA’s Advisory Council. He said NASA’s new plans are more realistic than the ones that were just canceled, which he likened to a middle-aged former athlete “spending all his time talking about the glory days.”
The new NASA plans are more of “a grown-up approach to space exploration,” O’Brien said. But he said the problem was that NASA, once an agency known for its public relations skill, did “a horrible job” of communicating its new goals.
Vitter criticized NASA for ignoring a 157-page report by a special panel of outside experts, headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. But the “flexible path” of going to the moon, an asteroid or Martian moons next was first proposed by the Augustine panel. And it was the Augustine panel that called the previous plans unsustainable.