SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1566 (27), Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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TITLE: Kremlin Hosts Mikhalkov Premiere
AUTHOR: By Xenia Prilepskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sixteen years after “Burnt by the Sun” won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, director Nikita Mikhalkov has unveiled the first of a two-part sequel set during World War II in a screening at the Kremlin.
Mikhalkov said last year that he wanted the film premiere to take place on Red Square on Victory Day, but settled for Saturday at the Great Kremlin Palace where close to 6,000 people, including politicians, celebrities and World War II veterans, watched the three-hour movie.
“We intentionally showed this movie at the beginning of the commemorations for the 65th anniversary of the victory,” Mikhalkov said before the film began. “We were confident that to understand what this victory cost, we should see what our people went through.”
The film resurrects the two main characters, Colonel Kotov and the NKVD agent who betrays him, who were both seemingly killed off in the first film, which was set in 1936, and plunges the duo into World War II.
With a budget of $55 million, “Burnt by the Sun 2” is the most expensive Russian movie ever made, and viewers can see where the money was spent as the film unfolds with huge, impressive battle scenes featuring thousands of extras and numerous exploding trains and planes.
Mikhalkov, who has spent almost a decade working on the film, told Russia One television that he had built a bridge for the film and allowed locals to use it. When he blew it up for the film, the locals, he said, berated him for blowing up “their bridge.”
“Burnt by the Sun 2” features almost the same cast as the original film. Mikhalkov plays Kotov, his daughter Nadezhda again plays his daughter in the film and Oleg Menshikov reprises his role as the NKVD officer. The only exception is Kotov’s wife, originally portrayed by Ingeborga Dapkunaite, who is now played by Viktoria Tolstoganova.
Kotov, who was taken away by the NKVD at the end of the first film presumably to be shot, is actually alive and goes into battle after escaping from a camp to fight in a penal battalion. With the war going badly, Josef Stalin orders Menshikov’s character, whose suicide attempt in the first film failed, to find Kotov, the once-respected colonel he had condemned.
Actor Maxim Sukhanov is a revelation as a terrifyingly unpredictable Stalin who can order a man killed at one moment and smile and joke the next.
The film is packed with cameos by many of the best Russian actors in cinema today, including Valentin Gaft, Dmitry Dyuzhev, Artur Smolyaninov, Yevgeny Mironov and Sergei Makovetsky, to name just a few.
“Burnt by the Sun 2” will take part in the competition section of this year’s Cannes Festival. Mikhalkov took the Grand Prix prize in 1994 with the first film, but how international critics and audiences will take to the sequel remains to be seen.
The sequel was a hit for many at the screening Saturday.
“Three hours! Everybody was afraid about the length, but it goes in one breath,” said director Fyodor Bondarchuk.
“It’s Mikhalkov’s tools. It’s immersion, it’s attention, it’s rhythm. There will be a lot of discussion, a lot of criticism, but it’s worth watching, period.”
“I’m astonished by the greatness of this picture,” said Karen Shakhnazarov, the head of the Mosfilm studio and a respected director. “I can assure you that this the greatest movie we have in modern Russian cinematography.”
But the film is also evoking many negative reactions. Mikhalkov is a controversial figure for some because of his vocal, unswerving support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and for his domination over the Russian film industry in his role as head of the cinematographers union.
Putin was supposed to turn up to the premiere but didn’t. He did, however, call by telephone later to congratulate the director, said Mikhalkov’s press service.
Even before the film appeared, bloggers had a field day mocking the movie poster, which shows Mikhalkov with the tagline “Great Cinema about a Great War.” In one instance, a blogger photoshopped Robocop’s head onto Mikhalkov’s body.
Columnist Andrei Arkhangelsky, writing in Vzglyad on Sunday, said the movie had some very strong moments but failed as a whole, especially in its attempts to put forward the idea that “God was on our side, and thanks to the war, God is again with us.”
“Burnt by the Sun 2” will premiere in movie theaters April 22.
TITLE: Hundreds of Flights Cancelled at Pulkovo
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova and Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Icelandic volcano eruption has caused the disruption of about a hundred flights from St. Petersburg’s international Pulkovo airport and the cancellation of dozens of performances in the city by foreign musicians and artists.
Pulkovo airport expected to cancel about 40 flights on Monday, in addition to 50 flights cancelled since Saturday, the airport’s press service said Monday.
More than 5,000 passengers have been unable to fly from Pulkovo since Thursday, when the volcano erupted, producing a cloud of ash that aviation safety officials say makes flying unsafe, Interfax reported.
“Flights have been canceled to the U.K., Norway, Poland, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and some parts of Italy,” said Olga Antipova, a spokeswoman for Pulkovo.
Flights to Rome operated by domestic airline Rossiya are still operating, while the Italian carrier Alitalia has canceled its own flights there.
All domestic flights from Pulkovo, as well as to Egypt and Israel, are unaffected.
“We also got the good news that flights to Kiev have been resumed today,” said Antipova. “Flights to Nice may also resume,” she said.
Antipova said it was hard to make any forecasts as to how the air travel situation would develop during the next few days.
She said that there were no crowds of stranded passengers to be seen at Pulkovo 2, the city’s international airport.
“Most passengers from cancelled flights have gone to hotels, and currently Pulkovo international airport is half empty,” Antipova said. “Pulkovo domestic airport is working according its regular schedule,” she said.
Under Russian and European legislation, passengers of cancelled flights should be put up in hotels at air companies’ expense if the cancellation is the airline’s fault. The volcanic ash is considered to be force majeure and not the fault of airlines, but they are still providing hotels for their passengers at the moment, Antipova said.
Airlines are also helping their foreign passengers to extend their Russian visas if they expire during the period for which the flights are delayed, she said.
Antipova said that Pulkovo airport was suffering financial losses due to the situation but that its press service was not yet able to release any figures.
Some of Europe’s largest airlines, including British Airways, KLM, Air France and Lufthansa have now carried out a series of successful test flights and issued a statement on Monday asking for flights in continental Europe and the U.K. to be allowed.
Air travel delays and flight disruptions have already resulted in a number of concerts and performances by foreign artists being cancelled in St. Petersburg.
Sunday’s concert by Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt, the patriarch of early music, was cancelled at the last minute when the musician was unable to fly in, said Yekaterina Grebentsova, the press officer for the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, where the concert was due to take place. The performance has now been rescheduled for April 28, she added.
“A recital by the French organist Daniel Pandolfo scheduled for Wednesday faces a high risk of cancellation,” Grebentsova said.
The Musical Olympus Foundation had arranged for the virtuoso Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff to perform on Tuesday at the Shostakovich Philharmonic, but was forced to cancel the performance due to flight disruptions.
A performance by the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra on Monday at the Mariinsky Concert Hall was cancelled as some members of the orchestra are currently stuck in paralyzed European airports, said Oksana Tokranova, press officer for the Mariinsky theater. She said a new date for the performance will be announced.
The Mariinsky symphony orchestra, which recently gave three performances at the Vienna Spril festival, is unable to fly home, and the musicians are waiting in the Austrian capital.
The Mariinsky’s artistic director Valery Gergiev is also in a fix, along with the company’s choir and several soloists of the Mariinsky opera, who are all unable to fly to New York, where the musicians are due to take part in the “Russian Stravinsky” festival at the New York Philharmonic.
Gergiev is scheduled to conduct the event’s opening concert on Wednesday, as well as all the other concerts of the festival, which ends on May 8.
Many other scheduled concerts remain under a question mark, with most airports unable to confirm whether or not they will be able to resume their flight schedules, and if so, to what extent.
The Goethe Institute in St. Petersburg said it was unclear whether the Hamburg-based Monteverdi Choir, which is due to perform in St. Petersburg on Saturday as part of the Week of Germany in St. Petersburg, would be able to arrive in the city on Thursday as originally planned.
Alina Gromyko, PR manager of the Azbuka publishing house, said two book presentations by the internationally acclaimed French fashion writer Janie Samet have been cancelled because Samet was not able to fly to St. Petersburg from France. Samet was expected to give two presentations on Monday and Wednesday, and attend the St. Petersburg Book Fair on Thursday.
TITLE: Corrupt Police Officers Face Tougher Penalties
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma approved in a first reading Friday a presidential bill that would toughen punishment for crimes committed by police officers, even as President Dmitry Medvedev asked deputies to expand the legislation to include all law enforcement officials.
A Constitutional Court expert said earlier in the week that the bill discriminated against the police by singling them out.
There is “a point in boosting responsibility not only for police but for all other people whose duty is to protect law,” Medvedev told reporters Friday, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s web site.
The bill, which is posted on the Duma’s web site, increases the maximum prison terms for various crimes committed by police officers and introduces a prison term of up to six months for police officers who fail to fulfill orders from superiors.
A senior Duma deputy said the bill would be expanded to include tough penalties for all law enforcement officials. It will also add “a very detailed elaboration” on which violated police orders could result in prison terms to prevent superiors from abusing their subordinates, Mikhail Grishankov, the first deputy chairman of the Duma’s Security Committee and a member of United Russia, told The Moscow Times.
Deputies from United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party backed the bill Friday, while those from the Communist Party and A Just Russia voted against it, the Duma’s web site said.
The 450-seat Duma is dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
A date for the second reading has not been set.
A Constitutional Court expert earlier criticized the bill for discriminating against police, breaking the Constitution’s “principle of equality and justice,” Vedomosti reported.
The court expert was stating his personal opinion and it therefore was not binding, court spokeswoman Yulia Andreyeva said by telephone.
Andreyeva identified the expert as Oleg Vagin and said he did not wish to speak to the media.
Under the law, the Constitutional Court has no right to edit bills.
Interior Ministry spokesman Oleg Yelnikov refused to comment on the bill.
The police force faces a Medvedev-ordered reform after a series of scandals involving corruption and violence. Medvedev ordered Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to submit proposals to the Kremlin by the end of March on how to reform the police force. It remains unclear whether Nurgaliyev has complied with Medvedev’s order.
TITLE: Bubble-Blowing Youths Attacked
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Young people who gathered to celebrate spring with an annual bubble-blowing flash mob in St. Petersburg were attacked by an organized gang of men, thought to be neo-Nazis, and then dispersed by the police Sunday. Organizers believe the attackers mistook the flash mob for a gay pride event.
It was the third year running that the event, known as both “Dream Flash” and “Soapy Piter,” was held in the city. It presents itself as “non-political,” and mostly attracts teenagers.
“It has nothing to do with the gay community, or with any political, ideological or any other organization,” said Yulia, Dream Flash’s organizer, by phone on Monday. She requested that her last name be withheld from publication.
“It’s simply a celebration of spring, with the idea that a group of people come together and walk around the city center blowing bubbles and enjoying spring. There was also supposed to be an amateur photography competition, so there were two goals — to have a good time and take pictures of bubbles.”
As an estimated 500 stood blowing bubbles on the steps of Gorkovskaya metro station and in the surrounding Alexandrovsky Park at about 4 p.m. — the agreed time for the start of the flash mob, a flare was thrown into the crowd as an organized group of more than 30 men ran toward the participants and started attacking them. Several people had fallen to the ground before the attackers retreated at the sight of the OMON riot police approaching. At least one of the attackers was arrested.
Later reports said that at least one person was suffering from a concussion and another had been wounded by a rubber bullet from an attacker’s gun, but these remained unconfirmed on Monday evening.
During preparations for the event, a gay activist began advertizing a gay pride event within Dream Flash several days before the planned event.
“These are two different events; they are not connected to each other at all,” Yulia said.
“When I found out about it, I started to correspond with them, asking them to separate the two events, but they refused, because they thought our event was very suitable for them, and that we were ‘gay friendly.’ We corresponded for three days but it led to nothing.”
Valery Sozayev, the chair of the gay rights organization Vykhod, described the actions of the gay activists behind the promotion of their event as a “provocation.”
“Soap bubbles are rainbow-like and iridescent, and that’s why people use a lot of rainbow symbolism at [bubble-blowing] events, but it has nothing to do with the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender) community,” Sozayev said.
“Obviously, part of the LGBT community joins the event in every city where it takes place, but they do so as everybody else does, without positioning it as an LGBT event.”
Organizers and participants believe that neo-Nazis were behind the attack.
“I suspect that it was representatives of ultra-right organizations who found out that gays were going to come to the event and decided to stop it,” Yulia said, adding that she came across a group called “Stop the Gay Parade” on Vkontakte, the Russian Facebook-like social networking site.
“I wrote to one of the organizers, gave him my phone number and asked him to contact me, explaining that innocent people might suffer because of their initiative, but the organizer didn’t reply,” Yulia said.
Several minutes after the attack, the OMON police declared the event an “illegal meeting” and started to drive the participants, many of whom continued to blow bubbles, away from the metro and then out of the park, with the help of two police vehicles.
“Put away your bubbles,” one police officer commanded through a megaphone.
“I said to them that we had talked to a representative of City Hall, who said that our event was not subject to any law, because — and I quote — ‘We can’t forbid you to walk around the city.’
“Unfortunately, I was not provided with any written confirmation of this conversation, and the only thing I could do in the situation that arose yesterday was to agree with the police’s actions and ask everybody to leave.”
According to Yulia, she and two other organizers were among about 30 participants who ended up in a police precinct and were released after about five hours, after being charged with walking on the grass (a charge denied by the organizers). At least three people who filmed the event were detained, two of whom later complained of police aggression and violence.
The police spokesman did not answer his phone when called repeatedly Monday.
TITLE: Jailed Lawyer Makes Appeal Through YouTube Video
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A lawyer sentenced to 12 years in prison has recorded a YouTube video appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev in which he compares his situation to that of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in custody in November.
Prison authorities said Friday that they intend to investigate how the video was recorded and posted on the Internet, Interfax reported.
The lawyer, Valery Kulish, 33, claims that he refused to support a 6 million euro ($8.1 million) scam organized by his former employer, Alexei Dushutin, head of Voyenno-Stroitelnoye Upravleniye Moskvy, a state-controlled company.
Dushutin then paid 150,000 euros ($200,000) to fabricate a case against Kulish, the lawyer says. Moscow’s Tushinsky District Court convicted Kulish on charges of economic crimes in late March.
Representatives of the Federal Prison Service said Kulish, who is being held in a pretrial detention center in Moscow, had broken the rules that require all messages by inmates to be screened by the prison service.
The prison service promised to investigate how the appeal was filmed and published.
The appeal comes after Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer for the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in a Moscow pretrial detention center where he was being held on tax-fraud charges that he called a sham by corrupt Interior Ministry officials.
Medvedev has ordered an investigation into Magnitsky’s death, which led to a shakeup of the prison service. The Kremlin has made no public comment about Kulish’s appeal.
TITLE: Medvedev Braves Ash to Attend Polish Funeral
AUTHOR: By David McQuaid and Nathaniel Espino
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: WARSAW — Poland interred President Lech Kaczynski and his wife in the ancient capital of Krakow on Sunday in the presence of Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev amid signs the historic enemies may reach a reconciliation.
Medvedev lit a candle at the service for the couple, who died on April 10 when their plane crashed in Smolensk, Russia, on the way to a ceremony in Katyn forest honoring 22,000 Polish officers and officials killed in 1940 by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s secret police.
Medvedev and German President Horst Koehler were among 700 foreign guests, Polish officials and family members gathered at the 14th-century St. Mary’s Basilica, where a Mass was led by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, archbishop of Krakow and the former secretary to Pope John Paul II.
“Seventy years ago Katyn divided two nations,” Dziwisz said at the beginning of the Mass. “The tragedy eight days ago has released stores of good will in individuals and nations, and the sympathy and support we have received from our Russian brothers revives hope for reconciliation.”
Ash from Iceland’s erupting Eyjafjallaj?kull volcano closed airspace over Europe and led U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to cancel plans to attend. Other delegations struggled to arrive on government planes with clearance to fly at low altitudes, or by helicopter, rail or road.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili flew to Rome and Istanbul, then made stops in Bulgaria and Romania before his plane made it to Krakow in the late afternoon. He arrived in time to walk behind the dead president’s twin brother, Jaroslaw, in the funeral procession.
During Georgia’s 2008 military conflict with Russia, Kaczynski collected the presidents of Estonia, Lithuania and Ukraine for a joint trip to the country’s capital, Tbilisi, in a show of support for Saakashvili.
The call for improved ties between Russia and Poland overshadowed disruptions from the volcano.
“Facing such a grievous loss, we can make efforts to bring our countries closer together and listen to each other better,” Medvedev told journalists in Krakow before boarding his plane for the return fight to Moscow. He called Katyn “a crime of Joseph Stalin and his associates.”
Polish commentators said such language, backed by Russian decisions to call a day of national mourning and show Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda’s film on Katyn on national television, suggests the countries may be headed for the kind of rapprochement German Chancellor Willy Brandt started in 1970 by kneeling at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
“Medvedev didn’t have to come to Krakow, he’d already done a lot. But he came. His presence is more important than Obama’s absence,” wrote commentator Aleksandra Klich on the web site of newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
“Nothing we saw today lessens the chance of a breakthrough. We still need Russia to release documents and legally rehabilitate the victims, but I think that will happen,” Andrzej Rychard, a professor of sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, said by phone Sunday.
Medvedev, who made his first official visit to Poland, met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski at Wawel Castle before the funeral Mass.
Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and 94 other officials including central bank Governor Slawomir Skrzypek and the top four leaders of Poland’s armed forces were victims of the April 10 crash.
“The Russians have shown us their empathy,” said Bogdan Zawada, 40, an engineer from Sycow in western Poland waiting with his family in Market Square. “It’s a pity though that so many lives had to be lost for this moment to come.”
Investigators continue to work on synchronizing voice and flight data from the “black box” recorders from the plane crash, said Col. Zbigniew Rzepa, a spokesman for the Polish Military Prosecutor’s Office. Russian specialists on Sunday completed decoding the recorders, Interfax reported.
At a ceremony on April 17 in Warsaw honoring Kaczynski and the crash victims, Tusk, whose ruling Civic Platform party had often clashed with the president and his brother, called for Poles to overcome their political differences in what has been called the country’s greatest disaster in generations.
“This is a serious test for all of us,” Tusk told a crowd in Pilsudski Square. “Like the passengers on that airplane, we differ by background, political views and age. Our sense of community can only be preserved within us.”
Poland must hold an election by the end of June to fill the post of president. Komorowski, who has assumed Kaczynski’s duties and is the ruling party’s candidate for president, said he will set a date on April 21. Opposition parties and a legal opinion prepared by parliamentary experts give June 20 as the preferred election date.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski may choose to run for president to succeed his fallen brother, or may withdraw from politics altogether, the Polish Academy of Science’s Rychard said.
TITLE: Iran Holds a Nuclear Forum And Gets Prodded by Moscow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov has called for more confidence-building measures from Iran to allay international concerns over its nuclear program.
Rybakov was speaking Saturday on the sidelines of a nuclear disarmament conference that appeared timed to be a counterweight to U.S. President Barack Obama’s 47-nation summit in Washington last week to discuss nuclear security.
Obama did not invite Iran, which the U.S. fears is using a civilian nuclear program as cover for developing a weapons capability. Iran denies that and says its nuclear work is only for peaceful purposes, such as power generation.
“We need to reinforce, reinstall full confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program,” Rybakov said on Iran’s English-language Press TV.
Three sets of UN sanctions have failed to pressure Iran to stop its own uranium enrichment work, which it says is only for producing fuel for power stations. The technology is of international concern because it could give Iran a pathway to warhead production.
Iran’s conference brought together representatives from 60 countries, as well as delegates from international bodies and NGOs, according to Iranian media.
TITLE: Finnish Border Guards Schedule Strike
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tourism industry figures are recommending that local tourists postpone trips to Finland this weekend due to plans among Finnish border guards to hold a national strike.
“It obviously makes sense to cancel trips to Finland this weekend if possible,” said Sergei Korneyev, director for the northwest of the Russian Tourism Industry Union.
If the trip cannot be avoided, travelers should try to avoid the busiest periods at the border and preferably travel at night when there is less traffic, Korneyev said. He also advised people to travel through the less popular border crossings such as that in Svetogorsk.
Finnish border guards have announced plans to hold a national strike from Friday to Sunday. The guards will stop work at 4:05 p.m. on Friday and resume services at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Fontanka reported.
The border will not be left unsupervised — it will be operating on a skeleton staff and offering a greatly restricted service.
Finnish border guards have asked travelers to empathize with their position and appreciate that they are dissatisfied with their labor conditions.
According to preliminary reports, the strike action will affect road and rail crossings, as well as services at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport, the country’s main transport hub.
TITLE: Kazakh Official: Bakiyev Has Left
AUTHOR: By Peter Leonard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan on Monday left Kazakhstan, ending four days of refuge in the country after he was driven from power in a violent uprising, a Kazakh official said.
Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov told The Associated Press he didn’t know where Bakiyev was headed.
“He’s left Kazakhstan — there are no details on his planned destination,” Omarov said by telephone from the Kazakh capital, Astana.
The authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, said Sunday that Bakiyev would be welcome in his country, which could exacerbate Belarus’ tensions with the West as well as its difficult relations with neighboring Russia.
Another possible destination is the United Arab Emirates, where Bakiyev is thought to own property.
Bakiyev left Kyrgyzstan for Kazakhstan on Thursday after he was driven from power in a bloody revolt.
Some observers have suggested Russia played a role in Bakiyev’s downfall, angry that he backed off his promise last year to evict the United States from its air base in Kyrgyzstan; Russia also has a base in the former Soviet Central Asian nation.
Both the United States and Russia were involved in the deal under which Bakiyev was allowed to fly to Kazakhstan. But none of those countries have expressed approval of him, and the arrangement appeared aimed largely at pulling Kyrgyzstan back from violence and even civil war.
At least 83 people died when an April 7 protest rally in the Kyrgyz capital exploded into gunfire and protesters stormed government buildings. Bakiyev fled to his native village in the country’s south, where he tried to marshal support to resist the opposition figures who declared themselves the country’s interim leaders.
Bakiyev left for Kazakhstan hours after he fled a rally of supporters amid gunfire that witnesses said came from his guards, who apparently were spooked by an approaching group of protesters.
TITLE: Conflicting Signals In U.S. Adoptions Freeze
AUTHOR: By Nataliya Vasilyeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian and U.S. officials gave birthday gifts on Friday to the 8-year-old boy who was returned to Russia by his adoptive American mother, as Russia sent conflicting signals about whether all adoptions to the United States were now suspended.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday that adoption of Russian children by U.S. families had been suspended after Artyom Savelyev was sent unaccompanied to Moscow last week with a note from his adoptive mother in Tennessee saying he had psychological problems and was violent. People who have spent time with the boy in Moscow say he seems like a happy child.
Russian officials have provided little clarification about the hundreds of U.S. adoptions now in progress.
The Kremlin children’s rights ombudsman said Friday that potential parents still may prepare the paperwork for adoptions during the freeze, but courts will not hear U.S. adoption cases.
The Education and Science Ministry, which oversees international adoptions, insisted, however, that it had received no formal instructions to freeze adoptions and that it was up to the courts to decide.
The U.S. ambassador in Moscow met Friday with Russian officials on the issue.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States did not believe that there had been an official suspension of adoptions.
“There are a number of cases that are in the legal system now and are continuing,” he said. “We are also aware of a number of cases that were pending before the courts that have been postponed.”
A U.S. delegation is flying to Moscow for talks Monday and Tuesday to address Russian concerns and hammer out an accord that would allow the placement of Russian children to go ahead, said David Siefkin, press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Siefkin said the United States had not received official notification of a freeze.
“A lot of American families are now concerned,” he said. “We hope the process will keep going, especially for people who applied before and have been waiting for a long time.”
Siefkin was with a consular officer who visited Artyom on Friday, his eighth birthday, which he celebrated in the Moscow hospital where he was taken for tests upon his arrival. The consular officer brought Artyom presents and “reported that he was laughing and in good spirits,” an embassy statement said.
Pavel Astakhov, the children’s rights ombudsman, who gave the boy flowers, a cake and a toy car, also said he found the boy happy but running a fever from all of the excitement.
Astakhov showed a grainy photocopy of Artyom’s U.S. passport, issued on April 9, the day after he returned to Russia. He suggested that the United States issued the passport as part of an effort to return him to the United States.
The embassy spokesman said although Artyom is an American citizen, the United States was not trying to take him out of Russia.
“We’re not at all unhappy that he’ll stay here because he’s being well taken care of, and we know he’s going to have a good Russian family and a good home,” Siefkin told reporters.
Under the U.S. Child Citizenship Act of 2000, any foreign child adopted by U.S. citizens automatically becomes a citizen once adopted.
Astakhov said several Russian families have already offered to adopt Artyom.
“As soon as he gets well, we’ll get him out of the hospital and into a foster family,” he told reporters.
The boy’s case caused public outrage and bolstered opponents of foreign adoptions, who in past years have pointed to a few highly publicized cases of abuse and killings of Russian children adopted by U.S. families.
But while international adoptions have been vilified in the Russian press, Russian adoption agencies stress the role that they have played in encouraging Russians to consider adoption.
“Thanks to Americans, as well as Italians and Spaniards, Russians have increasingly become more interested in adopting,” said Lyudmila Kochergina, director of the Moscow office of adoption agency Children’s Hope International.
A new adoption agreement might provide additional guarantees of Russian children’s safety overseas, she said, but adoptions already are heavily regulated and each case is decided by a Russian court, she said.
But what is lacking in some cases is an understanding by the adoptive parents that they will need to work hard to build a relationship with their children, Kochergina said.
“Parents need to be fully aware of the fact that adoption and parenting means a lot of work, and that attachment takes a long time,” she said. “All kids from orphanages are difficult to handle. It cannot be any other way, because these kids were once betrayed by adults.”
More than 1,800 Russian children were adopted in the United States last year, according to the Education and Science Ministry.
TITLE: Pro-Kremlin Nashi Youth Group Gets VIP Support for 5-Year Party
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, best known for harassing ambassadors and opposition leaders, celebrated its five-year anniversary Thursday with a major show of support from the Kremlin, which said the activists remain a vital force in Russia.
Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov — who is widely believed to have organized the group while an adviser to then-President Vladimir Putin in 2005 — spoke to the raucous crowd of 2,000 delegates, as did Nashi’s founding father, Vasily Yakemenko.
Created to resist revolutions like those in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, Nashi has taken a back seat to other youth groups in recent years as the threat of widespread public unrest dwindled.
But Surkov told members Thursday that he “would always support” them.
“If we all go on vacation, the consequences won’t wait. We see what’s happening in Kyrgyzstan — that means we’re needed and have to be at our posts. … Those who chose for themselves the political fight will never be able to relax again,” Surkov told the crowd. “I’m calling on you to remain in that fight,” he said, before conveying greetings from Medvedev.
Putin said in a letter to the congress that the movement “unites people who love their motherland and are trying to make a serious contribution to the resolution problems in the state and society.”
Yakemenko, now director of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, restated the group’s allegiance to Russia’s two leading politicians.
TITLE: Confusion Rattles U.S. Families
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — For the Zukors in Maryland and hundreds of other families across the United States, there were anxious and confusing moments last week as reports surfaced — and then were questioned — regarding a freeze of adoptions from Russia.
“You’ve got to expect the unexpected,” said Christie Zukor, who along with her husband, Ken, adopted four siblings from Russia in 2007 and has a pending application to adopt their 15-year-old half-sister.
They are among an estimated 3,000 U.S. families in various stages of adopting children from Russia.
For the Zukors, a suspension could dash their hopes of traveling to a Russian orphanage within the next two months to bring home 15-year-old Marina, the half-sister of the three girls and one boy they adopted in 2007.
“We have no doubt we’ll bring Marina home one day — though it may not be as soon as we would like,” Christie Zukor said. “But I don’t know how patient I’d be if this was my first adoption.”
Holly and Brian Shriner fit that “first adoption” profile. They started trying to adopt from Russia in May 2008, and last December were given approval to adopt two sisters, ages 2 and 3, whom they have visited in an orphanage near the city of Tver.
“We absolutely fell in love,” Holly Shriner said. “We feel we left pieces of our heart and soul in Russia when we left them. We’re now trying to finish the process and give them the family they deserve.”
The Shriners had hoped that the adoption would be complete within the next month or two, but the furor over a Russian boy’s return to Moscow has created uncertainty.
“The thought of our two girls continuing to remain in an orphanage without loving parents because of the action of one woman — it’s so hard for me to comprehend,” Holly Shriner said. “It breaks my heart to think thousands of other children could be hurt.”
Shriner said she and her husband have been reminded throughout their application process — which has included seminars and courses — that adoption can be daunting.
“From the very beginning, we were never promised rainbows and sunshine and birds singing all the time,” she said. “It’s hard. No one along the way has said anything other than that.”
Shriner said she takes comfort in the availability of a nearby social worker who has offered to help with any post-adoption challenges.
“I expect we will have a bump, or two, or 12, along the road,” she said. “You just have to figure out how to work through those.”
Christie Zukor, a stay-at-home mom, said a social worker provided by the adoption agency had helped her and her husband cope with four new members of the household.
“It saddens me that this woman … made such a poor choice,” Zukor said. “It’s impossible that she didn’t have resources. For her to spoil it for everybody — I just hope it doesn’t happen.”
Heather Boehm said she and her husband, Garrett, have had a good experience since adopting a son, Alexander, from Smolensk in 2007. The boy, now 3 1/2, has some speech delays and sleep problems, but she said, “We feel very fortunate.”
The couple submitted paperwork to Russia earlier this year for a second adoption.
Boehm, a lawyer for abused and neglected children before she became a stay-at-home mom, said Alexander is “pretty much a typical American child now,” although she has learned how to prepare Russian dishes like borsch.
“I hope with all my heart that the United States and Russia sort this all out,” she said, “because I know many, many adoptive families in the United States who have just wonderful success stories.”
Julie Garten and her husband Jay plan to adopt an 18-month-old boy from St. Petersburg but don’t have a fixed timetable yet.
“It’s definitely trying,” Julie said of the uncertainty. “You cry a lot, you pray a lot.”
TITLE: Father in Adopted Boy’s Death Gets Lawyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YORK, Pennsylvania — A judge has appointed an independent lawyer to advise a man charged along with his wife in the beating death of the 7-year-old boy whom they adopted from Russia.
Michael Craver, 45, and Nanette Craver, 54, of Carroll Township, Pennsylvania, are charged with homicide, child endangerment and conspiracy to commit both charges in the Aug. 25 death of the boy, Nathaniel Craver. Authorities said the child died of complications from traumatic brain injury and was also malnourished.
The couple had retained two lawyers to represent them jointly, but York County Common Pleas Judge John Kennedy advised them on Friday of the disadvantages of being represented by the same lawyers. He ended up naming Vincent Quinn to represent the husband, while his wife will remain represented by Gregory Moro.
The couple adopted Nathaniel, formerly named Ivan Skorobogatov, and his twin sister in 2003 from an orphanage in the Chelyabinsk region. Deputy prosecutor Tim Barker has said the girl is in a safe place and being well cared for.
The case, along with another in which a woman from Tennessee sent a 7-year-old adopted Russian child alone on a one-way flight back to his homeland, has sparked outrage in Russia and prompted officials there to suggest a suspension of adoptions of Russian children by U.S. families.
Russian authorities met with Pennsylvania prosecutors last month regarding the case against the Cravers.
TITLE: Mortgage Market Begins Recovery, Demand Rises
AUTHOR: By Lyudmila Vinogradova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The mortgage market showed some signs of recovery in March. Demand for mortgages rose 10 percent, and the number of deals increased 3.7 times from the year earlier.
Demand for mortgage loans rose about 10 percent over the last month and will continue to grow, experts at Ipotek.ru said. The change in demand is not only one of quantity but of quality as well: “Clean” mortgage buyers who are buying apartments, not just trading up, have appeared.
The number of registered mortgage deals for existing homes in Moscow has also demonstrated a positive dynamic compared with last year’s indicators. In March 2010, the Moscow branch of the Federal Registration Service registered 1,609 mortgage deals, which is 3.7 times higher than the level in March 2009 and 2.5 percent higher than March 2008, according to Miel’s Analytics Center.
Analysts say the bump in mortgage deals is because of demand that built up during 2009 and which is just now being realized, as the situation on the real estate market has stabilized and banks are starting to lower interest rates.
Mortgage rates for existing homes fell in ruble terms to an average of 14.6 percent annually, while in dollar and euro terms they are down to 10.8 percent, Miel said in a report.
Sberbank president German Gref said Friday that the bank would lower its interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 1 percentage point and would stop charging loan fees.
“The rate announced for loans will be the effective, final rate for borrowers,” Gref said. Taking into account the absence of fees, loans will become 2.5 percentage points to 3 percentage points cheaper, he said. The lowest mortgage rate will be 10.5 percent, which will be for ruble loans for organizations with pay wages through Sberbank.
By the beginning of this year, rates on certain loans fell to 10 percent. This wasn’t the first time in the short history of Russian mortgages that lowering rates to this level was a catalyst for demand, said Dmitry Ovsyannikov, chief executive of Ipotek.ru. Mortgages hit the psychologically important 10 percent mark for the first time in 2004.
“Before 2004, the average rate was above 12 percent to 13 percent, and the share of housing purchases that used mortgages was only 2 percent to 3 percent,” Ovsyannikov said. “In 2004, mortgage rates fell to almost 10 percent, after which demand for mortgage loans began to grow geometrically, and by 2007, every fifth apartment was bought with a mortgage.”
As for the “psychological barrier,” it was surpassed again by the beginning of this spring. Specifically, in the second half of January and February, many people had already received mortgages through the Mortgage Lending Agency at rates of 9 percent to 11 percent.
This vivid example led many who traditionally don’t trust new financial instruments to believe that they have a real opportunity to get a loan.
“It’s entirely possible that the pace at which rates are falling will lead to rates of 10 percent to 11 percent this year. Already today there are programs with even lower rates,” said Alexei Shlenov, chief executive of Miel Brokerage.
At the very least, these lower rates assure us that, if we haven’t reached the end of the crisis in the mortgage market, the worst is over, analysts at Ipotek.ru said.
TITLE: City Officials’ Earnings Go Up
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva and Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg officials earned more last year than in 2008, according to a statement published last week on City Hall’s web site. City governor Valentina Matviyenko earned 2.38 million rubles ($81,885) in 2009.
The statement revealed the names and earnings of St. Petersburg’s wealthiest officials — Deputy Governor Alexei Sergeyev, with 6.7 million rubles ($230,500) and Igor Metelsky, chairman of the City Property Management Committee (KUGI) with 5.5 million rubles ($189,200). According to KUGI’s press secretary, Yelena Bodrova, Metelsky’s total reported earnings comprised his salary, money earned from a car sale and interest on investments he made while still a businessman. Sergeyev, meanwhile, earned just 1.63 million rubles ($56,080) from his main employer. “The rest of his earnings came from converting securities, said Sergeyev’s press secretary Larisa Kostina.
Yevgeny Yelin, chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, earned 5.17 million rubles ($177,900) according to the statement. Yelin’s press secretary, Alexander Sazhin, noted that the chairman was in charge of St. Petersburg Technopark, a public company, until December 2009.
Other officials’ earnings ranged from 1.1 million rubles ($37,850) to 1.85 million rubles ($63,650), with all individuals seeing an increase from 2008. As of January 1, 2009, the base payment unit used for calculating officials’ salaries is 865 rubles ($30) — 145 rubles higher than in 2008. The apparent rise in earnings may also be related to a difference in reporting: In 2008 only salaries from primary places of employment were published, whereas this year’s figures reflect all earnings.
“For a large city, the earnings of the governor and officials are nothing out of the ordinary,” said political scientist Alexei Makarkin. In January 2010, the average salary in Russia was 24,478 rubles ($840) per month.
Two local officials earned less than their wives last year, according to the statement. The spouse of deputy governor Yury Molchanov earned 26.8 million rubles ($922,000) in 2009. Molchanov confirmed last week that the assets of Business Link, a company he founded prior to joining the public sector, had been transferred to his wife. The Molchanovs have four dependent children.
The wife of deputy governor Mikhail Oseyevsky earned 9.6 million rubles ($330,300), which Oseyevsky attributed to her investments in a Russian bank.
“That kind of profit could be earned from an investment of 75 million rubles at a rate of 13.5 percent, taking into account tax on interest earnings above bank rates,” said Maria Kalvarskaya, an analyst at KIT Finance. Oseyevsky was deputy chairman of the executive board at PromStroi Bank from 1999 to 2003 .
Seven of the fourteen officials who declared their earnings do not have cars. Deputy Governor Roman Filimonov, however, owns an all-terrain vehicle, a snowmobile and a jet ski. Filimonov’s wife drives a Mercedes Benz GL 500 4matic and Cadillac Escalade. She also owns a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle.
TITLE: Russia Plans to Sell 5-Year, 10-Year Bonds in Dollars
AUTHOR: By Denis Maternovsky, Caroline Hyde and Sonja Cheung
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia plans to offer five- and 10-year dollar bonds in its first international debt sale since the 1998 financial crisis, according to three bankers with knowledge of the transaction.
Russian officials were to meet investors in Los Angeles on Monday, San Francisco on Tuesday and New York on Wednesday, after covering European and Asian cities last week.
The government has said it plans to borrow as much as $17.8 billion abroad this year in several installments and is selling at a time when yields on emerging-market debt are near all-time lows on confidence in the economic recovery and record-low global interest rates. Officials, including Finance Minster Alexei Kudrin, have indicated the sale may be less than the official target for 2010 after a surge in commodity prices boosted the economy.
“The five-year maturity will cater more to local Russian banks, while the 10-year is for international accounts,” said Vladimir Gersamia, senior portfolio manager at Fortis Investments, who helps manage $3 billion of emerging-market debt in London. “As long as the deal is between $5 billion and $7 billion it should do fine. I wish they could have done the 20-year maturity as well, but obviously they didn’t want to oversaturate the market.”
Russia is coming back to international capital markets for the first time since defaulting on $40 billion of domestic debt in 1998. Yields have fallen by almost two-thirds from 12 percent in October 2008 as oil prices rebounded above $80 a barrel, spurring the economy’s recovery from its worst slump since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The country’s foreign-currency debt has returned 26 percent during the past year, beating the 24 percent gain for global emerging-market debt, according to JPMorgan’s EMBI+ Indexes. The rally helped increase assets under management in developing-nation debt mutual funds to a record $74.7 billion last month, according to research firm EPFR.
Bonds, stocks and the ruble slumped Monday as oil, Russia’s main export, retreated below $82 a barrel. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for fraud April 16, helping trigger a sell-off in commodities and global equity markets.
Russia’s benchmark dollar bond due 2030 dropped, pushing the yield eight basis points higher, the biggest increase since March 24, to 4.852 percent by 2 p.m. in Moscow, according to Bloomberg prices. That’s up from a record low of 4.773 percent on April 16.
Stocks had their steepest decline in more than two months, with the Micex Index losing as much as 2.9 percent. The ruble weakened the most since Feb. 4.
Russia hired Barclays Capital, Citigroup, Credit Suisse Group and VTB Capital on Feb. 5 to arrange the sale. The government’s debt is rated BBB by Standard & Poor’s, two levels above non-investment grade, and one step higher at Baa1 at Moody’s Investors Service.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Svyaznoi Sales Soar
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Svyaznoi, the Russian mobile-phone retailer with 1,949 outlets, said sales jumped 63 percent in the first quarter on demand for low-cost handsets and additional services.
Revenue increased to 26.1 billion rubles ($894 million) from 16 billion rubles a year earlier, the Moscow-based retailer said Monday in an e-mailed statement. Svyaznoi sold 7.1 million handsets in the first quarter, up from 5.9 million a year earlier. Its share of the Russian mobile-phone market reached 25 percent in the quarter, according to the statement.
Svyaznoi competes with Moscow-based Yevroset, which runs Russia’s largest handset chain and is part-owned by VimpelCom. Svyaznoi said in December it may consider an initial public offering in 2011.
Glavstroi Offers Land
MOSCOW (Vedomosti) — Billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Glavstroi corporation may cede land it planned to use for a residential development in southwestern Moscow to Bank Soyuz to repay part of a 5.7 billion ruble ($195 million) debt, according to Vitaly Korolev, a spokesman for the construction company.
LSR Plans Share Sale
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — LSR Group, Russian billionaire Andrei Molchanov’s property company, plans to sell as much as $773 million of shares and global depositary receipts, the company said in a regulatory filing Monday.
The shares will be offered through Streetlink, a Cyprus-based company owned by Molchanov, according to the statement. Streetlink controls 58 percent of the company, it said.
LSR set the price range for its share offering at $10-11 per GDR, equivalent to $50-$55 per ordinary share. Five GDRS represent one ordinary share. The company intends to use the proceeds to repay about $300 million in debt, to fund expansion of its real estate business through acquisition of land and to finance existing developments.
Shtokman Staff Change
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Shtokman Development Chief Executive Officer Yury Komarov stepped down after “completing his duties,” the Gazprom-led venture said Monday.
First Deputy CEO Herve Madeo will be acting chief until the board names a replacement at the end of May or start of June, Yury Akhremenko, a spokesman, said by telephone. Total and Statoil are also partners in the Arctic gas project.
Motor Oils Unit Plan
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom Neft plans to spend 2 billion rubles ($70 million) to build a motor oils unit by 2012 at its Omsk refinery, RIA Novosti said, citing Deputy Chief Executive Officer Anatoly Cherner.
The plant will have the capacity to produce 120,000 metric tons of motor oils a year, RIA said.
Gas Forum Talks Prices
ORAN (Bloomberg) — The Gas Exporting Countries Forum will discuss means to ensure fair natural-gas prices, Russia’s energy minister said.
“If we keep reducing gas production, prices will go up,” Sergei Shmatko told reporters Sunday in Oran, Algeria, which is hosting the gas forum. The organization includes Russia, Iran and Qatar.
Rosinter Sales Up
MOSCOW (SPT) — Rosinter Restaurants said Thursday that its same-store sales rose 2.6 percent in the first quarter, Reuters reported.
The number of transactions in comparable restaurants rose 4.3 percent year on year, although the average bill edged down 1.6 percent, reflecting still-weak purchasing power.
In March, same-store sales jumped 7.3 percent on the back of a 9.1 percent increase in guest traffic, while the average bill was down 1.7 percent.
Djaparidze Payout
MOSCOW (SPT) — Eurasia Drilling will pay $77 million to its main owner, Alexander Djaparidze, after raising $227.5 million by selling stock from earlier buybacks, Reuters reported.
The firm said it placed around 12 million Global Depositary Receipts on the London Stock Exchange at $19 per GDR to realize gains on buybacks and to boost the stock’s liquidity.
Xenon Taps 2 Bankers
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Xenon Capital Partners, an investment company set up to advise state- owned companies on mergers and acquisitions in the energy industry, plans to hire two bankers from JPMorgan.
Stan Song and Hamid Gayibov quit JPMorgan last week and may join three former colleagues from the U.S. bank’s M&A energy team in Moscow who are already at the firm, according to a statement from Xenon.
Ukraine, IMF Reach
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund agreed to end the country’s existing arrangement and start a new program that will run for 2 1/2 years, Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko said Thursday.
The new program’s size has yet to be negotiated, but the payments will exceed the remaining tranches of the existing $16.4 billion program, he said.
Hong Kong Listings?
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — As many as five Russian companies may follow United Company RusAl and list in Hong Kong by 2012, Yelena Khisamova, head of equity capital markets in the investment banking arm of VTB Group, said Wednesday.
“That’s my estimate based on the active discussions we’re having with Russian issuers,” Khisamova said. “I would say for three of these companies, this is serious.”
State Oil Fields
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The government may offer the Trebs and Titov oil fields for sale in one lot for at least 15 billion rubles ($517 million) in the second half of the year, Vedomosti reported Thursday, citing unidentified government officials familiar with the plans.
The value of the fields, which together form one of Russia’s biggest un- distributed oil assets, may exceed 17 billion rubles, the newspaper said, citing one of the officials.
TITLE: Farimex Calls Off Telenor Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A mysterious and minor shareholder in VimpelCom on Friday withdrew its lawsuit against Telenor, removing the final obstacle for the Norwegian telecoms firm and Alfa Group to merge their stakes in Russia’s second-largest mobile operator and Ukraine’s Kyivstar.
A federal arbitration court in Tyumen dismissed a decision from a lower court in Omsk, which had ruled in favor of Farimex Products on fining Telenor $1.7 billion.
Farimex’s case was widely seen as a tool to put pressure on Telenor to either unite its assets with those of Altimo, Alfa Group’s telecoms arm, or to divorce them fully. Altimo repeatedly denied any connection to Farimex.
The Omsk court’s ruling had become a stumbling block in Russian-Norwegian ties and weakened investor confidence in the country’s judiciary.
Farimex, which owns 0.002 percent of VimpelCom, filed its lawsuit in 2008. The suit claimed that Telenor-appointed board members hindered VimpelCom’s expansion into the Ukrainian market in 2005 by blocking the purchase of Ukrainian Radio Systems, an asset VimpelCom later acquired anyway.
On orders from the court, marshals seized Telenor’s stake in VimpelCom and were preparing to sell it to compensate VimpelCom to the tune of $1.7 billion for having missed a chance to move into the Ukrainian market.
Dmitry Chyorny, a lawyer for Farimex, confirmed that the company “had no claims” against Telenor.
“The situation has been settled. Everyone is satisfied,” he said by telephone from Tyumen, without elaborating.
Dismissal or withdrawal of Farimex’s lawsuit at no loss to Telenor was one of the conditions for the deal to merge VimpelCom and Kyivstar to be closed.
Telenor, which owns 30 percent in VimpelCom, and Altimo, which holds 44 percent of the voting stock, reached an agreement in October to end their long-running feud. Under the agreement, Altimo and Telenor are creating a new venture — Bermuda-registered Vimpelcom Ltd. — that will incorporate their stakes in VimpelCom and Kyivstar.
Altimo will hold a 43.89 percent voting stake in the new company, while Telenor will own 35.42 percent.
Telenor said it was satisfied that Farimex had withdrawn the lawsuit.
“Farimex’s withdrawal of its claim today and the cancellation of the Omsk ruling are steps in the right direction,” said Jan Edvard Thygesen, Telenor executive vice president and head of operations in Central and Eastern Europe.
“This case never had any merit, and we are pleased it has been withdrawn, he said in a statement published on Telenor’s web site.
TITLE: Prime Minister Checks Price for Flu Medicine
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Pharmacists in Murmansk received an unexpected visitor on Saturday when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was in the northern port city to discuss the fish industry, ordered his driver to stop so he could check on medicine prices.
“Are there any complaints from customers? Are you complying with [pricing] requirements on vital drugs?” he asked a pharmacist at a store owned by the 36.6 chain. Putin then asked for the price of Arbidol, a Russian-made medicine to treat flu, which was included on the government’s list of vital drugs.
As the store employees frantically began flipping through the pages of a catalog, Putin informed them, “We’re not in a hurry.” He and officials traveling with him had just visited a local fish factory and were on their way to a government meeting to discuss the industry.
The appearance was not the first time that Putin had decided — apparently on a whim — to drop by a retailer to chat with customers and check on prices.
In June, Putin and a crowd of Cabinet members made an unannounced visit to a Perekryostok supermarket in Moscow, where the prime minister inspected meat prices and persuaded the chain’s chief executive to lower pork prices.
Managers at the 36.6 outlet were luckier, earning Putin’s praise after he discovered that Arbidol was selling for 212 rubles ($7.30), well below the maximum price of 267 rubles.
“The repricing was done on time. The main thing is for our suppliers not to let us down,” one employee told him, according to comments on the government web site.
People in line assured the prime minister that some municipal drugstores offered even lower prices. “If there are prices cheaper than this — that’s great,” Putin said.
Earlier this month, the government began enforcing markup limits on a list of drugs that comprise about one-third of the Russian pharmaceutical market.
Under the law, the federal government set limits for each region on wholesale and retail markups on imported drugs, which are added to the declared price at customs. For Russian-made drugs, the markup is calculated from the production price.
Putin has made the war on high drug prices a prominent line of rhetoric, warning governors earlier this month that they would be held responsible if prices keep rising.
He also said drugstores could have their licenses revoked for violations.
Murmansk Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko, who accompanied Putin on the price-check, was spared a potentially embarrassing dressing-down, however.
“Your chain is not bad,” Putin told the 36.6 pharmacists. “It’s good that you are living up to the expectations of the government and the customers,” he said.
The pharmacy chain 36.6, which is traded on the MICEX stock exchange, also owns drug maker Veropharm, which produces branded and generic pharmaceuticals.
TITLE: IPO Trend Continues as Dozens of Firms Plan Offerings
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Four firms from Russia and Ukraine pressed ahead with share offerings to raise up to $2 billion, with two lowering valuations following weak demand for a placement last week and a fall in share prices on Monday, Reuters reported.
Dozens of Russian companies plan initial public offerings this year, seeking to replenish their coffers after a recession and enabling their owners to lock in profits.
Some investors are predicting that the total raised could exceed $20 billion, approaching the record levels seen in 2007.
The rush started with a $2.2 billion Hong Kong IPO by United Company RusAl, the world’s top aluminum producer, in January, followed by a $90 million IPO of seafood firm Russian Sea last week, which drew weak demand from investors. (See story, this page.)
On Monday, fertilizer company UralChem said it wanted to raise $496 million to $642 million, steam coal company Kuzbass Fuel Company $295 million to $398 million, developer LSR up to $773 million and Ukrainian egg producer Avangard $198 million to $256 million.
Together with drug distributor Protek, which started a roadshow last week to raise up to $400 million, the total sum raised by Russian firms could exceed $4.5 billion so far this year.
“There has been a long drought of Russian placements, so it is a delayed offer of some sort,” said Ivan Mazalov at Prosperity Capital Management, where he helps manage $4.1 billion worth of Russian assets.
“The choice is very big, the ranges are good and the appetite is there,” said Mazalov, who does not rule out bidding for some of the four stocks. “The next placement will depend on the market and, if it gets weaker, people will wait with placements.”
Emerging stocks fell more than 2 percent on Monday, heading for their largest one-day drop since Feb. 5, as investors became risk-averse, fretting about last week’s U.S. data and U.S. regulator Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud charge against Goldman Sachs.
The stock market fall, combined with the weak placement by Russian Sea and sour memories from United Company RusAl’s placement, when the stock plunged by more than 10 percent at the start of trading, have likely weighed on companies, bringing down their initial valuations.
UralChem said it would be valued at $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion post-IPO versus an initial estimate of $1.5 billion. KTK valued itself at $945 million to $1.276 billion post-IPO versus the initial $1.0 billion to $1.4 billion.
LSR set its secondary placement price range at $10 to $11 per GDR — in line with the market — and Avangard said it wanted to raise $198 million to $256 million — in line with an initial $200 million estimate.
TITLE: Shuvalov: Russia to Go It Alone
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia may abandon its plans to join the World Trade Organization in a joint bid with Kazakhstan and Belarus, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Thursday, recanting a plan that many experts said was doomed from the start.
The government had earlier indicated a willingness to apply for accession to the WTO as part of a customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus, but Shuvalov said that model would be changed “due to tactical considerations, as long as the decision is approved by the leaders of the three countries of the customs union — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
Russia has been in talks to join the WTO since 1993 and is currently the only major economy that is not yet part of the organization.
In June, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan would bid for WTO membership together. Later, both he and President Dmitry Medvedev indicated that Russia would join in whichever way was most expedient.
The idea of joining the WTO within the customs union was dubious from the start, said Alexei Portansky, an expert at the Higher School of Economics’ Trade Policy Institute.
“The announcement that Russia will join the WTO along with Belarus and Kazakhstan came as a surprise last June even for the negotiators, as it contradicts the rules of this organization,” he said.
The Marrakesh agreement, the 1994 document outlining WTO principles, stipulates that unified customs territories applying for membership must have full sovereignty over their trade policies, as do Hong Kong and Taiwan, and does not mention customs unions of any kind.
“It’s clear that the authorities realize they made a mistake last summer and are now trying to save their reputation, by saying cautiously that there is less probability now that the accession to the WTO within the customs union will take place,” Portansky said.
The initial stage of the customs union went into effect on Jan. 1 after the new organization’s legal framework was finalized. The agreement allows for the establishment of a customs territory by July 1, and the final stage of the union’s creation is expected to conclude on July 1, 2011.
According to an estimate by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economic Forecasting, the customs union will add a cumulative $400 billion to the gross domestic products of the three countries by 2015.
Kyrgyzstan has expressed an interest in joining the customs union, but it is not yet clear how the overthrow of the government in the Central Asian nation may affect those plans. Putin also invited Ukraine to join the customs union last month.
Despite the change in strategy, Russia could join the WTO by year’s end, Shuvalov said Wednesday at a meeting with members of the European Commission in Brussels.
“Russia hopes to complete all procedures by the end of the year. We have support from the EU and positive signals from the U.S. administration. If the U.S. gives similar support, it will take several months,” Shuvalov said, Itar-Tass reported.
The timing may be right for Russia to secure the support that it needs abroad, but first it needs to step up to the plate, Portansky said.
“Last April, [U.S. President] Barack Obama promised to help Russia join the WTO, but due to a number of pressing domestic issues in the U.S., it looks like the idea was put away for some time,” he said. “We need the support of the U.S. plus our own consistency in words and actions in order to join the WTO individually.”
Medvedev said Wednesday that he was counting on the Obama administration’s support and reproached Obama for not yet fulfilling the promise that he made in April 2009 at the G20 summit in London to help Russia join the WTO.
“Unfortunately, there has been no result so far,” Medvedev told Rossia-24.
Shuvalov said Wednesday that Russia would start lowering its customs duties in the second half so as to come in line with the levels required by the WTO.
“To start lowering the tariffs before then would be difficult, almost impossible, because it would not be easy to explain to the Russian people,” he said, Reuters reported.
Export tariffs on timber, which have been raised over recent years to stimulate investment in paper production, were one of the key points of recent disagreements with the WTO. In 2008, Russia introduced import duties on automobiles to protect domestic producers.
TITLE: HP Execs Suspected Of Making Illegal Payments
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — German prosecutors have offered assurances that there was no conflict of interest for Russian investigators helping them with a bribery case involving U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard and the Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow.
“We took extreme precautions and thought carefully about whom to contact [in Moscow],” Wolfgang Klein, a spokesman for prosecutors in Dresden, told The St. Petersburg Times on Friday.
German investigators suspect that individuals linked to HP paid 8 million euros ($10.8 million) to win a 35 million euro ($47.2 million) deal to equip prosecutors throughout Russia with hardware and software enabling secure communications.
A German request for help led to a raid at HP’s Moscow office on Wednesday. The search, carried out by agents from the Investigative Committee, resulted in the confiscation of documents that should be sent to Dresden, Klein said.
He said German prosecutors did not know who received the bribe money and had no evidence so far that officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office, including those assisting the German investigation, might have taken it.
Klein stressed that his office did not believe that Russian investigators were involved. “Nothing points in that direction,” he said by telephone from Dresden.
He noted that procurement for the Prosecutor General’s Office, like for most government agencies, is handled by a separate department.
A woman who answered the phone at the Prosecutor General’s press office Friday said questions would only be accepted in writing and that no answer would be sent before Monday.
Natalya Vishnyakova, who served as the prosecutor general’s chief spokeswoman from 2002 to 2006 — which, according to Klein, matches the period when the kickbacks were paid — said in an interview published Saturday that any suspicion that her former colleagues had accepted money were baseless.
She said the equipment deal was carried out as a tripartite agreement between the prosecutor’s office, HP and an unidentified bank. “This was a three-sided agreement involving one of the big Russian banks. The Prosecutor General’s Office was just a recipient of goods in this case,” she told Kommersant.
Vishnyakova, who now works as an adviser to former Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, also said HP got the deal because it made the best offer. “[HP] offered a comprehensive solution, while others just offered the hardware,” she said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is a key government agency in President Dmitry Medvedev’s drive to root out corruption. Both Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and his influential colleague, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, are members of a presidential council against corruption.
The HP case is also delicate because of a fierce rivalry between Bastrykin and Chaika and their respective offices. The Investigative Committee is a semi-autonomous agency nominally subordinate to the prosecutor general. Since its inception in 2007, both agencies have sparred publicly, and their leaders are seen as belonging to two competing clans that vie for dominance over the country’s law enforcement agencies.
It was unclear why Wednesday’s raid at HP Moscow was carried out by the Investigative Committee and not by prosecutors.
Diplomats say requests for legal assistance must be sent via both countries’ foreign ministries, implying that the decision on which law enforcement agency to use was made in Moscow.
But Marina Gridnyeva, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor general, has suggested that the Russians had no choice, saying the German search request was sent to the Investigative Committee “in accordance with the Criminal Procedural Code,” Interfax reported.
The Investigative Committee has not commented on the case since announcing the raid on Wednesday.
Nine people — including three Russians living in Moscow, according to Klein — are suspected of setting up a complex web of bogus companies and accounts in a host of countries ranging from Belize to Lithuania to facilitate kickbacks.
The investigation, however, is focusing on one current and two former HP executives who live outside Russia, Klein said. The three were temporarily detained last December.
Among them is Hilmar Lorenz, a onetime HP executive in Russia. German authorities are looking into whether Lorenz conceived a plan to divert bribes through shell companies, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing German court documents.
TITLE: Aeroflot Flights Get Wireless
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Passengers on certain Aeroflot flights will soon have access to in-flight wireless data service from MegaFon, the companies said Thursday.
One plane will be equipped for the service on June 1, and three other planes will follow on Nov. 1. Aeroflot could not predict which routes will use the outfitted planes, but customers will be able to find out whether their airplane is equipped when ordering tickets on the Aeroflot web site, said Vitaly Savelyev, the airline’s chief executive.
Passengers on the four planes will be able to send and receive SMS and MMS messages and to use up to 1 megabit per second of GPRS Internet. For safety reasons, coverage will be provided after the aircraft reaches a cruising altitude of 3,000 meters.
Although prices have not been finalized, one text message will likely cost about 10 rubles (30 cents), while 1 megabyte of data is estimated at 200 rubles, MegaFon chief executive Sergei Soldatenkov said.
MegaFon has invested 150 million rubles ($5.2 million) in the pilot project, which will run through the end of the year. After that, a decision will be made on whether to equip more planes, increase bandwidth or provide voice services.
Aeroflot will need to pay about $1 million every year for extra fuel and other expenditures incurred by having the 80-kilogram cellular stations onboard the planes, Savelyev said.
The market potential for in-flight cellular data usage will be 19 million people by 2013, MegaFon commercial director Larisa Tkachuk said. Subscribers to other networks will have access to MegaFon’s roaming coverage, but other service providers will not be able to install their stations on the same plane.
TITLE: Dealers Hope for No Recall for Toyotas
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Beleaguered carmaker Toyota said Thursday that it had suspended sales of its new Lexus GX 460 sport utility vehicle, and dealers are hoping that a recall of the vehicle won’t reach Russia.
The announcement came after Consumer Reports, a U.S. non-profit magazine, gave the car a “Don’t Buy: Safety Risk” recommendation. The magazine said the SUV lost traction too easily and slid out too far before the electronic stability-control system kicked in to bring the car under control.
Lexus dealers in Russia have been selling the SUV, which runs from 2.98 million rubles ($103,000) to 3.47 million rubles in Russia, since February. A total of 600 cars have been sold in Russia and the Middle East since the beginning of the year.
Toyota has been beset recently by claims that its cars are defective. The company had to recall 4.2 million units in the United States in September 2009 and an additional 2.3 million in January because of problems with the accelerator on several models.
It has also announced a recall on all Prius vehicles produced this year — 223,000 in the United States and more than 200,000 in other countries — after issues arose with the hybrid car’s brake pedal.
The GX 460 is in high demand, and customers who have purchased them haven’t reported any problems, said Kirill, a representative at a Lexus dealership who asked that his last name not be used.
“Many customers who have bought this car say they are very satisfied,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
He cast doubt on the Consumer Reports test, saying a video clip of the magazine’s test drive didn’t provide any evidence of a problem.
“They show a car turning at high speed, but it doesn’t even spin out of control, to say nothing of flipping over. The car stayed on its path. There was a drift, but nothing special happened to the car,” he said.
The tests the GX 460 underwent were extreme, and drivers would not subject the vehicle to such conditions on a daily basis, said Dmitry Leontyev, a reviewer with Russia’s 4?4 Club Magazine.
Toyota said Wednesday that it was halting sales of Lexus GX 460s in North America, where 5,400 have been sold since the beginning of the year.
Toyota will try to duplicate the Consumer Reports test to determine whether appropriate steps need to be taken, the company said in a statement on its U.S. unit’s web site.
The company also said it would provide loaner vehicles to customers who had purchased GX 460 SUVs and had concerns about driving.
Sales of the GX 460 will be suspended from Apr. 16 to Apr. 28, Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Tokyo, told Bloomberg.
Kirill, from the Lexus dealership, said the GX 460 SUVs supplied to the Russian market were unlikely to have the problems mentioned in the Consumer Reports review.
“We don’t foresee any problems with quality,” he said, adding that the cars Toyota supplied to the Russian market were different from those sold in the United States, since Toyota took into account the characteristics of the national markets for which it produced vehicles.
A spokeswoman for Toyota’s Russian unit declined to comment Thursday.
TITLE: Putin’s Judo Partners Make Forbes List of Russia’s Richest
AUTHOR: By Sergei Smirnov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Forbes on Friday published the Russian part of the magazine’s 2010 global billionaires list, which, for the first time, saw the entry of Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, friends of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The number of dollar billionaires on this year’s list nearly doubled from last year’s, rising to 62 people from 32. Capping the list is Vladimir Lisin, head of Novolipetsk Steel, with a net worth of $15.8 billion, giving him 32nd place in the worldwide ranking.
Lisin is followed by Onexim owner Mikhail Prokhorov ($13.4 billion), Alfa Group co-owner Mikhail Fridman ($12.7 billion), Roman Abramovich ($11.2 billion) and Basic Element owner Oleg Deripaska ($10.7 billion).
The Rotenberg brothers, who used to practice judo with Putin, entered the list for the first time, taking the 99th and 100th places, with a net worth of $700 million each.
The Rotenbergs’ best-known asset is SMP Bank: Each brother owns 36.84 percent of the bank, which has revenues of at least $3 billion per year, according to Forbes’ information.
The only woman on the list is Inteko president Yelena Baturina, whose net worth reached $2.8 billion from $900 million the year earlier.
Ten Russian businessmen have increased their wealth by at least $5 billion, with Mechel shareholder Igor Zyuzin holding the record for the biggest yearly increase — his wealth jumped 5.4 times to $6.4 billion.
Exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky didn’t make it into the top 100 for the first time since 2004: The minimum level of wealth in this year’s list was $700 million.
Maxim Kashulinsky, chief editor of the Russian-language edition of Forbes, said the fortunes of 64 of the richest 100 Russians included industrial assets dating back to Soviet times, Reuters reported.
Some billionaires, such as LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov and Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel owner Viktor Rashnikov — ranked sixth and ninth, respectively — joined the financial elite when these assets were privatized.
But Forbes said only 12 on its list made their fortunes this way. Others began as small-scale entrepreneurs.
TITLE: Russia’s New Place in NATO
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Trenin
TEXT: At the annual security conference in Munich in February, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked what he thought of the idea of Russia becoming a member of NATO. The same question was posed to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
This idea gets thrown around among top U.S. and Russian policymakers once every few years to test the political waters. The first time Russia’s membership in the alliance was seriously considered was in the early 1990s, when President Boris Yeltsin was lobbying for integration into the most prominent Western institutions. In the early 2000s, President Vladimir Putin, while not calling for outright membership, did his part to push for more cooperation with Western security structures under the banner of the joint fight against terrorism.
But much has changed since then. First, Russia’s desire for Western integration has weakened considerably. It has been replaced by a stronger desire to regain its global influence — at the very least as a regional power center — that the Kremlin hopes may some day rival NATO. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like integration with the West will become a priority again in the near future.
Another factor is the increasing number of schisms appearing among NATO members as their numbers grow. The war in Iraq and NATO’s current operations in Afghanistan demonstrate that although the United States remains the undisputed leader of NATO, its European allies increasingly pursue their own national interests or their own vision of the global situation. If Russia were to become a full-fledged member, NATO would surely become a completely dysfunctional organization, in which Washington would lose all interest.
In addition, Russia’s membership in NATO would be accepted very coolly by China, which would probably view this as the final stage of its geopolitical encirclement by the United States and its NATO allies. This would heighten tensions in Russian-Chinese relations and forfeit one of Russia’s greatest post-Soviet foreign policy achievements — the establishment of stable and friendly relations between Moscow and Beijing. Few NATO members would want to get bogged down defending its new NATO member along the 4,300-kilometer Russian-Chinese border in the event of a military conflict between the two countries.
Therefore, it would be completely unrealistic to try to solve the problem of European security in one fell swoop by granting NATO membership to Russia, and presumably Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other states. (This “NATO” has long existed — the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — and there is no sense in duplicating it.)
Since Russia’s membership in NATO is clearly a non-issue for the near future, what can be done to improve NATO-Russian relations? The first step would be to acknowledge that the excessive, chronic suspicions toward NATO and the United States harbored by Moscow do not strengthen European security. Moscow has an idee fixe that the West is determined to weaken Russia by any possible means, with the ultimate goal of dismembering the country and carving it into servile satellites. According to this thinking, NATO expansion, Western support of the color revolutions and U.S. plans to “encircle” Russia with its global missile defense system are all elements of an insidious Western plot to bring Russia to its knees.
There is a second misconception that Russia, not the West, plays the evil role. This notion holds that the Kremlin dreams of restoring its lost empire by annexing or subjugating former Soviet republics — and perhaps even former Warsaw Pact countries — and once again shipping dissenters to Siberian gulags. This Russophobia was seen, for example, in the suspicious way in which the West viewed the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, the criticism heaped on President Dmitry Medvedev for his doctrine of “privileged interests” in the former Soviet republics and the Kremlin’s plan to purchase a warship from France.
These excessive anti-Western or anti-Russian views do not in any way reflect post-Cold War reality. Nonetheless, both misconceptions are deeply rooted in the psychology of certain factions in the ruling elite on both sides of the fence. Only time and painstaking work can gradually eliminate these deeply ingrained ideas. The United States should take the primary initiative in improving relations, particularly since so many opportunities were lost in the administrations of former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. They could have been more diligent in pursuing a strategy of transforming the defeated superpower into an independent and respected partner of the United States.
Conversely, Russia should take practical steps toward systematically dispelling the fears of its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe. The Kremlin has already come to realize that without good relations with Poland, it will not have normal relations with the European Union and the West as a whole. To his credit, Putin has done much to improve relations with Poland. Most recently, he visited Gdansk on Sept. 1, the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, and earlier this month he joined Prime Minister Donald Tusk in a ceremony at Katyn to commemorate the Polish victims of the massacre.
It is in Russia’s interest to make Warsaw a true economic and political partner on the same level as Berlin, Paris and other European capitals. Poland will hardly become an outspoken advocate of Russia within the European Union or NATO anytime soon, but if Warsaw adopts a more positive policy toward Russia, this could play a significant role in improving overall relations between Russia and the West. In addition, the Kremlin should set a new, positive tone toward the Baltic states. Moscow should stop treating them as outcasts and trying to isolate them. Russia can start by opening its government archives and creating favorable conditions for a serious discussion on issues of their common — albeit difficult and painful at times — history.
Neither the expansion of NATO — even if Russia is added — nor the European security pact proposed by Medvedev are capable of uniting Europe. What is needed is the creation of a common security zone encompassing all of these states in which war and the use of armed forces would be abolished. That has already been achieved within the framework of NATO and the EU. It exists de facto between Russia and most European states, including Germany.
There is one gaping hole in building this broad security framework: Russia’s strategic relationship with the United States. A good place to start would be to work together on building regional missile defense systems. The first steps were taken in 2003 under the auspices of the NATO-Russia Council, when computer-assisted joint exercises were held to develop interoperability on a future theater missile defense system. There have been many verbal overtures from both sides to continue this work, but they need to be turned into concrete projects.
Of course, simply focusing on the “Russia question” will not by itself pave the way to European security. There are unresolved conflicts in the Caucasus, Kosovo, Cyprus and Transdnestr. The parties immediately involved in those conflicts must find a way to reach a reconciliation. This could occur soon if an appropriate level of understanding and cooperation existed between the United States, the EU and Russia. The creation of a common territory for an overarching security arrangement is the most important collective project of the 21st century — a feat that, if accomplished, would be comparable in significance to the creation of NATO in the middle of the last century.
Dmitry Trenin is the director of the Moscow Carnegie Center.
TITLE: Lenin’s Scent Still Lingers
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: During the Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum was the focal point of Red Square. It sat right in the middle of the square and was watched over by a military guard that changed at the stroke of the huge Kremlin clock in an elaborate goose-stepping ceremony.
It was the center of the country’s political life, too — the only place where the average Russian saw his leaders in the flesh. The Politburo reviewed twice-yearly marches of their loyal citizens while standing, quite literally, upon the founder of the Soviet state.
Communism was supposed to be the creed of the future, but its prophet lay mummified in a pyramid harking back to ancient Egypt or Persia. (The word “mausoleum” comes from Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria from the fourth century B.C.) The long line of waiting visitors matched the countless other lines snaking outside stores across the Soviet Union, as people hoped to buy chronically scarce food and consumer goods.
Writer Sergei Dovlatov put it best when he claimed that so many places in the Soviet Union stank so badly because the country’s main corpse had never been properly buried.
In modern times, the mausoleum has been eclipsed by other attractions on Red Square, including the rebuilt Iversky Gate — it was blown up by the Bolsheviks — and the old GUM department store, transformed from a grim showcase of Soviet economic failures into a mall of overpriced Western boutiques.
In winter, when a skating rink sponsored by clothing designer Bosco di Ciliegi opened on Red Square, the mausoleum looked somehow diminished and shunted aside.
This parallels the fate of its occupant. While passions still rage around Josef Stalin and attempts are being made to revive his reputation or place his portraits on Moscow streets, Lenin’s monuments dot the Russian landscape without much controversy. No one seems to care, even though there is much to the thesis that Stalin merely put Lenin’s ideas into practice.
Lenin may be irrelevant, and the 140th anniversary of his birth may pass almost unnoticed on April 22, but his embalmed body still occupies the mausoleum. A team of highly trained professionals is still employed on a full-time basis to keep his remains in fine fettle.
Calls to give Lenin a decent burial have been heard for years. Even those who consider the man to be a criminal and a monster object to using his body as a kind of macabre, circus-like attraction for out-of-towners. More to the point, however, is that preserving a shrine to the founder of Soviet communism — along with the mini-cemetery for Soviet-era luminaries just behind the mausoleum — is completely inconsistent with the values of a new, democratic Russia. How can the country move forward and find its place in the community of nations if after two decades it hasn’t yet been able to rid itself of such embarrassing and destructive symbols of its past?
The problem, however, is deeper and stems from the generally ad-hoc nature of the Bolshevik regime. When Lenin died in January 1924, his cohorts couldn’t decide what to do with his body. Ignoring his express wish to be buried near his mother in St. Petersburg, they decided to pretend he hadn’t die completely and that he was still present — at least in the flesh. Apparently, even today the Russian government can’t find a better solution.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: ‘Producers’ Takes Four at Golden Mask Awards
AUTHOR: By John Freedman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — “God may work miracles rarely,” quipped one winner of a Golden Mask award at an elegant ceremony in the cavernous atrium of Gostiny Dvor on Friday, “but they happen every evening in the theater.”
Golden Mask award ceremonies, of which there have now been 16, have not always been mentioned in one breath with miracles. Over the years the festival has had its share of scandals, embarrassments and slip-ups.
Those days are receding into the past. For the second year in a row, the annual spring rite of citing the best Russian artists and productions from the previous season unfolded in a smooth, attractive event. Its few minor glitches were easily overlooked, in part, perhaps, because the setting itself, an amphitheater combining elements of classical art and contemporary trash, was spectacularly beautiful.
In any case, by the time the 95-year-old Vladimir Zeldin joked about God, miracles and theater while accepting one of three Lifetime Achievement awards at the end of the ceremony, the audience consisting of Russia’s theater elite seemed unusually satisfied with what had transpired.
It was an evening of big and popular winners, which also included enough surprises to keep things lively.
The hands-down victor was Moscow’s Et Cetera Theater’s production of Mel Brooks’ musical “The Producers.” It took all four awards for which it was nominated — best musical actress (Natalya Blagikh), best musical actor (Yegor Druzhinin), best musical director (Dmitry Belov) and best musical.
Accepting his award, Druzhinin admitted that he hadn’t acted for some time and was unsure of taking on the role.
“I always doubted that I was a good actor, and I’m now pleased to get this award because maybe I’m not that bad after all,” he joked.
Et Cetera’s artistic director, Alexander Kalyagin, thanking the jury for its recognition of his theater’s excellence, pointed out what a feat it had been to mount such an expensive musical show in uncertain times.
“We expended a great deal of effort,” he said. “You understand what it means to stage a musical when an economic crisis hits.”
The overall heavyweight winner among theaters was Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, which pulled down a total of five awards spread over two operas, “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “Hamlet (Danish) (Russian) Comedy.”
Khibla Gerzmava was a popular choice for best female singer for her role as Lucia in the show that also was named best opera. Yelena Stepanova was cited as best costume designer in a musical show for her work on “Lucia.”
“Hamlet (Danish) (Russian) Comedy” brought Alexander Titel an award for best director in a musical production, while the opera’s author Vladimir Kobekin was named best composer.
The top winner in the field of drama was “Shukshin’s Stories,” a production from Moscow’s Theater of Nations, which was singled out as best large-scale production. Its star Yevgeny Mironov was named best actor, and Viktoria Sevryukova pulled down best costume designer for the colorful garments that she created for this show about country folk in Siberia.
Joined by most of the show’s cast on stage as he accepted the best production award, Latvian director Alvis Hermanis confessed that he would probably not have staged the show if he knew then what he knows now. “Rehearsals began, and I began to realize that Shukshin is like a relative to all Russians,” he said.
Mironov added that, for the cast, the show is not a regular show at all, but an opportunity for each of the performers to reveal himself as a human being.
The best actress award went to Polina Kutepova for her performance of Molly in Yevgeny Kamenkovich’s six-hour dramatization of James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel “Ulysses” at the Fomenko Studio.
Kutepova thanked Kamenkovich, her husband, for having both “patience and madness, because staging a work like that is madness.”
The shortest speech of the night belonged to Yury Pogrebnichko, who was cited as best director for his work on “La Strada” at Okolo, the Theater Near the Stanislavsky House. After accepting the attractive plaque, which consists of a delicate glass mask attached to a mirrored background, Pogrebnichko leaned towards a microphone, tersely said “thank you,” and ran back to his seat.
Sergei Zhenovach’s Studio of Theatrical Art pulled in two awards for its production of “The Potudan River.” Damir Ismagilov was named best lighting designer for this piece, which featured light reflecting through wooden planks off of a white brick wall. The show itself was declared best small-scale production.
Two young pairs of artists brought an added breath of fresh air to the proceedings.
Accepting the award for best puppet show for “The Epic of Lilikan” at the Ten Theater, the husband-and-wife team of Maria Litvinova and Vyacheslav Ignatov performed a comic routine as they finished each other’s phrases and Ignatov unfurled a six-meter scroll listing everyone he wished to thank but couldn’t because of time restraints.
Perhaps the youngest winners of the night were Vera Martynova and Maria Tregubova, the duo of designers who created the environment for “Opus No. 7” at the School of Dramatic Art.
Tregubova was taken aback by the win and said, “I had no idea this would happen, so I didn’t prepare any words. And I can’t improvise any, either.”
“Opus No. 7,” created by director Dmitry Krymov and composer Alexander Bakshi, was cited winner of the experiment award.
Pavel Pryazhko’s play “Life Is Grand,” which was jointly produced by the Playwright and Director Center and Teatr.doc, has raised hackles in some quarters for its profuse use of profanity. But it was a popular winner of a special drama jury award.
Presenting a plaque to the show’s co-directors, Mikhail Ugarov and Marat Gatsalov, jury chairman Anatoly Smelyansky pointed out that the show was unique for its subtle portrait of young people who “use only ten words” to express the full extent of their emotions and experiences.
Geographically, Moscow artists walked away with an unprecedented number of awards. Twenty-three of the total 36 were snatched up by theaters and performers from the Russian capital.
St. Petersburg came in second, although with its smallest number of awards ever — a total of six. These included Alexei Ratmansky, best choreographer, and Alina Somova, best female dancer, for their work in “The Little Humpbacked Horse” for the Mariinsky Theater. Vsevolod Polonsky was named best conductor in a musical for “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” at St. Petersburg’s Karambol Theater.
The city of Perm, which has made noises as a new provincial artistic center in recent years, made a strong showing with three different theaters pulling in four awards.
“Casting Off,” a contemporary dance piece by the Yevgeny Panfilov Ballet of Perm, was named best contemporary dance production, while Alexei Khoroshev was given the nod for best lighting designer for his work on the show.
Valery Platonov was voted best conductor in an opera for his participation in “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” for the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theater of Perm, while Sergei Fedotov and his Theater U Mosta in Perm was given a special jury award for the contributions they have made to Russian theater over the last 20 years.
For a complete list of award winners, see John Freedman’s Theater Plus column at www.themoscowtimes.com or go to www.goldenmask.ru.
TITLE: Film Depicting Neo-Nazis Premieres in City
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: “Russia 88,” a controversial feature film that follows a group of neo-Nazis in Moscow, opened in St. Petersburg last week more than a year after its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009.
The film has been a success with critics and festivals: Earlier this month, director Pavel Bardin was awarded the “Discovery of the Year” prize at the Nika Awards — Russia’s Oscars. In St. Petersburg, however, the film is being screened in just one movie theater, which is located on the outskirts of the city.
“No other film theater agreed to run it,” said Olga Safronova of the local film agency Dobroye Kino, which organized the screenings at the Kinomax cinema in St. Petersburg’s southwestern Kirovsky district. Filmed in a quasi-documentary style through the eyes of a cameraman who makes propaganda videos for a fictional neo-Nazi skinhead group called Russia 88 (in neo-Nazi code, “88” stands for “Heil Hitler”), the film has encountered many obstacles inside Russia.
Early last year, the authorities allegedly put pressure on the jury of the Spirit of Fire film festival in Khanty-Mansiisk not to award “Russia 88” its grand prize. (The film did receive the Special Jury Award and the Film Critics Guild Award.) Screenings organized last year by Kinoteatr.doc and Cine Fantom in Moscow were cancelled after last-minute bans.
“Both screenings were cancelled by persons unknown who produced some kind of [government] ID,” said Bardin, 34, who was in St. Petersburg to attend the local premiere on April 7.
“They would not have been the first screenings, but they were the first that tickets had been sold for. It’s only natural that distributors and movie theaters then took it as a sign that they should not distribute our film commercially.”
When the apartment of a St. Petersburg opposition activist was searched in June 2009 by Center “E,” the Russian anti-extremist law-enforcement agency, a pirated DVD copy of “Russia 88” was confiscated on suspicions that it was “extremist” material. Commercial screenings in Russia only became possible when the prosecutor’s office in the city of Samara withdrew a lawsuit against the film in January.
“Technically, [the lawsuit] came from the local FSB,” said Bardin.
“The case file included testimonies from two people written in a very similar manner, and a statement by an expert who had for some reason conducted a linguistic analysis of what the characters say in the film. Naturally, he found all kinds of extremism in it. [His conclusion] is easy to dispute because firstly, the film is not a text, and secondly, the characters don’t voice the viewpoint of the filmmakers. In fact, we use their extremist statements to expose them.”
When the case file was sent from Samara to the Russia Prosecutor General’s Office for further investigation, the filmmakers took advantage of the pause in legal proceedings to distribute “Russia 88” nationally. The Russian premiere at Dom Kino in Moscow followed on February 28, paving the way for public screenings in other regions.
Bardin admits that “Russia 88,” whose working title was “Tybalt,” is based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” When the sister of the main character, neo-Nazi group leader Shtyk (“Bayonet”), played by Pyotr Fyodorov (credited as the film’s co-writer along with Bardin), enters into a relationship with a man from the Caucasus, the conflict ends in bloodshed. The rest of the film closely tracks the everyday life of a Moscow neo-Nazi group: Members are shown training, talking, partying and making propaganda videos to upload onto YouTube. Genuine neo-Nazi propaganda clips available on the Internet inspired most of the videos. Bardin said he watched more than a hundred such videos before he started filming.
One video clip depicting a skinhead defending an old woman from an immigrant attacker, which the neo-Nazis are shown making in the film, was inspired by a real propaganda video produced by the ultra-nationalist Maxim Martsinkevich, aka Tesak (“Hatchet.”) In January 2009, a Moscow court sentenced Martsinkevich, aged 25, to three and a half years in prison for inciting ethnic hatred.
“Tesak had a similar video with an old woman, but it was about something else; it was a staged clip with a bit of humor,” Bardin said.
“He also had a video about a drug dealer, and we chose between these two. Finally, I decided that the one with the old woman was funnier and more ridiculous. The scenes of military training [in the forest], a burning swastika and the young fighter’s oath [were based on genuine neo-Nazi propaganda videos].”
Martsinkevich, leader of the neo-Nazi group Format 18, was also charged with producing a video that allegedly depicts the execution of a Tajik man. In the video, which later turned out to be a dramatization, men wearing Ku-Klux-Klan-style costumes first hang their victim and then dismember his body.
According to Bardin, a large number of direct quotations from neo-Nazi Internet forums were used in conversations between characters in his film, such as a discussion of the ZOG (“Zionist Occupation Government”) or an excerpt — “the most harmless,” according to Bardin — from a street terrorism manual available on the web. The songs performed in the film’s concert sequence are real songs by Moscow neo-Nazi bands Kiborg, Banda Moskvy and Kolovrat.
The Russian authorities are depicted in the film when police officers commission the neo-Nazis to carry out a pogrom at a marketplace to enforce the police’s criminal protection racket, and again when an official pays a visit to the group’s basement headquarters (officially, a patriotic sports club) and offers the neo-Nazis money in exchange for their support.
“The conversation between the bureaucrat and Shtyk [was based] on a lot of quotations from e-mail correspondence between two people that was made public by anti-fascist hackers,” said Bardin.
“I have good reason to trust it, because they published telephone numbers, ICQ passwords, correspondence, and everything else. Certain elements of circumstantial evidence led me to conclude that it was most likely real.”
Perhaps even more disturbing than the dramatized beatings and pogroms are real interviews with people in the streets of Moscow. Shtyk, holding a microphone with the phrase “Russia 88” emblazoned on it, conducts the interviews, in which most of the interviewees express support for the slogan “Russia for Russians.”
“It’s all documentary footage; not a single actor was used,” Bardin said of the interviews.
“There were a couple of people who tried to argue, but naturally the character filming them would have cut the interviews [to suit their purpose]. In reality, the percentages were not 90 to 10 [as in the film], but 50-50 on Pushkinskaya Square, and 70 to 30 on the suburban train.”
“Russia 88” has been compared to “Romper Stomper,” Geoffrey Wright’s 1992 film starring Russell Crowe, which recounts the exploits of a similar neo-Nazi skinhead gang in Melbourne, Australia. “Romper Stomper” is a cult film among Russian neo-Nazis. When Shtyk is asked in Bardin’s film how he became a fascist, he replies, “I watched ‘Romper Stomper.’”
“The remark was a joke, but it’s partly realistic, because obviously [Russian skinheads] copied a lot [from the film], as far as I understand,” said Bardin, who admits to having associated with skinheads in the 1990s.
“‘Romper Stomper’ was a real cult film: I once saw twenty skinheads watching a videotape of it on a small TV set. They were watching it for the umpteenth time.”
Bardin said that, despite comparisons, he wanted to avoid Wright’s approach.
“I didn’t want to do ‘Romper Stomper,’ because it’s not an anti-fascist film,” he said.
“It’s a strong film, and Russell Crowe is great in it. It shows the life of a youth gang from the inside, but there’s not the slightest trace of debunking Nazi ideas.
“It seems to me, however, that the problem [of fascism in Russia] is not the skinheads: That’s just an attractive package [for young people]. The [fascist] ideas, however, have always been around.”
According to Bardin, until recently it was forbidden to even mention “Russia 88” on Russian television, alongside other topics such as opposition leader Boris Nemtsov’s bid to become mayor of Sochi in 2009.
“I am a journalist, and my colleagues told me, among other things, that at RenTV a list of forbidden topics was openly circulated,” he said.
“In particular, ‘Russia 88’ ended up on this list at some point. But to be fair, [RenTV] was the first to do a story about the film, and more recently, NTV and Channel Five have done reports. Either people have realized that it was not forbidden, or somebody actually okayed it.
“Of course, I don’t know what really happened. But even if they’re only playing at democracy, I support that game.”
“Russia 88” is showing through Wednesday at Kinomax-Rumba movie theater, located at 6 Ulitsa Vasi Alexeyeva.
M: Kirovsky Zavod. Tel.: 335 3636,
335 3600. www.russia88.com
TITLE: Pope Celebrates 5th Anniversary of Election
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI marked the fifth anniversary of his election Monday under the shadow of a clerical sex abuse scandal that has plunged the Catholic Church into its most serious crisis of recent times.
Benedict hosted a lunch at the Vatican with about 60 cardinals, who cheered and applauded him.
Sitting next to the pontiff in the ornate Apostolic Palace were two of his closest aides, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and one of the pope’s most ardent defenders in the face of the scandal.
The pope leads the church “with great generosity” in the face of “the challenges that the modern world poses to each disciple of Christ,” Sodano said in an address to the pontiff, according to Vatican Radio.
As part of the anniversary celebrations, the Italian bishops’ conference has invited faithful in churches across Italy to pray for Benedict.
Reports of abuse of minors by priests have piled up across Europe, including in the pope’s native Germany. Benedict’s own actions as an archbishop in Munich and later as a cardinal at the helm of the Vatican morals office have come under question.
Victims of clerical abuse have demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse, charging that the Vatican orchestrated a culture of cover-up and secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children unchecked for decades.
Victims’ advocacy groups have similarly demanded that the Vatican take concrete steps to protect children and remove abusive priests and the bishops who protected them, saying the pope’s expressions to date of solidarity and shame were meaningless unless actual action is taken.
The main U.S. victims group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said it was easy for Benedict to make promises about taking action to protect children.
“Not a single adult should feel relieved until strong steps are actually taken, not promised, that will prevent future child sex crimes and cover-ups,” said Peter Isely, the group’s Midwest director.
The Vatican maintains Benedict, who just turned 83, has cracked down on sex abuse both as pontiff and in his tenure as a top Vatican cardinal.
Benedict has just returned from a two-day pilgrimage to Malta, a Catholic nation buffeted by the worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal. There, Benedict met privately with clerical abuse victims.
Benedict met for more than a half-hour with eight Maltese men who say they were abused by four priests when they were boys living at a Catholic orphanage. During the meeting in the chapel at the Vatican’s embassy here, a tearful Benedict expressed his “shame and sorrow” at the pain the men and their families suffered and promised that the church will do everything possible to protect children and bring abusive priests to justice, the Vatican said.
“Everybody was crying,” one of the men, Joseph Magro, 38, told Associated Press Television News after the meeting. “I told him my name was Joseph, and he had tears in his eyes.”
The visit marked the first time Benedict had met with abuse victims since the worldwide clerical abuse scandal engulfed the Vatican earlier this year.
“He prayed with them and assured them that the Church is doing, and will continue to do, all in its power to investigate allegations, to bring to justice those responsible for abuse and to implement effective measures designed to safeguard young people in the future,” the Vatican statement said.
TITLE: Royal Navy Sends Ships To Rescue Travelers
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Quinn and Jamey Keaten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Britain sent Royal Navy warships on Monday to rescue those stranded across the Channel by the volcanic ash cloud, causing the aviation industry to blast European officials, claiming there was “no coordination and no leadership” in the crisis that shut down most European airports for a fifth day.
As airline losses spiraled over $1 billion, Eurocontrol, the air traffic agency in Brussels, said less than one-third of flights in Europe were taking off Monday — between 8,000 and 9,000 of the continent’s 28,000 scheduled flights. Airports in southern Europe were open, however, and Spain offered to become an emergency hub for the whole continent.
In Iceland, meteorologists said eruptions from the volcano were weakening and the ash was no longer rising to a height where it would endanger large commercial aircraft. British Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis confirmed there has been a “dramatic reduction in volcanic activity.”
Video still showed smoke billowing into the air from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded around the world since the volcano in southern Iceland began erupting Wednesday for the second time in a month. Passengers in Asia, frustrated over sleeping on airport floors for days and running out of money, staged protests at airport counters.
European airlines are seeking financial compensation for a crisis that is costing the industry at least $200 million a day — and by some estimates up to $300 million a day. The British Airways airline chief said test flights had proven that flying was safe.
As pressure mounted from airlines, European civil aviation authorities were holding a conference call Monday about what steps could be taken toward opening airspace.
“It’s embarrassing, and a European mess,” said Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association. “It took five days to organize a conference call with the ministers of transport and we are losing $200 million per day (and) 750,000 passengers are stranded all over. Does it make sense?”
The IATA, world’s leading airline industry group, expressed its “dissatisfaction with how governments have managed it, with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership.” The group urged governments to more urgently “focus on how and when we can safely reopen Europe’s skies.”
Several airlines have run flights over the last few days, and none reported problems or damage, prompting some to wonder whether governments had overreacted to concerns that the microscopic particles of ash could shut down jet engines.
British Airways said it had flown a plane Sunday through the no-fly zone and found “no variations in the aircraft’s normal operational performance.”
TITLE: Iran Signs Off on Site for Nuclear Facility
AUTHOR: By Nasser Karimi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has approved the site for a new enrichment facility Iran plans to build, his top adviser said Monday, the latest step in expanding a nuclear program that the United Nations has demanded Tehran halt.
Still, in an apparent attempt to ward off a new U.N. sanction, Iran’s foreign minister said his country wants to hold further discussions on a nuclear fuel deal that was originally touted as a possible way to ease the standoff but has since hit a dead end.
The United States and its allies are trying to rally support for new U.N. sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop enrichment, fearing Tehran will use the process to build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any intention to do so, saying its nuclear program aims only to generate electricity.
The new enrichment plant would be Iran’s third. Ahmadinejad approved the location for the new facility, his top adviser Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi said, without specifying where the site is.
Samareh Hashemi said work will begin “upon the president’s order,” without specifying when, according to the ILNA news agency Monday.
Iran’s government approved plans in November to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities. Earlier this year, Iran’s nuclear chief announced that construction on two of the 10 would begin during this Iranian calendar year, which runs from March 2010 to March 2011.
Iran currently has two uranium enrichment plants — one operating in the central city of Natanz and a second, near the city of Qom, that has not begun enriching.
The United Nations has demanded enrichment be suspended because the process can be used to produce a nuclear bomb as well as fuel for a nuclear reactor.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran, including a ban on petroleum products exports to the country, to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapons capability. In an interview broadcast Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Netanyahu said if the U.N. can’t agree on sanctions, then “a coalition of the willing” among other countries should do it on their own.
The United States has been lobbying hard with Russia and China, who have traditionally been reluctant to impose sanctions on Iran and wield veto power in the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. has already imposed three rounds of limited financial sanctions.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would be sending delegations to China and Russia, as well as temporary council members Lebanon and Uganda, for talks on the moribund nuclear fuel deal.
Mottaki said Iran wants direct talks about the deal with all the Security Council members, except one with which it would have indirect talks — a reference to the United States, which with Tehran has no relations.
The talks halted after Iran last year rejected a U.N.-backed plan that offered nuclear fuel rods in exchange for Iran’s stock of lower-level enriched uranium — a swap would have curbed Tehran’s capacity to make a nuclear bomb.
Under the U.N. proposal, Iran was to send 2,420 pounds (1,100 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium abroad, where it would be further enriched to 20 percent and converted into fuel rods, which would then be returned to Iran.
Tehran needs the fuel rods to power a research reactor in the Iranian capital that makes nuclear isotopes needed for medical purposes. Sending its own low-enriched uranium abroad would leave Iran with insufficient stocks to further purify to weapons-grade level. Once converted into rods, uranium can no longer be used for making weapons.
TITLE: ‘UN Troubled’ By Australia’s Asylum Policy
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SYDNEY — The United Nations said Monday it was “deeply troubled” by Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers, as rights group Amnesty International condemned the reopening of a remote detention center.
An influx of immigrants has prompted the government to freeze applications from Afghans and Sri Lankans and to reopen the Curtin Air Base, which was shut down in 2002 following riots, to accommodate them.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said these measures were likely to have a negative impact on the health and well-being of asylum-seekers, particularly those who had already endured torture or trauma.
“The combination of mandatory detention, suspension of asylum claims and the geographical isolation of detention facilities such as Curtin Air Force Base in Western Australia — all without any effective judicial oversight — is a deeply troubling set of factors,” regional representative Richard Towle said.
Australia announced it would suspend asylum claims from Afghanistan for six months and from Sri Lanka for three months as it reassesses the improving security situations in the war-weary countries.