SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1565 (26), Friday, April 16, 2010
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TITLE: Russia 
Suspends Adoptions To U.S.
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A U.S. government delegation will arrive in Moscow next week to discuss rules for American parents who want to adopt Russian children, setting the stage for a resolution of a years-long irritant in U.S.-Russian relations.
Russia suspended all adoptions to U.S. families on Thursday until the two countries can agree on procedures, the Foreign Ministry said, the Associated Press reported. Adoptions, a hot-button issue after several Russian children died at the hands of their U.S. parents in recent years, jumped to the forefront last Thursday when a single Tennessee mother sent her 7-year-old Russian son to Moscow with a note saying she no longer wanted him.
President Dmitry Medvedev denounced the action as a “monstrous deed” by a “bad family.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was “the last straw” in a series of bad adoptions and threatened to suspend all adoptions to American families.
But shock and sympathy has also poured in from U.S. government officials, the U.S. parents of adopted Russian children and other Americans.
Although the mother’s actions were dismaying, the incident will not escalate into an international scandal and, on the contrary, promises to ultimately improve relations by convincing the U.S. government to finally discuss a long-running Russian demand for an international agreement on adoptions, analysts said.
“I don’t see any [Kremlin] desire to turn this into a political issue,” said Fyodor Lyukanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs.
Final arrangements are now being worked out for a visit next week by a State Department team led by Michael Kirby, a deputy assistant secretary who handles adoption issues, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Monday.
“In fact, this trip was being put together even before last week’s incident,” Crowley told reporters in Washington, according to an e-mailed transcript. “But clearly, this latest situation will be among the issues discussed.”
He did not give precise dates for the visit.
U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle said the team would discuss “an agreement on bilateral understanding” to ensure the welfare of adopted Russian children.
“Many thousands of Russian children have been adopted by American families, and we hope that children here who are unable to find a family in Russia to adopt them can continue to have this chance,” Beyrle said in a statement.
U.S. families adopted about 1,600 Russian children last year, according to the National Council For Adoption, a U.S. nongovernmental organization.
Another senior U.S. official, Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, will visit Moscow, St. Petersburg and Barnaul soon, and she might also discuss adoptions, the State Department said.
Lavrov said Friday that an accord to ensure the well-being of adopted children must be reached before further adoptions are approved, and he noted that Washington had balked at signing such an agreement in the past.
Medvedev has appeared to support a halt in adoptions, telling U.S. television network ABC News on Friday: “We should understand what happens to our children, or we will have to cease the practice of adoption of our children by American parents.”
At least 15 Russian children have been killed by their U.S. parents since the mid-1990s, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office. More than 60,000 Russian children were adopted by Americans over the same period, according to the National Council For Adoption. Among the more prominent parents is former U.S. astronaut Thomas Stafford, who adopted two Russian teenage boys in 2004.
But children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said up to 15 children adopted by Russian parents die every year. “If we compare the statistics for dead children in Russia with America, it is not in our favor,” he told reporters Monday.
About 1,220 children adopted by Russian parents died between 1993 and 2008, according to data compiled by the children’s ombudsmen’s office.
Astakhov recommended on Tuesday that the Justice Ministry take over adoption issues from the Education and Science Ministry, and said Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko supported the idea.
Analysts believe that Russia will let the incident blow over if the United States agrees to the adoption agreement.
But Elisabeth Bartholet, a professor of law at Harvard University and an expert on international adoptions, cautioned that better enforcement of existing adoption procedures would be better than negotiating the agreement.
“Adding new restrictive requirements to the adoption process typically simply means that children will be kept in institutions for longer,” she told The St. Petersburg Times. “This makes them much harder to parent and will increase the chances that the adoption will not work out.”
Artyom Savelyev’s adopted grandmother took the boy to Washington last week and sent him unaccompanied on a United Airlines flight to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, where a tour guide hired for $200 by the grandmother picked him up and deposited him at the Education and Science Ministry. The boy was carrying a note from his mother, Torry Hansen, that accused Russian orphanage workers of lying about the boy during the adoption process.
“He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues. … After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child,” the letter said.
The deputy director of the orphanage in the Primorye region town of Partizansk denied misleading Hansen and expressed surprise that the adoption had not worked out. Nadezhda Guseva said Hansen had visited the boy three times before the adoption was finalized last September and had “made a positive impression” with the staff. “She behaved like a woman who was ready to adopt a child,” she said.

TITLE: Advertisers Prepare for Market Shakeup
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — It’s not yet clear what shape the advertising market will take once new anti-monopoly laws come into effect next year, but market players are scrambling to prepare for the shakeup.
In December, the State Duma passed a bill that will prohibit nationwide television channels from signing contracts with sales houses whose market share exceeds 35 percent.
In an industry heavily dominated by a single sales house, that means that a big shuffle is ahead.
According to the bill, current agreements between advertisers and sales houses will remain in force for one year, after which channels will have to choose a contractor based on the results of auctions or competitive tenders.
The new rules, which go into effect on Jan. 1, 2011, will change the current structure of ad sales, resulting in increased competition for television channels and the creation of new advertising firms, said Alexander Mitroshenkov, president of Transkontinentalnaya MediaKompania, a media group operating Klass!, Poka Vse Doma and other TV companies.
“Since one sales house can’t control more than 35 percent of the market, it’s clear that there will likely be four of them,” he said.
Video International is currently far and away the dominant advertising firm in Russia, controlling 60 percent of the market. It sells advertisements for Channel One, VGTRK, CTC Media, Prof-Media and AF Media.
The other two contenders on the market are Gazprom-Media and Alkasar, which together control more than 30 percent of the market. The companies sell advertisements for NTV and TNT, both owned by Gazprom-Media Holding, as well as for TV-Center, which is owned by City Hall.
In October, Gazprom-Media lost contracts with two major channels owned by National Media Group, Ren-TV and St. Petersburg’s Channel 5, which were snapped up by Video International earlier this year.
The industry’s inevitable changes will likely follow one of two scenarios, said Mitroshenkov, who is also vice president of the industry association AKAR.
In the first scenario, one advertising firm would sell advertising to Channel One and Prof-Media, which owns TV3, 2x2 and MTV-Russia, while another firm would advertise for VGTRK, which owns Rossia One and its affiliates, and AF Media Holding, which owns 7TV and Muz TV. 
A third firm would then sell for CTC Media’s channels, which include CTC, Domashnii and DTV.
Mitroshenkov wouldn’t give specifics, but because Video International has a contract with Channel One until December 2012, the first scenario may see the advertising firm drop its contracts with National Media Group, VGTRK, AF Media Holding and CTC Media.
Mitroshenkov said Gazprom Media might be eager to regain its lost contract with National Media Group.
In the second scenario, he said, one firm could work with Channel One and National Media Group and another would deal with VGTRK and AF Media Holding, while the third would consolidate business with Gazprom-Media’s channels, TV-Center and Third Channel. Under this scenario, a fourth firm would pop up that would manage CTC Media and Prof-Media.
With this scenario, Video International could continue selling ads for Channel One and National Media Group, while dropping VGTRK, AF Media Holding, CTC Media and Prof Media. Gazprom Media, on the other hand, would retain contracts with NTV, TNT and TV-Center.
Kommersant reported Friday that Yury Kovalchuk’s Bank Rossia is considering acquiring a controlling stake in Video International. Market players said that if such a deal went through, the second scenario would be the most likely.
Given Channel One’s leading position on the market, the new alignment will largely depend on the strategy that it chooses, Mitroshenkov said.
Channel One’s market share exceeded 18 percent in 2008, while that of Rossia One, part of VGTRK holding, stood at 14.5 percent, Kommersant reported.

TITLE: Russia, U.S. Try To Secure Interests
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow and Washington began openly negotiating to secure their interests in Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, offering money and assistance to the interim government, even as it negotiated an uneasy truce with supporters of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake arrived in Bishkek for talks with interim leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin held talks in Moscow with her top deputy, Almazbek Atambayev.
Separately, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Sechin and other ministers to discuss the situation in Kyrgyzstan. Finance Minster Alexei Kudrin said Russia would provide $50 million in grants and loans, while Sechin said the country’s oil producers could provide 25,000 metric tons of oil products.
Blake, the highest-ranking official to visit Bishkek since last week’s violence left more than 80 people dead, said he was “optimistic” about the new leaders’ actions and that Washington was “prepared to help.”
The jostling for influence comes at a crucial time for the fledgling government, which accuses Bakiyev of leaving the state’s coffers nearly empty and of threatening renewed violence by refusing to resign.
Political pundits said that once stability returns, the situation in Kyrgyzstan could afford Moscow and Washington a chance to show a true “reset” of relations — meaning neither would treat allegiances with Bishkek as a zero-sum game.
That competitive relationship, while politically destabilizing for Bishkek, has been a regular source of income since Bakiyev came to power amid street protests in 2005.
Moscow was widely seen as pressing Bakiyev to force the United States out of its air base in Manas, a key transit point for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, after giving the country $2 billion in loans and aid.
Washington won an extension of the lease after agreeing to pay more in rent and offer additional financial support.
Russia has not been shy about expressing its frustration with Bakiyev, leading some analysts and Western media to speculate that Moscow had at least given its tacit support to the opposition movement.
Those suspicions were only deepened after Russia was the first out of the gate to recognize the new government and even to criticize Bakiyev for his management.
“President Bakiyev is a very consistent person: He first said he had made a consistent decision to dismantle the U.S. military base and then that he had made a consistent decision to keep it as an international transit center,” President Dmitry Medvedev said ironically during a speech Tuesday at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
It was Bakiyev’s inconsistency as a politician that put Kyrgyzstan on the brink of civil war, Medvedev said, adding that if he did not step down, it could turn into a “second Afghanistan.”
Putin said shortly after the uprising that Bakiyev’s nepotism was to blame for the public backlash.
Despite the unexpected treatment of the Kyrgyz leader, whom Medvedev and Putin both congratulated last year upon his re-election, and evident discontent over his ever-changing allegiances, political analysts and top Russian officials said Moscow had nothing to do with the regime change.
“There was a lot of irritation in Moscow over Bakiyev, but to replace him with anyone better, Russia would need to have built contacts with a strong, popular and united opposition, and that’s not the case you see here,” said Alexander Knyazev, a Bishkek-based Central Asia analyst with Moscow’s Institute for the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Indeed, the new leadership is an assortment of politicians with different agendas, almost all of whom had joined Bakiyev to oust Askar Akayev, the country’s longtime leader, in 2005. Otunbayeva was a leader of that revolt but was swiftly sidelined and pushed into the opposition by Bakiyev after he was elected president.
Knyazev said several Kyrgyz opposition leaders had approached him about putting them in touch with senior Russian officials, but he said the contact did not go beyond his institute’s head and a State Duma deputy.
Interestingly, just hours before being evicted from his office on April 7 by an angry mob, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov said opposition leader Temir Sariyev, who was arrested earlier that day, had confessed to meeting Putin in Moscow and securing his support.
But Usenov called the claims “all lies,” according the 24.kg Kyrgyz online news service.
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told The St. Petersburg Times that the prime minister never had any contacts with Sariyev or any other members of the Kyrgyz opposition.
Russian leaders traditionally have supported incumbent rulers in former Soviet states, but in this case Moscow is showing that it is ready to bend its rules for disloyal allies, said Fyodor Lukyanov, a political analyst and editor of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine.
He said the change was a signal to Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who will visit Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, and his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rakhmon, who both try to play Russia against the United States in the region.
“The biggest challenge for Moscow and Washington now is not to slide into a zero-sum game in Kyrgyzstan and begin competing in buying off the local politicians,” Lukyanov said.

TITLE: Lawyer Links Handgun To Two More Murders
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The same handgun was used in this week’s killing of a Moscow judge and last year’s slaying of a human rights lawyer and a journalist, a lawyer with close ties to ultranationalist groups said Wednesday. Authorities denied this.
Moscow City Court Judge Eduard Chuvashov was gunned down Monday outside his apartment in central Moscow. His colleagues said the murder was retaliation for long prison sentences he gave several months ago to members of White Wolves, a group of mostly teenage neo-Nazis that killed and assaulted dark-skinned non-Slavs.
Chuvashov was also included in a group of judges for the upcoming trial of two ultranationalists who were arrested and charged with the January 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.
Their lawyer, Alexei Baranovsky, said a ballistic examination showed the same gun was used in all three murders. He said he had learned that through his contacts in law enforcement agencies.
The Investigative Committee said in a statement that the claim was untrue. It said that the pistol used in the killing of Markelov and Baburova had been found during a search and remained in investigators’ possession.
On Wednesday, Chuvashov was buried at a Moscow cemetery after a funeral attended by dozens of judges and law enforcement officials.
“He suffered for his honesty, principles and determination,” ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said.
Human rights groups say that in recent years Russian skinheads and neo-Nazis formed well-organized terrorist groups that began targeting officials, rights activists and militant anti-racist groups.

TITLE: Poland Prepares to Release Readings From Black Box
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: WARSAW — Poland’s chief prosecutor promised Thursday to release details of the cockpit voice recorders from the plane that crashed near Smolensk on Saturday, killing the president and dozens of top officials, Reuters reported.
President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, Polish military leaders and senior opposition figures were traveling to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest when the plane went down.
Air traffic controllers in Smolensk say they urged the pilot to divert to another airport because of thick fog but he ignored the advice and made four attempts to land before hitting treetops and crashing.
Some Polish media have speculated that Kaczynski, in his determination not to miss the Katyn event, may have ordered the pilot to try to land the plane.
“No matter what the black boxes hold, it will be revealed to the public,” prosecutor Andrzej Seremet told Tok FM radio Thursday.
“The conversations, their content, will be vital in terms of proving or disproving the various hypotheses. I will not oppose revealing the contents unless they are of an intimate nature,” Seremet said. “The worst thing for the prosecutors to do would be to try to selectively release the information, as that could expose us to accusations of manipulating the investigation.”
Russian investigators are decoding the two cockpit voice recorders recovered from the plane and have said a preliminary review could be completed by the end of this week.
Interfax quoted what it said was a source close to the investigation commission saying the pilots did not seem to have been under pressure from Kaczynski.
“So far there is no evidence that any of the high-ranking passengers demanded that the pilots land at Smolensk. The voice recorder, whose decoding has been completed, did not register any pressure on the crew from their conversation,” it said.
The speculation that Kaczynski may have ordered the pilot to land in Smolensk is based in large part on an incident in 2008, when the president flew to Georgia to show his solidarity with that country during its brief war with Russia.
Kaczynski grew irate when his pilot refused to land in the capital, Tbilisi, because of safety concerns, later accusing him publicly of cowardice for diverting to Azerbaijan and even pushing for him to be fired.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has stormy relations with Warsaw after a crackdown on ethnic Poles, said Wednesday that he believed Kaczynski was responsible for the crash, Interfax reported.
“The president asks whether the plane can be landed in this situation,” he said. “But it’s nevertheless the president who has the final say. It’s he who decides whether the plane is to land or not.”

TITLE: Kremlin Redraws Graft Plan
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has refined his anti-corruption campaign by topping up his “National Plan Against Corruption” with a new “National Strategy.”
Both are contained in a 4,500-word presidential decree published Wednesday. The strategy portion lays out a midterm government policy, while the plan is to be updated every two years, the Kremlin said in a statement published on its web site.
“Analysis of the work of government and nongovernmental organizations … has shown two separate documents are necessary,” the statement said.
The new strategy, key elements of which were announced last week by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, envisages harsher fines, greater public oversight of government budgets and sociological research.
Transparency International  ranks Russia 146th out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index, saying bribe-taking is worth about $300 billion a year. Medvedev has made the fight against corruption a hallmark of his presidency since taking office in 2008.
Anti-corruption campaigners were divided over the benefits of Wednesday’s decree, with cautious praise coming from Transparency International. “This is good news because for the first time we have a road map of where to go,” the organization’s country director for Russia, Yelena Panfilova said.
But Panfilova said the main deficiency was a widespread absence of public debate about how to tackle the problem.
“Such a strategy should be the subject of public discussion, but instead it has been developed within the executive without much participation from society or the media,” she said.

TITLE: Air Traffic Controllers Go Hungry
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Air traffic controllers directing planes flying over half of Russia’s European territory and hundreds of other workers have gone on a hunger strike to demand the ouster of their boss over “totalitarian” working conditions, their union said Wednesday.
The union said flight safety would not be affected.
The federal agency that manages flights in Russian airspace, the State ATM Corporation, denied that any air traffic controllers had gone on a strike.
About 2,000 air traffic controllers and technical workers from 34 airports nationwide are taking part in the hunger strike during off-duty hours, said Sergei Kovalyov, president of the Federal Union of Air Traffic Controllers.
“They don’t fast at work because flight safety has to be ensured,” Kovalyov told The St. Petersburg Times.
A total of 6,500 air traffic controllers and a similar number of technical workers are employed at airports nationwide, Kovalyov said.
He said all 300 controllers and technical workers serving half of Russia’s European territory, including the entire Southern Federal District, were on strike at the air traffic control center in Rostov-on-Don, where the labor action started Friday.
Workers at other airports joined the strike but air traffic controllers in Moscow and St. Petersburg are not participating in the strike.

TITLE: IOC Approves Sochi Building Progress
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The International Olympic Committee praised construction work for the Sochi Winter Games after an inspection of the site Wednesday, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to respect the environment.
But environmental groups complained that their advice was being ignored and warned of dangerous consequences.
“Progress is very significant,” said Jean-Claude Killy, chairman of the IOC commission that is monitoring the work in Sochi.
He said IOC inspectors were “on most accounts very satisfied” with what they saw on the visit.
The committee was “deeply impressed” by the attention to the environment, the 24-hour workdays, the government’s focus on the project, and “everything we have seen,” he said.
Putin, speaking during a teleconference call, touted the Olympic project for giving “unprecedented development” to southern Russia and assured Killy that Russia was ready to listen to outside advice and comply with recommendations.
“Protection of the environment is one of our priorities,” Putin added. “We are trying to not only preserve nature, but to restore what has been lost because of human activity.”
While Putin stressed the government’s environmental awareness, conservation groups said their advice has been ignored in Sochi, leading to the complete loss of important nature areas. Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have stopped working with the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee and Olimpstroi, the state corporation overseeing construction, “until there is a dialog at the highest level with the authorities” to guarantee the thorough monitoring of all sites and adequate compensation measures, said WWF deputy director Pyotr Gorbunenko.
He said IOC inspectors might appreciate seeing truck tires washed, but they do not see that dirty construction water simply flows into the nearby Mzymta River.
“Of course there are things to show on these commission visits, but at what cost do these things come?” Gorbunenko said.
Last month, the WWF paid for laboratory tests of water from the Mzymta River and found that concentrations of arsenic, phenols and oil exceeded maximum permissible levels by 300 percent, 3,500 percent, and 6,000 percent, respectively, he said.
“Nobody is monitoring the sources of this pollution,” Gorbunenko said, adding that monitoring was needed to fulfill the environmental goals announced by Putin.
He warned that water from the Mzymta River could run into drinking water supplies.
Mountain tests were taken around Krasnaya Polyana and Esto Sadok, where Rosa Khutor and Gazprom are building hotels and sports venues.
Rosa Khutor, a major resort developed by Vladimir Potanin’s Interros, is one of the projects that will be completed this year, Putin said. Others include the new airport and seaport, both built by Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element, and two power stations, he said.

TITLE: Legislators Focus On Health Food
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg legislators and quality control specialists are working on a draft law aimed at supporting the production and distribution of food items for people with special nutritional needs.
Groups who would benefit from the proposed legislation include pregnant women, breast-feeding mothers, children, teenagers, athletes and allergy-sufferers, members of the bill’s working group said at a meeting on Tuesday.
“The number of people in the city with special nutrition requirements is growing every year,” said Sergei Gudkov, head of the Northwest Consumer Rights Foundation. “However, the volumes and ranges of these products available in St. Petersburg are very limited.”
Vladimir Zuikov, a deputy in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said that the city lacks stores offering health foods and foods tailored for diabetics or people suffering from allergies. There is also a shortage of stores selling organic products.
Since the production of such foods is often more expensive, therefore pushing up their prices and reducing their competitiveness, producers of health foods should receive benefits in the form of public advertising and lower taxes, Zuikov said. 
“For that reason, this work should be initiated with the help of the federal authorities,” he said.
Tatyana Nikitina, deputy head of Sputnik, one of the few companies in St. Petersburg specializing in the production of organic products, said that customers can rarely find such items in their local stores.
“The real problem here is that we can’t compete in terms of price with the producers of similar foods that are made with various additives,” Nikitina said.  
The higher price for organic food puts off many individual shoppers. “For instance, our salted herring, which contains no additives, only goes to schools and to the cafeterias of large enterprises,” said Nikitina. “Our other organic fish products, such as smoked salmon and trout produced under the Rybny Ryad brand, are only distributed directly to restaurants and cafes.”
Alexander Schyogolyev, general director of Sputnik, said that although the company’s plant only produces fish at present, there are plans to produce organic meat products. The company is seeking financing for the construction of a meat section, which will cost another 500 million rubles ($17.2 million).
Alexei Gurniyev, head of the Agriculture Industry Commission at the St. Petersburg branch of the United Russia party, said Russian customers are currently subject to very poor price to quality ratios on the country’s food market.
“The market has too many intermediaries who ramp up the prices of products,” he said. 
Gurniyev said that ideally, producers should make more direct sales, which could also speed up the process of getting the goods to their end-users.
“Ideally, meat and dairy products should go on sale as fast as possible so that they don’t go off. If that’s done, then producers won’t have to add various preservatives that aren’t good for people,” he said.
Gurniyev said that the Russian food market should also focus more heavily on homegrown products rather than buying imported foods which require further preservatives as a result of their extended transportation periods.

TITLE: U.S. to Stop Treating Poultry With Chlorine
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. producers agreed to stop using chlorine to treat poultry in order to resume supplies to Russia, Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, said Tuesday.
“We have information that U.S. factories are intensively working to give up treating poultry with solutions containing chlorine,” Onishchenko told Interfax, adding that poultry producers said they were ready to resume exports as soon as possible.
Onishchenko said Russia would start working with certain producers after they provide official confirmation that they would supply poultry that hasn’t been treated with chlorine.
Russia froze imports of U.S. poultry on Jan. 1 after long-planned regulations that forbid the import of poultry treated with chlorine — a production method used by many U.S. producers — went into effect.
Russia and the United States have already held two rounds of negotiations and created a draft of an agreement on renewed imports.
Onishchenko didn’t specify which companies had agreed to the overhaul or when exports could be resumed.
Albert Davleyev, director of the Russian office of the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council, said he could not comment on the course of the negotiations.
The Russian Poultry Union, a nonprofit organization representing Russian poultry producers and suppliers, has no information on the U.S. companies’ intention to resume supplies, said Galina Bobylyova, the union’s head.
“Everything depends on how actively they will adopt [the new technology] and which technology they will implement. It will take them six months to a year,” she told The St. Petersburg Times.
She also said Russian poultry producers were increasing production volumes to fulfill the government’s order to replace imports in the coming years.
Chicken is the top U.S. export to Russia, bringing in $600 million to $700 million a year to producers in 38 U.S. states, but that may change in the coming years if domestic producers edge out U.S. imports.
President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new “food security” doctrine in February, calling for, among other things, 85 percent of all meat consumed in the country to be produced domestically.
In January, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia would be able to cease all poultry imports by 2015.
Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said Tuesday that meat production would increase 5 percent this year.
The volume of domestic poultry production increased by 14.6 percent in 2009, and Russia will become a net exporter of poultry over the next 4 years to 5 years, the ministry said last month.

TITLE: Vekselberg Wants To Tap Perelman To Work at New ‘Silicon Valley’
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A U.S. institute hasn’t yet coaxed Grigory Perelman out of his apartment to accept a $1 million prize, but billionaire Viktor Vekselberg would like to do one better: convince the reclusive St. Petersburg mathematician to work in Russia’s “Silicon Valley.”
Vekselberg is looking for talented scientists after President Dmitry Medvedev appointed him late last month to oversee the creation of the Skolkovo innovation center in the Moscow region.
The project, which the Kremlin has pushed as its answer to the United States’ Silicon Valley, is a key point in Medvedev’s program to diversify the economy through investment in innovation.
“Our project is open to all talented and enterprising people and offers an opportunity to work,” Vekselberg said in an interview with LifeNews.ru.
“Everyone is welcome to participate — and Grigory Perelman in particular,” he said.
Perelman, 43, made headlines last month when the private U.S. Clay Mathematics Institute announced that it had decided to award him $1 million for proving a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space and was waiting for him to accept the money. The institute’s head said Perelman had told him that he would need to think about it.
Perelman, who has previously expressed a lack of interest in money and fame, did not accept a prestigious math award at a ceremony in Madrid in 2006, preferring instead to stay at home with his elderly mother in the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Roza’s Revolution
AUTHOR: By Ariel Cohen
TEXT: The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has been caught flat- footed once again — this time in Kyrgyzstan. Last April 7, as the opposition stormed the presidential palace in Bishkek, not far from where the strategic Manas U.S. air force base is located, Washington was celebrating its New START arms control treaty with Russia.
The administration didn’t anticipate the annual spring riots escalating and sweeping away corrupt President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his clan. Nor did it move fast enough to distance itself from Bakiyev and recognize the temporary government led by Roza Otunbayeva.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Otunbayeva only on Saturday, as did Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president in charge of Russia. This tardiness may be a costly mistake. Otunbayeva — who has served as Kyrgyzstan’s foreign minister three times, as well as its ambassador to Washington and London — is a moderate. She is also close to Moscow, and so are her allies. Once in office, she immediately sent her deputy to meet with the Kremlin. One likely topic at those initial Moscow talks was the future of the U.S. base in Manas — no small annoyance to Russia, which also has a military outpost nearby.
Russia has supported “Roza’s Revolution,” despite its past opposition to Eurasia’s color revolutions: the Rose Revolution of 2003 in Georgia, the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine and the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. The reason is likely geopolitical: Bakiyev, like the leaders of those other uprisings, was too close to the United States for Moscow’s comfort, as well as to China.
Bakiyev’s rampant corruption and nepotism included appointing his young son, Maxim, as head of the nation’s development agency and taking over the majority of businesses in the country, including lucrative fuel supply to the Bishkek airport.
For a while, the opposition and the media were free to protest Bakiyev’s regime. But in the last couple of years, he has been on a rampage, arresting and reportedly even killing journalists and opposition leaders.
Because of the war in Afghanistan, Washington had to hold its nose and deal with Bakiyev and his predecessor. But ties to Moscow are strong in the heart of Asia. Bakiyev, his equally corrupt predecessor Askar Akayev — and Otunbayeva for that matter — are all Soviet-educated politicians with an affinity for Russian language and culture.
In 2007 and 2008, Russia put significant pressure on Kyrgyzstan to kick the United States out of the Manas air base that is crucial to resupplying troops in Afghanistan. Moscow handed Baki- yev a $2 billion assistance package in credit and loans, some of which he allegedly embezzled. In January, however, Bakiyev signed a deal with Washington anyway, and Moscow was left holding the bag. This spring, Moscow retaliated by hiking tariffs for energy supplies and blasting Bakiyev on Kremlin-controlled television as a tyrant.
In addition to the continuous U.S. military presence, Moscow was also miffed by Bakiyev’s growing ties with Beijing, which presented Kyrgyzstan with large highway and railroad construction projects, investment and Chinese access to natural resources.
In this latest Kyrgyz revolution, the Kremlin has moved with lightning speed and judo-like agility, which may be an omen for things to come. Immediately following last week’s revolution, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin distanced himself from Bakiyev and offered help in quelling unrest. That, coupled with the provisional Kyrgyz government’s publicly expressed “gratitude” to Moscow for its “assistance” to the revolution, indicates that there may already be deeper Russian involvement than meets the eye.
The main short-term challenge for the Obama administration will be to put distance between itself and Bakiyev. To that end, the United States can offer the provisional government assistance in putting the deposed president on trial for massive embezzlement and the murder of dozens of demonstrators. As the provisional government in Bishkek is assembled, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon would do well to work closely with it.
The main long-term challenge for the United States will be to keep the Manas base open, even if Moscow disapproves and offers an alternative route with a higher level of Russian control. Otunbayeva has already said that Manas will continue to function “until the current contracts expire,” which will happen this summer.
The White House should provide Otunbayeva with an opportunity to visit Washington to discuss the future of U.S.-Kyrgyz relations. And while Manas should remain a top priority for impoverished Kyrgyzstan, developing small and medium-sized businesses and fighting corruption are paramount. The State Department should signal that the assistance package for Kyrgyzstan will be generous. The White House need not worry that Otunbayeva — Kyrgyzstan’s “Ms. Clean” — will inappropriately benefit from U.S. taxpayer help.
In the last couple of years, Russia has scored some points in its “roll-back” of former U.S. President George W. Bush’s advances in Eurasia. First, the Georgian war and the European reaction to it all but froze Georgia’s chances for NATO membership. Second, Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in the Ukrainian presidential election moved Kiev from a pro-Western orientation to neutrality. Now, the U.S. presence in Central Asia is at stake.
After the initial shock of the second Kyrgyz revolution passes, the Obama administration should make the former Soviet space once again a U.S. geopolitical priority. Our efforts in Afghan- istan and a Western presence in the heart of Eurasia are at stake.

Ariel Cohen is a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies and international energy policy at the Katherine and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Policy at The Her- itage Foundation, as well as author of “Kazakhstan: The Road to Independence.” This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: Scent of Shale Gas Hangs Over Katyn
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: During Putin’s rule, Katyn has become the main obstacle in Russian-Polish relations.
In 2006, relatives of the Polish officers killed in the Katyn massacre of 1940 filed a lawsuit to force the Russian government to release its archives on the tragedy, but the prosecutor general rejected the case. In 2008, Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court threw out the same request, as did the Supreme Court in a 2009 ruling.
At the same time, the Kremlin-controlled media went on the offensive on two fronts. Russian readers were told that, first, it was the Germans who actually shot the Polish officers and, second, that the Katyn shootings were revenge for Red Army soldiers who had been killed in prisoner-of-war camps following the war with the “White Poles.”
An interview with historian Natalya Narochnitskaya published in Komsomolskaya Pravda just before Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s August visit to Poland caused a big scandal in Poland by suggesting that Polish prisoner-of-war camps served as a prototype for German concentration camps.
Then it all ended unexpectedly, as if on cue. Putin traveled last week to Katyn along with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
What caused such a dramatic shift?
The Wall Street Journal on April 8 reveals the answer. According to the article, “U.S. [energy] giants will start drilling for shale gas in Poland within the next few weeks.”
There’s your answer. All of Russia’s neo-imperialism has been built upon the fact that it has “peaceful gas” (similar to the Soviet Union’s “peaceful atom”) and that it can shove its gas pipelines through Poland just like the Kremlin did with Ukraine. But what if Poland becomes a shale gas exporter?
The Kremlin realized that the question of how much shale gas Poland extracts will depend on which political party wins the next elections there. One option: the party of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski. He was an ardent anti-Communist and a man who experienced deep personal pain over the Katyn massacre. Kaczynski made a point of attending commemorations at the site every year.
The other option is the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a pragmatist who is ready to be friends with everyone, except Kaczynski — the two refused to even speak to each other.
And then the two prime ministers — Putin and Tusk — met at Katyn. They especially came in advance so as not to invite Kaczynski and to outflank him.
Three days later, Kaczynski — the unpopular, bad-tempered and despondent man whom opinion polls indicated would lose his re-election bid to any other contender  — flew to Smolensk. He took the entire Polish elite with him in hopes that his personal visit would outdo the pre-emptive showing by the archrival Tusk and the despised Putin.
And when he was told that dense fog shrouded the area and that flight controllers were attempting to reroute the airplane to an alternate airport, it was undoubtedly Kaczynski who gave the command to land anyway, suspecting that the fog was just a political ruse instigated by Putin to disrupt Kaczynski’s participation in the Katyn ceremony.
Putin and Tusk landed at the same airport three days before the crash to participate in their own commemoration ceremonies. For their arrival, special navigation equipment was brought to the Smolensk airport to provide additional safety. It is possible that this equipment was removed before Kaczynski’s plane landed. That would add even more fog to the mysterious crash.

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

TITLE: Factory of art
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A dilapidated former textile factory complex designed by the expressionist German architect Erich Mendelsohn in the early 20th century is getting a second life thanks to the inspiration and enthusiasm of a local developer, who nurtures a plan to turn it into an international center for arts and culture of the caliber of London’s Tate Modern or Paris’s Centre Pompidou.
St. Petersburg businessman Igor Burdinsky knew nothing of Erich Mendelsohn and his expressionist architecture when he unexpectedly stumbled upon the crumbling masterpiece during a leisurely Sunday morning stroll around the Petrograd Side in 2005.
“I was amazed by the appearance of this highly imposing constructivist building — the former power station, which Mendelsohn shaped to resemble a marine vessel,” Burdinsky recalls. “It got under my skin to such an extent that when an opportunity arose to buy it I agreed immediately, even though it was not for sale separately and I had to buy it as part of a package deal that comprised all the premises of the Krasnoye Znamya textile factory.”
The story behind Mendelsohn’s masterpiece is dramatic. The German architect was invited to design the Krasnoye Znamya (Red Flag) complex by the Soviet government shortly after the end of the Civil War that followed the Bolshevik revolution, amid chaos and devastation. Most of Mendelsohn’s bold ideas never actually took shape, as various bureaucratic commissions judged them too extravagant. The architect was also constantly criticised for having been given the assignment without a competition. Finally, Mendelsohn simply washed his hands of the project, packed his suitcase and left Russia, apparently thinking he was burning all his bridges with the painstaking enterprise. Years later, however, when the architect discovered his ship-like power station had been built according to his designs, he included it in the official list of his projects.
Burdinsky’s idea is to create what he describes as an oasis of European culture in St. Petersburg. “This once highly depressing area will be transformed into a modern quarter, complete with commercial and residential real estate as well as an arts center,” Burdinsky said. “The arts center is not the most profitable or attractive part for investors, but it’s certainly the most exciting part of the whole thing for me.”
The arts center project is admittedly not the kind of idea that would interest a businessman interested in seeing an instant return. “If I was into making a quick buck, I would have gone into building hypermarkets,” Burdinsky smiles. “Yes, economically, our project makes perfect sense, it’s just that we don’t expect a fast return.”
About $50 million has already been invested into the project, and a further $150 million is needed for the plan to take shape. Negotiations with potential investors are in progress, says Burdinsky, but the economic crisis is slowing things down. 
“Mendelsohn’s name sparked tremendous interest in our project among German architects,” said Burdinsky. “Many historic buildings in Germany were destroyed during World War II, and German architects seize any opportunity to work with the country’s architectural legacy abroad with great enthusiasm.”
The first proposal for the renovation and development of Krasnoye Znamya came from German architect Rudiger Kramm, who conducted scrupulous research work and offered to carefully recreate and implement all of Mendelsohn’s ideas that were rejected by the Soviet bureaucrats.
Burdinsky and his team, however, decided to go a little further, and approached the British architect David Chipperfield, who is responsible for striking innovative projects such as Neues Museum in Berlin and Figge Art Museum in Davenport, U.S. “What appealed to us about Chipperfield in the first place is the unique combination of liberty and tact with which he tackles historic objects,” Burdinsky said. “He proposed putting up a cutting-edge new museum building next to Mendelsohn’s famous power station. The design looked amazing and was really inspiring — we really liked it.”
The former Krasnoye Znamya is now the subject of ambitious comparisons, ranging from the Solomon Guggenheim Center in Bilbao to Moscow’s Vinzavod exhibition hall. Burdinsky, however, is not after a famous name. “We have an amazing design, so what I am most concerned about at the moment is what we are going to fill it with,” the businessman said. “This unique space is capable of hosting a huge variety of shows and genres. I have often heard that many contemporary artists simply do not have anywhere to exhibit in St. Petersburg because their installations require large spaces, which the city does not have. I am happy to say that things have changed and a venue has appeared.”
Remarkably, Burdinsky’s enthusiasm, despite being actively shared by Western architects and Russian artists, is yet to find support in government circles. One of Mendelsohn’s most memorable statements was that “bureaucrats in Russia are strong enough to destroy anything, right up to the results of the Bolshevik revolution.” Today, the businessman striving to create a modern cultural center in Mendelsohn’s avant garde creation, admits that negotiations with the authorities typically end nowhere. “Basically, what happens is that we agree on every point we discuss but nothing happens next,” he explains.
“I get the feeling that our city is not interested in getting new signature architectural works,” Burdinsky said. “Such things appear to be rather low on the authorities’ list of priorities, as are contemporary art museums, which St. Petersburg, embarrasingly, still has a total lack of. Culture is generally regarded as a burden that everyone seeks to dispose of as quickly as possible. What people are interested in is whatever brings a fast return.” 
In December 2009, the former power station building hosted its first arts display, a series of Ilya Trushevsky’s media-installations. Critics have observed that the cosmic, seemingly endless space has a unique quality: on the one hand, it can save the most hopeless artist, yet it can also overwhelm and swamp the most talented. Paradoxical as it may sound, both opinions are true, Burdinsky said. 
The businessman’s concept for the new arts center is based on the principle of Dmitry Mendeleyev’s table of elements. “Contemporary arts compares very well with the table of elements in the sense that it contains a stunning number of unique components, each of which is precious both on its own and in combination with the others,” Burdinsky said. “So the exhibition spaces of the center should become exactly like Mendeleyev’s table, accommodating a wealth of styles, genres, names and ideas. The artists we exhibit might be controversial, the ideas they express may be debatable, but most important thing for the arts center is to be alive.”

TITLE: Word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Øàïêà: hat, letterhead, headline

My way of dealing with the recent tragic events in my adoptive country is completely childish: whenever possible, I try to distract myself. So as I prepared for Easter and found myself singing, “In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it … ” — off-key with plenty of “something-something-something” in place of forgotten words — I started thinking about Russian words for hats and hat expressions.
Boring, you say? I beg to differ. What, for example, is the difference between øàïêà and øëÿïà? Hm? Anyone? Speak up please. No takers? Not quite so easy, eh?
Dictionaries define both as ãîëîâíîé óáîð (head gear) and then add “ïðåèìóùåñòâåííî …” (mainly) with further descriptions. To me, that means: The difference is in the eye of the beholder, or behatter. Øàïêà is “mainly” an unstructured, warm hat without a brim. This is your basic winter âÿçàíàÿ (knitted) or ìåõîâàÿ (fur) øàïêà. Øëÿïà is “mainly” a structured hat witha òóëüÿ (crown) and ïîëÿ (brim; note that the Russian is plural and the English is singular). One friend calls every fur hat øàïêà no matter what it looks like. Another friend calls a fur hat with a brim ìåõîâàÿ øëÿïà ñ ïîëÿìè. Disagreement ends with the famous øàïêà-óøàíêà (fur hat with ear flaps).
A baby and a lady might wear ÷åïåö (bonnet, cap), which is any kind of soft cap, often with ruffles and ties. Women and men wear áåðåòû (berets). Sadly, in today’s non-hat society, women’s hats have lost their names. I’ve found êëîø (cloche), áàíäàíà (a cross between a turban and a cloche) as well as many other terms, but most of my friends simply describe them: ìÿãêàÿ ôåòðîâàÿ øëÿïà (soft felt hat); ñîëîìåííàÿ øëÿïà ñ øèðîêèìè ïîëÿìè (wide-brimmed straw hat).
And then there are figurative hats. Øëÿïà is a lazy dolt, a loser, a nobody. But in publishing and graphic design, øàïêà is what’s on the top of the page, which might be a headline, a banner, a banner headline or a company’s letterhead, depending on the context. You might be confused when you are given directions to äîì ñ êîçûðüêîì (literally, “a house with a visor”). This vivid image describes a house with an awning or covered entryway.
And then there are good hat expressions. I recall once being thrilled beyond belief when a translator I admired read something of mine and said solemnly: “Ñíèìàþ øëÿïó.” (I take off my hat.) In both languages that means: You done good.
This is very different from ïðîøëÿïèòü, which means to overlook something or to mess up. Êàê ìîæíî áûëî ïðåôåêòóðå ïðîøëÿïèòü ñòðîèòåëüñòâî òàêîãî ìàñøòàáà? (How could the prefecture overlook such a massive construction project?)
Apparently because by the time they noticed, äåëî â øëÿïå (it was in the bag; it was a fait accompli).

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

TITLE: Duke Ellington: a jazz legacy
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The descendant of one of the most acclaimed jazz bands in the world, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, will take to the stage of the city’s Oktyabrsky Concert Hall this weekend.
Judging from the posters advertizing the event around the city, if you know nothing about Duke Ellington, who is ranked as one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, then you might be forgiven for thinking that he was on his way, too.
Instead, the orchestra will be led by Ellington’s grandson, Paul, who himself took over from his father, Mercer, who had led the orchestra after Duke Ellington’s death until he died in 1996.
Duke Ellington led his orchestra for fifty years from the early pioneering days of the 1920s until the last decade of his life when he was world famous, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor from Richard Nixon in the White House and touring all over the world. He died in 1974 of lung cancer.
He grew up in Washington D.C. where President Theodore Roosevelt would stop on his horse to watch as he and his friends played baseball. It was there that he wrote his first song, “Soda Fountain Rag.” He once said he wrote it as “a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango and fox trot,” so that “listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire.”
Ellington was also a pioneer in touring the Soviet Union. He came in 1971 and was the first great jazz musician after Benny Goodman in 1961 to play in the country.
He and his orchestra played 20 concerts in five cities in five weeks that year. Before he went on tour he told American papers: “When you think of going to Russia to play music, you say, ‘This is where so many great musicians came from,’ you wonder if you are going to be able to breathe the air. It’s one of the most important music places in the world, if not the most. Rimsky Korsakov is the foundation of orchestration. He’s the foundation of music today.”
Ellington is said to have learned the Russian for “Love you madly,” his stage catchphrase for the concerts.
The current-day orchestra will focus on the most famous Duke Ellington tracks, such as “Take the A Train,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” “Mood Indigo,” “In a Mellotone” and “Satin Doll.”

The Duke Ellington Orchestra plays the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m. Ligovsky Prospekt 6. M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya. 
Tel. 275 1300.

TITLE: Fare Shares
AUTHOR: By Sasha de Vogel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Enjoying Spanish tapas is an inherently social experience. These small dishes are designed to be eaten with one’s fingers — like a crostini topped with smoked ham — or popped straight into the mouth — like olives — so that diners can focus on the company of their friends, rather than on their food. At BarSlona, the latest culinary addition to Ulitsa Rubinshteina, the bite-sized dishes themselves are a hot topic of conversation.
BarSlona, which already has a branch on Prospekt Chernyshevskogo, offers dozens of tapas some traditional, some variations on classics and some plucked straight from Russian cuisine. Their three page-long list of tapas can seem overwhelming to the inexperienced. Fortunately, there are six different sampler platters on the menu — three pairs of hot and cold options designed to pair with a different alcoholic drink (beer, wine or spirits). As we were already indulging in over-sweetened but summery sangria (260 rubles, $9 per half-liter), which was served in an enormous goblet complete with a swizzle stick in the form of a naked lady, we ordered the hot (260 rubles, $9) and cold (230 rubles, $8) tapas platters recommended to go with wine. 
The dishes we were brought bore surprisingly little resemblance to those listed on the menu in the descriptions of the platters. The hot selection purported to contain a mostly vegetarian assortment, including vegetable ragu, eggplant with honey and grilled potatoes with cheese, but the dishes that were presented to us were tender marble-sized meatballs in a smoky brown sauce, two toast rounds topped with vegetables and crispy bacon, and two enormous chunks of crusty baguette, one smothered with what seemed to be a mixture of ham, mushrooms and cream, and the other with ham, eggs and cream. The last two dishes were messy, not to mention incredibly rich and buttery. The vegetable-and-bacon toasts were the definite winner of the assortment, with different flavors coming through in each bite.
The description of the cold tapas platter promised ham and melon and some combination of salmon and cheese. In reality, the dishes turned out to be drawn mostly from the Spanish tradition of cured meat and from the Russian tradition of buterbrod. Butter, pepperoni, a cornichon and sprig of lettuce were skewered to two bite-sized slices of Russian rye bread with decorative toothpicks. Atop another welcome chunk of baguette, butter, cheese and prosciutto comprised the perfect indulgent combination of salty and fatty. On another, a room-temperature meat stew was unexpectedly light, with a delicate slow-cooked flavor. A few delicate slices of roast beef-esque cold cuts rounded out the dish.
The disparity between the menu and the dishes didn’t diminish our enjoyment of the meal. Each small dish was pleasantly unique, and the chance to try a few bites of everything was refreshingly fun. One platter is the perfect size to share or to enjoy for lunch. 
Salty tapas are the perfect compliment to alcohol, and BarSlona offers an impressive selection of sangrias, wines, liquors, cocktails, shots and beer (Edelweiss, 190 rubles, $6.50). In addition to two dining rooms, the restaurant has a lively scene at the rustic bar. With plans for outdoor dining in the works, BarSlona will be an ideal place to enjoy an after-work cocktail in the summer months. 
BarSlona’s interior has taken a page from the playbook of the city’s eternally popular Irish pubs; the wood-paneled walls and even the ceiling are crowded with kitsch, like comical portraits of Spanish nobility, postcards and gigantic vintage wine casks. Even in the bathroom, cheeky — pun intended — drawings decorate the walls. Naturally, no Russian bar would be complete without a flatscreen TV for watching football matches, and BarSlona’s hangs front and center, illuminating the cozy dining area with the grass’s electric glow. 
Traditional Spanish main courses are also available, such as pork steak (310 rubles, $10.60) and chicken and rabbit paella (320 rubles, $11). The creamy paella, served in a cast-iron skillet, had a strong saffron flavor but lacked the crispy burnt bottom. The derevinsky soup (150 rubles, $5.20) also failed to impress, as it seemed to be only half meat and potatoes, and half bright orange oil that even managed to stain the spoon. The Spanish coffee — espresso with a dash of brandy — was a nice conclusion to the meal (150 rubles, $5.15).
Will the tapas trend take off? With a few more spots like BarSlona, Petersburgers may soon be putting aside their sushi for dishes with a Spanish flair.

TITLE: Russian Rap Taking on Real-Life Issues, Not Bling
AUTHOR: By Yuri Pushkin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian rap has shown its social conscience in recent weeks, highlighting how local performers are willing to deal with local problems rather than parade the babes and in-your-face oligarchic bling of the likes of Timati.
Following from rapper Noize MC’s song “Mercedes 666,” which damned LUKoil vice president Anatoly Barkov to hell after he was involved in a car crash that left two women dead, there comes Dino MC 47’s “Song About Explosions in the Metro,” which criticizes the government elite for hypocrisy over the two bombings that killed 40 people late last month.
“Arrogant, overfed faces, with blue lights and security / telling us from TV that we won’t be threatened / their kids are in London and their money in the Caymans / what are we supposed to do? Where do we hide?” Dino raps.
Dealing with such social issues may not have been what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had in mind when he appeared on a rap music television program last November where he praised rap’s social importance in “talking about the problems of society, the problems of youth.” He also praised break dancing for helping “fight against drugs.”
“Hip hop, in Russia or the West, does not expose government secrets, but it does talk about real issues, which always attracts people,” said Andrei Nikitin, editor-in-chief of Rap.ru, Russia’s premier rap and hip- hop web site.
“Everyone became too relaxed. There was a feeling that everything is all right, that the brave government is concerned about us. In reality, it’s not like that. Turns out, we’ve been told a lie the whole time,” Dino said on Ekho Moskvy radio. 
Seminal rap performers in the 1990s — such as Kasta, from Rostov-on-Don, and Y.G., from southern Moscow — grew in popularity by rapping about local and social issues.
“Social and political issues have been a growing trend for hip-hop artists,” said Noize MC, whose given name is Ivan Alexeyev. He dismissed Putin’s appearance on the rap music program as a PR stunt.
Rappers have tackled topics ranging from a lack of food in grocery stores after the fall of the Soviet Union to poor living conditions, drug addiction and social unrest.
“Hands behind your back, face in the mud, down lower than crud / your reward — a two-year cruise,” Kasta raps in a track about the harsh realities of Russia’s mandatory military service for men.
Although more successful than acts in the 1990s, rappers such as Noize, Kasta, Basta and Dino struggle for media attention from major television and radio networks, which frequently opt to play the artists’ Western counterparts.
The fame of “Mercedes 666” — with Noize MC singing “Miserable mob, shiver with fear / a patrician is coming your way … We’re late to hell today / so get out of the chariot’s way” — only came virally after fans made a video that plastered Barkov’s face onto a South Park video. Even relatively independent radio station Ekho Moskvy banned the song after one play.
“Only about 1 percent of what’s out there gets played on TV and radio. Internet is the main hip-hop gateway for Russian artists — social networks,” Nikitin said.
Alexeyev believes, though, that the genre’s underground days are long gone and that songs with social issues will appear more and more in the mainstream media.
“We have a strong movement on the rise,” he said, adding that this explains why Putin appeared on the rap music program. “As an influence on younger generations, it is extremely interesting for our government — which has apparently decided to set up a monarchy.”

TITLE: Zhukovsky: A Spring Trip to an Aviation Town, Home to Testing Centers
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: ZHUKOVSKY — An aviation museum, a cathedral that looks like a rocket and the Volkonsky Estate — spring is the time to visit the town of Zhukovsky and its surroundings.
Zhukovsky, which is located 40 kilometers southeast of Moscow, is a city of 100,000 that was founded in 1947. The city was named after aero- and hydrodynamics pioneer Nikolai Zhukovsky. Appropriately, it is the home of two major facilities for testing and designing aircraft, the Gromov Flight Research Institute and the Zhukovsky Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute.
The Museum of the History of the Conquest of the Sky explains that until World War I in Zhukovsky, there were tests of gliders that were able to lift and transport light BT tanks by air, although this technology did not achieve widespread use. Among the exhibits is the two-meter wooden aircraft propeller into which Russian flying ace Pyotr Nesterov crashed. Nesterov was the founder of aerobatics and the first pilot to fly in a loop. Also in the museum is a 1914 photograph from one of the first Russian air shows.
Additionally, the museum includes a flight simulator for children to try feeling like a pilot for 40 rubles ($1.40) an hour. Visitors can play with driving the low-flying attack aircraft, the Ilyushin Il-2, or sit in the pilot’s ejector seat of a fighter jet.
On display is an interesting collection of uniforms, from leather suits and cloaks of the 1930s, to the Baklan spacesuit, which is worn on flights into the stratosphere. Museum staff are especially proud that Vladimir Putin appeared in the news in the very suit that is on show. A model of a wind tunnel, when activated, sends a toy airplane into an air spin, and at the height of a five-story building, we see it travel toward the museum to the right of the road.
Not far from Zhukovsky is the village of Ostrov, the ancient tsarist estate. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich loved to hunt here, and in the 18th century, Catherine II granted the village to Count Alexei Orlov, murderer of her husband, Peter III.
From the entrance to the village, the dome of the Church of the Transfiguration, built in the 16th century, is visible. Its silhouette resembles a rocket soaring into the sky. This resemblance arises not only from the fact that the church itself is fairly tall, at 35 meters, but also because it stands on the hill. Thanks to many corbel arches called kokoshniki, which are distinct to Russian architecture, the cupola design is reminiscent of flames. Restoration is underway in the church. The size of the building is impressive on the inside, where the cone-shaped arch seems to be aspiring to infinity.
If you stand on the observation deck nearby, you understand why the place is called Ostrov, or Island. The hill where the church stands seems to hover over the bend of the Moscow River, and the water appears to surround it on all sides. Not far away is Sukhanovo, a hamlet that was once part of the estate of the same name that was owned by the prominent Volkonsky family. Two wings of the estate are now the House of the Union of Architects, and the other buildings are occupied by the Perspektiva Lyceum.
The manor once belonged to Prince Pyotr Volkonsky, a hero of the War of 1812. The prince was reputed to be a stingy man, but he did not skimp on money for his out-of-town estate, and most of the Sukhanovo buildings were erected on his order. The mausoleum of the Volkonsky family is located in the center of the complex. It is a massive rotunda with a six-column portico. In Soviet times, the mausoleum was redone as a dining room, and to seat everyone, a gallery was built on two sides of the rotunda.
To the right of the mausoleum is a replica of the famous statue in Tsarskoye Selo of a girl with a broken jug. Under the statue used to be a spring, allowing water to flow out of the jug.

TITLE: Icelandic Volcano Causes Travel Chaos
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: REYKJAVIK — A volcanic eruption in Iceland fired ash across northern Europe on Thursday, bringing chaos to air travel, and melted a glacier, causing severe floods.
About 800 people have been forced to evacuate their homes around the Eyjafjallajokull volcano because the flooding cut roads and risked bringing down a bridge.
A huge cloud of ash from the second major eruption in Iceland in less than a month blew eastwards, closing major airports more than 1,700 kilometers away in London, where all flights were halted.
Nearly every airport in Norway, Denmark and across northern Sweden was also closed, authorities announced. There was also disruption in Finland.
More than 250 flights out of London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports were cancelled, including transatlantic services. Hundreds of other mainly domestic flights were also hit at airports across Britain.
British airport operator BAA said: “Following advice from the Met Office, the National Air Traffic Service has introduced restrictions to U.K. airspace this morning as a result of volcanic ash drifting across the United Kingdom from Iceland.”
The ash was about 8 to 10 kilometers in the air and could not been seen from the ground. But experts said it was a danger to jet engines and restricted visibility.
Icelandic airports remained open as wind was blowing ash away from the island.
“Flights to and from Iceland are still ok. The wind is blowing the ash to the east,” Hjordis Gudmundsdottir of the Icelandic Airport Authority said.
“It’s amazing really,” she said. “Things here should be fine for the next 12 hours at least, and we think probably all day, judging from the weather forecast.”
The volcano on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland erupted just after midnight on Wednesday.
Smoke coming out of the top crater stacked more than 6,000 meters into the sky, meteorologists said. Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported that a 500-meter fissure had appeared at the top of the crater on Wednesday.
Lava melted the glacier, causing major flooding which forced the evacuation of between 700 and 800 people. Evacuees were being directed to Red Cross centers.
“We have two heavy floods coming out from the melting of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier,” police spokesman Roegnvaldur Olafsson said  from near the site of the eruption late Wednesday.
The eruption in a remote area about 125 kilometers east of Reykjavik was bigger than the blast at the nearby Fimmvorduhals volcano last month.
“It is very variable how long these eruptions last. Anywhere from a few days to over a year,” Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor in Iceland, said.
“Judging from the intensity of this one, it could last a long time,” he added.
Olafur Eggertsson said he had been forced to evacuate his farm, which lies in the path of one of two large floods of melt water coming from the glacier.
“At around 10:30 this morning we heard a lot of noise and saw mud and soil suddenly rushing down from the mountain.
“Just 30 minutes later we had mud and soil and a giant flood running into our dyke above the farm,” Eggertsson said.
“So in just a half hour, mud and soil came cascading down the mountain, down to our farm and on to the national highway that lies just beneath our farm. That is a total of four kilometers in just 30 minutes,” he said.
His family left all their animals behind in the rush to escape.
“We have 200 animals on our farm: cows and sheep who are all inside now. It takes some time for the dykes to be destroyed and I don’t know yet if they are in danger, but we are extremely worried,” he said.
Last month, the first volcano eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823 — and Iceland’s first since 2004 — briefly forced 600 people from their homes in the same area.
That eruption at the Fimmvorduhals volcano, which gushed lava for weeks, ended Tuesday, experts said.

TITLE: Quake Kills 600-Plus 
In China
AUTHOR: By Anita Chang
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADOI, China — Rescue teams fought gusty winds and altitude sickness Thursday as supplies of food, water and almost everything ran thin after strong earthquakes left more than 600 dead in a mountainous Tibetan area of western China.
Survivors, many of whom spent the night outside in freezing weather, wandered bleeding from their wounds through Jiegu township for a second day, witnesses said. Rescuers, tired from the high winds and thin oxygen, pulled some survivors and many bodies from the pulverized remains of the town flattened by Wednesday morning’s quakes.
“We’ve seen too many bodies and now they’re trying to deal with them. The bodies are piled up like a hill. You can see bodies with broken arms and legs and it breaks your heart,” said Dawa Cairen, a Tibetan who works for the Christian group the Amity Foundation and was helping in rescue efforts. “You can see a lot of blood. It’s flowing like a river.”
Grim pictures emerged from several collapsed schools that were the focus of early rescue efforts. Footage on state television and photos posted online showed bodies laid out near the rubble, and the Xinhua News Agency quoted a local education official as saying 66 children and 10 teachers had died, mostly in three schools.
After spending most of Wednesday opening the nearby airport and clearing roads, relief operations quickened. Nearly 2,000 soldiers, police and firefighters arrived in Yushu county, where Jiegu is located, Xinhua said. Joining them were the China Earthquake Administration’s professional rescue teams, with sniffer dogs, satellite communications equipment, medicines and food.
As more people and supplies poured in by road and air, the influx was producing unintended effects: taxing the normally scarce resources of the remote Yushu, where the altitude averages around 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).
Supplies of food, water, gas and other necessities were running low, said Pierre Deve, a program director at the Yushu-based community development organization Snowland Service Group. Deve said he waited for hours in a line of some 100 cars at the only open gas station. Most shops in Jiegu remained shut, he said, and local Buddhist monasteries handed out some food while some people scavenged food and other belongings from what was left of their houses.
China Central Television said the death toll had risen to 617 by late morning Thursday, with more than 9,000 injured and around 300 still missing. The Ministry of Civil Affairs said about 15,000 houses collapsed and 100,000 people — nearly the entire population of Yushu — needed to be moved to safety.
Dozens of monks were either dead or missing at the Thrangu monastery, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) outside Jiegu, when all but its main hall collapsed, said Danzeng Qiujiang, a senior cleric at the Xiuma monastery far to the north of town.
“Only 7 or 8 of the monks are left alive. All the rest have gone missing. The rescuers either can’t find them or found their bodies. I’m not sure how many deaths have been confirmed yet. But 60 of 70 of them have all gone missing,” the cleric said.

TITLE: Obama on Afghanistan: We Can’t Be There in Perpetuity
AUTHOR: By Rohan Sullivan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SYDNEY — President Barack Obama on Thursday reaffirmed his plans to start withdrawing U.S troops from Afghanistan in 2011, saying they “can’t be there in perpetuity.”
In an interview with Australian television ahead of an Asian visit, Obama also indicated that Washington will maintain efforts to get China, India and other developing countries to make further commitments to fighting global warming.
Obama confirmed he will visit Australia in June — rescheduling a visit to the staunch military ally and to nearby Indonesia that was deferred last month so the president could conduct last-minute lobbying on his health care reforms.
Afghanistan is likely to be a key topic for discussion when he holds talks with leaders in Australia, which has some 1,500 troops in the country — the largest single contingent outside NATO — and has suffered 11 combat deaths.
Obama said the war in Afghanistan remained a difficult task but that there had been positive trends recently.
“I would dispute the notion that it is not getting better,” Obama told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in the interview, conducted in the White House. “I do think that what we have seen is a blunting of the momentum of the Taliban, which had been building up in the year prior to me taking office.”
He reiterated his plan to begin drawing down U.S. troops in 2011 and handing responsibility for security to domestic forces in Afghanistan.
“We can’t be there in perpetuity,” he said.
On China, Obama said the United States was not interested in constraining the Asian giant’s booming growth or emergence as a world power but that the country must take seriously the responsibilities that come with that role.
Asked about China’s commitment to fighting global warming, Obama said China’s leaders understand they need to decide on a new model that allows the country to pursue its growth while protecting the environment.
“Right now though, their impulse is to say, well, we’ll let the developed countries, the Australias and the Americas, deal with this problem first and we’ll deal with it when we’ve caught up a little bit in terms of our standard of living,” he said.

TITLE: Aid Arrives Following Cyclone in India
AUTHOR: By Manik Banerjee
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CALCUTTA, India — Aid workers distributed rice, dried fruits, water and tarpaulins Thursday to the victims of a ferocious cyclone that killed at least 119 people in northeastern India and demolished ten of thousands of mud huts.
Rescuers cleared hundreds of uprooted trees and electricity poles blocking roads to the devastated areas in Bihar state, said Sharwan Kumar, a state administrator. Telephone services also were restored in most of the region after a 30-hour interruption.
Rescuers found 10 bodies on Thursday in the district of Purnea, raising the overall death toll in Bihar state to 80, Kumar told The Associated Press.
Police and rescue teams have recovered another 39 bodies in the worst-hit villages in West Bengal state — Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi — since Wednesday, said Ramanuj Chakraborty, a senior local official.
Packing winds of more than 100 mph (160 kph), the cyclone struck close to midnight Tuesday.
Hundreds of people were injured and thousands left homeless. They were caught unawares as there was no cyclone warning from the weather department, said Devesh Chandra Thakur, Bihar state’s minister for disaster management.
“Most people were sleeping when the cyclone struck. They ran out of their homes into the open,” said M. B. Shajuruddin, a 30-year-old teacher in Chhota Suhar, a village in West Bengal.
The storm destroyed most of the village’s 500 tin-roofed huts, and splintered trees.
“We have so far received no government help ... People are surviving on whatever they are left with,” he said.
Vyasji said rescuers found 23 bodies overnight from the northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea.
Authorities handed tarpaulin sheets to the cyclone victims to set up temporary shelters in the region and distributed food and water, Vyasji said.
Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, told AP by phone she and her husband were sleeping in their hut when it was crushed by a tree that broke from the impact of the cyclone. Her husband was killed.
The cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts in West Bengal and thousands more in Bihar, officials said.