SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1561 (22), Friday, April 2, 2010
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TITLE: Chechen Rebel Claims Moscow Bombings
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the deadly Moscow metro explosions in a short video posted on a rebel web site late Wednesday, hours after two new suicide bombings killed at least 12 people in Dagestan.
The authorities had blamed Umarov for the Moscow bombings on Monday, which killed 39 people and injured 85 others, and they promised Wednesday to boost security on transportation, including the introduction of metal detectors in the Moscow metro.
Umarov said in a 4 1/2-minute video clip that the bombings were carried out on his personal orders in retaliation for an attack on impoverished Ingush and Chechens who were gathering wild garlic outside the Ingush village of Arshty on Feb. 11. He said Federal Security Service commandos intentionally attacked the civilians with knives and then made fun of the corpses.
Senior Russian officials had suggested that the Moscow attacks were in retaliation for FSB operations in the North Caucasus that killed two senior Chechen militants in recent weeks.
“As you all know, two special operations were carried out to destroy the infidels and to send a greeting to the FSB on March 29 in Moscow,” Umarov said in the video published on the Kavkaz Center web site.
One bombing occurred in the Lubyanka metro station near the FSB’s headquarters.
Umarov, who said the video was recorded Monday, promised that the attacks would continue.
Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev vowed that Umarov would be “neutralized” but said capturing him depended on a host of factors, “including the weather.”
“Sometimes random factors hinder us. But we will persist,” Patrushev said in an interview published Wednesday in Kommersant.
Confusingly, two reports emerged earlier Wednesday in which Umarov apparently denied involvement in the Moscow bombings.
“We did not carry out the attack in Moscow, and we don’t know who did it,” a spokesman for Umarov’s Caucasus Emirate organization, Shemsettin Batukayev, told Reuters by telephone from Turkey.
He said his group was planning attacks on economic targets, not civilians, in Russia.
Georgia’s Russian-language television station First Caucasus played an audio recording attributed to Umarov in which a male voice with a heavy Chechen accent denies responsibility for the metro bombings.
Patrushev, the Security Council chief, said that investigators should look for a “Georgian trail” in the Moscow bombings.
“Individual members of Georgia’s secret services maintain ties with terrorist organizations in Russia’s North Caucasus,” he said.
The Georgian government dismissed the allegation and instead offered to help Russian investigators. “If there really is anything pointing toward Georgia, we are ready to cooperate in any investigation,” Reintegration Minister Temur Yakobashvili told reporters in Tbilisi, Interfax reported.
Relations between Georgia and Russia have been frozen since both countries fought a short war in August 2008 over Georgia’s separatist province of South Ossetia.
Moscow previously accused Tbilisi of harboring terrorists in Pankisi, a valley in eastern Georgia inhabited by ethnic Chechens and Ingush people. Tbilisi has long denied the accusations.
Patrushev, a former Federal Security Service director, defended the FSB, saying no law enforcement agencies had previous intelligence about the pending attacks and had done “everything they could to guarantee safety.”
The FSB has prevented a total of 86 terrorist attacks this year, Patrushev said. “Sadly, it is impossible to prevent every act of terror. No agency in the world could guarantee that,” he said.
In the latest violence, the driver of a black Lada Niva set off a powerful explosion after being stopped by police in the Dagestani city of Kizlyar.
The car was packed with explosives equivalent to 200 kilograms of dynamite, the Investigative Committee said.
The blast killed two police officers and some passers-by. The officers had stopped the driver as he was heading to the city’s police headquarters, LifeNews.ru reported.
A second suicide attacker struck 20 minutes later as law enforcement officers rushed to the shattered car. The man, dressed in police fatigues, blew himself up in the middle of a small crowd of officers, killing eight people, including the city’s police chief, Vitaly Vedernikov, Interfax reported.
Twenty-seven people were injured in the two explosions.
Photos from the scene show gutted cars standing near a deep crater on a debris-strewn street. The windows of a redbrick schoolhouse are blown out, and its roof is partly ripped off.
Kizlyar, a city of 50,000, is located in the northern plains of the otherwise mountainous Dagestan. The area made headlines in 1996 when about 80 people were killed in a mass hostage-taking by rebels from neighboring Chechnya.
President Dmitry Medvedev told a Security Council meeting at his Gorky residence that the Moscow and Dagestani attacks were “all links in one chain and manifestations of a terrorist activity that has recently reappeared in the Caucasus,” according to a Kremlin transcript.
“I do not exclude that this is the same gang,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a separate Cabinet meeting devoted to anti-terrorist measures, according to a transcript on his web site.
Medvedev, meanwhile, announced that complex safety measures would be rolled out for the country’s transportation systems soon.
He did not elaborate, but Moscow metro chief Dmitry Gayev said they would include metal detectors in the metro. The first metal detectors might be introduced in the Belorusskaya metro station as early as April, Gayev said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: OMON Seize Dozens During Constitution Protest
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dozens were detained during a banned demonstration in defense of the constitutional right to assembly in the center of St. Petersburg on Wednesday. 
Part of the Strategy 31 campaign, the demonstration took place near Gostiny Dvor department store on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare, despite having failed to obtain permission for the event from the city authorities.
The event, which was due to be held in 35 Russian cities, was on the brink of cancelation after suicide bombers struck in the Moscow metro on Monday, but on Tuesday the organizers announced that the rallies would be held as planned, though they would begin with a minute of silence.
The brainchild of author and opposition leader Eduard Limonov, the campaign is named after Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees the right to assembly, and events are held on the 31st day of months that have 31 days. In St. Petersburg, the March 31 rally was organized by Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov-led People’s Democratic Union (NDS) and the Left Front, a coalition of left-wing organizations formed last year.
By 6 p.m., people had gathered at the heavily policed site, with OMON special task force police trucks and city buses parked nearby. Vladislav Ivakhnik, an NBP activist, announced a minute of silence to honor the victims of the explosions.
“On Monday a tragic event took place in Moscow; people were killed,” local NBP leader Andrei Dmitriyev said in a loud voice, without a megaphone, after the silence.
“When Colonel Putin came to power, people were killed too. He said terrorists would be ‘rubbed out in the outhouse.’ Ten years later, he says they will be ‘dragged out from the sewers.’ Nobody believes it anymore  — it sounds like a self-parody.”
Dmitriyev said that every terrorist attack in Russia since Putin came to power had only led to restrictions of freedom, such as the abolition of governors’ elections in 2005 after the terrorist attack in Beslan. Calls to tighten the screws are being heard today, he added.
“But you can’t forbid us to assemble and speak out, because we’re free people,” Dmitriyev said, before the activists, some holding cards with the number 31 printed on them, erupted into the slogan “Russia Will Be Free!”
During Dmitriyev’s speech, a policeman with a megaphone announced that the meeting was illegal and said measures would be taken against those who disobeyed police orders. Moments later, a group of helmet-wearing OMON policemen armed with truncheons ran into the crowd, targeting and dragging out activists. 
With Dmitriyev detained, another activist took the floor, and when he was detained, the speech was continued by another. As arrests were made in waves, the policeman with the megaphone informed passers-by that the demonstration was a “provocation.”
After the arrests, the attention of both the public and the police was diverted by several vehicles that drove past the site with the number 31 drawn in the dirt on their side panels. The police stopped a couple of them, but seemed at a loss about what to do next. The cars belonged to activists from TIGR — a movement originally formed by car owners fighting for their rights, who wanted to support the event.
Of an estimated 400 participants, around 60 were detained, Dmitriyev said Monday. The police spokesman said 46 people had been charged with violating the rules on holding public events, but declined to specify the total number detained. The offence is punishable by anything from a 500-ruble ($17) fine to 15 days in custody. 
Although the Strategy 31 events take place in one chosen location in each participating city, the local branches of the United Civil Front (OGF,) Yabloko Democratic Party and Human Rights Council, who did not take part in the Jan. 31 rally, decided to hold their own rally in defense of the constitution an hour later on Palace Square. 
Between 150 and 200 participants, many wearing buttons bearing the number 31 and holding a copy of the constitution, walked quietly around the Alexander Column in what local OGF leader Olga Kurnosova described as a “flashmob.” According to Kurnosova, the organizers had made an agreement with the police not to use posters in order to avoid being arrested.
The next Strategy 31 events are scheduled for May 31.

TITLE: President Calls For ‘Brutal’ Measures
AUTHOR: By Arsen Mollayev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAKHACHKALA, Russia — President Dmitry Medvedev made a surprise visit Thursday to the violence-wracked southern province of Dagestan, telling police and security forces to use tougher, “more brutal” measures to fight the “scum” responsible for terrorist attacks.
Russia’s security chief said some terror suspects had been detained.
In his dress — a black T-shirt under a black suit coat — and rough language, Medvedev was following the style of Russia’s powerful prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Twin suicide bombings this week in Moscow — which Islamic militants from the North Caucasus claim to have carried out — have refocused attention on the violence that for years has been confined to the predominantly Muslim republics in Russia’s southern corner.
Another explosion Thursday killed two suspected militants and wounded a third in Dagestan near the border with Chechnya. Police said the men may have been transporting a makeshift bomb.
The day before, two suicide bombings in Dagestan killed 12 people, including nine policemen, a frequent target of attacks in part because they represent Russian authority.
The suicide bombings on the Moscow subway killed 39 people on Monday and have left nearly 90 hospitalized.
Medvedev said much more needed to be done to stop the attacks.
“The measures to fight terrorism should be expanded, they should be more effective, more harsh, more brutal, if you please,” he told local officials in a televised meeting.
Funerals were held Thursday at four Moscow cemeteries for some of the subway victims. At the Khovanskoye cemetery, the family, friends and colleagues of Anna Permyakova, a 34-year-old nurse, could not hold back tears as they placed flowers on her open casket. Permyakova had worked in a rehabilitation center and many of her former patients attended the funeral in wheelchairs.
Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov, who joined Medvedev in Dagestan, said the organizers of the Moscow attacks have been identified as “bandits” from the Northern Caucasus and some had been detained. He did not give specific numbers.
“We know the personalities of organizers,” Bortnikov said during the meeting. “We have detained a number of people, conducted interrogations, got evidence.”
In recent months, police and security forces have killed at least two high-profile Islamic militants, but they have been unable to capture the veteran Chechen militant Doku Umarov, who has claimed responsibility for the Moscow subway attacks.
“We have torn off the heads of the most notorious bandits, but clearly this was not enough. In any case, we will find them all and punish them,” Medvedev said.
Umarov, who leads Islamic militants in Chechnya and throughout the North Caucasus, said the Moscow subway bombings were revenge for the killing of civilians by Russian security forces.
“Any politician, any journalist who accuses me of terrorism only makes me laugh, causes me to grin. I have not heard anyone accuse Putin of terrorism for the murder of civilians who were killed on his orders,” Umarov said in a video posted Wednesday on kavkazcenter.com, a Web site used by rebels.
Umarov seemed to be taunting Putin, who had just vowed to “drag out of the sewer” the terrorists who plotted the subway attacks.
Umarov, 45, fought Russian forces in both separatist wars in Chechnya of the past 15 years. Shortly after taking over the leadership of the rebel movement in 2006, he announced a change of tactics. Instead of struggling for Chechen independence, the militants would seek to create an Islamic state across the North Caucasus. Umarov declared himself the emir, or military leader, of a Caucasus Emirate.
It is unclear, however, how much power he wields over the militants operating throughout the region.

TITLE: New Tourist Zone Ordered
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The impoverished Russky island in the Far East will be developed as a special economic zone to promote tourism after it hosts the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.
Preparations for the summit have turned Russky Island into the country’s second-biggest construction project, following work for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. But the government has been struggling to find a use once the summit is over for the hotels, conference centers and other infrastructure being built on the lightly populated island.
Initially, the state considered locating one of four federal gambling zones there. In 2008, it was decided that Russky would be turned into a university center for the Russian Academy of Science’s branch in the Far East.
Putin personally visited the island in October to inspect preparations, which have been plagued by delays and fears of cost overruns. He said at the time that the government would not cut the 202 billion rubles ($6.9 billion) in federal money allotted for APEC-related construction.
The single largest construction project for the summit is a 3.1-kilometer bridge connecting Russky, which is home to about 5,000 people, with the Primorye region capital of Vladivostok.

TITLE: Student Sues Police Chief, Gets Cash Compensation
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An opposition activist has unexpectedly won a case against the St. Petersburg chief of police.
A court ordered St. Petersburg Police Chief Vladislav Piotrovsky to retract the accusations he had made in a letter to the activist’s university, and ruled that the student should receive compensation for moral damages.
Yekaterina Alimova, 21, a student at the State Russian Herzen Pedagogical University and member of the Yabloko Democratic Party, was among five people — including local Yabloko chair Maxim Reznik — briefly detained in December 2008. 
The arrests were made at a small picket held near the Legislative Assembly on St. Isaac’s Square against planned amendments to the Russian constitution to prolong the presidential and State Duma terms.
Two days later, before the court had had time to examine her case, Alimova was summoned to the dean’s office at her faculty and warned about her political activities.
She was told that Piotrovsky had sent a letter to the university accusing her of taking part in an “unsanctioned” rally and resisting arrest, and suggesting the university administration should hold assemblies with students in which they would be warned not to take part in oppositional political activities as Alimova had done. 
“I was told that as a student of a state university and, moreover, a pedagogical university, which according to the dean imposes some special obligations upon me, I should not participate in unsanctioned events which could be, in his words, ‘illegal,’” Alimova told The St. Petersburg Times this week.
“I was told that because I was a student of the university, both the university and I could suffer from my participation in such events.”
Alimova, who recorded the conversation, said she was asked to refrain from taking part in oppositional rallies. “I said no, I have the right to take part in public activities in my spare time without asking the university for permission,” she said.
“As a student, I can’t be owned by the university; I do what I am obliged to as a student, attending classes and passing exams, but everything else is my own business.”
In February 2009 — a month after the presidential term was increased from four to six years and the Duma deputies’ term from four to five — a district court found that no offence had been committed in holding the picket, and closed the case. Alimova then filed a defamation lawsuit against Piotrovsky. 
Having lost her case in the district court, where the judge found that Piotrovsky had not strayed from the facts in his letter, Alimova appealed to the St. Petersburg City Court.
On March 22, the court ruled that Piotrovsky’s letter had defamed Alimova’s reputation with the university administration, and ordered the police chief to write another letter retracting his previous accusations. The court also ruled that Alimova should receive 5,000 rubles ($170) in compensation for moral damages.
Speaking Thursday, Alimova said that despite the ruling, which is already in force, she was yet to receive any compensation or hear from the dean’s office about a letter retracting the allegations made in the original one.

TITLE: New Forestry Law Risks Devastating City Woods
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Legislative Assembly passed a law on forestry in mid-March that grants any local citizen the right to cut down 15 cubic meters of timber from the city woods annually for heating needs, causing an outcry in the country’s environmental circles.
The law also allows citizens to cut down up to 50 cubic meters of lumber for construction or renovation needs once every 10 years, and up to 15 cubic meters of wood for personal needs once every five years.
As ecologists in St. Petersburg have pointed out, the law, amazingly, sets no conditions under which citizens can claim their new rights. For instance, according to the law, people do not have to give any proof that they have an open fireplace at home when cutting down trees for heating purposes.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko has yet to sign off on the new law.
St. Petersburg boasts around 20,000 hectares of woodland within its municipal boundaries. Dmitry Artamonov, head of the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Greenpeace, has calculated that if just one percent of local citizens make use of the new opportunity, the city’s forests will vanish within ten years.
Greenpeace argues that the new law creates perfect conditions for all sorts of “grey schemes” of cutting and selling wood. 
Critics also say the law could ultimately help to vacate land for construction purposes, while leaving local residents powerless to fight such new construction. If citizens were to protest against the destruction of a local wood to make way for a construction project, for example, the authorities could simply send people claiming to want to exercise their right to obtain firewood, ecologists say.
Anastasia Filippova of the environmental organization Green Wave said the new law would create an ideal excuse for construction companies wishing to seize new land. 
“It is obvious that the law was not passed in the interest of city residents: Can you imagine your neighbors marching down to the nearest wooded area to stock up on some wood for a chic new parquet floor?” Filippova said. 
Alexander Karpov, head of the non-governmental St. Petersburg Center for Ecological Expertise, branded the legal initiative absurd, suggesting the move, if it comes into force, would lead to devastating consequences.
“The city risks losing its lungs — the vast and beautiful forest parks such as the Yuntolovsky, Rzhevsky and Novoorlovsky parks,” Karpov warned. “As for the very idea of granting this right, it goes without saying that local residents don’t need wood in such quantities.”
As Artamonov points out, the new law was only recently made possible when Russia adopted its new Forestry Code, which allows regional authorities to establish the woodcutting norms for local residents.
The code has been heavily criticized by environmentalists and citizens across the country, who have argued that it appears to have been tailored to suit the interests of private business and the regional officials who oversee the forestry sphere.
The code has also left Russia’s state foresters and forest wardens out of work, which has already led to massive illegal forest devastation and land seizures, Artamonov said. The situation in the Leningrad Oblast is one of the most alarming in Russia, along with the regions of Altai and the Far East, according to Greenpeace.
“Due to its location next to the Finnish border and its wealth of timber, the Leningrad Oblast has found itself in a precarious situation,” said Alexander Yaroshenko, head of Greenpeace’s Forestry program. 
“The demand for timber is particularly high here, as is the temptation to get into the illegal business of unsanctioned logging. We have documented numerous cases of illegal land seizures and forest devastation here.”
The local branch of Greenpeace and other environmental groups regularly receive hundreds of complaints from residents of the Leningrad Oblast as well as from St. Petersburg residents who have dachas, or summer cottages, outside the city. 
Their letters complain of local woods being ravaged by illegal woodcutters and filling up with illegal garbage sites. Many hectares of local forests are cut down to make space for various kinds of construction sites, ecologists say.

TITLE: 10% of Work Force Is Foreign
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign workers make up as much as 10 percent of the country’s work force, a report published by the United Nations said Wednesday.
There were 2.4 million officially registered migrants in 2008, although the real figure is likely three times higher, according to the report on Russia’s demographic development, commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund.
“Taking into account the shadow component of labor migration, the average proportion of foreigners currently employed in Russia may be around 10 percent,” the report said. “Illegal migrants are basically employed in jobs the local population doesn’t want.”
The country’s official work force stood at about 74.5 million people, or 52 percent of the population, as of February 2010, according to the State Statistics Service.
The report praised authorities for better facilitating the registration procedure for migrants and improving border control but said the country still lacked a systemic approach to immigration.
“Russia is still in search of an efficient migration policy that can tackle the future demographic situation,” the report said. “Meanwhile, both the work force shortage and the risks posed by illegal migration are underestimated.”
A law regulating the status of foreign workers came into force in 2007, which requires candidates to present an identity document and a migration card and to pay a fee to get a card.
The law allowed migrants to obtain a work permit and change employers freely, rather than depend on a specific employer to get one as before. But in June, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed to reverse the measure and link each migrant to a specific employer so as to have more leverage on the number of foreign workers.
The initial steps were a good way for the country to generate more of a benefit from immigration, but the recession has made the government rethink its strategy, said Nikita Mkrtchyan, a senior research fellow at the Higher School of Economics.
“Things have changed since the government realized it didn’t need so many foreign workers in the recession-hit sectors like construction,” he said. “The official quotas for migrants for 2010 were reduced, which pushed lots of foreigners out of the legal framework.”

TITLE: Assailant Strikes Human Rights Activist
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva was struck in the head as she laid flowers for bombing victims in the Park Kultury metro station late Wednesday instead of attending an anti-Kremlin rally.
The 82-year-old activist said the attacker — a young man — approached and asked, “Are you still alive?” before hitting her. Footage of the incident has been circulated on the Internet. 
“I’m alive. Maybe I have got a slight concussion,” Alexeyeva said shortly after the incident, Interfax reported.
The unidentified man was detained by the police, the report said.
Alexeyeva had decided to pay tribute to the 39 people who died when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Park Kultury and Lubyanka metro stations on Monday instead of joining opposition activists at a rally on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad.
The absence of Alexeyeva — as well as Solidarity opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Milov, who said in a statement that the time was not right for “bloody PR” — meant that plans for the rally fizzled.
It didn’t help matters that about 3,000 young people crowded onto the square for a sanctioned concert organized by pro-Kremlin youth groups, and the 2,000 police officers guarding the area quickly detained Eduard Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition group, and several dozen opposition activists who showed up.
Limonov said Tuesday that the rally had to go ahead despite the bombings. “The battle for freedom and the Constitution cannot be suspended for holidays or even a day of mourning,” Limonov wrote in his blog. “Freedom is more important than grief.”
Opposition politicians and human rights activists have gathered on the square on the 31st day of every month to call attention to Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which provides the right of free assembly.
The activists say the authorities, who have refused to authorize the rallies, have violated the Constitution by not allowing them to protest. Previous protests have been broken up by police.
Several dozen Other Russia activists exited the Mayakovskaya metro station on Wednesday evening and were quickly detained by police, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Magazine Accused of Secrecy Breach
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A federal media watchdog said Wednesday that it had issued a warning to Kommersant Vlast, the influential news magazine, for divulging military secrets in a report about the Strategic Rocket Forces.
The report, a reference guide published in December, contained technical data on Russian missiles, the locations of missile bases and biographical information about the forces’ commanders.
Vlast said it is accused of disclosing the classified locations of missile units and denied wrongdoing. It said in a statement that the information used in the report had come from public sources, including the Defense Ministry’s newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda.
Under Russian law, a media outlet can be closed by a court if it receives two warnings within 12 months.
The Federal Press and Mass Communication Agency issued the warning in mid-March. 
Vlast vowed to challenge the watchdog’s decision in court.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Forum Party Tender</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT)  — City Hall has announced an open tender for the organization of the governor’s reception at the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which will take place from June 17 to 19 this year.  
The cultural program of the forum is expected to cost about 15 million rubles ($510,000,) and the governor’s reception may cost another 10 million rubles ($340,000,) Delovoi Peterburg newspaper reported.
A sum of 3.8 million rubles ($130,000) has been allocated for paying performers and creative groups, while decorations are expected to cost 3.3 million rubles and the hire and installation of equipment is expected to cost 3.5 million rubles.
In 2008, the governor’s reception cost 14 million rubles, and included food for 3,000 people at an estimated cost of 3,000 rubles per person. In 2007, 9.6 million rubles was spent on the reception.
Guests at the governor’s reception are traditionally treated to performances by world-class stars, such as pianist Denis Matsuyev and violinist Sergei Stadler in 2008. The cultural program usually features fireworks, fountains and laser shows.

TITLE: Insurers Feel the Winter Chill
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s insurance companies have suffered significant losses this winter due to the heavy snowfalls that the city experienced. The warmer weather promises little relief, however — now more trouble is expected in the form of flooding in the city.
Most car insurance claims this winter were related to car accidents caused by ice on the roads. Other insurance cases resulted from roofs leaking or falling in due to the weight of snow, accidents caused by central heating systems, and an increase of fires caused by short circuits.
“The causes of the main losses incurred this winter included icicles, ice and snow falling on cars,” Denis Chigaryev, head of the northwest branch of automobile insurance at Renaissance Insurance, was quoted by Delovoi Peterburg newspaper as saying. “We have received 480 such claims,” he said.
Chigaryev said that the average cost of repairs was 130,000 rubles ($4,420), and the total figure to be paid out would be more than 62 million rubles ($2.1 million) — approximately double the cost of claims paid out last winter, he said.
Meanwhile, the spring may bring even more losses for insurance companies, especially for Rosgosstrakh, Ergo Rus, ASK-Peterburg and Renaissance Insurance, because they provide insurance of non-residential premises.
Flooding will most probably affect the cellars of the Admiralteisky and Vasileostrovsky districts, the lowest parts of St. Petersburg.
Yevgeny Dubensky, first deputy of Ergo Rus, said that the company expects that at least several hundred tenants will apply for compensation for damage caused by flooding this year, compared to just a handful of such cases in previous years, Delovoi Peterburg reported.
Insurance experts are concerned that cars may also suffer from any flooding.
The losses will depend to some extent on the prompt removal of snow, and on how quickly it melts. Consequently, insurance companies may sue the city’s water monopoly, Vodokanal, which is responsible for the city’s sewage system.

TITLE: Debt Sale May Weaken Ruble, Says Troika
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s planned sovereign debt sale this year will be “damaging to the economy” because it threatens to spur government spending and slow institutional changes, according to Troika Dialog.
Borrowing capital from international investors is likely to spur budget expenditures, weaken the ruble and lead to wasteful spending as the country struggles to allocate money efficiently, Moscow-based economists Yevgeny Gavrilenkov and Anton Stroutchenevsky at Troika, Russia’s oldest investment bank, said in a research note Thursday.
Government officials will meet bond investors in Asia and Europe before heading to the U.S. in April to wrap up a promotional tour for Russia’s first Eurobond sale since 1998, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday. The country may borrow as much as $17.8 billion abroad this year.
“A new sovereign bond issuance may be damaging for the economy,” Troika economists wrote. “In addition to providing a better benchmark for the market, it could encourage the government to inflate spending in the years to come, if not this year, under the onslaught of a seemingly invincible army of enthusiasts in Russia keen to get money for free from the budget.”
Government spending almost tripled between 2005 and 2009, according to Troika. Russia may run a budget deficit this year of as little as 6 percent of gross domestic product, less than the government’s forecast of 6.8 percent, Kudrin said Thursday.
“We are almost certain that if borrowing occurs this year, then next year’s budget spending will go up, as opposed to the current three-year budget plan that stipulates some spending cuts next year,” Troika said.

TITLE: Q4 Shows Improvement In Economy on Oil Surge
AUTHOR: By Paul Abelsky
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economic slump eased in the fourth quarter as oil, gas and metals exporters benefited from higher prices after gross domestic product slumped by a record in the first half of the year.
Output of the world’s biggest energy exporter shrank an annual 3.8 percent in the last three months of 2009 after contracting a revised 7.7 percent in the third quarter and a revised 10.8 percent in the second, the Federal Statistics Service said Thursday. GDP fell 7.9 percent in 2009, the biggest contraction since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
A surge in oil prices bolstered state finances as the price of Urals crude more than doubled in the quarter from a low of $32.34 a year earlier. Leaner inventories, improved global sales and higher raw materials prices prompted companies including iron ore producer Metalloinvest to boost output. The momentum may stall as rising joblessness and low demand for credit damp growth this year.
“We’ve seen a consistent recovery on the export side, and now I think we’ll be seeing the consumer coming in,” said Clemens Grafe, chief economist at UBS AG in Moscow. “The big question mark will be on the investment side. Traditionally, investment has been very much driven by the resource sector and at the moment there are a lot of question marks” among energy, coal and steel producers as a global restocking cycle subsides. 
Net exports, or exports minus imports, grew 61 percent in the fourth quarter after advancing 108 percent in the previous three months, statistics service data show. Household spending slid 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter.
The economy shrank an estimated seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent in February after a “period of rather sustained growth at the end of 2009,” the Economy Ministry said in a report published on March 23.
Manufacturing growth was “sluggish” in March as a stronger ruble discouraged new export business and companies continued cutting jobs, VTB Capital said Thursday, citing its Purchasing Managers’ Index.
The central bank cut its main interest rates for the 12th time in less than a year last month as signs appeared that the recovery has lost momentum. Industrial production expanded at a slower pace in February and bank loans continued to shrink even as lending conditions eased last quarter.
Even so, Russia is exiting the downturn and doesn’t face a “second wave” of the crisis, Andrei Kostin, chief executive officer of the nation’s second biggest lender, VTB Group, said in an interview in Paris on March 2. The recovery will still be “quite slow and gradual,” he said.
“One of the largest problems in the near future is unemployment, the problem of increasing demand,” Kostin said. “We see that in the economy today, demand for credit resources is not very high.”
Frail investment demand and the risk of rising unemployment remain the “weak links” in a recovery, Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach said on Feb. 25.
Income from oil and gas, which account for about 25 percent of GDP, jumped to 3 trillion rubles, 45 percent more than planned, narrowing the budget deficit to 5.9 percent. Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings raised the country’s outlook as higher prices for commodities brought in extra revenue.
Manufacturers such as AvtoVAZ may aid the recovery as increasing sales and a government stimulus prod companies to boost output and replenish stockpiles.
The manufacturing revival, as well as increasing metals output, may help lead to broader economic growth after those sectors posted the steepest declines early last year, said Dmitry Polevoy, an economist at KIT Finance in Moscow.
“Their pace of growth will support positive numbers for the economy as a whole,” he said. “But the question remains if this growth will lift production to pre-crisis levels or just partly compensate for the plunge” last year.

TITLE: The FSB Dropped the Ball
AUTHOR: By Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov
TEXT: Every explanation offered for Monday’s Moscow metro bombings is connected in some way with the North Caucasus. Most refer to the fact that Federal Security Service commandos killed several well-known separatist leaders in the region over the past few weeks. But despite what would seem to be a logical connection, the theory that the Moscow bombings were a revenge killing remains extremely doubtful.
It surely took the terrorists more than a month to prepare for the metro bombings. After all, the organizers had to bring the suicide bombers to the capital, obtain the explosives and select a secret apartment as a safe house. It thus seems clear that the metro bombings were not a reaction to the March killings of separatist leaders as the FSB has claimed.
In fact, the militants began building up suicide bomber units as long as two years ago. Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov announced in April 2009 that the Riyadus Salikhin battalion of suicide bombers created by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who was killed in 2006, had been fully restored. He then repeatedly warned that the jihad would spread to all of Russia. After suicide bombings began in Vladikavkaz, it was clearly only a matter of time before they came to Moscow.
It would be a mistake to assume automatically that Chechens carried out Monday’s bombings. Recall that members of the “Karachayevo-Cherkessia Jamaat” staged metro bombings in 2004. In February 2004, 20-year-old Anzor Izhayev, a Karachay from Karachayevo-Cherkessia, blew himself up in a metro train car near the Avtozavodskaya metro station. And on Aug. 31, 2004, a female suicide bomber standing near the Rizhskaya metro station blew herself up, along with her escort, Nikolai Kipkeyev — also from Karachayevo-Cherkessia. Members of the same Jamaat also organized a series of terrorist attacks at bus stops in Voronezh and Krasnodar.
In any case, Moscow bombings represent a fundamental failure of the Kremlin’s strategy for fighting terrorism. Contrary to popular belief, these blasts cannot be attributed to foreign forces such as al-Qaida or other international terrorist organizations. Terrorism in Moscow and the North Caucasus definitely has local roots.
Unfortunately, it is doubtful that Monday’s tragedy will force the government to change its approach to combating terrorism. Although terrorism on Russian soil strikes fear and panic among the people, the same cannot be said for the country’s leaders. Under a strategy that the Kremlin adopted in the mid-2000s for fighting terrorism, the main criteria for evaluating the severity of an attack is the potential threat it poses to political stability, not the number of victims.
As a result, the focus of the government’s war on terrorism is, above all, to deny militants the ability to make the Kremlin look weak. After video showing former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and other leaders negotiating with Chechen terrorists in 1995 for the release of hostages in a Budyonnovsk hospital was shown all over the world, the Kremlin vowed not to make the same mistake again.
Separatist leaders adopted a different tactic after the hostage-takings in Moscow’s Dubrovka theater in 2002 and at Beslan School No. 1 in 2004. In the summer of 2004, a large group of militants invaded and temporarily seized control of an entire district in Ingushetia, and a new strategy for combating terrorism was developed to combat this new “guerilla terrorism.” The focus of the new strategy shifted toward preventing coordinated actions by large groups of militants, which requires using Interior Ministry troops. This came at the expense of taking measures to prevent individual suicide attacks, which requires top-notch intelligence and surveillance work — areas in which the FSB is either incompetent or simply has other priorities and doesn’t want to invest its resources in developing these capabilities.
It is obvious that the bombings on the Nevsky Express train in November and the Moscow metro attack will have no impact on political stability in Russia. That is why we can expect almost no substantive change in the Kremlin’s policy on fighting terrorism.
At the same time, it is possible that the authorities will use the Moscow blasts as a pretext for introducing new measures to increase control over society. This may include fingerprinting or creating a new DNA data base on all citizens, which the Investigative Committee suggested — again — within hours of Monday’s attack. Although this rhetoric sounds tough, it would be completely ineffective in preventing future terrorist attacks.

Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov are analysts with Agentura.ru, which tracks the security services. A longer version of this article appears on EJ.ru.

TITLE: The Caucasus Emirate
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Terrorist bombings of apartment buildings, markets and the metro have been ripping Russia apart for 11 years.
Although the media focus mostly on terrorist attacks in Moscow, most of the bombings took place in other cities — especially in the North Caucasus, where it was much easier for militants to execute them.
Terrorist attacks in Moscow attract the most attention. When they happen “somewhere in the North Caucasus,” few people are concerned. Few remember that the bombings of 1999 began not in Moscow apartment buildings in September but in Vladikavkaz in March. Who recalls how many times markets have been bombed in Vladikavkaz? Who can remember the horrible bombing of a commuter train in Yessentuki in the Stavropol region on Dec. 5, 2003, that left 47 people dead, or the bombing of a Samara marketplace on June 4, 2004?
The authorities have always tried to minimize the attacks in the hope that people will forget about them. Sometimes, they even understate the number of victims. I will never believe that only 40 people died in the bombing at the Avtozavodskaya metro station on Feb. 6, 2004. After all, three train cars that were jam-packed with rush-hour passengers were completely destroyed. And I cannot believe that only 10 people were killed in the Samara market bombing, where eyewitnesses reported seeing mounds of corpses.
And what about the simultaneous bombings of the two airplanes bound for Volgograd and Sochi on Aug. 24, 2004? For three days following those attacks, the authorities claimed that the airplanes crashed because of “mechanical failures.”
Most of these terrorists attacks were not carried out by Chechens but by other nationalities who were set on fighting a jihad. Ingush militants carried out the Vladikavkaz market attacks. The 1999 bombing in Buinaksk, in Dagestan, was carried out by local militants who were fighting to install “pure Islam” in the republic.
Several Moscow blasts were orchestrated by two men from the republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia — Achemez Gochiyayev and his brother-in-law Khakim Abayev. Gochiyayev also staged a series of simultaneous bombings in late 2000 and early 2001. He was joined by Denis Saitakov, a Tartar, and Rustam Akhmyarov, who is half-Bashkir, half-Russian.
Ever since Yunus-Bek Yevkurov took over as president of Ingushetia in October 2008, the republic has no longer been a safe haven for militants. As a result, the virtual Caucasus Emirate went on the offensive.
It is unlikely that the number of militants in the North Caucasus has dramatically increased, but their status has changed radically. Businesses throughout the region pay the radicals protection money, and officials who have bribed their way into influential Moscow positions do not dare to refuse paying kickbacks or protection money to the Wahhabis. In the North Caucasus, you have to play by local rules. If you betray one militant, another will kill you.
Under such conditions, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before another terrorist attack would follow the bombing of the Nevsky Express train in November. And considering the unique way that the authorities battle terrorism, we can expect that they will continue their ruthless war on terrorism by breaking up more marches of political dissenters and extorting more money from businesses.

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

TITLE: Tracing style
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Why Pyotr Konchalovsky? And why now? At the preview of the opening of a blockbuster exhibition of this artist — the first in St. Petersburg since 1985 — Yevgenia Petrova, deputy director of St. Petersburg’s State Russian Museum, said simply: “The time has come.”
“Pyotr Konchalovsky: To the Evolution of the Russian Avant-Garde” presents 93 canvasses and 19 graphic works by the artist from museums and private collections. The exhibition was organized jointly by the Konchalovsky Foundation, the Russian Museum and Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery.  
The painter, who was born in 1876 and died in 1956, was one of the patriarchs of the Kochalovsky-Mikhalkov family that is best known to the general public today through the film directors Nikita Mikhalkov and Andron Konchalovsky.
Pyotr Konchalovsky’s life was happy and very productive, despite the turbulent times in which he lived. His talent was quickly recognized, and during his lifetime his work was sought after by museums and private collectors. In the 1910s, together with other young Moscow artists, he created the Knave of Diamonds artistic society, which was regarded as a forerunner of Cubism. Konchalovsky actively participated in its exhibitions, and produced a total of about 600 paintings, along with innumerable drawings and watercolors.  
He traveled to Paris in 1898 for the first time when he was 20 years old, and was greatly impressed by the city’s artistic scene. But among all the trends and movements, the most influential on Konchalovsky was an exhibition of work by Paul Cezanne. It defined the young Russian artist’s own art for many years to come — he painted for years in the Cezanne style and became, in his own words, “a Russian Frenchman.”
Later travels in the pre-World War I period took him to Italy, Spain, Germany and, time and time again, back to France. Everywhere, he observed, listened, absorbed knowledge and worked. His Spanish paintings demonstrate how well he caught the mood, colors and way of life of traditional Spain.   
During this period, he settled in the South of France, painting seascapes and landscapes using the techniques of Cezanne. He also discovered other painters based in France, including Van Gogh, Matisse and Van Dongen, whose work he bought for his own collection.
Konchalovsky returned to Russia in 1925, eight years after the Bolshevik Revolution. As the exhibition catalogue explains, this was not an easy choice for the artist. Soon afterwards he discovered the ancient city of Veliky Novgorod, and was enchanted by it. The Novgorod series of his work at the Russian Museum’s exhibition presents portraits, genre painting, and still life images reflecting his fascination with folkloric art.  
Konchalovsky was by no means the only Russian painter to be captivated by Cezanne, but he remained under Cezanne’s spell considerably longer than others. Perhaps he found an escape in Cezanne that was acceptable to the official Union of Painters, of which he was now a member, while the avant-garde style of his youth and abstractionism were generally proscribed. Whatever the reason, Konchalovsky continued in the Cezanne tradition long after it faded in the West. 
His 1930s works resemble the majority of Soviet art of that time: realistic and figurative. One typical canvas of that period on display at the Russian Museum is “Spanish Pioneers” (1937.) Everything is there — craftsmanship, use of color, composition and technique — yet the painting still seems to be missing something. 
The curators of the exhibition seem unsure of what to say about Konchalovsky’s work dating from that period. They call him a “preserver of traditional values; cultural and artistic.” In any case, he was not an inventor; he was a follower. The question that inevitably arises as one wanders through this exhibition is: Where was his individuality? In what way did his work go beyond craft to become art?
One small hall is devoted to Konchalovsky’s graphic art. His watercolors and drawings are enchanting, lyrical and moody. Both the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery possess vast collections of his graphics, and in showcasing these works they highlight the fact that he was a talented master of graphic art.
Although Konchalovsky’s canvasses feature in the permanent collection of the Russian Museum, the vast new exhibition incorporates major works brought from other cities. It is particularly interesting to study and compare two enormous “family portraits,” one from the Russian Museum’s collection and the other from the Tretyakov — the “Portrait of Alexei Tolstoy.” In the latter, the author sits at a table laid with copious quantities of food and drink. The date, ‘1941,’ is liable to confuse spectators given this abundance, but Petrova says that the portrait was painted before the outbreak of war.
Another fascinating work is the “Portrait of the Violinist Romashkov” (1918,) in which the painter experiments with Cubism — the portrait is executed in the style and color scheme of this movement. 
Konchalovsky was a well-educated painter, and his travel experience is reflected in his canvasses. After the war, and in the 1950s, he painted large still life works in the style of the Dutch masters, depicting meat, poultry and vegetables against backdrops resembling the interiors of Dutch houses.
The exhibition concludes with some spectacular canvasses of lilacs. Here, Konchalovsky returns to his roots: One of his teachers in Moscow was Mikhail Vrubel, a master painter of lilacs. 
If the aim of the exhibition is to “rehabilitate” the painter, to prove that he was one of Russia’s most important and original artists and not just a follower of Cezanne, then the results are mixed. What is on display is a sequence of influences. This is, however, a blockbuster that art devotees should not miss.

“Pyotr Konchalovsky: To the Evolution of the Russian Avant-Garde” runs through mid July at the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum, 2 Nab. Kanala Griboedova, tel: 595-42-48. M: Nevsky Prospekt. It will then move to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

TITLE: Word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: A few weeks ago, Russians were outraged to learn that traffic cops ordered drivers and their passengers in civilian cars to form a æèâîé ùèò (human shield) to stop a criminal speeding toward them on the Moscow Ring Road. Like every other person in Russia, I wondered how I would now manage my kneejerk reaction to comply with a law enforcement officer’s orders and my new kneejerk fear of doing so. But unlike Russians, I was puzzled by the description of the criminal the cars were supposed to stop: áîðñåòî÷íèê.
After some searching, I learned two new words. Áîðñåòî÷íèê is a relatively new kind of criminal, a thief who specializes in stealing áîðñåòêè (small “man bags”) and other valuables from cars, often when they are stopped at a light or stuck in a traffic jam. This got me thinking about Russian names for portable things that hold valuables.
Áîðñåòêà (often spelled áàðñåòêà) was all the rage in the 1990s. It is a small bag — usually leather — often with a wrist or shoulder strap. The word is probably from the Italian borsetta (handbag). As far as I can tell — not being a specialist in men’s fashion accessories — this is called a men’s wrist bag or “man bag,” used to hold cash and personal documents. Big documents go in a ïîðòôåëü (a briefcase that has a flap closure) or êåéñ (a hard-cased briefcase that opens like a suitcase). 
But wait! More searching revealed that in 2010, all briefcases are, like, so yesterday that no self-respecting stylish man would carry one. Instead, Russian men are urged to carry a variety of “man bags,” like ïëàíøåò, which seems to have gotten its name from a bag that once held maps. My more sartorially informed sources tell me that it’s smaller than a tote bag, bigger than a áîðñåòêà and is longer than it is wide, usually with a shoulder strap. 
For carrying larger amounts of valuables, you might choose a äîðîæíàÿ ñóìêà (travel bag) or õîçÿéñòâåííàÿ ñóìêà (tote bag). These are presumably the kind of bags stolen in those fascinating crimes that occur from time to time in Moscow: Áîðñåòî÷íèêè ïîõèòèëè ó áåçðàáîòíîãî æèòåëÿ Ìîñêâû ñóìêó, â êîòîðîé íàõîäèëèñü ëè÷íûå äîêóìåíòû è 125 òûñÿ÷ ðóáëåé (Thieves stole a bag from an unemployed Muscovite; the bag contained personal documents and 125,000 rubles). So why does an unemployed guy have that much cash on him? It’s one of those Moscow mysteries.
The moral of all this is: Lock the doors the second you get in the car, hook the strap of your bag in the fastened seat belt, do not carry hundreds of thousands of rubles, and obey traffic cops at your own risk.

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

TITLE: Local saint in the spotlight
AUTHOR: By John Freedman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Golden Mask Festival, offering up some of the best Russian theater from last season, is well underway. In the coming week alone, Muscovites have the opportunity to see shows by the Bolshoi Drama Theater from St. Petersburg, the Volkov Theater from Yaroslavl and the Krasny Fakel Theater from Novosibirsk, as well as several Moscow productions that are nominated for awards.
One entry that has already come and gone in Moscow, but can be seen on a regular basis in St. Petersburg, is “Ksenia. Story of Love” by St. Petersburg’s Alexandriinsky Theater. It is an interesting work that deserves a look before moving on to whatever the festival brings next.
“Ksenia” is a relatively rare instance of a contemporary play written on a historical topic. In this case, it is the tale of Ksenia Petrova, an 18th-century noblewoman who, when her husband died suddenly without receiving last rites, took to living a life of poverty and piety.
That, however, was only the beginning. For Ksenia not only renounced wealth and status, she renounced her name and her sex. Donning the clothes of her late husband, and taking his name of Andrei Fyodorovich, she became known in St. Petersburg as a meek, though irrepressible, eccentric.
Called Ksenia the Blessed then and in later years, she was canonized as a saint by the Orthodox Church in 1988 and is unofficially regarded as the patron saint of St. Petersburg.
Vadim Levanov, a playwright from Tolyatti, spun this tale into a modern parable about living a life outside the bounds of social conventions. His Ksenia encounters a series of visitors on the bank of the Neva River — drunks, statesmen, aristocrats, a priest, a religious fanatic and a pair of individuals resembling, perhaps, Satan and God. Most are hostile in some way. A few are understanding.
At all times, Ksenia is alone. This is a woman who turned her entire life into an ongoing statement of faith, love and penitence and never looked to anyone but her God and herself for strength.
Levanov reveals the high cost of Ksenia’s decision through small, veiled incidents, starting with the easiest and most obvious. Two drunken hoodlums accost her on the riverbank, and one begins to force himself upon her. But it is not the threat of physical violence that truly tests this unusual woman. In fact, she is more than capable of answering aggression with her own manner of belligerence.
Far more difficult and dangerous to her is a visit from the prostitute Katya, a woman for whom Ksenia’s late husband held especial affection.
Here, all of a sudden, is a reason for Ksenia to doubt everything she has become. What if her husband was not worthy of the sacrifice she has made for him? What then does that say about her? Is her faith in God and herself enough to carry her past this blow?
Director Valery Fokin steered his production away from sentimentality every step of the way. In fact, there is something slightly cold and calculated about this show exploring the notions of love, sacrifice and faith. But it also has a clarity and directness that suits the character of Ksenia and the city in which she lived.
Fokin occasionally takes us outside the time and place of the Ksenia story, giving us a sense of the impact she had on the mentality and mythology of St. Petersburg. As Ksenia huddles by the river, busloads of modern-day tourists swarm around her, or crowds outside a prison wall in the late 1930s gather in the distance.
The performance begins with an appropriately eerie musical prologue composed by Alexander Bakshi — a howling and weeping sound that merges with the sounds of singing.
Yanina Lakoba turns in a fine, nuanced performance as Ksenia. There is something about her of a wounded bird, albeit one that utterly refuses to give in. Small and wiry in stature, Lakoba has big, round eyes that grow even larger and more expressive when they well up with tears.
The set by Alexander Borovsky makes maximum use of a large, empty stage. Towering over everything in back are white, arched walls reminiscent of a church. Separating the audience from the actors is a trough of water — a nod to the Neva — that runs from wing to wing.
“Ksenia” is part of the repertory at the Alexandriinsky Theater.

Golden Mask information may be obtained at www.goldenmask.ru or by telephone at (495) 755-8335. “Ksenia. Story of Love” (Ksenia. Istoria Lyubvi) plays Sat. at 7 p.m. in St. Petersburg at the Alexandriinsky Theater, 6 Ploshchad Ostrovskogo. M: Gostiny Dvor. Tel. 380-8050. 
www.alexandrinsky.ru. 
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

TITLE: Simply surreal
AUTHOR: By Hardie Duncan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On a quiet side street off Stary Nevsky, about 10 minutes from the Moscow train station, next door to a banya sits a nondescript illuminated edifice. The building’s large red metallic door misleadingly suggests a bank or an insurance agency, but in fact conceals the Italian restaurant Gusto, which replaced the deceptively named Simple Bar after the latter’s closure last year.
Gusto is an addition to the growing empire of restaurant group Probka, which includes the eponymous wine bar, the Mozzarella Bars, the high-end Ryba na Dache and the new Bar 812 on Zhukovskogo. 
The restaurant is separated into two floors, and heeding the hostess’ suggestion that upstairs would “provide a better setting for dinner,” we climbed the somewhat precarious spiral staircase. With mirrored rectangular pillars, track lighting and worn wood floors, strewn with an assortment of tall potted plants, the large dining room is a cross between an early ‘80s penthouse apartment and a yoga studio.
Sitting along a wall hung with portraits of winemakers in their wineries that appeared to have been ripped from a press campaign, we examined the large menu. An assortment of tartares and carpaccios, including an intriguing octopus carpaccio (690 rubles, $23.50), were tempting, but eventually we settled on simple appetizers of soup and salad.
Though palatable, the tomato soup with mozzarella and eggplant croquets (280 rubles, $9.50) lacked distinct flavors, and the fried shells of the croquets were too heavy. The spinach salad with chicken liver, goat’s cheese and almond slices (410 rubles, $14) was soggy from the meat, and the cheese and almonds did little to unite the dish, though the liver was well cooked, firm and creamy, with a nice pinkish coloring.
Sitting between courses over a nice glass of Malbec (230 rubles, $8), it was possible to take in the restaurant’s eclectic musical choices, which stayed mostly in the range of serious ‘70’s disco and early ‘80’s dance cuts from America, but also strayed into gospel and the occasional Italian-influenced ballad.
Gusto offers a range of pastas, including rigatoni with mascarpone, lemon and Parma ham (370 rubles, $12.50), and entrees, from the chicken cutlet alla Milanese (390 rubles, $13) to the Chilean sea bass (1,250 rubles, $42.50.) We settled on two of the day’s specials — to our regret.
The spinach gnocchi with gorgonzola and walnuts (320 rubles, $11) was mediocre, the pasta cooked accurately, but without its characteristically rich flavor. The sauce, on the other hand, was overpoweringly rich, the strong gorgonzola flavor obliterating any possibility of subtleties. The rabbit alla romana in Pecorino sauce with artichokes (680 rubles, $23) was not even palatable — the meat bland and the sauce reminiscent of thinned mayonnaise.
The dishes ranged from okay to bad, but even the best suffered from a lack of personality. It would be hard to mistake any of them for home cooking, but easy to mistake them for something churned out at a chain restaurant.
The evening took a turn for the weirder when the music drifted into a surreal dialogue between a demonic alien-voice and sped-up voice meant to sound like a baby, accompanied by a bombing drone.
Just as bizarrely, no one else in the restaurant seemed to find this musical choice odd for a mid-range Italian restaurant. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed we were listening to a baby and an alien argue.
A trip to the bathroom failed to provide the reality check that might have been expected. The walls are made of padded leather, creating the impression that one has wandered into a padded cell in an upscale mental institution. Or perhaps that was just the combination of bad food and strange music that no one else seemed to notice.
On returning to the table, the intro had transitioned into the wonderful, though no less odd, “Electric Spanking of War Babies,” by P-Funk, circa 1981, which heralded the arrival of dessert: A scoop of homemade lemon sorbet and a scoop of melon ice cream (100 rubles, $3.40) that were rich and zesty, refreshing and smooth, and by far the best, most intriguing flavors of the evening. 
At least we left with a good taste in our mouths, to go with the strange sounds in our heads.

TITLE: In the Spotlight: Celebrity Spats
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Last week, the tabloids were busy investigating a comedian advertising women’s underwear, a television host’s extravagant taste in interior decoration and a feud between the first lady of Russian pop and the plaited former first lady of Ukrainian politics.
Comedian Sergei Svetlakov, best known for his roles as a gay metal worker and two gastarbeiters’ loud-mouthed boss in sketch comedy “Nasha Russia,” is complaining that a Perm store has illegally taken his face to advertise women’s tights and underwear, Tvoi Den reported.
It’s a story that could come straight out of “Nasha Russia,” a takeoff of “Little Britain” that mocks provincial life. The offending poster doesn’t involve any sophisticated photographic fakery but is just a terrible cut-and-paste job, with black outlines around Svetlakov and a slogan offering knitwear and hosiery “in bulk or to individuals.”
The owner of the store told Tvoi Den on Wednesday that the campaign was inspired by Svetlavkov’s gay character in “Nasha Russia,” who tries to seduce his hard-bitten boss by saying he’s wearing red panties. “Everyone remembers his famous phrase about red panties,” she said. “I don’t see anything criminal here.”
Svetlakov’s lawyer disagreed, and said they would go to court unless the ad was removed.
Meanwhile, another popular comedian Maxim Galkin, who until a recent feud hosted the Russian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” was revealed in Express Gazeta to be a big fan of the Uzbek oligarch school of interior design.
Galkin, who has spent years building a mock French chateau in the Moscow region, has been inspired by the extravagant residence of Uzbek oligarch Salim Abduvaliyev, the tabloid wrote, showing photographs of the comedian being ushered around a house filled with gilt furniture, stuffed animals and murals of reclining women. Every item of furniture is decorated with the Versace logo and Abduvaliyev’s monogram, the newspaper added.
Abduvaliyev, one of Uzbekistan’s richest men and owner of the Pakhtakor football club, is not someone you would want to argue with on fine points of interior decoration: He is also the head of the Wrestling Association of Uzbekistan.
On a softer note, he is the “best customer” of Versace, Express Gazeta reported. Photographs of his house are even used in Versace advertising brochures, it said.
A Ferghana.ru article said Galkin was a guest at Abduvaliyev’s house in Tashkent, although it seems more likely that he was paid entertainment.
Inspired by Abduvaliyev, Galkin has now decided to add a hookah smoking room to his “Victorian-style” castle interior, Express Gazeta reported. The house has already been furnished with $100,000 worth of curtains, the newspaper added. And yes, you read that correctly: curtains.
It’s an odd image, but according to Express Gazeta, Russia’s top pop diva Alla Pugachyova likes to spend her evenings smoking a hookah in her Rubylovka mansion.
One guest who won’t be welcome now is former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Pugachyova has been photographed smiling broadly next to Tymoshenko. This winter, she filmed a concert called Christmas Meetings in Kiev, and Tymoshenko was a guest of honor.
In a major falling-out though, the then-prime minister’s people ordered that Pugachyova’s song “Rus,” or Old Russia, be cut out of a television broadcast of the concert because it could offend residents of Western Ukraine, Tvoi Den reported Tuesday.
A famous Soviet-era joke about Pugachyova runs that Leonid Brezhnev was a “political activist during the reign of Pugachyova,” and she is not a lady who takes insults lying down.
“When Alla found out, she stopped any communication with our premier,” organizers told Tvoi Den.

TITLE: 2010 Preview: Films to Look Out For
AUTHOR: By Katherine Tulich
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NEW YORK — 2010 looks set to be another bumper year for Hollywood films. While no one is expecting any to come even close to “Avatar’s” box-office-shattering record of $2 billion, there are still plenty of familiar formulas involving action, romance, animation and the pull of major stars to draw audiences to cinemas this year.
Australian actor Sam Worthington has wasted no time capitalizing on his “Avatar” success by moving onto his next big screen epic, a remake of “Clash of the Titans” playing the legendary figure from Greek mythology Perseus who goes into battle against Hades (Ralph Fiennes), the vengeful god of the underworld. 
“I didn’t really grow up learning Greek mythology, but this is a fun ride,” he said of the role. “It’s me in a dress with a couple of guys in dresses with swords fighting monsters. I don’t think you could call this a history lesson.”
Titans is not the only sandal epic for the year. Disney’s promised blockbuster from the team that made “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” will debut in May. Set in medieval Persia, it’s the story of a rogue prince (a very buffed Jake Gyllenhaal) who teams up with a rival princess to stop an angry ruler from unleasing a sandstorm that could destroy the world. Also coming in May is yet another retelling of the Robin Hood story, this time directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett as his Maid Marian.
With 3D animation now all the rage, prepare to be wearing your 3D specs often this year with the already released and warmly reviewed “How to Train Your Dragon,” the upcoming “Toy Story 3D” and yet another Shrek sequel, “Shrek Forever After” which, thankfully, they are promising will be the final chapter in the story.
Sequels remain one of Hollywood’s favorite insurance policies for a guaranteed audience. Robert Downey Jnr returns in “Ironman 2,” Milla Jovavich returns for “Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D,” the Twilight tween sensation continues with “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the Harry Potter saga begins to wind up with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” and the Sex and City girls are also returning. Their last big screen outing earned $400 million worldwide, so not only will the heels be high but so will expectations, as the girls take their misadventures from Manhattan to Abu Dhabi. There is also a flashback to the 80s. “You see what the girls look like in the 80s and we get to see how they all met,” says director Michael Patrick King.
This year also sees the return of Tom Cruise to the big screen with his romantic action comedy “Knight and Day” with Cameron Diaz. George Clooney goes from corporate high-flyer to expert assassin in his new suspense thriller “The American” which was shot in Italy, while Angelina Jolie stars in “Salt.” She plays CIA officer Evelyn Salt who is accused of being a Russian spy. Expect plenty of action and drama as she goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture.

TITLE: Director Darren Aronofsky Finds Latest Muse in ‘Swan Lake’
AUTHOR: By Katherine Tulich
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NEW YORK — Brooklyn-born director Darren Aronofsky feels a strong affiliation for his Russian heritage. “I have deep connections to Russia. My grandparents came from Russia and so many of my family traditions are connected to the country.”
It’s no wonder, then, that his latest film boasts some Russian inspiration. He’s just wrapped shooting on “Black Swan” in New York, a thriller about two dancers and their turbulent relationship, set around a production of Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake.” It’s already garnering lots of buzz because of a reported steamy sex scene between its two stars, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. 
Ukrainian born Kunis says she is thrilled to be working with Aronofsky, but admits the movie’s plotline is hard to pin down. “It’s Darren’s movie. Natalie Portman and I play rival ballerinas, and her character gets the lead in ‘Swan Lake.’ My character appears and is everything that she wants to be in life. Her character is very professional, very strict and very neurotic. And, my character is very loose. The talent that my character has in ballet comes naturally to her. She’s not technically as good as Natalie’s character, but she has more natural passion, and that’s what Natalie’s character lacks, and so it’s a battle. It’s a yin and yang. Ultimately, it’s a story of Natalie’s character being on a downward spiral, mentally, through ‘Swan Lake.’ And because everything is falling apart around her, crazy things start happening. As far as she and I go, it’s just an unfortunate tale. If you know the story of ‘Swan Lake,’ the Black Swan is the third act. It’s a movie.”
Aronofsky has always been known for his intelligent and startling film-making. He made his feature film directorial debut with the acclaimed independent feature “Pi,” which he also co-wrote. The film was honored with the Director’s Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. His second film, the critically acclaimed “Requiem for a Dream,” premiered at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and captivated both critics and audiences. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans, the film appeared on more than 150 Top-Ten Lists for 2000.
His last film, the emotionally charged “The Wrestler” single-handedly revived the career of its star Mickey Rourke. 
It was during the promotional tour for the movie that Aronofsky had the chance to visit St. Petersburg. “I loved St Petersburg when I visited with ‘The Wrestler.’ I can’t wait to get back. I hope to bring ‘Black Swan’ to the city. When I was in St. Petersburg, I took in a production of Swan Lake. The ballet was amazing, the dancers were staggering and beautiful and the musicians were tremendous. But I was stunned that the production had a happy ending. I’d never seen that before. And in Russia? Needless to say my film’s ending isn’t as bright.”

TITLE: Seagull Films Marks  Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Katherine Tulich
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NEW YORK — New York-based Alla Verlotsky is passionate about Russian film and this year the company she founded, Seagull Films, is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a leading distributor of quality Russian films in North America.
Verlotsky, who moved from Russia to New York in 1991, remembers feeling there “was a huge gap” in the U.S. distribution and presentation of Russian cinema. 
“There was a stigma attached to the classic and contemporary works from the region. It was this realization that inspired me to bring Russian film treasures, those beyond such world-renowned masters as Eisenstein, to American audiences,” Verlotsky says.
Since its inception, Seagull has premiered hundreds of titles through collaborations with some of the most prestigious film institutions in North America. Partner institutions and organizations include the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, Cinematheque Ontario in Toronto, the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, Pacific Film Archive in San Francisco, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago and the Harvard Film Archive in Boston, among others. 
Earlier this year the company premiered “A Room and a Half” by director and animator Andrei Khrzhanovsky at Film Forum, New York. The film focuses on an imaginary return to Russia of the eminent emigre writer Joseph Brodsky.
Seagull Films was also behind the U.S. premiere of Karen Shakhnazarov’s provocative update of Chekhov story “Ward No. 6,” Russia’s official Academy Award selection for best foreign language film this year. “Ward No. 6” was one of the films presented in “Celebrating Chekhov,” an event organized by Verlotsky which premiered at the Lincoln Center last November and then went on a National tour, which included screenings at the prestigious Palm Springs Film Festival.
In April, the distribution company will premier the documentary “Countryside 35 x 45” at the renowned Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina. 
From writer and director Yevgeny Solomin, the documentary shows the transition of many communities who are exchanging old Soviet passports for new Russian ones. A provincial photographer, Lutikov, travels between Siberian villages taking 35x45 millimeter passport photos of the villagers. The black and white film radiates a vitality and richness, despite the advancing years of many of the subjects. Armed with a bed sheet, a pocket comb and an extra jacket, Lutikov makes sure that all the men are appropriately attired and the women properly coiffed for their photos, and his unflagging humor while taking their photos adds a light touch to what might otherwise seem a bleak subject.
“I’m very excited to have the chance to show this to an American audience. It tells a unique but profound story of a transition that is happening now in Russia,” says Verlotsky.

TITLE: Afghan Opium Seizures Soar in 2009 Says DEA
AUTHOR: By Christopher Bodeen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL — Opium seizures in Afghanistan soared 924 percent last year because of better cooperation between Afghan and international forces, the top U.S. drug enforcement official said Thursday.
The Taliban largely funds its insurgency by profits from the opium trade, making it a growing target of U.S. and Afghan anti-insurgency operations. Afghanistan produces the raw opium used to make 90 percent of the world’s heroin.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration now has 96 agents in the country who have joined with Afghan counterparts and NATO forces in more than 80 combined operations last year, acting DEA administrator Michelle Leonhart said at a news conference in Kabul.
“That is the success of bringing the elements, civil, military Afghan partners together,” Leonhart said.
Leonhart did not give figures for total amounts of drugs seized but said the increase was 924 percent between 2008 and 2009. The United Nations reported 50 tons of opium were seized in the first half of last year.
International groups estimate that only about 2 percent of Afghanistan’s drug production was blocked from leaving the country in 2008 for markets in Central Asia and Europe.
The booming drugs trade has hindered U.S. and Afghan efforts to turn back the insurgency, especially in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban and the center of the drug trade.
A British soldier died in a roadside bomb explosion near the town of Babaji in Helmand province in the southern Taliban heartland, the British Ministry of Defense said.
In a sign of President Hamid Karzai’s increasingly tetchy relations with key international allies, the Afghan leader on Thursday accused UN and European Union officials of interfering in last year’s flawed presidential elections.
Karzai was forced into a runoff after a UN-backed commission threw out nearly a third of his ballots, but it was scrapped when the president’s main opponent dropped out.
He accused the officials of committing “vast fraud” in the disputed Aug. 20 ballot to push the election into a runoff, singling out former UN deputy chief Peter Galbraith, who was fired in a dispute with his boss about how to deal with fraud allegations, and the head of the EU observers, retired French general Philippe Morillon.
Karzai was installed for a second five-year term but his government remains weak as it faces a challenge from a resurgent Taliban.
Since the fall of the former Taliban regime in 2001 until 2007, the illegal cultivation of opium poppies skyrocketed. It has since started to decline, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has forecast that opium production could drop again in 2010.
Opium exports dropped from an estimated $3.4 billion in 2008, to $2.8 billion in 2009, the UNODC said. That represented a fall in opium’s share of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product from about one third to one quarter.
Leonhart said eradication efforts had already scored some success in the south, with opium cultivation down more than 30 percent in Helmand province that is responsible for half of Afghanistan’s total production.
She said the DEA was working with U.S. forces moving into the Taliban heartland, including “significant operations” in Helmand, where the poppy harvest season is in full-swing.
Such operations place the Afghan government and its foreign allies in a bind because eradicating poppy fields risks driving angry farmers, for whom opium poppy is a cheap, hardy, low-risk crop, into the arms of the insurgents because they fear the loss of their livelihood.
Efforts to replace opium with other crops such as wheat and vegetables haven’t scored wide success because profits for the farmers are much lower than for poppies. 
Leonhart gave no details of the strategy for the south, but stressed that the focus was not on farmers but on seizing drugs and weapons, arresting traffickers, and tracing the profits of the trade. 
“The money is what fuels the insurgency,” Leonhart said. 
In a sign that traffickers are striking back against such efforts, 13 people were killed Wednesday when a bomb concealed on a bicycle exploded near a crowd gathered to receive free vegetable seeds provided by the British government as part of a program to encourage them not to plant opium poppy. 
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, although the acting provincial head of agriculture, Ghulam Sahki, said the blast could have been the work of drug dealers. 
A recent NATO operation that drove militants from the Helmand town of Marjah struck at the heart of the Taliban opium business. While troops discovered acres (hectares) of poppy fields and numerous opium-packing operations, farmers were left alone.

TITLE: April Fools’ Tradition Alive In British Press
AUTHOR: By Jill Lawless
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — In today’s headlines: flavored newsprint, high-tech ferrets and the revelation that Britain’s greatest writer was — quelle horreur! — half French.
The stories Thursday weren’t true, it was just the British media carrying on its proud tradition of April Fools’ Day spoofs — the unofficial April 1 competition to dupe the naive and unsuspecting.
This year, The Sun reported it has developed the world’s first flavored newspaper page and invited readers to lick a square of newsprint “to reveal a hidden taste.” Just below the spot to be licked was the fine-print warning: “May contain nuts.”
The Daily Telegraph said an Internet service provider plans to use tunneling ferrets to deliver broadband services to remote areas, and BBC radio’s “Today” program ran an item claiming new research in Stratford-upon-Avon had revealed that William Shakespeare’s mother was French.
After noon — the traditional cutoff time for April Fools’ pranks — Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford revealed the story was a joke in honor of the day the French call “Poisson d’Avril,” or April Fish.
The Daily Mail, meanwhile, claimed staff at car-breakdown service the Automobile Association are to be fitted with jet packs to fly over traffic jams and reach stranded motorists.
The Daily Mirror ran a picture of Queen Elizabeth apparently taking a  flight with the budget airline easyJet, while The Independent reported that nuclear scientists want to turn London’s Circle Line subway into a particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It said there were safety concerns about “a mini-black hole being created at Westminster (home to Britain’s Parliament) when the two proton beams collide.”
Some say April Fools’ Day started with the creation of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, which changed the starting date of the new year from April 1 to Jan. 1. But associations between April 1 and tomfoolery stretch back to the Middle Ages, and some say the day’s origins lie in ancient Indian and Roman festivals that celebrated foolishness and misrule.
The British media prides itself on a long tradition of elaborate hoaxes. In 1957, the BBC news program “Panorama” aired a story about the unusually strong spaghetti harvest that year in southern Switzerland. Straight-faced and convincing, it is now considered a classic April Fools’ hoax.
Several spoofs on Thursday targeted Britain’s next national election, which must be held by June 3.
The Guardian reported the Labour Party plans to tackle rumors that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has anger-management issues with a campaign slogan “Vote Labour. Or else.”
It said strategists plan posters based on classic films “casting Brown as The Gordfather, the Terminator or Mr. Brown from ‘Reservoir Dogs.’”

TITLE: Lebanese Man Faces Beheading in Saudi
AUTHOR: By Bassem Mroue
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT — The lawyer of a Lebanese TV psychic who was convicted in Saudi Arabia of witchcraft said Thursday her client could be beheaded this week and urged Lebanese and Saudi leaders to help spare his life.
Attorney May al-Khansa said she learned from a judicial source that Ali Sibat is to be beheaded on Friday. She added that she does not have any official confirmation of this. Saudi judicial officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
A Lebanese official said Beirut has received no word from its embassy in Riyadh about Sibat’s possible execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The Saudi justice system, which is based on Islamic law, does not clearly define the charge of witchcraft.
Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling. These practices are considered polytheism by the government in Saudi Arabia, a deeply religious Muslim country.
Al-Khansa said she has called upon Saudi King Abdullah to pardon Sibat, a 49-year-old father of five. She also says she is in contact with Lebanese officials about the case.
She added that Sibat did not make predictions in Saudi Arabia and was neither a Saudi citizen nor a resident in Saudi and therefore should have been deported rather than tried there.
Sibat made predictions on an Arab satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police during his pilgrimage to the holy city of Medina in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November.
“Ali is not a criminal. He did not commit a crime or do anything disgraceful, “ al-Khansa said. “The world should help in rescuing a man who has five children, a wife and a seriously ill mother.”
She added that Sibat’s mother’s health has been deteriorating since her son was sentenced to death.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said last year that Sibat’s death sentence should be overturned. It also called on the Saudi government to halt “its increasing use of charges of ‘witchcraft,’ crimes that are vaguely defined and arbitrarily used.”
Last year, the rights group presented a series of cases in the kingdom, including that of Saudi woman Fawza Falih, who was sentenced to death by beheading in 2006 for the alleged crimes of “witchcraft, recourse to jinn (supernatural beings)” and animal sacrifice.
On November 2, 2007, Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian pharmacist, was executed for sorcery in the Saudi capital of Riyadh after he was found guilty of having tried “through sorcery” to separate a married couple, Human Rights Watch said.

TITLE: Top Iranian Nuclear Negotiator Heads To China for Talks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN — Iran’s state media says the country’s most senior nuclear negotiator is heading to China in order to discuss possible UN sanctions against Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.
Iranian state television reported Wednesday that Saeed Jalili will travel to China Thursday for talks with senior Chinese officials “concerning the nuclear program.”
The U.S. and other Western powers are pushing for a new round of UN sanctions on Iran over its defiance to halt its uranium enrichment program.
China wields veto power on the Security Council and has consistently been a vocal opponent of sanctions on Iran. U.S. officials have said they believe Beijing may be changing its stance.
The U.S. and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the charges.