SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1553 (14), Friday, March 5, 2010
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TITLE: Yukos, Russia Face Off 
At Last In 
Strasbourg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG, France — Thousands of kilometers from the Siberian jail where its founder has been imprisoned for the better part of a decade, representatives of ruined oil giant Yukos and the Russian government will meet face to face for the first time at the European Court of Human Rights this week as the dismantled company seeks to prove that its rights were violated.
Fearful that it would never get a fair day in a Russian court, Yukos representatives filed a complaint with the European court on April 24, 2004, on the ground that it was “targeted by the Russian authorities with tax and enforcement proceedings, which eventually led to its liquidation.”
Six years later, Thursday’s hearing is a milestone in Yukos’ efforts to win acknowledgment that the Russian government’s actions were “unlawful, disproportionate, arbitrary and discriminatory, and amounted to disguised expropriation” of the company. Russian authorities had accused Yukos of conducting shady deals and using shell companies to hide revenue from tax authorities.
Russian authorities began pursuing Yukos in 2002 on allegations of tax fraud. Through the courts, they ultimately froze its assets, forced it to sell its shares in other companies and declared it insolvent in 2006 before the company was finally liquidated a year later.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch who founded the company in the chaotic years that followed the Soviet collapse, was arrested in 2003 on charges of fraud and tax evasion and was convicted two years later.
Yukos would not give up the fight, however, and representatives of the company’s entities that managed to survive kept pressing the complaint that they filed with the European court, which was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.
On behalf of Yukos, its representative has submitted a claim for $98 billion in damages.
The treatment of both Khodorkovsky and his company have continued to dog the Kremlin even as President Dmitry Medvedev, a lawyer, says that judicial reform and the rule of law are among his top priorities.
“We chronically fail to respect laws,” Medvedev said Wednesday, addressing a high-level group of Russian and French business leaders during his state visit to France. “We have to change people’s mentalities.”
He promised his audience that he would make sure Russia became a country where the rule of law prevailed.
Russian citizens have long seen the European court as a place where they can gain a hearing, and the Russian government has been hostile to it. Recently, however, the government has moved to ease that stance. In January, Russian lawmakers ratified an international agreement intended to strengthen and speed up the work of the court after years of refusing to do so.
Late last year, the Supreme Court agreed with the European court’s earlier judgment that a 2003 arrest of one of Khodorkovsky’s business partners was illegal, although that did not lead to Platon Lebedev’s release.
Khodorkovsky, himself now on trial for additional embezzlement charges that could carry another 22 years in prison, has few illusions that Medvedev’s promises will produce change. His supporters believe that he is in prison in part for supporting opposition parties and challenging the Kremlin’s political supremacy while still a free man.
“The system is an assembly line of a gigantic factory. ... If you become raw material for the assembly line, then a Kalashnikov rifle is always produced — that is a guilty verdict. Any other result from the system’s processing of raw material is viewed as a malfunction,” Khodorkovsky wrote in an article that appeared Wednesday in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.
The European Court of Human Rights is an independent judicial body under the auspices of the Council of Europe. The court agrees to hear less than 5 percent of the applications it receives. The court declared most of Yukos’ complaints admissible on Jan. 29, 2009.
Rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are binding on all its member countries, including Russia.

TITLE: Putin Spearheads Innovation Effort
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky and Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the Cabinet’s high-tech commission would take on wide-ranging new powers to enforce its modernization agenda, significantly raising the body’s profile on his first day as its chairman.
“The scale of the goals to be achieved requires an expansion of its authority,” Putin said while opening the meeting. The body’s decisions will now be binding on other state agencies, he said.
The commission — created by President Dmitry Medvedev — had been headed by Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov since its inception last year. Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, said in an interview last month that “consolidated power is the instrument of modernization” and that Putin would be taking the commission’s helm.
On Wednesday, the prime minister said the government would spend more than a tenth of its budget on science and innovation this year, with funding for major scientific projects to be carried out on a competitive basis.
“We have assigned about 1.1 trillion rubles [$36.8 billion], or more than 10 percent of the federal budget, for fundamental and applied sciences, higher education, high-tech medicine and specialized federal programs,” he said.
The government spent 300 billion rubles more on these goals in 2009 than in the previous year, he said.
Weaning the country off its dependence on commodity exports by encouraging a knowledge-based, high-tech economy has been the hallmark issue of Medvedev’s presidency, with “modernization” and “innovation” becoming buzzwords on the lips of businessman and officials alike.
Putin’s decision to spearhead the efforts at the Cabinet level may help them gain traction, but it also gives him a leading role in something that had exclusively been Medvedev’s agenda. The two members of the ruling tandem, as they’ve come to be known, have said that only one of them will run for president in 2012.
Nearly two years into Medvedev’s term and after billions of dollars in spending to promote innovation, the economy has made only gradual steps forward, however.
The INSEAD business school on Wednesday released a global innovation ranking, which evaluates the innovation-readiness of 132 countries. Russia came in 64th in the index, between Kazakhstan and Oman, though up from 68th a year earlier.
“Over the centuries Russia produced a number of scientists and inventors and was among the leaders in science and technology. … But it has slipped from its position as a leader,” the report said, criticizing Russia for exporting mostly energy and arms and mistreating foreign investors.
Putin indicated that the measures to promote high-tech businesses would include changes in the way the state buys products and services. Officials must start giving preference to innovative options when they choose winners of tenders, he suggested.
Vneshekonombank, the state development lender, will probably be ordered to spend a certain amount of its funds on high-tech ventures, Putin said.
VEB had primarily invested in infrastructure before the financial crisis hit in 2008, when it also took on responsibilities as a bailout bank. Another state corporation, Rusnano, was established to stimulate investment in nanotechnology.
Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said after the meeting that the federal and regional budgets have a combined 4 trillion rubles ($134 billion) annually in spending to buy products and services — even a portion of which could create significant demand for high-tech businesses.
The ministry is drafting legislative amendments that would give agencies legal grounds to pick goods based on the latest technology instead of cheaper but older counterparts, she said.
“It’s rather the quality than the price parameters that will play a role,” she said.
The government is still discussing how big of a quota VEB will be given, she said.
“We would like VEB to be more vigorous in searching for innovative projects,” she said. “It’s important to find the best projects that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.”
Onexim Group chief Mikhail Prokhorov briefed the commission on his project to build hybrid cars at a new facility in cooperation with Yarovit Motors. He said the plan, which he has already discussed with Putin, won general approval from the commission.
The plant, to be built in AvtoVAZ’s hometown of Tolyatti and have the capacity to churn out 10,000 cars annually, will start production in mid-2012, he said. Construction will begin in January, he said.
Investment in the project will reach 150 million euros ($204 million) before the first car rolls off the conveyor line, Prokhorov said, adding that the venture was hoping to recoup the investment in four to five years.
“Our country has a chance to compete in this area,” he told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. “It’s an absolutely rational business project.”
Earlier in the day, a government official brushed off Prokhorov’s project as “science fiction.” He was speaking about the government’s strategy to develop the car industry at a pre-Cabinet briefing on condition of anonymity, which is standard policy for such occasions.
Putin said a key focus of the commission would be finding long-term investment in scientific sectors that would not rely on budget funding.
“Of course, we’ll tend to increase expenses on development in the future, but this will not have the required effect if we don’t learn to make use of existing resources in a more organized and competent way,” he said.
Budget expenses should be distributed on a competitive basis, including spending on the projects in fundamental science, he said.
“We should avoid financing scientific institutions on the basis of faceless cost sheets,” Putin said. “We can’t afford to maintain ‘brands’ that have nothing but a famous name or maybe even a glorious past. We can’t pay for research that is not up-to-date, that duplicates other work and, in some cases, that is literally pulled from dusty closets. This is wrong. This is flawed, costly and inefficient.”
Russia has about 4,000 scientific institutions and six academies of sciences, Putin added, warning that quantity does not always mean quality.
He singled out the Kurchatov Institute, a top nuclear research center in Moscow, as the sort of institution that the government would be counting on to lead the way forward.
“The Kurchatov Institute serves as a model to fine-tune all aspects of establishing national research centers,” he said.

TITLE: Lax Sentence in Child Abuse Case Stirs Anger
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A lenient sentence for a St. Petersburg man convicted of raping his niece during a period of four years starting when she was five provoked an outcry Thursday.
The Dzerzhinsky District Court handed down a six-year suspended sentence in the case on Feb. 26, Interfax reported Thursday.
Sexual intercourse with a child under 12 carries a maximum of 15 years in prison. The court considered that the defendant’s married status, full-time employment and positive references provided by acquaintances were mitigating circumstances.  
Since hearing the verdict, the victim, now 12, has refused to leave her apartment out of fear, Fontanka.ru reported, citing the girl’s lawyer, Oksana Khomyakova.
Officials did not identify the defendant, the victim or the judge who delivered the verdict.
Anton Belyakov, a State Duma deputy with A Just Russia, called the verdict “inhuman” and said he had asked law enforcement agencies to investigate whether the defendant had bribed the judge, Interfax reported.
Belyakov said the judge should be fired.
Federation Council Senator Viktor Yevtyukhov has asked St. Petersburg chief prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev about the reasoning behind the verdict and requested that Zaitsev secure the victim’s interests and take the matter under his personal control, Interfax said.
St. Petersburg prosecutors have filed an appeal against the sentence in the city court.
Svetlana Agapitova, the city’s children’s ombudsman, and the victim’s lawyer Khomyakova also plan to appeal.
Mikhail Grishankov, first deputy head of the Duma’s Security Committee, said he felt “indignation and astonishment” over the verdict, which he called a “shame for Russia,” United Russia’s web site reported.  
Belyakov cited data claiming that up to 90 percent of convicted rapists repeat the offense after being released from prison.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has argued in favor of chemical castration for pedophiles.

TITLE: Adopted Child’s Death 
In U.S. Angers Russians
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. police have arrested the adoptive parents of a seven-year-old Russian boy for homicide after an autopsy found more than 80 external injuries on his malnourished body, Channel One state television reported Tuesday.
The case reignited Russian anger over U.S. adoptions, a delicate issue in U.S.-Russian relations in recent years, and could tangle efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama to “reset” ties that deteriorated under the previous administration.
Complicating matters, the boy died in August, and the Education and Science Ministry, which oversees adoptions, accused U.S. authorities of failing to notify their Russians counterparts within the time frame required by international law.
Pennsylvania parents Nanette and Michael Craver adopted Chelyabinsk-born Ivan Skorobogatov, whom they named Nathaniel, and his twin sister in 2003, Channel One reported.
The boy was hospitalized Aug. 20 after Michael Craver, 45, found him lying unresponsive on his bed that morning, U.S. media reports said. He was taken off life support at his parents’ request Aug. 24 and died the next day.
Craver and his 54-year-old wife were arrested Feb. 26 and face charges of homicide, conspiracy and child endangerment. 
A local prosecutor said the arrests were made so many months after the death because the autopsy report was only finalized in late February, Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News newspaper reported Feb. 27.
The autopsy found more than 80 external injuries, including 20 to the head, the report said, citing the arrest affidavit. It listed the cause of death as complications from traumatic brain injuries and identified malnutrition as a contributing factor.
The parents have told investigators that the boy was psychologically disturbed and injured himself by purposely banging against walls and falling on the floor.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov said cases of Russian children dying in adoptive U.S. families “have become systematic recently,” Interfax reported Wednesday.
From 1996 to March this year, at least 15 Russian children appear to have died at the hands of their adoptive foreign parents, including 14 in the United States and one in Canada, a spokesman for the Education and Science Ministry said by telephone Wednesday.
U.S. authorities failed to report the boy’s death to Russian authorities within the time period set by law, a senior ministry official, Alina Levitskaya, told journalists, RIA-Novosti reported. She did not elaborate.
Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov criticized “the poor system of control and reporting on the fate of adopted children” and wrote to the U.S. State Department for information about the investigation into the boy’s death, Interfax reported.
Astakhov said international law requires foreign agencies involved in the adoption process to make an annual report to Russian authorities about the life of an adopted child, but U.S. agencies often refuse to do so, citing Russia’s membership in the Hague Convention of 1961 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which contradict each other on the subject.
The Cravers regularly reported to Russian authorities during the first three years after they adopted the children, Levitskaya said. Russian authorities had “no reason to request extra information” from the Cravers, she added.
She noted, however, that the Cravers briefly lost custody of the boy and his sister in 2008 during an inquiry by child-welfare workers.
A number of Russian children who are put up for adoption are sick or disabled.
The boy’s sister is in the care of local authorities, Channel One reported.
A preliminary court hearing into the boy’s death will be held March 31, the channel said.

TITLE: Plushenko Plans to Quit Politics, Focus on Sport
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yevgeny Plushenko is leaving politics. 
“I’m seriously considering giving up my seat in the city parliament and going back to sports, simply because I am quite good at it,” the Russian figure skater, who won the Olympic gold in Turin in 2006 and skated to the Olympic silver medal in Vancouver, told reporters at Pulkovo airport on returning to St. Petersburg from what has been described as Russia’s most disappointing Olympics in history. 
The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, where Plushenko has a seat representing the Just Russia faction, has shown understanding for the sportsman. Oleg Nilov, head of the Just Russia faction in the St. Petersburg assembly, said that the skater “must devote himself to a very special mission — he must save Russia’s deteriorating sports from further degradation.”
“Considering Russia’s rather, to say the least, uncharacteristic performance at the recent Winter Olympics, Yevgeny Plushenko, as a truly outstanding sportsman and one of the ambassadors of the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympic Games, may be required to fully dedicate himself to sports,” Nilov said.
Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the parliament would petition the Russian authorities to award Plushenko with an Order of Service to the Fatherland. 
“We will definitely recommend Yevgeny for the prestigious award; his achievement is heroic, and he fully deserves the order,” Tyulpanov said.
The order may not be the only addition to Plushenko’s Vancouver silver.
Twenty-six grams of gold have already been collected for a gold medal for the St. Petersburg figure, whose local fans have launched a campaign aimed at collecting gold and producing a “people’s medal” for their favorite. 
Plushenko’s hopes of winning a second Olympic gold were dashed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics when he lost to Evan Lysacek of the United States and Russia’s sports officials refused to  back his appeal against what the sportsman called “unfair judging.” His supporters in St. Petersburg were quick to offer their own solution —a medal made of real gold to be presented to the skater by his many Russian admirers.
Dmitry Ilkovsky, chairman of the city’s Petrovsky municipal district and one of the leaders of the people’s medal campaign, is proud of the fact that the Russian people’s medal will contain more gold than the Olympic medal.
“The ‘people’s medal’ will weigh 516 grams — exactly the same as a real Olympic medal, but the proportion of gold in it will be much higher,” Ilkovsky said. “The Olympic gold medal has 510 grams of silver and only 6 grams of galvanic gold, whereas ours will have a substantial amount of gold in it, or it might even end up being made entirely of gold.”
Ilkovsky said there is no shortage of fans willing to part with their gold rings, earrings and chains. “I am getting phone calls all the time,” he said, adding that he expects “hundreds of people to take part in the initiative.”
Ilkovsky has already been in touch with jewelers in Yakutia and with St. Petersburg designers who are creating various designs for the medal.
Three different medals have already been designed, with one of them featuring diamond decorations. The designs will be put on the Internet on Plushenko’s fan page on the Vkontakte.ru social networking site, where members will be able to discuss the designs and vote for their favorite. 
Plushenko, who has made critical statements questioning the victory of Eva Lysacek, whose performance he branded “mere dancing,” and criticized the Russian authorities for not standing up for the interests of the country’s sportsmen, has not yet commented on the “people’s medal” and the collection of gold for its creation.

TITLE: Olympic Committee Chief Quits
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Olympic Committee chief Leonid Tyagachyov confirmed Thursday that he was resigning and urged Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Minister Vitaly Mutko to implement reforms after the country’s dismal showing at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
“I have given notice of my decision to resign and am calling for an executive committee meeting,” Tyagachov told Interfax.
He said a successor would be elected at a special plenary session on March 10.
Tyagachyov had been the subject of much confusion Wednesday after his own spokespeople contradicted each other on whether he had resigned and his aides said he had fallen ill with pneumonia.
President Dmitry Medvedev called for the country’s “fat cat” sports officials to resign Monday after Russia’s athletes failed to live up to the team’s previous Olympic glory, winning just three gold medals and coming in at 11th place overall.
But sports bureaucrats reacted hesitantly. Mutko said Tuesday that he would make a decision only after talks with Russia’s leadership, and Tyagachyov has pointed out that he is not subordinate to the Kremlin because the Olympic Committee is a public organization.
Tyagachyov explained Thursday that while his committee was not to blame for the poor results, he was taking responsibility for the country’s athletes.
“I feel personal responsibility for each of our athletes; therefore, I have decided to take the blame myself, so that our associates under sports minister Vitaly Mutko can complete the reform of our national sports and lead the Russian team to victory at the Sochi Olympics in 2014,” he said in an interview with All Sports news service.
Tyagachyov refused to say who his successor would be, but media reports have pointed to his long-standing rival Vyacheslav Fetisov, the former NHL hockey player who heads the Federation Council’s Sports Committee.

TITLE: Georgia Puzzled by Mistral Sale
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — More than 18 months ago, France helped defuse the Georgia-Russia war. Now, Paris is moving forward on plans to sell a massive warship to Russia — and Georgia is crying foul.
Mamuka Kudava, Georgia’s ambassador to Paris, said it would be “incomprehensible” if France were to sell the Mistral-class ship, which can carry helicopters and tanks, to Russia.
The comments, made in an interview during President Dmitry Medvedev’s pomp-filled state visit to France this week, laid bare rising concerns by Georgia and some other former Soviet republics about the proposed sale.
Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters Monday that their countries are in exclusive talks over the possible sale of four Mistrals. It would mark the biggest sale ever of military hardware from a NATO country to Russia.
Kudava said Georgia was especially surprised because France led the shuttle diplomacy that helped end the Georgia-Russia war in 2008 over two separatist provinces. France was acting in its role as European Union president at the time.
“France was the country responsible for — and the guarantor of — the peace accord” of August 2008, Kudava said at the Georgian Embassy, where maps of Georgia covered his office walls.
Now, he said, “it’s the agreement’s guarantor, France, that is arming one of the parties, which goes beyond our comprehension.”
Georgia’s ability to stop the sale is limited.
“Georgia is going to protest about it,” Kudava said. “So we will talk about it very loudly.”
In Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Temuri Yakobashvili, a cabinet minister in charge of issues related to the breakaway provinces, said Tuesday that his country needs access to defensive weapons.
He said the Mistral sale makes it all the more important for Georgia to join NATO. The war damaged Georgia’s efforts to join the Western alliance.
“It’s important for Georgia to win NATO membership quickly as it cannot compete with Russia in arms purchases or influence the sale of the warship Mistral to Russia,” he told reporters.
A European Union report released in September supported Russia’s contention that Georgia started the August 2008 war, while saying Russia responded with disproportionate force.
The five-day war ended with Russian soldiers driving Georgian forces out of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Russia has since recognized as independent states.
Sarkozy has argued that the Cold War is over and that the West needs Russia’s help on many challenges facing the world — notably the Iranian nuclear program.

TITLE: U.K. Trade Agency Focuses on Russia
AUTHOR: By Veronica Smyly
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Deputy Chief Executive of U.K. Trade and Investment (UKTI) Susan Haird visited St. Petersburg this week to promote trade links between Great Britain and Russia.
Of the 96 UKTI offices around the world, Russia was identified in 2004 as one of the most important to Great Britain. 
“We identified 17 high-growth markets where there were big opportunities for U.K. companies and where we felt there wasn’t very good awareness, so we increased the resources we’ve got here,” said Haird on Wednesday. 
Haird highlighted energy, financial services, advanced engineering and hi-tech manufacturing as important sectors for Anglo-Russian collaboration, both currently and during the next few years. 
“Britain has a lot of expertise in public-private partnerships and in financing major projects,” she said.
Once such project is the 25.4-kilometer Flood Protection Barrier in St. Petersburg, for which British engineering consultancy Halcrow is the lead consultant. Haird met with representatives from both Halcrow and the U.K.-based architectural firm Grimshaw — both of which are working on the development project of the city’s Pulkovo Airport — during her visit. 
She also held discussions with City Hall to discuss other opportunities for collaboration in the infrastructure sector, particularly in transport. The St. Petersburg authorities have expressed interest in introducing a “smart ticketing” system for public transport. 
“They’re very interested,” said Haird. “It’s very important because it cuts costs and increases the collection rate — you don’t need conductors on buses. There are lots of different ways of doing it, but I think London’s got a very good system.” The introduction of Oyster swipe cards has transformed transport in London.
Haird arrived in St. Petersburg after visiting Moscow, where she met with representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development. The two sides discussed the next meeting of the intergovernmental steering committee between Russia and the U.K. to be held in Russia later this year, chaired respectively by Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin and U.K. Business Secretary Lord Peter Mandelson.
The committee is supported by working groups that focus on various areas, one of which is the Olympic Games. As part of a signed host-to-host agreement, host countries look to share expertise — London for the 2012 Games and Russia for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Haird described the Olympics as “a very important area, where the opportunities for cooperation vary widely from security and ticketing to stadia development and the whole infrastructure.”
Anglo-Russian collaboration is already strong, and encouraging further investment from foreign companies in manufacturing and service industries is a win-win situation, according to Haird: “Win for the Russian economy, win for the U.K. companies concerned,” she said. 
The Russian and U.K. economies “are actually very hi-tech economies with a very strong science base, so there also is a lot of hope for partnering in the areas of research, development and innovation,” she added.
Commenting on the U.K.’s emergence from recession — the country saw 0.3 percent growth in the last quarter of 2009 — Haird described the U.K. as “very well-placed” and said that all the optimistic indicators, such as the number of companies expecting business to grow and number of businesses expecting to take on new staff, were very positive.

TITLE: State to Sink $6 Bln Into Car Rescue
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government intends to pump $6 billion into the domestic auto industry as part of a $60 billion, 10-year strategy aimed at salvaging the faltering sector, a government official said Wednesday.
The strategy, which was due to be approved at a Cabinet meeting Thursday, calls for the state to provide 24 billion rubles ($800 million) of the 55 billion rubles that the sector is expected to need this year, as well as 39 billion rubles of the 135 billion rubles needed in 2011, and 44 billion rubles in 2012, the official said at a pre-Cabinet briefing, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
The state may also make 150 billion rubles available over the next decade to buy foreign assets, the official said.
In all, the Cabinet’s draft strategy estimates that the car sector will need to raise 630 billion rubles to stay afloat over the next 10 years, including 330 billion rubles to modernize technology and 190 billion rubles to build up component-producing capacity.
All international partnerships in the industry will keep foreign ownership at 50 percent or under, according to the official.
Preservation of current import duties through 2015 or 2016 is “one of the conditions for the strategy to succeed,” the official said.
“The Russian car industry will be able to compete with foreign carmakers in 2015 or 2016, and the measures of customs protection will lose their current importance,” the official said.
The lion’s share of the state support will be distributed from 2012 to 2014 to fund research and development and to subsidize interest rates for loans so companies pay no more than 7 percent, the official said.
The draft strategy, a 100-page document that was leaked to the media this week, outlines in detail the grandiose plans for Russia’s carmakers and their foreign partners and predicts complete death of the industry in as little as three years if no action is taken.
The plan starts off diplomatically, describing the “situation in the domestic auto industry” as “ambiguous.” It says the arrival of foreign carmakers “did not form the preconditions for creating economically reasonable, modern auto component industries,” while government policies that attracted investment into the car sector “were not enough to develop it fully.”
The state of the industry, especially in the passenger car segment, is “critical” and will completely disintegrate in three to five years unless the government takes “decisive systematic measures,” it says.
The report calls the technological level of Russian cars “in line with international standards,” but “lagging by four to seven years in using those standards,” citing as examples fuel efficiency, safety, comfort and emissions.
Russian car producers invest only 1 percent of their earnings into research and development while the global average is 4 to 5 percent, it says. Investment into R&D must amount to at least 44 billion rubles per year.
Moving to component makers, it says the industry is practically “nonexistent” and needs to be created from scratch by rebuilding existing capacities or attracting foreign companies. Only 5 percent of the few Russian players on the market meet international requirements, while just 12 percent of global component makers have come to Russia.
The report also says labor efficiency in Russia is 50 to 75 percent lower than in global industry leaders, while existing equipment used by the industry is 60 percent worn-out.
The government’s decision to pour unprecedented funds into a mostly Soviet-era technological base rather than opening the borders and making foreign cars affordable is dictated by social pressures and interest in economic security, said Sergei Udalov, an analyst with Tolyatti-based agency Avtostat.
“The industry is not going anywhere because it is still in the 1970s. It never had any competition, and the government hasn’t thought about the future for 40 years,” he said. “Now all the competitive advantages the industry had have disappeared, so the government has to build it anew.”
There are about 1.4 million jobs in car plants and the businesses that directly depend on them. Prior to its crash in 2009, the auto industry contributed about 1 percent of gross domestic product, and its share should grow to 2.38 percent by 2020, according to the Cabinet’s plan.
The government expects the market to return to pre-crisis levels by 2013-14. Return on its investment is expected within five to 10 years.

TITLE: Medvedev Offers Sweeping Reforms of Criminal Code
AUTHOR: By Vera Kholmogorova and Alexei Nikolsky
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW —President Dmitry Medvedev has decided to remove the article on false entrepreneurship from the Criminal Code, reduce prison terms for money laundering and increase the threshold for economic crimes to be treated as “major” and “massive,” Vedomosti has learned. 
The president submitted a host of changes to the Criminal and Criminal Procedural codes to the State Duma on Monday that would liberalize how economic crimes are punished. 
Medvedev was carrying through on promises he made during a meeting Saturday with business representatives, which was also attended by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika. 
The bill, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti, would remove Article 173 on false entrepreneurship from the Criminal Code, as well as removing violations of licensing terms and conditions from Article 171 on illegal entrepreneurship and Article 172 on illegal banking activity. The formulation was too vague and led to broad interpretations, according to explanatory notes accompanying the legislation. 
Money laundering, covered under Article 174, Point 1, would now require the presence of a defining characteristic: The action must “give the appearance of legality to the ownership, use or distribution of the indicated funds.” The change was needed to prevent someone charged, for example, with false entrepreneurship, from also facing laundering charges for making any purchase with the funds in question. 
The punishment for money laundering would be reduced to between three and 10 years, from the current five to 15. Medvedev’s bill also proposes increasing the levels of funds involved in economic crimes when determining whether an offense is “major” or “massive.” 
The bars would be raised six-fold to 1.5 million rubles ($50,000) for major offenses and 6 million rubles ($200,000) for the most serious economic crimes. 
The liberalization of the money-laundering law will change how arrests are made, said lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov. Currently, suspects can be locked up while on trial for “serious” and “severe” crimes — carrying maximum sentences of five to 10 years and 10 years or more, respectively. The money-laundering charge is often tacked on to other crimes to make them more serious, he said. 
Previously, the law had never included a clear definition of what constitutes money laundering, meaning that investigators were free to interpret it however they wanted. The president’s proposals will help reduce the number of arrests, Zherebenkov said.  
The bill would also establish minimum bail sizes. Suspects in minor and serious crimes would need to post at least 100,000 rubles, while suspects in severe crimes would be required to offer at least 500,000 rubles. Physical property, stocks and bonds will also be allowed to serve as bail.

TITLE: Central Bank Plans to Cut Foreign Speculative Investment
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank may institute new measures to dampen the inflow of “speculative capital” into the country, it said in a report on its web site.
The Central Bank may raise capital reserve requirements for banks on foreign currency deposits and banks’ liabilities to nonresidents, it said.
Higher taxes on foreign borrowing by corporations and control of foreign borrowing by companies in which the state holds a stake are among “other measures under consideration,” it said. A return to capital controls is not being considered.
“Excessive volatility of private capital flows poses a serious threat to the systematic stability of the Russian economy,” the report said.
Russia posted an estimated net capital outflow of $52.4 billion last year as the economy contracted a record 7.9 percent and foreign direct investment plummeted 41 percent. The country saw a record net outflow of $130 billion in 2008, following a record net inflow of $83 billion a year earlier.
Russia posted a net outflow of $13 billion in January, although the trend may have reversed in February, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said, Interfax reported.
In an interview published Wednesday in Izvestia, Ulyukayev said the Central Bank supports limitations on bonuses paid to bankers.
“We are not proposing limiting bonuses directly or levying a tax on them,” Ulyukayev said. “If the size of bank capital is within a certain band, restrictions can be placed on the right to divide profits. The higher the capital adequacy, the smaller the restrictions.”
Banks are under scrutiny from governments worldwide to reduce compensation amid public anger about trillions of taxpayer dollars used to bail out lenders during the credit crisis. In December, Britain introduced a one-time 50 percent levy on discretionary bank bonuses of more than ?25,000 ($37,500) to encourage banks to build up their capital.
Ulyukayev also said in the interview that the Central Bank is seeking to increase the share of gold in its international reserves.
“Gold will always be a natural quality asset,” Ulyukayev said. “We buy as much gold as the industry can produce without harming the market.”
The bank added 100,000 troy ounces of gold to its reserves in January, increasing its holdings to 20.6 million ounces, the bank said Feb. 19. The biggest energy exporter holds $432.4 billion in the reserves, the world’s third largest after China and Japan.

TITLE: Prokhorov Defends Power 
Generators
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov fought back on Tuesday after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the owners of power generators for failing to invest in new capacity, saying the prime minister was misinformed.
“Incorrect documents concerning investment programs must have been provided to the prime minister,” said Prokhorov, who is accompanying President Dmitry Medvedev on his state visit to France. “The issue is that all companies, without exception, postponed their investment programs. There were objective reasons [for that], including a fall in demand, [and] there were also the subjective ones,” he said, Interfax reported.
Last week, Putin lashed out at generating companies and threatened to fine their wealthy owners, including Prokhorov, Vladimir Potanin, Leonid Lebedev and Viktor Vekselberg, for failing to invest in new capacity.
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 ($2.2 billion) 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.
But Prokhorov said all changes to the investment programs were approved by the System Operator, the industry regulator, and hinted that the recent resignation of a deputy energy minister may have had a place in the controversy.

TITLE: Son of Ex-Policeman Says He’s Police Victim
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vasily Astrashabov, a 19-year-old Moscow student, met with friends to go to a movie theater on New Year’s Day but caught the eye of police officers seeking the attackers of a married Kyrgyz couple.
Astrashabov was detained, and the Kyrgyz wife identified him as one of the attackers. The husband, who was badly injured in the attack, said he was not sure.
But Astrashabov’s father, a former Moscow police officer, said he saw a police investigator telling the wife that she “must identify” his son and calling him a “killer.”
Astrashabov’s lawyer, Raisa Tyurina, accused investigators of failing to include any evidence of her client’s innocence in their official case file, including testimony of friends about his whereabouts that night and video footage from street surveillance cameras.
Astrashabov spent a month in detention on charges of attempted murder and was only released after his lawyer filed several complaints with various state agencies. He is still facing trial.
Supporters say Astrashabov fell victim to a bureaucracy that has infiltrated law enforcement agencies and forces them to report continually growing crime-solving rates.
The Interior Ministry, which has long linked crime-solving rates to bonuses and reprimanded police officers for not boosting their rates every year, tweaked the system in late January in a bid to reduce the temptation to make arrests for the sake of crime-solving rates.
The changes, however, are not inspiring confidence among a public weary of notorious police corruption.
It certainly hasn’t made a difference for Astrashabov, who says he was 200 to 300 meters away from the underground pass outside the Rizhskaya metro station where the Kyrgyz couple was attacked hours earlier by a group of young people. The husband was hospitalized with grave stab wounds.
“Law enforcement officers did all this to report that they had solved a crime while in hot pursuit of the suspects, and this has led to accusations against a person who didn’t commit the crime,” Astrashabov’s father, Alexander, said in an interview in the family’s apartment.
Police referred questions about Astrashabov’s case to the Investigative Committee’s Moscow branch, which refused to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
How many innocent people fall victim to police officers’ drive for statistics is unknown. The Moscow Helsinki Group received about 610 complaints from suspects and convicts about violations by law enforcement officials between January and October last year, the group’s executive director Nina Tagankina said.
The complaints included illegal detention, torture, psychological pressure and the refusal of law enforcement officers to consider requests from defense lawyers, Tagankina said.
The 610 complaints constituted 18 percent of all complaints that the group received during the 10 months.
A total of 418 people complained to the group In Defense of the Rights of Prisoners last year about their sentences, said a member of the group, Nadezhda Radnayeva. Sixteen of the 418 people told of law enforcement officers using violence against suspects who were under investigation. All 16 wrote from detention centers.
“Quite often, convicts complain that the confessions were beaten out of them or that they were convicted of grave crimes they didn’t commit in addition to the crimes that they did commit,” Radnayeva said.
Under orders from President Dmitry Medvedev to reform the country’s police force, the Interior Ministry in late January enforced new rules for evaluating the work of police officers. Under the new rules, “the number of numerical indicators has been reduced” and “public opinion has become the main criteria” to assess police work, Interior Ministry spokesman Oleg Yelnikov said by telephone.
The new rules, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, declare themselves aimed at securing “the quality and legality of police work” and “the population’s trust in the police.”
Activists and one former police officer said that while the new rules have changed the method for assessing police work, the essence of the work remains the same.
“It’s the same system that leads to power abuse, only the wording is different,” said Dmitry Povarov, head of the Moscow branch of a police union, the Interregional Professional Union of Police Officers of the Russian Federation.
He said officers would still be required to show high crime-solving rates. Under such circumstances, police officers will continue to opt “to pin the crime on someone,” he said.
Povarov was echoed by Mikhail Pashkin, head of the Professional Union of Police Officers of Moscow. “A police officer has to report a higher number of crimes and administrative offenses every year, and what if their numbers don’t grow?” Pashkin said. “Police have been prosecuting the innocent and will continue to prosecute them.”
A former Moscow police officer said the crime-solving rates reported by police precincts to the Interior Ministry “don’t reflect reality” anyway because apart from “creating crimes,” police “buy” figures for their crime-solving rates from colleagues and other law enforcement agencies and take figures from subordinate police units.
The former officer asked for anonymity in order to talk candidly without fear of reprisal.
She said police used to commonly “create crimes” by planting weapons on the homeless and drugs on drug abusers, and now they detain people and force them to steal from shops under threat of violence.
“Police are busy drawing up reports about crime-solving rates while nobody cares about solving crimes in reality,” she said.
The Interior Ministry registered 2.8 million crimes from January to November last year, and 42.4 percent of them have not been solved, primarily because of a lack of suspects, it said on its web site. The 1.1 million unsolved crimes include 1,700 murders and murder attempts and 6,400 violent attacks.
Povarov and Pashkin said public opinion was important in assessing police work but the new rules did not ensure that it would be taken into account.
The new rules mention independent public opinion surveys as a way to assess police work. They also stipulate that the surveys be carried out by the Interior Ministry.
In any case, public opinion does not carry a lot of weight under the new system for scoring police work, Pashkin noted. If the new rules gave high marks for good public opinion, “then police would really work for the people,” he said.
Astrashabov, the suspect in the New Year’s attack, said he was proud of his father’s work as a police officer but his opinion of the police had faltered after his arrest. He showed a reporter surveillance footage on his home computer that he said investigators had ignored and proved that he was not near the scene of the attack.
Astrashabov said he used to walk around the city “without fear, thinking that law enforcement officers protected me.”
“Now I am more afraid of people in epaulets than hooligans,” he said.

TITLE: Finlandization of Georgia and Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Ronald D. Asmus
TEXT: What is the most important source of disagreement today between Russia and the West? It is not the issues most often in the news — Iran or Afghanistan. It is Europe’s contested neighborhood: the future of those countries between the eastern border of NATO and the European Union and the western border of Russia. While the West and Russia still talk the talk of cooperative security in Europe, geopolitical competition for influence has been renewed in these regions.
Russia today openly lays claim to a sphere of interest in its borderlands — in direct contradiction to commitments made under the Helsinki process. It has embraced policies and a military doctrine that places NATO as the top external military danger and justifies the right to intervene in neighboring countries. While packaged in smooth diplomatic language, President Dmitry Medvedev’s new proposal for pan-European security has the less-than-hidden goal of stopping and rolling back Western influence.
Rather than moving into the 21st century, Russia seems determined to revert to 19th-century strategic thinking. With the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama focused on Afghanistan and Iran, the Kremlin hopes that a West in need of its cooperation will acquiesce to its demands.
And it is not only words. Eighteen months ago, a war took place in Europe between Russia and Georgia. It was a little war, but one that raised big questions. It was not fought over the future status of Georgia’s Russian-backed breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (though that source of conflict was a real one). Instead, the war’s root cause was Georgia’s desire to align itself with the West and Russia’s determination to stop it.
Many diplomats would prefer to forget the war or sweep it under the rug, but none of the underlying tensions have been resolved. There is no stable solution in sight for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia has not abandoned the goal of breaking Georgia’s desire to go West. Instability and separatism are growing in the northern Caucasus, making the broader region more volatile.
In late January, the Obama administration issued its first unequivocal reaffirmation of the strategy of democratic enlargement that has guided Western thinking since the collapse of the Iron Curtain two decades ago. Speaking in Paris, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reminded us that NATO and European Union enlargement created an unprecedented degree of stability and security in the eastern half of the continent, that Russia too had benefited from this stability and that it was critical that Europe’s doors remain open to further enlargement.
But what about those countries in between — for example Ukraine and Georgia? Ukraine has just elected as its president Viktor Yanukovych, who is unlikely to pursue a NATO integration agenda, and if he follows through on his commitment to join a customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, membership in the EU would be precluded. But that does not mean that tensions with Russia will automatically disappear.
Yanukovych’s victory notwithstanding, Ukraine is a country that is becoming more European and gradually moving out of Russia’s orbit in its own chaotic way. Regardless of whether Georgians like or dislike President Mikheil Saakashvilli, they want to go West, too. So Russia’s attempts to bring these countries to heel are likely to continue and remain a bone of contention and conflict.
And what is Western policy? In reality, the West today no longer has a grand strategy toward the East. The moral and strategic vision of the 1990s has exhausted itself and come to a grinding halt after the shock of the Russia-Georgia war and the recent Ukrainian election. As welcome as Clinton’s recent words were on the need to defend the right of countries to decide their own fate, you don’t have to go very far in Europe to hear whispers that some kind of new “Finlandization” might be a reasonable compromise for countries like Ukraine and Georgia.
It is time for the West to openly debate what its strategy is — and what it is not. Two decades ago, the West rejected “spheres of influence” because Europe’s bloody history taught us that compelling nations to align themselves with others against their will was wrong and a recipe for future conflict.
If we still believe that today, we need an updated moral and strategic vision for such countries and to back it up with a real strategy. We need to be clear that Moscow has a right to security, but that it does not have the right to interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, to topple their governments or to deny them their own foreign policy aspirations.
Obama is right to try to reset relations with the Kremlin and engage a revisionist Russia. But we need to do so knowing what our strategy is on this key issue. As the United States and Russia close in on a new arms control treaty, it is time to face the question of how we deal with Europe’s contested neighborhood.

Ronald D. Asmus is executive director of the Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels and author of “The Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia and the Future of the West.” © Project Syndicate

TITLE: Betting on a Philosopher’s High-Tech Stone
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Why have first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov’s plans to build a Russian Silicon Valley prompted such a large public debate on whether modernization is possible without democracy?
In my opinion, discussing the theory of modernization with Surkov is like discussing game theory with a con artist. If a casino craps table has a hidden magnet underneath and the blackjack dealer is using a stacked deck, the magnet and the dealer determine who wins, not game theory.
To understand which types of projects will be funded in the Silicon Valley dreamed up by Surkov, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, we can forget about theory and just look at which projects already receive government financing.
Topping the list is scientist Viktor Petrik and his co-inventor, State Duma Speaker and United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov, who invented a perpetual motion machine and a real philosopher’s stone under the guise of a water-purification filter. Prior to Petrik, the last person to claim knowledge of the philosopher’s stone was a 18th-century Italian mystic and adventurer, Count Cagliostro. But Petrik, firmly grounded in 21st-century innovation, is boldly requesting 1.5 trillion rubles ($50.2 billion) for his filter device. He’ll probably get it, don’t you think?
Another miracle of Russian science is the Glonass satellite navigation system. This year, four separate budget items account for more than 10 billion rubles ($334 million) in funding for Glonass.
The most expensive part of the Glonass system is the Russian satellites, and they are already in orbit or are included among the secret items of the military budget. So the 10 billion rubles is in addition to the main funding and is intended solely for developing the receiving device that differs little from an ordinary satellite telephone. That’s an awful lot of money for developing technology that already exists.
How about this for another example of modernization: In October, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Rusnano director Anatoly Chubais visited the Mikron factory in Zelenograd outside Moscow where technicians have created Russia’s latest microchip with spans of only 180 nanometers. The visit also marked the signing of a $500 million agreement to purchase unbelievably advanced technology from the French and Italian STMicroelectronics firm capable of producing circuits with spans of only 90 nanometers. The problem is that elsewhere researchers have managed to halve the possible circuit span every 18 months or so, and just two weeks before Putin’s historic visit, Intel announced a microprocessor using spans of only 32 nanometers.
What is the point of buying European technology that is already outmoded and that will be obsolete by the time it is brought to market two years from now? That is just the easiest way to transfer money overseas.
So there is no reason to spend a lot of time discussing whether modernization is possible without democratization. The Chinese example proves that it is, in fact, possible. But that argument is irrelevant in this case. No matter how hard Surkov tries to build a Silicon Valley in Russia, it will just end up being another Lake Seliger.

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

TITLE: A splash of Greek cheer
AUTHOR: By Elmira Alieva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While Greece battles a severe financial crisis, Russian Greeks in St. Petersburg are developing a youth organization to spark people’s enthusiasm for Greece and Greek culture.
Those flying the flag for Greek culture in the city are young, positive people bursting with energy. They have Greek blood in their veins — some of them are descended from generations of Greeks, while others have just a few Greek ancestors. Many of them have come to study in St. Petersburg from other regions of Russia that are densely populated by Greeks — primarily the area around the Black Sea and the Northern Caucasus. Most of them call themselves Pontian Greeks, referring to Pontos, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea colonized by ancient Greeks, who called the Black Sea Pontos Euxeinos — the Hospitable Sea.
Several years ago, a group of young Russian Pontian Greeks living in St. Petersburg started networking through the social networking site “Vkontakte.” 
“Soon we realized that there were enough of us to start up a youth organization that would aim to unify young Greeks in St. Petersburg and to spread knowledge about Greece and Greek culture,” said Demis Pelivanidis, one of the founders of the organization and an ethnic Greek.
The young Greeks called their new organization Aetos, meaning eagle in Greek. The group’s main activities include the organization of Greek language courses, Greek and Pontian dance classes and Greek parties. The members build contacts with other Greek societies across Russia, including the St. Petersburg Greek society, Petropolis.
The Greek language courses are organized by Mikhail Borodkin, a young but experienced teacher, translator and interpreter. Russian by origin, Borodkin became passionate about both classical and modern Greek at school, and has worked as a teacher and a translator for several years.
Learning Greek is not as popular as some other European languages among Russians, but the similar alphabet, some common grammatical structures, Greek terminology that has entered the Russian language and the unique rhythm of Greek attract many Russian speakers. 
“There are several groups of people who are learning Greek today,” said Borodkin. “First of all there are quite a lot of tourists, who having visited Greece have decided to learn this melodic language, which reminds them of the Mediterranean area. People also learn Greek for professional reasons, especially those who work in travel agencies, and Russian Greeks who emigrate to Greece, as well as university students. I’ve also encountered many situations in which Russian girls were learning Greek because their boyfriends or husbands were Greek.”
“It’s not just our history and bilateral friendship that unifies Russia, Greece and Cyprus, but also our common orthodox culture,” added Borodkin. “Our orthodox churches cooperate, this is why for many clergymen it is necessary to speak Greek. So quite often I teach Greek to trainee priests.”
The Greek dance classes in St. Petersburg were initially organized by Nikolai Halaichidi, a student of Greek origins from the Stavropol region of Russia who started folk dancing at the age of 10. He began teaching dance several years ago, when members of Aetos expressed an interest in traditional Greek dancing.
“So far we only have one group of dancers of about 15 people,” said Halaichidi. “There are always newcomers, whom we also teach and help to catch up with the rest of the class. I teach Pontian dancing, and my colleague, Olya Andready teaches Hellenic dances. Currently I’m forming a group for children aged 7 to 10,” he added. 
Aetos’ main achievement so far is the creation of a folk dancing group named Asteri, meaning star in Greek, comprising students of the Greek dance classes led by Halaichidi. “Our first public performance was in September 2008 at an event devoted to the closing of the Summer Garden. I remember it was raining, we were completely soaked, but continued to dance. Then our performance was broadcast by a well known television channel,” he said.
Asteri performs at events devoted to Greek culture or to important events in Greek history. The dancers participate in events and festivals that aim to contribute to tolerance and friendship between different nations, and also dance at Greek parties organized by Aetos.
Greek youth parties are organized in the city on a regular basis. Music from Greece, Pontian music and folk dancing of a variety of genres feature on the evenings’ programs, along with performances by Asteri and different competitions. The organizers rent clubs and restaurants for the events, which are held at a different venue every time. They advertise their events through Vkontakte and by distributing flyers and posters.
Aetos has found a lot of fans among ethnic Russians who adore Greece. “I got bitten by the Greek bug during my internship there,” said Tatyana Alexandrova, a Russian member of Aetos. “Greeks are very welcoming, cheerful and hospitable people. When I returned home, I wanted to deepen my knowledge of Greek culture by learning Greek language and dancing. I am a member of the Asteri team and I have also performed in Oliva, my favorite Greek tavern in St. Petersburg,” she added.
“Greece… When I hear this word somewhere in a crowd, my heart starts to beat faster,” said Ksenia Konopleva, another Russian aficionado of Greek culture, explaining her interest in the local Greek culture scene. 
“It is not only about the beauty of Greek landscapes; there is something that can be felt only in the heart. The air there is full of love and faith. There are so many monasteries and holy places... It’s impossible not to love Greece, and I’m so pleased that in the northern city of St. Petersburg, there is the opportunity to feel this atmosphere of warmth and kindness, thanks to Greek concerts and events organized here,” she said. 
“I’m not Greek, but once I visited Greece and I realized that Greek spirit, culture and traditions are very close to my heart,” said Svetlana Salikhova, one of the most active non-Greek participants of Aetos. 
“I like the positive approach of Greeks to life. It’s a pleasure to learn Greek and to perform with Asteri at events such as the ‘Days of Tolerance’ in St. Petersburg. Communication with upbeat Greeks brings me a lot of positive emotions, and participation in events connected to Greek culture enable me find good friends,” she added.
 
Information about Aetos and its events can be found at: http://vkontakte.ru/club280851. 
Additional information about Greek dance classes is available at: http://vkontakte.ru/club1670282

Additional and contact information for Greek language courses can be found at: www.metafrastis.ru, http://vkontakte.ru/club1808168

TITLE: Word’s  worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ñîïëè: snot, sniveling, sniffles, schmaltz
“Snot” is not a word I use much in English. The sound of it instantly transports me back to junior high school, where we said mean, supercilious Debbie was a “snot” and whining, pesky Jimmy was a “snot face.” Perhaps for that reason ñîïëè has always been a difficult word for me. Like snot, ñîïëè (singular ñîïëÿ) are the stuff that comes out of your nose, and it’s certainly a vulgar word. But the Russian word has different meanings and connotations and is used more imaginatively than its more-or-less English equivalent.
Of course, sometimes it just refers to a runny nose. Ó ìåíÿ îò ýòîãî ñêâîçíÿêà ñîïëè òåêóò (This draft is giving me the sniffles).
But if in English “snot” is associated with disdain, in Russian ñîïëè are associated with infantile behavior. Wiping someone’s nose — óòèðàòü or âûòèðàòü ñîïëè — connotes coddling. An outraged girlfriend complains: Ó íåãî ìàìà ïî âîñêðåñåíüÿì ïðèõîäèò ñîïëè âûòèðàòü è íîñêè ñòèðàòü (His mother comes round every Sunday to wipe his nose and wash his socks). When you wipe your own nose, it means that you have gotten over some trauma and are pulling yourself together. In English, we focus on another body part: Ñîïëè ïîäáåðè! (Pull your socks up!; literally, “clean up your snot!”)  
Ðàñïóñêàòü ñîïëè (literally, “to let out the snot”) is what we call sniveling in English: Îáà ïëàêàëè, ðàñïóñêàÿ ñîïëè, ïðîñèëè äðóã ó äðóãà ïðîùåíèÿ, êëÿëèñü â âå÷íîé äðóæáå (They both wept, sniveled, begged each other’s forgiveness and vowed eternal friendship).
Ñîïëÿê is a sniveling little kid or an inexperienced adult: Îíà ñòàðøå è çàìóæåì, è ðÿäîì ñ íåé îí — ùåíîê, ñîïëÿê (She is older and married, and next to her he’s just a puppy, a kid).
When referring to artistic works, ñîïëè can have the sense of something cloying and unrealistically rosy. Depending on the context, sometimes you can slip in some Yiddish to convey the sense of the Russian. Äàíèëà âñåì îáúÿñíÿåò, ÷òî «Áèòëç» — ðîçîâûå ñîïëè (Danila explains to everyone that the Beatles were pure schmaltz).
Ñîïëè (sniveling) can be rhymed with âîïëè (moaning) to refer to something cloyingly tragic, mawkishly melodramatic. For example, an errant hubby’s return annoys a young woman: Åù¸ ýòîãî íå õâàòàëî! Ñîïëè-âîïëè è ðàñêàÿíèÿ (Just what I need! Sniveling, moaning and repenting).
Russians have also noted that the stuff that comes out of your nose isn’t exactly epoxy, so something built íà ñîïëÿõ (literally, “on snot”) is unlikely to stay together for long. Ïîòîëîê äåðæèòñÿ íà ñîïëÿõ (The ceiling is hanging by a thread). Russian professional drivers and pilots apparently also use the phrase to mean driving on empty: Õîðîøî, åñëè óäàñòñÿ äîòÿíóòü íà ñîïëÿõ äî áëèæàéøåé çàïðàâêè (You’ll be lucky if you can run on fumes to the nearest gas station).
Gas fumes, schmaltz, thread, sniffles, sniveling … Who knew what wonders the nose knows?

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.

TITLE: Cooking up a storm
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The hippest way to celebrate a special occasion in the city right now is by visiting the culinary workshop of local chef Ilya Lazerson. His welcoming kitchen-workshop hosts birthday celebrations, corporate parties and groups of people who simply want to learn new recipes or improve their cooking skills.
Lazerson, who has worked in a number of the city’s upscale restaurants, including those at the Grand Hotel Europe, opened his cookery workshop just over a year ago, and it has since become very popular among both adults and children, mainly through word of mouth.
The inventive Lazerson, who also hosts radio and television culinary shows and writes cookery books, said he came up with the idea of a workshop when looking for new formats through which to develop and share the art of cooking.
The workshop aims to teach visitors to prepare various kinds of food together with Lazerson. Guests are invited to put on an apron upon arrival, before getting down to work with different ingredients under the chef’s guidance.
“The choice of food to be cooked depends on my guests,” said Lazerson. “Some of them want to learn how to cook Chinese or American cuisine, others Italian or Japanese.”
Children are usually more excited about learning how to cook pizza, sushi or hamburgers, he said.
“They also get excited about cooking ratatouille because of the cartoon of the same name,” said Lazerson. “Ratatouille is a vegetable dish, and I remember how happy one mother was that her son, who had always refused to eat vegetables, suddenly enjoyed ratatouille,” he said.
At his studio, Lazerson demonstrates food preparation processes from start to finish, teaching participants how to skin fish and peel vegetables, as well as advising what spices to add for divine flavors, how to cook different kinds of food, and how to serve it to make the perfect-looking dish.
“My work here probably adds more competition to restaurants, because I teach people here different kinds of restaurant dishes that they will be able to cook themselves after the classes,” Lazerson said.
The atmosphere at the classes is warm and welcoming, as groups of people —whether friends or colleagues who have come to celebrate someone’s birthday, or strangers who have come to attend one of Lazerson’s classes — are united by their efforts and common interest in cooking. 
Lazerson’s personality and humor are an integral part of the experience. 
Anna Vyborova, administrator at the Dutch Institute in St. Petersburg, who once brought a group of Dutch guests to Lazerson’s studio, said they were thrilled to have the opportunity to learn about Russian cuisine.
“They were so happy to learn how to cook legendary Russian borshch and pelmeni,” said Vyborova.
From time to time, Lazerson invites famous Russians — often actors or singers, some of whom are also good cooks — to join his master classes and share their experience.
Lazerson became interested in cooking at quite a young age, after watching his grandmother cook.
“I was amazed to see how individual ingredients were turned into a dish. It was a kind of chemical process for me,” he said.
Later, Lazerson attended a culinary college in his native Ukraine, before serving in the army as a chef, and then studying at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Food Technology Institute. Lazerson went on to work at the Grand Hotel Europe, one of the city’s leading five-star hotels, followed by positions at the restaurants Flora and St. Petersburg.
During his career, Lazerson has cooked for many famous people, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin when he worked for the St. Petersburg administration, and for Britain’s Prince Charles.
“I think I was most surprised by the choice of Prince Charles, who ordered only roast potatoes and fried fish. Of course, I expected a more demanding order from a member of royalty, so it was interesting that he chose the potatoes instead,” Lazerson said.
The chef said that though he loves to cook, he doesn’t do it very often at home.
“My wife cooks very well, and I enjoy her food because it’s more fun to eat something that someone else has prepared. It leaves the moment of the food’s taste a surprise,” he said.

More information on Lazerson’s studio can be found at: www.lazerson.ru

TITLE: Dostoevskian delight
AUTHOR: By Jan Meyer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When Varvara Dobroselova leaves behind her beloved Makar Devushkin in the slums of 19th-century St. Petersburg in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel “Poor Folk” for the sake of a new luxurious life, she undergoes a metamorphosis. She leaves behind her faithful and devoted admirer in order to flee the impoverished circumstances in which she grew up and gain access to high society, with its exclusive salons. 
The restaurant Metamorfos, which, like the rest of the recently opened Reval Hotel Sonya in which it is located, is Dostoevsky-themed — definitely bears more resemblance to Varvara’s life post metamorphosis, with its atmosphere of unostentatious elegance permeated with luxurious comfort.
The relaxed interior of Metamorfos, while decorated in a mainly Russian style, successfully avoids the kitschy elements so often found in Russian-themed restaurants. The matrioshka dolls found lurking here and there and a couple of samovars blend perfectly with the overall sophisticated design, although the interior seems somehow incomplete, and the metamorphosis motif, indisputably interesting, could be displayed in a more striking and memorable way.
The menu, however, more than makes up for the lack of originality in the interior design. Presented in the form of a book, it has an inventive prologue, and each dish is accompanied by a short story from Dostoevsky’s life. 
Guests with limited Russian will be delighted to find that not only all the dishes, but also every story, are translated into perfect English. Furthermore, in a considerate nod to foreign guests used to such information, a key is provided showing whether the dishes are vegetarian or contain gluten or lactose. 
Along with the customary starters, soups and main dishes, a wide range of pasta and grilled dishes are available. Prices range from 370 rubles ($12.50) for a simple but decent meal to 1,200 rubles ($40) for a magnificent assortment of grilled meat. 
Our order — crispy Russian pike perch with onion fondue and asparagus (625 rubles, $21,) chicken consomm? (160 rubles, $5.40,) and roulade of pork with parsley, pomegranate sauce and lemon-baked vegetables (645 rubles, $22) was taken and brought promptly by a friendly, obliging, but not intrusive waitress. 
While my friend was more than satisfied by the flavor of the onions and the taste and consistency of her pike perch, which was perfectly accompanied by the sauce, the soup was less convincing, bearing alarming similarity to a homemade broth made with shop-bought bouillon cubes. 
The coned roulade that followed fully compensated for this, however. Although the portion was not generous, the taste was outstanding. The meat was tender, juicy and had well-defined texture. Combined with the sweet pomegranate sauce, the burst of flavors upon the tongue was spectacular.
Those for whom money is no object will note with glee that red and black caviar are also available — for just 23,000 rubles ($775,) 113 grams of the finest Beluga caviar can be enjoyed. 
For dessert, we chose the thing that sounded the closest to wintertime comfort food — oven-baked apple frosted in honey (160 rubles, $5.40.) Unfortunately its appearance promised more than it could deliver, and it remained unfinished — though this may also have been due in part to the unexpectedly generous portion of the previous course.
The separate wine list consists of an impressive array of wine from all over the world starting at 600 rubles ($20) a bottle. The facilities are also worthy of note as they are fully wheelchair accessible — a rarity in Russia. 
Ultimately, although the restaurant and hotel are dedicated to Dostoevsky’s most celebrated work, “Crime and Punishment,” (the hotel takes its name from the character Sonya Marmeladova) it is fortunately far from the feelings of depression and desperation that pervade that novel. On the contrary, Metamorfos invites visitors to escape the severity of St. Petersburg’s cold winter and spend time in a very enjoyable, cozy and comfortable atmosphere.

TITLE: 17 Killed in Iraq Blasts Targeting Voters
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Santana
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — A string of blasts ripped through Baghdad targeting early voters and killing 17 people Thursday, authorities said, raising tensions in an already nervous city as early ballots are cast for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
Insurgents have repeatedly threatened to use violence to disrupt the elections, which will help determine who will oversee the country as U.S. forces go home. It is also a test over whether the country can overcome its deep sectarian divides. Two of the blasts hit voters outside polling stations.
Baghdad was a tense city Thursday as thousands of troops were deployed across the capital, and convoys of army trucks and minibuses ferried soldiers and security personnel to and from polling stations.
Many stores were shuttered, and normally crowded streets were near empty as people appeared to be staying home on what was a holiday across the country.
A sandstorm blowing into the capital also gave the already empty streets an even more eerie feel.
“Terrorists wanted to hamper the elections, thus they started to blow themselves up in the streets,” said Deputy Interior Minister Ayden Khalid Qader, who’s responsible for election-related security across the country.
He said security measures prevented the bombers from reaching polling centers so they struck at voters en route. Many of the victims were believed to be security personnel —  the main group of people casting their ballots through early voting since they were due to work on election day.
Thursday’s voting was for those who might not be able to get to the polls Sunday, including detainees, hospital patients and medical workers.
The United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq estimated that between 600,000 and 700,000 people could vote Thursday. About 19 million of Iraq’s estimated 28 million people are eligible to vote in the elections, which will also see Iraqi expatriates cast ballots in 16 countries around the world.
In the first attack, a Katyusha rocket killed seven people in the Hurriyah neighborhood about 500 meters from a closed polling station, police said.
Early reports said the blast had been caused by a bomb hidden in garbage.
The second attack took place in the upscale Mansour neighborhood when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest near a group of soldiers lining up at a polling station, killing six and wounding 18, police said.
The blast left a small crater in the middle of the street, and debris from the explosion splattered around the crater. Pools of blood and burnt human flesh littered the ground along with broken glass, rubble from buildings and the remnants of shops signs.
In the third blast, another suicide bomber blew himself up near policemen waiting to vote, killing four people and wounding 14 others, according to police and hospital officials.
All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned that insurgents could launch attacks in an attempt to disrupt the vote. On Wednesday, a string of suicide bombings in the city of Baqouba left 32 Iraqis dead.
Sunday’s elections are only Iraq’s second for a full parliamentary term since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein, leading to the eventual creation of the Shiite-dominated government in power today.
At a high school in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood, police and military officials crowded in to the building to cast their ballots, displaying the now-iconic purple ink —  used to prevent people from voting twice —  on their fingers. 
Many expressed frustration at the government and a desire for change. 
“The people who are in government, they did nothing for the country and if they return to power, they will do nothing again,” said Jolan Ali Hossein, a police officer. 
Others said they were excited about being able to vote and help usher in a new political era in Iraq. 
“In the past we used to make change through violence. Now we have democracy,” said Hamza Abbas, another police officer. 
In the town of Nimrod in the northern province of Ninewa, policeman Anwar Khames said he was voting for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition. 
“He did one good thing, overcoming the sectarian violence, especially in Mosul. Before, I was not able to go to Mosul. Now I can go, but I am still cautious,” he said.

TITLE: 63 Dead
In Indian Temple Stampede
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LUCKNOW, India — Sixty-three people, all of them women and children, were crushed to death on Thursday in a stampede at a temple in India when a gate collapsed triggering panic among the 10,000-strong crowd.
The devotees had gathered in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to receive food and clothes from a local holy man when the gate, which was under construction on the perimeter of the temple complex, came crashing down, police said.
“We have now counted all the bodies and they include 37 children and 26 women who had come to collect free gifts,” Assistant Police Superintendent S. P. Pathak told AFP by telephone from the scene.
State officials said organisers had been unprepared for the size of the crowd that assembled to meet holy man Kripaluji Maharaj at the Ram Janki temple in Pratapgarh, 650 kilometers (400 miles) southeast of New Delhi.
According to his web site, Maharaj runs a charitable trust which sets up schools, temples and hospitals and operates five large Hindu ashrams (hermitages), including one in the United States.
Police said 125 people had been injured and were being treated at local hospitals or at the scene.
“I want my sister back,” one distraught woman told the IBN7 news channel. “She came here to get clothes and sweets, but now she is dead.”
“My wife would come here every day,” another mourner said. “Today she came with her friends to participate in the event. She was found dead on the stairs of the temple.”
Stampedes at religious events in India are common as large numbers of excited worshippers pack into congested areas. Panic can spread quickly and, with few safety regulations in place, the result is often lethal.
The worst recent incident was in October 2008 when about 220 people died near a temple inside Jodhpur’s famous Mehrangarh Fort.
More than 25,000 worshippers had rushed towards the hill-top shrine to join in an auspicious moment for offering prayers at the start of Navaratri, a nine-day Hindu festival.
That stampede appeared to have started when a wall along the narrow path leading up to the temple collapsed, killing several people. Hundreds of people were trampled and suffocated to death in the ensuing panic.
Also in 2008, 145 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede after railings collapsed at a popular temple in Himachal Pradesh state.
In most cases, crowd management measures are rudimentary, or even non-existent, and police action has often been blamed for exacerbating panic when things go wrong.
In 2004, 20 women died in a stampede when politicians handed out free clothes in a bid to garner votes for the Hindu nationalist BJP party.

TITLE: Increased Ransoms Encourage Pirates
AUTHOR: By Katharine Houreld
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — Private security guards aboard a Spanish fishing trawler fought a gunbattle with Somali pirates on the Indian Ocean on Thursday, as confrontations between mariners and brigands off the coast of Africa become more violent.
The pirates hit the Albacan with a rocket-propelled grenade, causing a fire that was quickly extinguished, officials said. None of the 33 crew members or three guards was hurt. Three private guards aboard the Albacan fired back at the pirates, a ship’s owners association said. The pirates fled.
The high-seas firefight underscores what maritime officials say is a deepening trend on the seas off East Africa: increasingly violent attacks from pirates desperate for the millions of dollars in ransom that are routinely paid for hijacked ships. Maritime officials say pirates are ratcheting up the violence of their attacks as ships and crews become better at fending them off. Only seven ships were fired on worldwide in 2004, but 114 ships were fired on last year off the Somali coast alone, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
The Albacan was fishing between Kenya and the island nation of Seychelles when two skiffs approached carrying pirates brandishing weapons, the EU Naval Force said.
“The crew took refuge inside the ship while the security team confronted the pirates,” the ship owners association Cepesca said in a statement from Spain. “There was an exchange of gunfire and the pirates also fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the vessel before fleeing.”
The EU Naval Force said the guards fired above the heads of the pirates, implying that no pirates were hurt.
Some ships have begun carrying armed guards in hopes of deterring high-seas assaults. Ship owners are also investing in physical defenses like stringing razor wire and adding fire hoses that can hit attackers with streams of high-pressure water. Some ships are even having electric fence-style systems installed.
Rising ransoms may also be a factor in the increasing violence of attacks. Piracy expert Roger Middleton of the British think tank Chatham House said that last year the average ransom was around $2 million, giving the pirates a total haul of around $100 million for 2009. This year, two paid ransoms were much higher, coming in at around $3 million and $7 million, he said.
Somali pirates are currently holding six hijacked ships and 132 sailors, including a British couple kidnapped off their private sailboat last year. Somalia’s parliament on Thursday called for the unconditional release of the couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler.
The parliament urged elders, clerics and women’s groups to press for their release on grounds of their advanced age and poor health. A statement said the U.K. government “has been very kind to our large diaspora community living in the United Kingdom and it’s upon us to reciprocate their benevolence” by working for the Chandlers’ release.

TITLE: Mars Recon Orbiter Provides Better Picture
Of  Red Planet
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PASADENA, California — Scientists are impressed with the flood of data beamed back by NASA’s most advanced Mars orbiter. The space agency said Wednesday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back 100 terabits of information since 2006. That’s equal to about 3 million songs in MP3 format.
Launched from Florida in 2005, the reconnaissance orbiter reached Mars in March 2006. It is the most powerful probe ever sent to the Red Planet.
Project scientist Rich Zurek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says he is blown away by the quality of the images and other tidbits that give scientists a deeper understanding of the planet.
Last year, the reconnaissance orbiter suffered several computer resets that temporarily halted science operations. It has since returned to normal.