SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1587 (48), Tuesday, June 29, 2010
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TITLE: Miller Sweetens Merger For Naftogaz
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom has offered Ukraine specific gas fields with reserves of up to 1 trillion cubic meters if Naftogaz Ukrainy agrees to contribute its gas assets to their joint venture, chief executive Alexei Miller said Friday.
The two state energy giants are destined to be together, Miller said, suggesting that Moscow was prepared to offer additional perks to make an eventual merger more palatable to deeply skeptical political leaders in Kiev.
“It’s already time to discuss the possible size of reserves,” he said, adding that a decision on fields would depend on Naftogaz’s willingness to hand over its pipeline network and gas production assets, as well as how they were priced.
Speaking at a news conference after Gazprom’s annual shareholders meeting, Miller did not name the fields Gazprom had offered, although he said they would hold 800 bcm or “say, 1 trillion cubic meters.”
Gazprom’s total proved, probable and possible reserves amount to 33.6 trillion cubic meters by Russian reserves standards. Its major Chayandinskoye field alone holds 1.2 tcm.
The company has been seeking to use warming political ties between Moscow and Kiev to gain greater control over the transportation of its gas supplies to Europe, about 80 percent of which pass through Ukraine.
Regular disputes over prices for the fuel and transit costs have led to cutoffs through Ukraine and Belarus, damaging Gazprom’s reputation and prompting European consumers to seek alternative suppliers.
Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Mykola Azarov first discussed a possible merger of Gazprom and Naftogaz in late April, although the companies later agreed to start by contributing gas assets to a 50-50 joint venture.
Gazprom insists that the venture must be a prelude to a full merger of Gazprom and the much smaller Naftogaz. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his government have said the merger would be impossible unless Kiev and Moscow had equal weight in the final holding.
In a bid to sweeten the deal further, Miller on Friday offered additional concessions.
Ukraine’s households — hit hard by the local economy’s 15 percent drop last year — would continue to pay “subsidized regulated prices” for gas if the merger materialized, he said.
And an eventual Gazprom-Naftogaz merger would be “advantageous” for Ukraine’s big business as well.
“It would increase efficiency for the Ukrainian gas industry and the industries that are large consumers of the gas,” he said.
The energy-intensive steel industry is a key exporter and mainstay of the Ukrainian economy.
Miller went so far as to say Gazprom and Naftogaz — once part of the single Soviet gas industry — were destined to reunite.
“It’s a historically predetermined step,” he said in a speech at the shareholders meeting earlier Friday. “Gazprom’s and Naftogaz’s gas transmission systems represent a single network that functions only in close connection with each other.”
Miller said earlier this month that it was possible that Gazprom could lay its South Stream pipeline through Ukrainian — rather than Turkish — waters in the Black Sea, which would be another major boon because of the transit fees it would generate. But the move would be conditional on the full merger, he said.
Ukrainian deputy prime ministers Serhiy Tihipko and Boris Kolesnikov may have elaborated on the progress of the joint venture and merger talks at a Renaissance Capital investment conference Monday.
A full merger of the two state energy companies could be politically risky for Gazprom because future Ukrainian presidents could seek to reverse the deal, said Konstantin Yuminov, a gas industry analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities.
Yanukovych’s opponents, including former President Viktor Yushchenko and his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, have been vocal opponents of any deal giving Russia influence over the country’s gas infrastructure.
TITLE: Fleeing Official Flings $320,000 From Car
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Federal Fisheries Agency official tossed 10 million rubles ($320,000) out his car window on a busy Moscow street in a desperate attempt to avoid bribery charges during a failed car chase, investigators said.
Police scrambled to pick up the banknotes, but about 1 million rubles were reported missing, a news report said.
The incident occurred immediately after Boris Simonov, a deputy department head with the agency’s branch for the Moscow and Oka rivers, received the money Thursday, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Simonov and his boss, department head Roman Postnikov, were under surveillance by the Federal Security Service and were detained after Simonov received the money, the statement posted on the committee’s web site said Friday.
Postnikov was nabbed in a separate operation in the Moscow region as he was handing over official documents and a forged contract to the head of Lucia Plus, a Moscow region fishing enterprise that was found to lack the required operational permits during an inspection by the Federal Fisheries Agency, the statement said.
Simonov tried to flee police officers in his Cadillac SUV but crashed into another vehicle because he was distracted by throwing money out the window, not knowing that all the banknotes were marked by the FSB, it said.
Official FSB footage shown on Channel One on Friday evening news showed banknotes scattered over a central lane of the broad Varshavskoye Shosse in southern Moscow.
Two men, one of them presumably Simonov, are seen sitting in the lane on the pavement next to a large silver SUV, while plainclothes officers wearing rubber gloves are busy collecting the cash.
Police blocked the street for about half an hour during the incident, leaving a single lane open for traffic, Valery Buzovkin, spokesman for the city’s southern administrative district police, told The St. Petersburg Times.
But 1 million rubles ($32,000) of scattered money went missing, possibly collected by passing motorists, Kommersant reported Saturday.
A criminal case has been opened against Simonov and Postnikov, who face prison sentences of up to 12 years if convicted of large-scale bribery.
“They offered to abort the inspection [of the fishing company] for a payment of 10 million rubles,” the Investigative Committee said.
Government inspections ranging from police to health or fire safety agencies are widely seen as a means to extort bribes. Companies frequently employ so-called permit managers whose primary function is to manage the payment of such bribes.
President Dmitry Medvedev has made the fight against bribery and other forms of corruption a hallmark of his two-year presidency, and Thursday’s incident suggests that it is bearing fruit. Anti-corruption experts, however, say the problem is so deeply imbedded that Medvedev faces a formidable challenge.
The Federal Fisheries Agency said the two officials had been suspected of bribery for the past six months.
“We informed the law enforcement agencies about it, which finally resulted in that exciting adventure,” agency spokesman Alexander Savelyev told Kommersant.
The case is not the first to involve the agency, which manages the country’s lucrative fishing quotas. In April, Igor Bakulin, an aide to agency director Andrei Krainy, was charged with accepting a $250,000 bribe for salmon fishing permits in the Pacific Ocean.
The Investigative Committee issued a stern warning Friday to the fisheries agency, saying that “if the authorities do not take serious steps to fight corruption, such crimes could become systemic.”
“We’re going to cauterize this evil with a red-hot iron,” agency spokesman Savelyev said, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Twenty-Seven Arrested at Gay Pride Event in City
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The police broke up a gay pride event in the center of St. Petersburg, arresting five activists Saturday. Twenty-two people who came as part of a larger group — some armed with baseball bats — with the apparent intention of attacking the rally were also arrested.
Despite failing to obtain permission from City Hall and receiving threats from extremists, 19 activists marched from the rear of the inner courtyard of the State Hermitage Museum, alongside the long line for entrance to the museum. They carried rainbow flags and posters reading “Homophobia Is a Disgrace to the State” and “No One Is Equal Until Everyone Is Equal” and shouted slogans such as “Equality Without Compromises.”
The protesters were blocked by the police as they tried to enter Palace Square. Organizer Maria Yefremenkova was detained while reading out the event’s manifesto. Called “We Are Here,” it accused the authorities of banning peaceful rallies and demanded an end to discrimination against LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) people.
Four other activists, including Alexander Sheremetyev and Yury Gavrikov of St. Petersburg’s Ravnopraviye (Equality) LGBT rights group who co-organized the event, were detained as well. The others dispersed among tourists and journalists.
Due to the failure to obtain permission and threats received, only 19 activists, some of whom came from Moscow and Minsk, took part.
Yefremenkova said that she and the other detained activists were held for four hours at a police precinct before being charged with violating the law on public events, an offence punishable by a 500- to 2,000-ruble ($16 to $65) fine or up to 15 days in custody, and released. The court hearing was set for July 5.
The organizers misled extremists, who had issued threats and discussed plans online for attacking the protesters, by announcing Friday that the event would be held on Senatskaya Ploshchad, one kilometer from the Palace Square, and disclosing the real location at the last moment.
The alleged attackers arrived 20 minutes after the gay pride rally had been dispersed, but when approached by the police, a large group of 60 to 70 people ran off around the Hermitage and along the embankment.
The police arrested 22 people, who were later charged with disorderly behavior, police said Monday. The spokesman did not elaborate on what the rally’s opponents had done, but a senior police officer on the scene mentioned that some had brought baseball bats and truncheons.
Some continued to hang around the site, and three women were reportedly surrounded by 15 young people on Palace Square an hour after the event. One of them, Alyona Laskoronskaya, said Monday they had recognized her from her photo on the Russian social networking site vkontakte. They also did not like the fact that she was holding hands with her girlfriend, she said.
“We know you! You are also Jewish! There’s a bounty on your head,” Laskoronskaya quoted one of the young people as saying.
The confrontation lasted until one of the women called over some nearby policemen, who dispersed the group. “They didn’t look like skinheads, more like misguided teenagers,” said Laskoronskaya.
Nikolai Alexeyev, the organizer of gay pride events in Moscow who participated in the rally Saturday, described the event as “a success — first of all, because we managed to avoid being attacked.”
Although the authorities rarely issue permission for any rallies expressing non-state endorsed sentiment in the center, organizers are usually offered an alternative site further from the historic center. No alternative was offered to Saturday’s gay pride event, which organizers say is a violation of the law.
Earlier this month, City Hall’s law, order and security committee rejected six proposed locations for the rally for reasons the organizers described as “derisive.”
After receiving another rejection Wednesday, organizers proposed three more routes on the same day, but they were refused by the committee Friday on the grounds that there were less than three days left before the planned rally, Yefremenkova said.
On Wednesday and Thursday, applications submitted to the administrations of four districts to hold smaller-scale demonstrations were all rejected on identical grounds — that events were already scheduled for that place and time.
Yefremenkova’s own lawsuit against City Hall’s law, order and security committee over the ban will be heard Friday, she said, adding that she was also planning to sue the four district administrations.
The organizers say they have been trying to meet with Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who was awarded a diploma for St. Petersburg’s tolerance program by UNESCO in Paris in January, in order to discuss the planned event with her, but to no avail.
“The only answer we got was from City Hall’s law, order and security committee, saying that public events are regulated by the federal law on public events,” Yefremenkova said.
Although Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, no gay pride event has ever been permitted by the Russian authorities.
TITLE: Founder of St. Petersburg Times Dies at Age of 46
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Munro and Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The first editor of The St. Petersburg Times has died in Britain.
Lloyd Donaldson collapsed at the Glastonbury Festival and died on Saturday. He was 46. The cause of death has not been established.
In 1993, journalist Donaldson was one of four friends who launched The St. Petersburg Press. The times were hard with massive inflation and many Russians struggling to make a living as the economy went through the birth pangs of the transition from a state-controlled economy to one based on unregulated markets.
The prospects were uncertain, but it was also a time of opportunity. Launching a newspaper is usually a massive undertaking, but with low printing costs — the first editions cost only $50 to print — the venture had a chance.
Through the high standards of journalism that Donaldson maintained, the paper became a must-read. It prospered and is still going strong today.
Donaldson was its first editor and a driving force in developing the paper, training and motivating its staff as it changed from being issued once a week to twice a week.
He soon became its manager and was a respected figure in the St. Petersburg business community.
By 1996, however, he realized that the financial resources for developing the paper that he and remaining co-owner Grigory Kunis — who now runs the successful Russian-language chain of newspapers Moi Rayon, also masterminded by Donaldson — could access were limited.
He looked around for a buyer and decided on Moscow’s Independent Media, owned by the ebullient Dutchman and publisher of The Moscow Times, Derk Sauer. Soon after the takeover The St. Petersburg Press became The St. Petersburg Times.
Donaldson, a New Zealander by birth, had spent many years in journalism in Australia before covering the Yugoslav wars in the early 1990s and eventually finding his way to London. The experience of the war had given him a great social conscience and he had wanted to do something for humanity after observing it at its worst.
He left St. Petersburg and moved to London as a media adviser. He developed programs for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting and the Media Diversity Institute. Later he went part-time to complete an MA degree in development studies.
His most recent work had been with the British aid and medical agency Merlin. He organized logistics and distributed humanitarian aid to the needy of the world, including to the tsunami-devastated Aceh in Indonesia and to Kashmir in Pakistan, and, most recently, in Haiti, after earthquakes struck.
He left behind another dream — running a refugee camp in Africa.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: River Traffic Accident
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A boat on which students from the European University in St. Petersburg were celebrating their graduation crashed into another boat in the early hours of Sunday morning, Fontanka.ru reported.
European University Vice Principal Vadim Volkov said that the helmsman of the boat carrying the students was not to blame for the incident.
There were reports that several people were injured by broken glass and taken by ambulance to hospital. Volkov said, however, that no one had been seriously injured and that the students were able to continue their celebrations.
Peterhof Hotel
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Inteco group of companies headed by Yelena Baturina, wife of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, has opened its new hotel complex in Peterhof, a suburb of St. Petersburg, Fontanka.ru
reported.
The new four-star hotel has 150 rooms and various facilities, including a conference hall and underground car-parking. The six three-floor buildings in the complex occupy a territory of 13,000 square meters.
Not Safe to Swim
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Environmental Prosecutor’s Commission has claimed that the city authorities have been failing to inform citizens about the dangers they face when swimming at local beaches, Fontanka.ru reported.
According to Rospotrebnadzor, there is only one place in St. Petersburg which meets sanitary norms — Lake Beztmyannoye in the Kransnoselsky district. Water at the other 24 public beach areas within the city boundaries fails to meet those standards.
By law, the authorities are obliged to post warnings at beaches that have failed to pass sanitary tests and to publicize bans on swimming in such areas in the mass media.
Second Stage
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Construction work on the Mariinsky Theater’s second stage will be completed by the end of 2011, Valery Gutovsky, head of the northwest branch of Construction and Reconstruction, the firm carrying out the works, said Monday, Interfax reported.
“We are in a very positive mood about it,” Gutovsky said when visiting the construction site.
“There won’t be any major problems, although getting all the work completed in 2011 will be a struggle, and after the main construction work is completed there will be a lot of fitting out and interior design to do,” he said.
Gutovsky said the first performances will take place on the Mariinsky’s new stage during the White Nights season in 2012.
Gutovsky said the foundation works for the second stage have already been completed and work on the utilities connections is already underway.
Expenditure on construction work has already exceeded 10 billion rubles ($320 million), with 2.5 billion rubles having been spent on the underground section of the work alone, he said.
TITLE: Medvedev Tweets His Way Through the G8 Forum
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev’s press office faces some competition.
At the G8/20 summit, Medvedev announced efforts to overhaul global financial rules and an agreement for regular talks with new British Prime Minister David Cameron on his new Twitter microblog.
In all, Medvedev, who opened the Twitter account Wednesday during a fact-finding trip to California’s Silicon Valley that included a stop at Twitter’s headquarters, made more than 10 posts as he met with the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies in Canada from Friday to Sunday.
After attending G8 meetings in Huntsville, north of Toronto, on Saturday, the president tweeted: “Encouraged G8 leaders to set an example of responsible budget policy.”
Medvedev economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich later explained that the president had reiterated Russia’s call for the creation of a global financial control system aimed at preventing a new economic crisis.
A larger number of reserve currencies that go beyond the U.S. dollar and euro, as well as “a higher role of the drawing rights of the International Monetary Fund,” is “the best scenario,” Dvorkovich told reporters.
But for the shorter term an acceptable method to lessen risks to the global currency system is for countries to review one another’s policies and hold consultations about how credit and monetary policies are pursued, he said.
Russia also opposed a proposal by France, Germany and Britain to introduce an international financial transactions tax aimed at compensating governments’ costs for supporting the banking system, he said, adding that Russia was unlikely to benefit from such a tax on banks.
The three countries said earlier this month that they planned to impose the tax as early as next year, with Britain alone expecting to collect ?2 billion ($3 billion) a year.
“Our financial market is just developing. We would like a large bulk of financial transactions to be completed [in Russia],” Dvorkovich said, adding that Russia would benefit if other countries imposed the tax.
He said tighter regulations over European banks could speed up Kremlin plans to turn Moscow into an international financial center.
Countries at the G20 summit on Sunday were split on the tax, with the United States joining France, Germany and Britain in embracing it and Japan, China and India supporting Russia’s opposition. For related story, see page 16.
The G20 leaders planned to agree on measures to rein in budget deficits that highlighted the countries’ need for “sustainable” budgets, Bloomberg reported Sunday, citing a draft summit statement.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Saturday that the countries’ leaders would agree to lower budget deficits.
Medvedev, who just started following the tweets of U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Cameron, declared after meeting Saturday with the new British prime minister that the two had agreed to talk on a regular basis.
“Met with David Cameron. Have agreed that we’ll continue to speak in person, not just online,” Medvedev tweeted.
The two spoke for more than an hour in their first meeting after Cameron took office in May.
Medvedev told reporters after the meeting that “permanent attention to economic issues and other themes” was needed to develop Russian-British ties, which have been strained since the 2006 poisoning death of former Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.
“We are determined to make them more productive and full-fledged,” Medvedev said, according to the Kremlin’s web site.
The two leaders didn’t discuss the case of Litvinenko, Medvedev spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said. “A number of disagreements … were mentioned,” she added, without elaborating.
Russia has refused to extradite Britain’s main murder suspect, State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, to London.
Medvedev and Cameron also discussed the situation in Iran and the Middle East and BP’s problems after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The issue of BP “was touched upon very briefly,” Dvorkovich said.
“We confirmed that we are interested in a favorable outcome for BP,” he said, adding that “the talks had been very open and candid.”
A planned meeting of the leaders of the emerging BRIC economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was cancelled after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva skipped the G20 summit to deal with flooding at home.
As leaders worried about the global economy, Medvedev showed his concern for another event, the World Cup.
“Germany plays England today,” he tweeted Sunday. “I sincerely hope both teams do well. No matter who wins, it will be a wonderful match.”
Germany ended up thrashing England 4-1.
TITLE: Tsarskoye Selo Celebrates 300 Years Since Foundation
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar’s Village), a former residence of the Russian imperial family located in St. Petersburg’s suburb of Pushkin, celebrated its 300th anniversary this weekend.
The anniversary was marked by a military parade, performances by military bands and fireworks.
To mark the occasion, the Tsarskoye Selo museum and park complex unveiled the fully restored Hermitage Pavilion. During the tsarist era the pavilion was used by Russia’s rulers for intimate dinners — a mechanized dumb-waiter system allowed them to be served without waiters or servants being present, dishes being raised to them through shafts under the dining table.
The pavilion has now been restored to its original condition.
Russian Patriarch Kirill also performed the consecration of the rebuilt St. Catherine’s Cathedral in Pushkin, close to Tsarskoye Selo.
The 53-meter cathedral is a copy of the original, built in 1840. It took four years to rebuild the cathedral, which was destroyed in 1939 on the orders of the region’s communist administration. A statue of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was then erected in its place.
About 30,000 St. Petersburg residents personally contributed to the restoration process by buying bricks for the foundations of the construction.
TITLE: TV Anchor Stabbed to Death
AUTHOR: By Greta Mavica and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A 26-year-old journalist for the pro-Kremlin Expert cable television channel was found in his Moscow apartment with more than 30 knife wounds to his neck, investigators said.
Investigators and friends of Dmitry Okkert, a Chelyabinsk native, expressed doubt that the killing was linked to his professional activities.
Okkert’s body was found Friday by his landlady, who was alerted by friends worried he had stopped returning calls and did not respond to the doorbell Thursday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Investigators did not provide a possible motive for the killing.
“According to the preliminary investigation, the killing of Okkert wasn’t related to his job,” Anatoly Bagmet, head of the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee said Sunday, Itar-Tass reported.
Okkert’s employer and a friend said they were mystified by the killing.
Valery Fadeyev, head of the Expert media holding, said he did not think the killing was connected to Okkert’s work, a sentiment echoed by a friend of Okkert, journalist Anton Korobkov-Zemlyansky.
Okkert moved to Moscow in 2005, joining NTV’s “Maximum” show that covered scandals and celebrity lifestyles. He joined Expert in late 2008, becoming a news anchor for the television channel, which specializes in analyzing business and politics.
TITLE: International Observers Praise Kyrgyz Referendum
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster and Peter Leonard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — International observers on Monday praised Kyrgyzstan’s constitutional referendum, saying the vote was conducted in a transparent and remarkably peaceful manner despite a lingering climate of fear after ethnic purges.
While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recognized some shortcomings in the vote, its approval was the final stamp of legitimacy for the interim authorities who came to power after President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in mass protests in April.
More than two-thirds of the 2.7 million eligible to vote in this Central Asian nation overwhelmingly approved a new constitution that reduces presidential power and hands more authority to parliament. The referendum was seen as a barometer of national trust in interim President Roza Otunbayeva’s rule.
Many feared the referendum would reignite the kind of violence that saw hundreds of ethnic Uzbeks killed and many thousands more displaced earlier this month when majority Kyrgyz rampaged through minority Uzbek neighborhoods in the country’s south.
“Considering the extremely difficult environment in which the referendum took place — only weeks after the violence in Osh and Jalal-Abad — the provisional government and other authorities should be commended for organizing a remarkably peaceful process,” Boris Frlec, head of the OSCE observation mission, said in a statement.
Shortcomings the group noted included a lack of safeguards against multiple voting, with voters not always checked for ink on their fingers, and polling panels at times being unaware of procedures.
“The pervasive atmosphere of fear and intimidation in parts of the south, compounded by arrests of prominent public figures of the Uzbek community, may have dissuaded some voters from casting their ballots,” the statement said.
Otunbayeva said she now would be inaugurated as a caretaker president and form her government and parliamentary elections will be held in October. But the fractured makeup of the interim government may put the nation’s stability at risk.
Several of her top deputies also lead their own political parties, which will face off against one other in the parliamentary vote.
Otunbayeva has asked them to resign from the government by July 10 in order to ensure a level playing field for the elections.
As caretaker president, Otunbayeva will have sweeping powers in the three months before the elections, including the right to appoint ministers, issue presidential decrees and influence state media, a role that could open her party to criticism of having an unfair advantage in the political campaign.
Deep internal divisions already emerged among the interim leaders over how best to handle the violence in the south, when rampages by Kyrgyz mobs killed as many as 2,000 people this month and forced 400,000 minority ethnic Uzbeks to temporarily flee.
The provisional authorities had accused Bakiyev’s followers of instigating the recent attacks to try to stop the referendum, a charge that Bakiyev, now living in Belarus, denied. But they have done little to follow up on reports that Kyrgyz security forces were also involved in the violence or turned a blind eye.
This has sown distrust toward police among many Uzbeks, who have nevertheless supported the interim government in the hope that it will create stability. The Kyrgyz community in the south backed Bakiyev, whose regime was seen as corrupt.
Voters in the southern city of Osh — the epicenter of the unrest — sounded upbeat early Monday.
“We hope, we must hope for something so that our children will live better. We believe in Roza Otunbayeva. She can understand what life we have, and she can make it better to live together with people of all nationalities,” Gulnara Nasyrova told Associated Press Television News.
For the first time since the rioting, the streets in Osh were buzzing with activity Monday as some shops and restaurants began to operate again. But many of the most popular eating spots were run and owned by Uzbeks in this Silk Road city, and they still stand gutted by arson.
Both the United States and Russia have military bases in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Manas air base is a key transit center for U.S. and NATO troops flying in and out of Afghanistan.
Otunbayeva said after the vote that Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy will remain unchanged, maintaining close ties with ex-Soviet neighbors in Central Asia, as well as Russia and China.
“We will also continue our partnerships with the countries of the European Union and also with the United States,” she said.
TITLE: Charges Dropped Against Aleksanyan
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vasily Aleksanyan, the gravely ill former Yukos vice president, will leave Russia for treatment abroad after a Moscow court on Thursday dropped charges against him following the expiration of their statute of limitations last month.
Aleksanyan, diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, tuberculosis and AIDS, unexpectedly attended Thursday’s hearing to personally inform the judge that he did oppose the closing of the criminal case against him without his acquittal.
He wore a medical mask in court and left before the hearing was over.
The prosecutor in the case, Nikolai Vlasov, had no objections, and Simonosvky District Court judge Olga Nedelina announced on Thursday evening that the charges of embezzlement and tax evasion had been dropped, Interfax reported.
The judge also dropped two civil lawsuits against Aleksanyan worth 11 million rubles ($353,800), filed by Tomskneft and the Federal Property Management Agency.
Aleksanyan told journalists after leaving the courtroom that it had been difficult for him to come, Interfax reported. Answering a question about his health, he said only, “Still alive.”
The lack of an acquittal means that Aleksanyan cannot demand compensation for his four years of legal troubles.
But he is free and plans to leave Russia for medical treatment, his lawyer Gevorg Dangyan said.
“Now that the restrictions have been withdrawn, he can seek treatment abroad. He has received an invitation already,” Danyan said after the hearing.
“This doesn’t mean that he pleads guilty,” he added.
Aleksanyan’s trial was suspended soon after its start in February 2008 because of his health. Facing enormous international pressure, the court in August 2008 ordered Aleksanyan’s release on bail of 50 million rubles ($1.6 million), which was collected through private donations because Aleksanyan’s property had been seized by prosecutors. He was freed only in December 2008.
The bail will be returned to Aleksanyan.
Aleksanyan, a graduate of Moscow State University and Harvard Law School, was head of the legal department of Yukos, once Russia’s biggest oil company whose former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is now serving an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax evasion charges along with his business partner Platon Lebedev.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are now on trial in a Moscow court on related charges that could add 22 1/2 years to their sentences. They and their supporters say the cases against them and other Yukos employees like Aleksanyan are politically motivated.
Aleksanyan was arrested in April 2006 and diagnosed with HIV in September that year. At the time, he accused the authorities of denying him treatment because he had refused to testify against his former Yukos employers.
The court spent the last 18 months considering whether Aleksanyan could be forced to attend hearings in his trial.
TITLE: Rights Chief Under Fire For Stance on Protests
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has come under heavy fire from United Russia for his criticism of a violent police crackdown on a May 31 opposition protest.
Lukin, who has held the post since 2004, overstepped his authority by taking sides in a political conflict, Sergei Markov, a prominent State Duma deputy for United Russia, said Thursday.
“Lukin damaged his neutrality by supporting those who were breaking the rules,” Markov told The St. Petersburg Times.
He also suggested that members of oppositional political groups should not be a focus for the ombudsmen. “They have enough support from other sources,” he said, without elaborating.
Markov and other United Russia officials have frequently accused foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations of supporting the pro-Western opposition.
Riot police detained more than 150 people at the unsanctioned May 31 rally on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad, and about two dozen people claimed that they were beaten or attacked.
Lukin, who attended the rally as an observer, has said he expects apologies from the police for the violence and has sent a report to President Dmitry Medvedev.
But the position has opened him up to scathing attacks in the national media over the past 10 days.
The criticism began when the heads of three veterans and police organizations wrote to the Kremlin linking Lukin to the series of attacks on policemen in the Far East.
By attending the rally, the ombudsman supported radical opposition leader Eduard Limonov, the leaders of the groups said in the letter, excerpts of which were published last week by the Regnum.ru news site.
At least one of the so-called Primorye partisans was “a supporter and follower” of Limonov, they wrote.
A host of regional ombudsmen were then reported to have complained to Medvedev about Lukin.
Penza region ombudsman Svetlana Pinishina said Lukin’s activities had shown a “biased approach to human rights,” the Politonline.ru news site reported.
Last Friday, Lukin canceled an appearance in the Duma, where he was to present his annual human rights report. He told lawmakers he had to chair a session of the national Paralympics Committee.
It remained unclear Thursday when he would reschedule the address. On Wednesday, Lukin said his account on the May 31 protests would probably not be published. It was sent “directly to the president … maybe he will react directly,” Lukin said, Interfax reported.
A woman who picked up the phone in Lukin’s office Thursday said he was unavailable for comment.
The Duma confirmed Lukin for a second and final five-year term in February 2009.
Supporters say the criticism resembles a campaign last fall against Ella Pamfilova, head of the Kremlin’s human rights council. Nashi activists had called for Pamfilova’s dismissal after she had condemned the pro-Kremlin youth movement for “persecuting” journalist Alexander Podrabinek for his criticism of World War II veterans.
TITLE: Coca-Cola Launches Kvas in New York
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Coca-Cola has started selling kvas in New York in the hope of winning over the American palate to the mildly fermented Russian drink with a peculiar crisp malt taste.
Krushka & Bochka Kvass, which Coca-Cola launched in Russia in the spring of 2008, went on sale in Whole Foods Market stores to commemorate President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the United States last week, the soft drink giant said.
“We are pleased to be able to introduce authentic Russian kvas to New York in recognition of President Medvedev’s historic visit,” said Deryck Van Rensberg, president of Coca-Cola North America’s venturing and emerging brands division, which promotes high-potential growth brands.
While kvas resembles beer and shocks foreigners who see children drinking large bottles of it on billboards, the drink with alcohol content of up to 1.5 percent is widely embraced as a symbol of Russian hospitality and has been drunk for more than a thousand years.
Moscow alone hosts about 200 kvas producers, according to IMC Network, a Moscow-based organization of marketing professionals.
A Coca-Cola spokesman said Russian sales of Krushka & Bochka Kvass had surpassed expectations last year. “Our expectations for yearly sales volume were met in August,” the spokesman for Coca-Cola’s Moscow office said Friday. He refused to elaborate.
In the United States, the kvas will sell in 0.5-liter bottles (16.9 ounces) in contrast with the 1.5-liter bottles in Russia because the taste is new to Americans and often provokes “an interesting reaction” among foreigners, the spokesman said.
Coca-Cola, however, is not the first company to export kvas to the United States. Last year, Baltika started selling its kvas brand Granary Land in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida and California, while Russian producer Deka has sold its Nikola kvas in the United States since 2005, Vedomosti reported.
Coca-Cola’s kvas will retail for $2.49, compared with 40 to 55 rubles (about $1.50) for 1.5 liters in Russia, a Coca-Cola official told Reuters.
Some analysts said the price was high for a soft drink in the United States, especially in a tough economy. “On average, an American consumer would not pay more than a dollar for a can or a bottle of soda,” said Gary Hemphill, senior vice president of the information services division at New York-based Beverage Marketing Corp.
“The economy has been weak. Consumers have been a bit more hesitant to purchase new products,” said Hemphill, who has not tried kvas.
Still, he said, kvas might find a niche like kombucha tea, a fermented tea sold for medicinal purposes in specialty and herbal stores in the United States.
Richard Haffner, Chicago-based soft drinks industry manager for Euromonitor International, said he has drunk kvas, which he compared to cream soda, and believes that Americans could acquire a taste for it if Coca-Cola marketed it right.
“As a specialty, this item is going to be a satisfying and small pleasure, even during recession,” Haffner told The St. Petersburg Times.
Hemphill said Coca-Cola made the right choice by selecting Whole Foods as a platform for selling kvas.
Whole Foods Market is a specialized grocery store that focuses on organic produce and healthy foods and has more than 270 stores across North America and Britain. The kvas will be initially sold at its 12 stores in New York, Vedomosti reported.
TITLE: City Hall Reshuffle Boosts Oseyevsky
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin, Nadezhda Zaitseva and Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A reshuffle at City Hall has led to the strengthening of the financial-economic bloc led by Deputy Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky.
Oseyevsky will be appointed leader of the governor’s administration after the retirement of Alexander Vakhmistrov, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced earlier this month. Oseyevsky will remain in charge of the financial-economic bloc. The governor’s administration will lose part of its activities — the press service will be put under the management of Deputy Governor Alla Manilova, while Deputy Governor Valery Tikhonov will be in charge of emergency resources management. Human resources management and the legal committee will report directly to the governor.
Igor Metelsky, chairman of the City Property Management Committee (KUGI), will become a new deputy governor, and will take over control of the land resources and land development committee and Committee for the State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Landmarks (KGIOP) from Deputy Governor Roman Filimonov, while Deputy Governor Yury Molchanov will hand over control of KUGI to him. Molchanov will be in charge of the development and road maintenance committee, which will be turned into the road maintenance committee, as well as the transport committee.
“The changes will help to increase the efficiency of the management of the city’s maintenance,” Matviyenko was cited as saying by her press service.
Dmitry Kurakin, who has been Metelsky’s deputy since July 2008, may become the chairman of KUGI, according to two officials at City Hall.
“The redistribution of duties among deputy governors has led to the creation of a new government bloc focused on solving transport problems and developing road infrastructure,” Molchanov told Vedomosti.
“With the promotion of Oseyevsky, the financial-economic bloc has gained a stronger political position in the government than the fragmented property and investment bloc has under the management of Molchanov,” said an official from a committee under Oseyevsky’s supervision.
“There is an opportunity to redistribute authority after the retirement of Vakhmistrov, and the governor is attempting to improve work in problem areas,” said Igor Rimmer, a deputy at the city’s Legislative Assembly. According to him, the development and road maintenance committee has already been reorganized several times, and faces a lot of complaints over traffic jams and street cleaning, and probably the governor hopes to increase control over this sector.
“The changes are linked to the governor’s desire to make huge expenses on road construction and developing the transport sector more effective,” said Vatanyar Yagya, a deputy at the Legislative Assembly.
TITLE: Stocks, Ruble Rise on Oil
AUTHOR: By Denis Maternovsky and Jason Corcoran
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian stocks and the ruble rose the most in a week Monday as crude oil traded near $78 a barrel and leaders from the Group of 20 nations endorsed targets to cut deficits, easing concern of defaults.
Rosneft, the country’s biggest oil producer and VTB Group, Russia’s second-largest lender, added as much as 3.5 percent. The 30-stock Micex Index rose 1.2 percent to 1,363.4 at the close in Moscow, its first day of gains in a week.
Oil, Russia’s chief export earner, was at $77.95 a barrel, 0.8 percent higher than at the close of equities trading in Moscow on June 25. Prices reached $79.38 a barrel earlier. Investors’ appetite for riskier assets increased after pledges from G-20 leaders over the weekend helped curb concern budget shortfalls will pull the global economy back into recession.
“Oil at $79 a barrel is very good environment for Russia,” Andrei Kuznetsov, a strategist at Troika Dialog, said by phone Monday. “Demand for commodities is high.”
Russian stocks are down 5.9 percent from March 31, headed for their first quarterly drop since the last three months of 2008 as speculation increased that European deficits will hobble a global economic recovery.
The Russian currency strengthened 0.3 percent against the greenback to 31.0049 in Moscow, its biggest gain since June 21. The government’s benchmark sovereign dollar bonds due April 2020 climbed, with the yield falling 8 basis points to 5.41 percent.
The ruble slid 0.1 percent against the euro, weakening for a fourth day, to 38.2200. Those movements left the ruble 0.2 percent stronger at 34.2564 against the central bank’s target currency basket, which is used to manage swings that hurt Russian exporters.
TITLE: Olympic Medals Cost $12.5M Each
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia spent the equivalent of 388 million rubles ($12.5 million) for each Olympic medal it won at the Vancouver Winter Games, the state financial watchdog said.
Russia spent a total of 5.8 billion rubles on preparing and competing in the games, where the country had its worst showing since it began competing in 1956, the Audit Chamber said in a report published on its web site Monday.
The probe found “problems in the system of sports management, both organizational and financial,” the watchdog said. Results of the investigation will be presented to President Dmitry Medvedev as well as to prosecutors and government agencies, according to the report.
Russia finished the Winter Games with three gold medals, its worst-ever performance. The Russian team won a total of 15 medals, sixth among the competing countries and one better than South Korea, according to the Games website.
TITLE: Russia Plans to Sign Nuclear Energy Agreement With U.A.E.
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The United Arab Emirates and Russia plan to sign “in the near future” an agreement to work together on nuclear energy.
“After the signing of the cooperation agreement, we will have the potential to work on research reactors and we also plan to take part in the Emirates’ program with the Koreans,” Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Monday in Moscow after a meeting with U.A.E. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The U.A.E. awarded an $18.6 billion contract in December to Korea Electric Power Corp. to build four nuclear plants by 2020 as it seeks to meet increasing demand for power. The plants, to be built on the coast of western Abu Dhabi, will each have a capacity of 1,400 megawatts.
The Persian Gulf nation is pursuing nuclear power while neighboring Iran faces sanctions aimed at forcing it to scale back nuclear development work.
Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes such as generating power. It has rebuffed United Nations Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment. The council imposed a fourth set of sanctions on Iran on June 9, backed by Russia and China, while the Congress approved U.S. sanctions last week.
Power demand in the U.A.E. will double to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, Anwar Gargash, the minister of state for foreign affairs, said last November. The nation prohibits the enrichment of uranium on its soil and signed a nuclear energy cooperation deal with the U.S.
“We are ready to cooperate with Russia in nuclear power on various aspects,” Sheikh Abdullah said after Monday’s meeting of the Russian-U.A.E. commission on cooperation. “By 2030, we plan to generate as much nuclear power so as to meet one third of our energy consumption.”
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Rosneft Accepts Ruling
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, will abide by a Dutch court decision seeking 12.9 billion rubles ($420 million), the Moscow-based company said.
“The company believed its position would be carefully studied by the high court in Netherlands, which unfortunately didn’t happen,” Rosneft said Monday in a statement. “This won’t affect the company’s execution of the court decision.”
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands on Friday rejected a Rosneft unit’s appeal against a ruling to repay loans granted before Russia seized and sold off Yukos Oil Co., Yukos Capital Sarl, which is run by former Yukos Oil management, said in an e-mailed statement that day.
Danger Seen in Prices
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Surging food prices may slow growth in emerging economies and fan inflation, according to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.
Rising food prices should be one of the major concerns for investors in developing nations as they could stoke inflation, Deripaska, chief executive officer of United Co. RusAl, the world’s biggest producer of aluminum, said at a Renaissance Capital conference in Moscow on Monday. Ivanhoe Mines Chairman Robert Friedland said at the same event that commodities “people need,” such as water, food and copper, will outperform gold.
Global food production must rise 70 percent by 2050 as the world population expands to 9.1 billion from about 6.8 billion now, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says.
Rostelecom Merger
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Rostelecom, Russia’s dominant long-distance operator, may save 30 billion rubles ($970 million) a year by merging with eight regional companies, while failing to pass increased dividend payments on preferred stock.
The consolidation with the eight regional telephone companies, which shareholders approved at an annual meeting Saturday, will allow Rostelecom to cut capital expenditures, eliminate spending on duplicate infrastructure and centralize purchases, Chief Executive Officer Anton Kolpakov said.
Ukraine to Sell Assets
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ukraine’s government plans to sell state assets and cut the state’s role in the economy to about 20 percent to 25 percent in five years from 37 percent now, Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko said.
The government plans to sell VAT Ukrtelecom, the state-owned phone company, heating utilities and electicity distribution companies, Tigipko told a conference Monday in Moscow.
Raven to Switch Market
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Raven Russia, a Guernsey-based property company that specializes in warehouses in Russia, plans to move from London’s Alternative Investment Market to the main London market this year, the Financial Times reported.
The company was expected to announce Monday that it meets listing requirements, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people close to the talks.
Raven Russia hopes a listing on the main market will enable it to attract more international investors, especially from the U.S., the FT said, adding that Raven Russia declined to comment.
TITLE: Steve Jobs Presents Medvedev With iPhone, Advice
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev left California’s Silicon Valley on Thursday with a brand-new iPhone 4 and a bit of advice from Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Change Russians’ mentality.
Medvedev, who toured the U.S. cradle of innovation to get tips and drum up support for his modernization drive, also won a pledge from Cisco Systems to invest $1 billion as a tenant in Skolkovo, the Kremlin’s version of Silicon Valley outside Moscow.
But with a business culture where corruption and bureaucracy are rampant, Russia poses a huge risk for U.S. companies, said the U.S. congresswoman whose California district includes Silicon Valley.
“I think American investors should have serious concerns about corruption in Russia,” Anna Eshoo, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Medvedev himself acknowledged that Russia had a way to go before it could boast a competitive, innovative economy.
“Unfortunately for us, venture capitalism is not going so well so far,” Medvedev said Wednesday during a meeting with Stanford University officials, including former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz, according to the Stanford Report.
“No one wants to run the risk,” he said. “It’s a problem of culture, as Steve Jobs told me today. We need to change the mentality.”
Medvedev met with Jobs at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, where the legendary CEO presented him with an iPhone 4 an hour before it went on sale in the United States.
Medvedev did not elaborate on his conversation with Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976 and returned in 1996 to revive it into a technology powerhouse by promoting a corporate culture where workers are enthusiastic about their work and encouraged to improve the world.
Medvedev also did not say how he might use Jobs’ advice. But his actions with his new iPhone could speak volumes.
Under anti-corruption rules backed by Medvedev, government officials are only allowed to accept gifts that cost less than 3,000 rubles ($100), and iPhone 4 pre-orders in Russian online shops range from 85,000 to 95,000 rubles ($2,700 to $3,000).
The phone, which will not go on sale in Russia before this fall, retails for up to $600 in the United States.
A Kremlin spokeswoman said Thursday that the iPhone was a personal gift to Medvedev so he could do with it as he pleased. Reminded of the gift rules, she said the restrictions applied to gifts accepted in private.
“This is different because the iPhone is a gift presented to the president officially in an open setting,” she said.
Medvedev, who already owns an older iPhone model, used the new phone during the meeting with Jobs to make a video call to his economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich, who was accompanying him on a tour of Silicon Valley, RIA-Novosti reported.
Medvedev also got advice from other U.S. business executives and a group of Russian expats working in Silicon Valley.
Cisco, a world leader in computer-networking equipment, seemed to have bought into Medvedev’s pitch for Skolkovo, with a proposed 10-year tax holiday.
“We will partner with many of the Russian companies,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said at a meeting with Medvedev at the company’s headquarters.
The company will build offices in Skolkovo, including a second global headquarters for emerging technology, and invest $1 billion into research in business development over 10 years, Cisco said in a statement.
Stas Khirman, a board member of the American Business Association of Russian Professionals, a nonprofit organization of Russian-speaking entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley, said Skolkovo should not try to compete against Silicon Valley but instead focus on areas where it could excel, like the science-intense, mathematics-heavy fields of cloud computing, and image and parallels processing.
“You need to find your own niche, an area of expertise where Skolkovo can succeed, and then Skolkovo will bring a lot of money,” he said by telephone Thursday.
Entrepreneurs with his group met with Medvedev at a local restaurant Wednesday.
Despite the smiles and handshakes, some people voiced caution about Russia.
“American businesses are able to flourish with a host country when there is a commitment to the rule of law and transparency,” said Eshoo, the congresswoman.
“Silicon Valley has been successful largely because of its open and collaborative environment,” she said. “Investors have a clear set of rules and can predict the risk to their investments.”
It is an “absurdity” to present Russia as a safe place for investment, said William Browder, a U.S.-British businessman who once ran the biggest foreign investment fund in Russia but was barred entry from the country on national security grounds in 2005.
“You cannot just chant words like ‘modernization’ and hope that all the problems will just disappear,” Browder said by telephone from London. “The Russian government has to take serious actions against corrupt vested interests, and there is no indication that is happening.”
Medvedev no doubt hoped for a warmer reception in Washington, where he wound up his three-day U.S. visit Thursday with talks with President Barack Obama and a meeting with a group of CEOs.
In California, Medvedev found kind words at the headquarters of Twitter, the microblogging service where he opened Twitter accounts in Russian (@KremlinRussia) and English (@KremlinRussia_E).
“Russia is a huge country, and we feel that Twitter as a source of communication can be very interesting for Russian people,” Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said, adding that Twitter would be interested in expanding in Russia. He did not elaborate.
Medvedev typed out his first Twitter message in the presence of Williams and company co-founder Biz Stone: “Hi everyone! I’m on Twitter, and this is my first message.”
As many Twitter users have learned, Medvedev found that it is hard to write an error-free tweet. His first Russian-language tweet contained a typo, an extraneous “6” after the word “my.”
Medvedev used a subsequent tweet to direct attention back to the purpose of his U.S. trip. “Russia will continue to do its best to remain a predictable business partner for everyone — the Russian people and our foreign partners,” Medvedev tweeted.
TITLE: BP CEO Meets With Sechin In Moscow to Talk Oil, Safety
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The future of BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward wasn’t discussed during talks Monday with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, an aide to the country’s top energy official said.
Hayward and Sechin discussed TNK-BP, the oil venture BP owns with a group of billionaires, and Rosneft, in which it owns a stake, according to the aide, who declined to be identified in line with state policy. Sechin chairs Rosneft, the largest oil producer in Russia. Hayward reiterated the company’s commitment to Russia, the aide said.
Earlier Monday, Sechin had said that Hayward was planning to resign and announce his successor, in comments that were confirmed by an aide. Hayward’s failure to halt the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has triggered speculation that he might be forced out. BP denied that he was about to quit.
Hayward and Sechin also discussed BP’s efforts to contain the oil leak and how to prevent future accidents, the aide said by phone after Monday’s meeting in Moscow. Sheila Williams, a spokeswoman for BP, earlier said that Hayward has no plans to step down. She later declined to comment on the content of the talks.
Hayward also plans to visit Moscow-based TNK-BP, which accounts for about 25 percent of the London-based company’s reserves and output, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. They declined to be identified because the visit was confidential.
BP pledged its 1.3 percent stake in Rosneft to banks to raise funds for the costs of battling the spill, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
It bought $1 billion of shares in Rosneft’s initial public offering in 2006 and has a joint venture with the Moscow-based company to explore for oil and gas off Sakhalin Island, which is north of Japan, as well as the Arctic.
BP has lost about 50 percent of its market value since the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 crew members and caused the the spill. BP has agreed to deposit $20 billion in an independent account to pay for Gulf restoration and compensation claims. The direct costs of the cleanup have reached $2.65 billion, BP said Monday.
TITLE: Court Rejects Spiked Beer Claim Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Moscow Arbitration Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit from the Russian Beer Union that sought a retraction from a government official who claimed that brewers spiked their beer with hard alcohol.
In December, Yevgeny Bryun, head drug control official at the Health and Social Development Ministry, accused beer makers of spiking beer with alcohol to make it stronger. He said at the time that ethyl alcohol was added to strong beers with 16 percent to 18 percent alcohol content to regulate the fermentation process.
The beer union said it may appeal the verdict, but will not make a decision until it receives the official court decision, said Yulia Khramaikova, the union’s spokeswoman.
“The question of adding alcohol to beer was not even discussed at today’s court hearing,” the union said in a statement, adding that it believes the reason for the court’s rejection of the suit was that it didn’t recognize the union as a legitimate plaintiff.
The union, a grouping of 34 Russian beer makers that account for 95 percent of all beer produced in the country, filed a suit against Bryun in January, demanding that he retract his remarks. Interfax and TV Center, which carried his remarks, were named codefendants in the lawsuit when the case was first presented in April.
The union says Bryun’s remarks resulted in a change in the public’s attitude toward beer. A consumer opinion study commissioned by the union showed that the remarks changed the attitude of one in 10 customers, said Andrei Volkov, a marketing director at Gortis, the consumer research company that conducted the study.
Seven percent of respondents said they would stop drinking beer, while 6 percent said they would reduce their beer consumption because of their belief that most brewers add alcohol to beer, he told The St. Petersburg Times.
“Regardless of the legal nuances, the objective reality is that no alcohol is added during brewing. Alcohol is a byproduct of brewing,” the union’s statement said.
Bryun’s remarks came as beer makers were entering a tough economic environment. In January, a law went into effect tripling the excise tax on beer from 3 rubles per liter to 9 rubles.
The tax increase hit brewers hard. Beer output over the first four months of the year fell 20 percent from the same period the year before, according to data from the State Statistics Service.
Earlier this week, Carlsberg, whose unit Baltika has a 40 percent market share, said it expects the Russian beer market to shrink as much as 13 percent this year, Reuters reported.
TITLE: Mine Repairs to Cost $320M
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Repairs at Raspadskaya’s largest mine will cost 10 billion rubles ($320 million) — a price tag that will be borne largely by stakeholders, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“This is a big burden on stockholders and owners. They’ll have to pay this from their own pockets,” Putin said, Interfax reported. He added that the government would help if it were absolutely necessary.
About 80 percent of the company is owned by its management and steelmaker Evraz, while the rest traded on exchange.
Twin blasts ripped through Russia’s largest underground mine in May, killing 90 workers and rescuers. Restoring the mine, which employed about 4,000 people, could take 12 to 15 months, according to Energy Ministry estimates.
The 10 billion ruble figure significantly exceeds the estimate given last month by Kemerovo region Governor Aman Tuleyev, who said repairs would run to about 5 billion rubles.
Raspadskaya deputy chief executive Alexander Andreyev said Thursday that the miner was in talks with banks over financing the repairs, but that the company had no need to run to the capital market immediately.
TITLE: Sukhoi’s SuperJet Gets Boost in Europe
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, the commercial unit of Russian military plane maker Sukhoi, is chipping away at a Canadian-Brazilian duopoly for regional jets after scoring a milestone certification for its SuperJet model.
The engine for the SuperJet, Russia’s first major passenger airplane project since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was certified on Wednesday by the European Aviation Safety Agency. Russia’s Avia Register is set to follow “within a few weeks,” said PowerJet, the company selling the engine. Certification includes tests for safety, noise and emissions.
The approval brings the SuperJet, which can carry 75 to 95 passengers, one step closer to challenging Brazil’s Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica and Canada’s Bombardier as the only builders of regional jets. Certification for the plane may follow later this year, with three prototypes already accumulating thousands of hours of test flights, EASA said.
“From what we know today, the plane can still get certification this year,” Norbert Lohl, certification director at EASA, said at a ceremony in Cologne.
Bombardier filed for certification of its CSeries jet, which seats 100 to 149 passengers, with EASA at the beginning of the year, and Embraer filed for a competing plane this year, Lohl said. The process typically takes about five years, he said. Bombardier targets entry into service for 2013. The SuperJet may include a stretch version with up to 118 seats.
The SuperJet is “three to four years” ahead of competitors, Snecma chief executive Philippe Petitcolin said at the event. Safran’s Snecma, together with Saturn NPO of Russia, make the SaM146 engine for the SuperJet.
Some 13 engines will be produced this year, with as many as 50 following next year, Petitcolin said, reflecting the current order level of 122 planes for the SuperJet. Sukhoi has said it plans to sell at least 1,800 of the new jets over 20 years.
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, in which Italy’s Finmeccanica owns 25 percent, is scheduled to deliver the first three SuperJets this year to Aeroflot and Armenian airline Armavia, Sukhoi CEO Mikhail Pogosyan said in June. Fifteen SuperJets are scheduled for delivery in 2011, he said.
The first SuperJet has been a long time coming. The jet was originally scheduled to start delivery at the end of 2008, but construction delays pushed that deadline back to 2009. That delivery date was also delayed, after problems arose with certifying the engine.
(Bloomberg, SPT)
TITLE: Number of Russians Worth $1M Surges 21 Percent
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The population of rich Russians grew by 21.3 percent to 117,700 in 2009 — the world’s second-best result — and the outlook remains optimistic, according to a report on world wealth released last week.
The number of high net-worth individuals — people with investable business assets worth upward of $1 million — in Russia was boosted by surging stock market capitalization, which rose 103.6 percent in 2009 despite a 7.9 percent shrinking of gross domestic product, according to the annual report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini Group.
The dismal 2008 saw a decrease of 28.5 percent in the number of wealthy individuals in Russia, but now the situation has rebounded, and the trend is expected to continue as long as the ongoing global recovery keeps commodities prices high.
Britain led the way in 2009 with a 42.7 percent surge that brought the number of its high net-worth individuals to 448,000, and the United States remained the leader in absolute figures with 2.86 million (a growth of 16.5 percent).
But the Asia-Pacific region is expected to display the fastest growth in the number of wealthy individuals over the coming years, mainly because of China and India, the report said.
TITLE: The Kremlin’s Nuclear Trump Card
AUTHOR: By Stephen G. Rademaker
TEXT: A recurring theme in the U.S. Senate’s hearings on the New START treaty has been the disappointment expressed by many senators over the treaty’s failure to limit Russia’s tactical nuclear warheads. Supporters of New START respond that the treaty’s exclusive focus on strategic nuclear warheads follows the pattern of all previous U.S.-Russian arms control agreements. But the critics are rightly concerned that the number of strategic warheads has fallen so low that the United States can no longer ignore Russia’s overwhelming advantage in tactical warheads.
Strategic nuclear weapons are intended to win wars by targeting major cities, military bases and other “strategic” targets. Tactical weapons, by contrast, are designed for use on the battlefield. In practical terms, strategic nuclear weapons target the Russian and U.S. heartlands, while tactical nuclear weapons were designed for use in combat in Central Europe.
During the Cold War, the United States and Russia deployed large numbers of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. But U.S.-Russian arms control had always focused on strategic weapons on the theory that tactical weapons were irrelevant to keeping the nuclear peace as long as both sides deployed vastly larger numbers of strategic weapons. Events on the battlefield were thought to be of little consequence if Washington and Moscow were at risk of destruction by strategic weapons.
But what was true at the height of the Cold War when both sides possessed tens of thousands of strategic nuclear warheads has become increasingly less true as both sides have reduced their strategic forces. During the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, the agreed ceiling on deployed strategic weapons was reduced from 6,000 to 2,200 on each side. The New START drops the ceiling even further to 1,550.
Regrettably, these deep reductions in strategic weapons have not been matched by Russian reductions in tactical weapons. By most estimates, the United States today deploys just between 200 and 300 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, compared to Russia’s arsenal of between 2,000 and 3,000.
The Obama administration has argued to the Senate that Russia’s 10:1 advantage in tactical weapons is militarily insignificant today and will remain insignificant even if U.S. strategic forces are cut to roughly half the size of Russia’s tactical forces as required by New START. But obviously there comes a point at which strategic nuclear reductions will be so deep — and Russia’s advantage in tactical weapons so large — that the disparity can no longer be ignored.
Incredibly, the arms control community, and even some U.S. allies in Europe, believe that the solution to this problem is to unilaterally withdraw the remaining U.S. tactical warheads from Europe, assuming incorrectly that Russia would, in turn, remove its warheads (at least those that are located in the European part of the country). The Obama administration has not embraced this solution, but it hasn’t rejected it either, promising instead to intensify consultations within NATO on the issue and calling on Russia to negotiate reductions in tactical weapons.
Indeed, persuading Russia simply to talk about tactical weapons would be a significant achievement. The Bush administration tried repeatedly to initiate such a discussion, but Russia always demurred, insisting there was nothing to talk about until the United States withdrew all its tactical weapons from Europe, while Russia kept its weapons in that theater. Russia has become no more flexible on this issue following the advent of the Obama administration. When asked by the Senate why New START addresses only strategic weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted “they were not willing to negotiate on tactical nukes.”
This inflexibility reflects a troubling reality. Russia emphatically has not embraced Obama’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. On the contrary, as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates candidly told the Senate, “Everything we see indicates they’re increasing the importance and the role of their nuclear weapons in the defense of Russia.” Russian officials explain that the country’s conventional capabilities are much degraded since the demise of the Soviet Union, while threats to Russia’s security have increased.
These perceived threats include not just China to the East and unstable Islamic regions to the South, but also NATO to the West. In truth, NATO has served to stabilize Russia’s Western periphery rather than threaten it, but bitterness over the loss of so much of its former empire to NATO prevents Moscow from recognizing this reality.
In an environment where the threats perceived by Russia outstrip its ability to defend itself by conventional means, Russian officials see tactical nuclear weapons as the great equalizer. The United States has little to offer to persuade the Kremlin to reduce its 10:1 advantage, much less abolish these weapons entirely.
Washington would have even less to offer if the Obama administration unilaterally withdrew the remaining U.S. tactical weapons from Europe. Proponents of this idea misunderstand the nature of the problem. In reality, Russia deploys tactical nuclear weapons to counter an imagined conventional threat from NATO.
For these reasons, New START is likely to be the last arms control agreement signed with Russia for a long time to come. Another traditional strategic arms control agreement is out of the question. Any future agreement will have to limit tactical weapons as well, but Russia appears determined to keep its tactical nuclear trump card so long as it perceives NATO as a threat. Changing that perception will take a lot more than reset buttons and unilateral U.S. concessions.
Stephen G. Rademaker, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control from 2002 to 2006, is senior counsel for BGR Government Affairs in Washington.
TITLE: Overloaded by Chimerica
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a memorable gaffe. She gave her Russian counterpart a “reset” button, but the word on top of it was missing two crucial letters, thus turning “reset” into “overload.”
This is the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama in a nutshell. When Obama became president, the country was economically and morally bankrupt and needed a reset button of its own. Mired in two endless wars and drowning in debt, it had just suffered a financial debacle that brought down the global economy. It was no longer able to lead, its government was corrupt and incompetent, and by the standards it had itself set in the world it would be judged a rogue nation.
Obama swept into the White House on a wave of “yes we can” hope, but in 18 months he has done nothing to alter the situation. He has been unable to extricate the United States from Iraq and has gotten the country more deeply bogged down in Afghanistan. The economy has not been fixed despite trillions of dollars of new debt. Debacles such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill reveal Washington’s impotence in dealing with national emergencies.
Despite his best efforts, Obama has not united the nation. The left seems bereft of ideas and popular leaders, whereas an ugly populist tide is rising on the right, baying for blood and producing exactly the kind of ignorant and reactionary politicians that the radical right has been notorious for since the early 20th century.
U.S. General Stanley McChrystal’s candid, blunt remarks in a Rolling Stone article suggest that the country’s military is going rogue. The United States is becoming a frightened, angry nation, and such nations often seek solace in a military dictatorship.
So far, Washington has been saved from bankruptcy by the emerging global power, China. To designate this relationship, scholars have coined a new term, Chimerica. As Washington grows weaker, China becomes correspondingly stronger, using U.S. fat to build its industrial muscle. But it remains a symbiotic relationship. China needs the United States to help innovate and develop new technologies, while the United States needs Chinese loans and cheap consumer goods to continue living high on the hog while producing little.
The rest of the world will see the liberal democratic Pax Americana, which has prevailed since the end of World War II, replaced with a new Pax Chimerica. It is certain to be a far uglier beast. China, with its authoritarian tendencies and 1.2 billion population, is unlikely to respect human life, much less individual rights and freedoms. It passes more death sentences on its own citizens than the rest of the world combined. National self-determination, as seen by the fate of Tibet, is unlikely to be tolerated, either.
China’s foreign policy in Zimbabwe says a lot about Beijing’s values and priorities. China’s state-owned companies have signed sweetheart deals with thugs in President Robert Mugabe’s regime. China uses vacant agricultural land, which was stolen from white farmers, to grow food for its own consumption while ordinary Zimbabweans starve.
Russia will be especially vulnerable. Its state has been privatized by corrupt bureaucrats and siloviki, who cynically package themselves as “Russian patriots” while stealing as much as they can get away with. China is already settling vacant Siberian land and importing Russia’s natural resources on the cheap.
An illiberal world dominated by truculent Washington and rapacious Beijing could spell national disaster for Russia.
Alexei Bayer, native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: Cirque du Soleil Dazzles With Premiere of ‘Corteo’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova and Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Canada’s globe-trotting, internationally renowned Cirque du Soleil rocked the city on Saturday with the European premiere of one of the company’s most recent shows, “Corteo.”
Directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, a Swiss-born Italian, the production has a Fellini-esque aesthetic, blurring boundaries between reality and fantasy, while being rooted in the traditions of itinerant Italian troupes. Titled “Corteo,” which means a procession, the surreal show revolves around the dream of a clown, who observes his own funeral and subsequently finds himself orchestrating the event, turning it into a grand-scale festivity celebrating life.
The show, which unfolds with sweeping speed, has a flexible narrative. The main character is essentially reliving a series of thrilling recollections from his life on stage, joining acrobats twisting in and out of enormous ornate chandeliers under the cupola, launching a performer of small stature attached to gigantic helium-filled balloons into the audience, playing football with a marionette and riding a bike under the eves of the big top.
Founded in 1984 in Montreal, Cirque du Soleil has evolved into an international giant, with seven permanent shows in Las Vegas, plus its own venues in Orlando, Florida; Macau, China; and Tokyo. Each venue has its own repertoire created specifically for that performing space and audience. Cirque du Soleil employs more than 1,200 people, of whom about 20 percent are performers from the former Soviet bloc.
“Acrobats and flyers are usually Russian, while jugglers are from South America,” said Mario d’Amico, the company’s senior vice-president for marketing. “If you want contortionists, you go to Mongolia — you simply can’t get them anywhere else.”
While “Corteo” is showing in a huge tent construction near the St. Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex (SKK) erected especially for the event, the company nurtures plans to open a permanent stadium in Moscow, although no concrete arrangements have yet been made, said Craig Cohon, chairman of Cirque du Soleil Rus.
According to d’Amico, a permanent venue typically takes two to three years to complete and costs about $200 million.
“The last one we created was a show in Las Vegas called “Viva Elvis,” centered around the life and music of Elvis Presley,” he said. “ These shows [in temporary structures] are fantastic, but when you go to see a permanent show, the technology allows you to do so much more, because you can dig in the ground, bring up lifts, do things in a different way; those shows are way more advanced.”
“We are here for the long term,” said Cohon. “The show is only in St. Petersburg for five weeks, but with our company Cirque du Soleil, we want to help modernize Russia’s thousands of years of culture, taking all the best bits and helping to modernize it — a cultural answer to the projects taking place in Skolkovo and Sochi.”
Corteo runs in St. Petersburg until August 8, before moving on to Kazan and then Moscow.
In 2011, Cirque du Soleil is hoping to push geographical boundaries a lot further and tour 10 to 15 Russian cities. A likely choice for the next visit is the company’s show Kooza, which is currently playing in the U.S. and juxtaposes the art of clownage and the traditions of acrobatic art.
TITLE: Football Film Takes Top Prize at Moscow Festival
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Venezuelan film about two brothers who play football took the top prize at the Moscow Film Festival, which finished with a grand ceremony at the Pushkin cinema.
Director Marcel Raquin accepted the prize for best film, the Golden George, for “Brother” from jury head Luc Besson at the closing ceremony Saturday, which was preceded by the usual meet and greet by festival head Nikita Mikhalkov on the red carpet outside the cinema in the sweltering heat that has gripped the capital.
Raquin’s film set in the slums of Caracas tells of two brothers and their tryout for a chance to go professional.
The special jury prize went to Johannes Naber’s “The Albanian,” a German-Albanian production about a migrant who goes from Albania to Germany to earn enough money to marry, with its star Nik Xhelilaj also winning best male actor.
Otherwise, the awards reflected the main trend in this year’s competition with directors from Eastern Europe looking at the recent past, when their countries were under the control of the Soviet Union as part of the Warsaw Pact. Jan Kidawa-Blonski won best director for “Little Rose,” a tale of dissidents and secret police in 1960s Poland, and Vilma Cibulkova won best actress for the Czech film “An Earthly Paradise for the Eyes,” set around the Soviet invasion in 1968.
“If someone had told me 15 or 20 years ago that I would make a film about the Soviet occupation in my own country and get a prize from the Moscow Film Festival, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Cibulkova said. “We are connected by a history, and I hope that in the future we will be connected through history in the best kind of way.”
The Polish film “Reverse,” a very black comedy about secret police in 1950s Poland, won best film in the “Perspectives” section of the competition devoted to debut movies and also won a prize from international critics.
The two tribute prizes went to French artists, a reflection of the Russia-France year of cultural exchange, with director Claude Lelouch, whose film “What Love May Bring” opened the festival, receiving a special prize for outstanding contribution to world cinema, and actress Emmanuelle Beart receiving the Stanislavsky prize.
Beart’s film, “It Begins With the End,” directed by her husband Michael Cohen and reportedly blocked from the Cannes Film Festival because of its raunchy scenes, competed but went home empty-handed.
TITLE: It-Girl Dishes the Dirt in Encyclopedic Detail
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This month, blonde it-girl Ksenia Sobchak released her latest book, “An Encyclopedia of Losers.”
The slim volume, with large print and slightly obscene illustrations by artist Andrei Bartenev, follows Sobchak’s former literary ventures: a book of fashion tips, “Stylish Things,” and a step-by-step guide, “How to Marry a Millionaire,” both of which were breezy — somewhat forgettable — reads.
Sobchak’s definition of “loser” is a very broad one. The encyclopedia’s title in Russian uses the word lokh, which is hard to translate. Dictionaries tell you something like “country bumpkin,” but you quickly realize that this cannot be the case when you see it graffitied on concrete housing estates. I think that it means something like “sucker” or “loser,” someone who tries to be cool, but just never quite gets it.
Lokhs can be rich or poor, she writes. Rich lokhs like pointy crocodile shoes, jewel-encrusted hubcaps for their Bentley, and Ulysse Nardin watches decorated with a miniature St. Basil’s cathedral. Their favorite word is “exclusive.”
Meanwhile, poor lokhs like pyramid schemes and designer knock-offs that enable them to look like rich lokhs from a distance.
Reading this, it’s hard not to flick through my well-thumbed copy of Sobchak’s style tips, where a photograph reveals her vast collection of pointy cowboy boots, at least six of which appear to be snake and crocodile skin. Oh, and didn’t she once crash her $300,000 Bentley Continental? But that would be quibbling.
The book takes aim at various social luminaries and is quite funny in an outrageously rude kind of way. I can’t imagine that the blond, coiffured pop-opera singer Nikolai Baskov would much like the photo collage of him with the slogan: “Nikolai Baskov, walking past the mirror, accidentally came.”
Nor will former Bolshoi “fat” ballerina Anastasia Volochkova be overjoyed by Sobchak calling her “swan woman” and accusing her of luring away a boyfriend with pseudo-profound text messages about the sun coming up.
Sobchak also settles scores with Olga Rodionova, the model wife of a publisher who took her to court earlier this year. Sobchak ridiculed her for posing for a book of erotic photographs by French artist Bettina Rheims, a project that was financed by her husband and that featured close-ups of her genital piercings. Rodionova won the case in January, and Sobchak was ordered to pay 20,000 rubles ($640) in damages.
Sobchak responds by mocking an interview Rodionova gave in which she explained that Sobchak was simply jealous of her because Sobchak wasn’t married.
An accompanying photo collage shows Sobchak in a 1950s-style scene holding two angelic children with the slogan: “Sobchak is a fool, a bitch, and envies all women who have family happiness and material prosperity.”
The book even goes into politics, saying Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has high approval ratings because he “stretches out his mighty hand and touches the subcortex of the loser.” She compares him to the perestroika-era healer Anatoly Kashpirovsky, who promised to send health-giving rays through the television screen.
“Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev has this gift to a much lesser extent,” she writes.
She gives the example of Putin chatting with ultrapatriotic artist Ilya Glazunov at his art gallery when Putin ludicrously complained that the sword was too small in a painting of a heroic figure, “looking like a penknife in his hands, as if he were cutting salami.”
The artist humbly agreed, saying Putin had a “very good eye,” in an episode wittily reported by Kommersant’s Kremlin watcher, Andrei Kolesnikov.
Losers love this kind of thing, she writes. “As long as the hero has a big heroic sword, who needs democracy?”
TITLE: Russian Music Festivals Beckon in Summer Season
AUTHOR: By Lilya Dashkevich and Bela Bostanova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In Europe, summer is the season of music festivals. Now Russia boasts a number of its own events that attract thousands of music fans every year, including several festivals based in St. Petersburg.
Nashestvie
Zavidovo, Tver Oblast
July 9-11
Lovers of camping, Russian rock and knightly tournaments should head for the Tver Oblast. Just 115 kilometers from Moscow, you’ll find yourself at Russia’s largest open-air festival, Nashestvie, or Invasion. It was first organized in 1999 by Nashe Radio, a pop and rock radio station, and in the intervening 10 years it’s been hosted in a number of locations. In 2003, following a terrorist act at the Krylya Festival at the Tushino Aerodrome near Moscow, Nashestvie was temporarily transformed into a broadcast event, with 30 bands performing at the Nashe Radio studio.
Despite the difficult weather conditions that the festival has experienced over the years, with a good deal of rain and mud, it has on occasion managed to gather hundreds of thousands of lovers of Russian rock. The festival’s watchwords of beer, music and love are entirely fitting.
Headliners: Mumii Troll, Okean Elzi, Spleen, Agatha Christie, Alisa, Korol I Shut, Pilot, Animal Jazz, Smysloviye Gallyusinatsii
Tickets from 1,200 rubles ($39), camping 1,500 rubles ($48), parking available, for tickets: www.zavidovofest.ru and www.concert.ru
Tuborg Greenfest
16 Aptekarsky Ostrov,
Telebashnya Stadium, St. Petersburg
July 18
Year after year, Tuborg Greenfest has brought major international stars to the city. This high-profile international project made its Russian debut in 2005, and in the interim it has featured the likes of Metallica, Linkin Park, The Rasmus, Jamiroquai, Mattafixx and Fatboy Slim.
This year’s Greenfest at the Telebashnya Stadium will give locals and visitors the chance to see pop diva Pink as part of her Funhouse Summer Carnival Tour 2010. Specials guests will include the heroes of the alternative scene Good Charlotte and Ilya Lagutenko’s Mumii Troll.
Tickets from 1,500 rubles ($48).
www.greenfest.ru
Muzatsiya
Telebashnya Stadium,
16 Aptekarsky Island, St. Petersburg
July 23
The first international Muzatsiya festival is being staged to promote peace and combat loneliness, and has as its slogan: “Don’t stand by the wall, come into the circle!”
Finland will send surf band The Charades, Dubstepler will represent Moscow, and Markscheider Kunst will be flying the flag for St. Petersburg. The headline act will be Gogol Bordello from the U.S., who will present their new album “Trans-Continental Hustle.”
Tickets can be purchased at www.light-music.ru and www.muzbilet.ru
Afisha Picnic
Kolomenskoye Park,
39 Prospekt Andropova, Moscow
July 31
Afisha Picnic combines a music festival featuring performances by foreign acts and local indie musicians with various forms of entertainment out in the open. Games, films, dance-floors and a rollerdrome set out on more than 1,000 hectares of land attract 50,000 guests.
Numerous shops selling all manner of odds and ends open on the territory of the impressive Kolomenskoye park and nature reserve for the duration of the festival, along with gaming stands. The organizers stage various modern art performances, lectures in the open air and a multitude of additional activities.
Over the years, bands featured at Afisha have included Madness, The Future Sound of London, Mum, Beirut, Junior Boys, Clinic, Leningrad, Teenagers and Black Lips.
Picnic is an alternative to traditional rock festivals, with a ban on all commercial sponsorship from alcohol and tobacco companies, making it suitable for young audiences and families with children.
Headliners: Editors, Hercules and Love Affair, Tesla Boy.
www.afisha.ru/picnic
Sziget Festival
Obudai Island,
Budapest, Hungary
Aug 9-16
Sziget is one of the biggest musical and cultural events in Europe. This year, it will mark its 17th anniversary on the shores of the Danube, on an island with an area of 108 hectares. Every year, the event attracts about 400,000 music lovers from around the world who stay in tents, trailers or hotels. This year will see performances by Kasabian, Muse, Faithless, Gorillaz Sound System, Iron Maiden, Nina Hagen, 30 Seconds to Mars, Papa Roach and many more.
Sziget translates from the Hungarian as “island.” As well as music, there is a huge amount on offer for those attending, such as film, theater, exhibitions, galleries and sporting competitions. There are stands offering body art, tattoos and hair-braiding, and you can learn to mold clay, carve wood, draw and dance. For sports lovers there’s mini-football, a skating rink and a swimming pool.
Headliners: Muse, Kasabian, Papa Roach, Iron Maiden, 30 Seconds to Mars, Faithless, The Hives, Billy Talent
www.sziget.hu
Pukkelpop
Hasselt-Kiewit, Belgium
Aug 19-21
The Belgian alternative festival Pukkelpop will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. It takes place in the town of Kiewit, which can be reached by public transport directly from Brussels or Antwerp. If you’re traveling by train, your festival pass is valid for the journey to the festival and back.
The musical genres on offer include rock, metal, dance, electronic, hip-hop and punk. Over the course of the festival’s three days about 200 acts will appear on eight stages.
Headliners: Placebo, Blink-182, The Kooks, Queens of the Stone Age, The Prodigy, Limp Bizkit, Gogol Bordello
www.pukkelpop.be
Ruisrock
Ruissalo Island, Turku, Finland
July 9-11
The first Ruisrock festival was organized the year after the legendary Woodstock “happening” in the U.S., and it was intended to operate along the same lines. Today, it’s one of the major festivals in Finland and one of the oldest in the world. This year it will be celebrating its 40th anniversary, and over the years performers at the event have included Nirvana, Bjork, Sting, David Bowie, Aerosmith and Bob Dylan.
The festival is staged on the island of Ruissalo, to the west of the center of the city of Turku. You can reach the island by road or by boat, and add a little fun into the trip by combining it with an excursion along the canals. Ruissalo Island looks particularly impressive from the water during the concerts, and you get a great view of the light show and people jumping from the death-slides.
Tickets can only be used once a day for entry.
Headliners: Ozzy Osbourne, Belle and Sebastian, Regina Spektor, Rise Against, Billy Talent, NOFX, The Sounds
www.rusrock.fi
LISTINGS
July
Rock Werchter
Leuven, Belgium
July 1-4
Line up: Muse, Green Day, Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire, Rammstein, 30 Seconds to Mars, Paramore, Stereophonics,
Pink
Roskilde Roskilde
Denmark
July 1-4
Line up: Muse, Gorillaz, Jack Johnson, Kasabian, The Prodigy, Paramore, Alice in Chains, Prince, LCD Soundsystem, Vampire Weekend
Open’er Festival
Gdynia, Poland
July 1-4
Line up: Kasabian, Regina Spektor, The Hives, The Dead Weather, Hot Chip, Klaxons, Tricky, Matisyahu, Empire of the Sun,
2 Many DJ’s
Eurock?ennes de Belfort
Belfort, France
July 2-4
Line up: Massive Attack, Kasabian, Jay-Z, Mika, The Hives, Broken Social Scene, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Missy Elliott, The Black Keys, Foals, Empire of the Sun
Exit Festival
Novi Sad, Serbia
July 8-11
Line up: Placebo, The Chemical Brothers, R?yksopp, Mika, LCD Soundsystem, David Guetta, DJ Shadow, Klaxons, Faith No More, Missy Elliott, Crystal Castles
Ruisrock Festival
Turku, Finland
July 9-11
Line up: Belle and Sebastian, Regina Spektor, Rise Against, Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Talent, NOFX ,
The Sounds
August
Sziget Festival
Budapest, Hungary
Aug 11-16
Line up: Muse, Kasabian, Papa Roach, Iron Maiden, 30 Seconds to Mars, Faithless, The Hives, Billy Talent
Pukkelpop
Hasselt, Belgium
Aug 19-21
Line up: Placebo, Blink-182,
The Kooks, Queens of the Stone Age, The Prodigy, Limp Bizkit, Gogol Bordello
FM4 Frequency Festival
Salzburg, Austria
Aug 19-21
Line up: Muse, Massive Attack,
30 Seconds to Mars, Hot Chip,
Billy Talent, Klaxons, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, NOFX
Lowlands
Biddinghuizen, Netherlands
Aug 20-22
Line up: Snow Patrol, Placebo, Blink-182, Massive Attack, Air,
The Kooks, 30 Seconds to Mars,
OK Go, Band of Horses, NOFX, Pendulum, The xx, 3OH!3
Rock en Seine
Paris, France
Aug 27-28
Line up: Blink-182, Massive Attack, The Kooks, Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, Stereophonics
TITLE: Newspaper’s Founder Recalls the Early Days
TEXT: Llloyd Donaldson, one of the founders of The St. Petersburg Times, died in Britain on Saturday. Here, in an article he wrote in 2008 for the newspaper’s 15th anniversary celebrations, he recalls working at the newspaper in its early years.
Incidents and memorable moments were never far apart for the journalists who staffed The St. Petersburg Times in its early days. The mafia sometimes visited, businessmen threatened to sue, officials occasionally pressured us — none were humored. Everything was new, things were changing fast, and our initially inexperienced journalists rode the hurricane of events with relish.
The first journalist taken on was Alistair Crighton from Scotland. At one point he disappeared for three days — to my annoyance, given our looming deadline. He emerged, unshaven and stinking of drink, having nailed the rumors of bandits fleecing alcoholics of the ownership deeds to their apartments through a combination of vodka and violence — complete with first-hand quotes and photos of the armed gang he spent those days with. He later worked with The Times of London and now edits a magazine in Dubai.
The second man on, Yevgeny Pogorelov, reported on an American whom the traffice police (GAI) had shot at 17 times in a high-speed chase, but initially followed the GAI line that this was because the man had run a red light! These were the early days — training was a work in progress. Yevgeny carved out a career in PR in Brussels.
Drew Wilson, a former U.S. paratrooper who wrote business for us, was spooked by a nasty brush with bandits. We both bought gas pistols — illegally — for protection, and being a military man he insisted we test them. I suggested shooting a dog (I’m not a fan): Drew, appalled, insisted I shoot him instead. Later that night I did, possibly the only shot ever fired in the newspaper’s office. Drew now mixes journalism with writing books.
Ron Lorenzo, an American whose Russian was flawless (as was his German and skills as a pianist), fed his need for some bang-bang action with a trip to Nagorno-Karabakh — he navigated the treacherous mountains locked inside a refrigerated truck with a band of fighters. The same year he shot the front-page picture of our coverage of the 1993 Moscow fighting. He is now a pilot.
Yevgenia Borisova was also there, and I remember her shock as we rounded a corner behind the burning White House and she saw her first corpse — she went on to see many more in Abkhazia and Chechnya. For The Moscow Times she spent months on a stunning investigative piece that proved vote-rigging in the first round of the election that brought Putin to power in 2000. She is now in New Zealand working on a PhD in journalism.
There were many other memorable events and journalists in those early days. The diminutive Rachel Katz, later with Newsweek. Englishman Michael Randall, whose need to get close to the action saw him strafed by a jet in Chechnya, went on to work for the BBC World Trust. Ali Nassor from Tanzania came to us with a story about black students being beaten — then a novel topic — and spent many years with the paper. Garfield Reynolds, an Australian whose talent and gruff, prodigious energy produced the best papers we had published to date, later worked with Bloomberg.
Tony Hall, possibly the most upright journalist ever to work at the paper, attempted an ill-advised illegal border-crossing in 1994 after being pulled off the night-train to Narva. The FSB were still reminding me of it years later. Charles Digges’ and Anna Badkhen’s dogged work on the Nikitin spy-scandal led the country’s media. Anna was reporting from Iraq for The San Francisco Chronicle last time I heard. Unfortunate Andy Schub was a free-lancer only, but on assignment with us in Chechnya. His camera and passport were recovered, but his body never found.
Sometimes the seriousness of what we were doing struck home. Brian Whitmore, whose astute political coverage added much gravitas to the paper, informed me in 1996 that the closely contested mayoral election would mark the first ever democratic transition of power in Russian history. Other days were just bizarre. U.S. photographer Paul Miller, sent to cover a simple PR event, came back with pictures of a TV cameraman shooting the band with a camera on his left shoulder, and a pistol in his right hand.
A personal memorable moment was my 30th birthday in 1993, which I spent in Abkhazia watching the bodies of 127 executed soldiers exhumed one-by-one from a mass grave. It took days for the stench of rotting human flesh to leach out of my clothes. The images I photographed remain seared in my mind 15 years later.
The photos were too graphic to use, but I recall another photograph that did make the front page. One day in 1995 photographer Alexander Belenky turned in a shot of 3,000 tanks waiting to be broken up for scrap — the sheer waste of it struck me forcibly. Sasha joined in 1993, already one of the city’s top photographers. He made a career with The St. Petersburg Times spanning 15 years. He is still with the paper.
TITLE: Leaders Walk Economic Tightrope at Summit
AUTHOR: By Tom Rauber and Rob Gillies
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO — Wary of slamming on the stimulus brakes too quickly but shaken by the European debt crisis, world leaders pledged Sunday to reduce government deficits in richer countries in half by 2013, with wiggle room to meet the goal.
Leaders of 20 major industrial and developing countries generally sided with cutting spending and raising taxes, despite warnings from President Barack Obama that too much austerity too quickly could choke off the global recovery.
“Serious challenges remain,” they cautioned in a closing statement. “While growth is returning, the recovery is uneven and fragile, unemployment in many countries remains at unacceptable levels, and the social impact of the crisis is still widely felt,” according to the document from the Group of 20 major industrial and developing nations.
Obama told a news conference he was satisfied with the outcome, saying he recognized that countries had to proceed at their own pace in either emphasizing growth or budget austerity.
“We can’t all rush to the exits at the same time,” Obama said after three days of economic summitry.
Summit participants navigated a careful course between Obama’s emphasis on growth and fellow leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel who advocated spending cuts and even tax increases.
“Advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016,” according to the statement. The gross domestic product, or GDP, measures the value of all goods and services, and is considered the best gauge of economic health.
At the same time, the statement called for following through on “existing stimulus plans,” heeding Obama’s concerns.
Japan was given an exemption from meeting the debt targets because of years of a stagnant economy, and the fact that its huge debt is largely owned by Japanese and not overseas investors.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the summit host, told reporters that deficit reduction “is not an end in itself” and that there is “an ongoing role for stimulus in the short term.”
As the summit wrapped up, conditions on the streets of Canada’s biggest city remained tense.
Police, responding more aggressively than the day before, raided a university campus and rounded up protesters in an effort to quell further violence after youths rampaged through the city the night before, smashing windows and torching police cruisers. Police said they arrested more than 600 demonstrators.
Harper blamed “thugs” for the violence and suggested the destruction and fires on the streets justified the $900 million that Canada spent for summit security.
World leaders also took note of the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in their statement, which recognized “the need to share best practices to protect the marine environment, prevent accidents ... and deal with their consequences.”
The April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. BP is London-based and the disaster has contributed to strains between the U.S. and Britain.
Britain’s new conservative prime minister, David Cameron, told reporters BP was working hard to cap the well, “clean up the mess” and compensate victims. At the same time, “what we all want is for this important company to be strong and stable for the future,” he said.
The G-20 statement limits the deficit-reduction goal to the most industrialized nations and offers governments flexibility on when to start balancing their books.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy pointed out that “France has made even more stringent promises to its European partners on deficit-cutting.”
Asked if summits were necessary, Sarkozy admitted that they can be exhausting. “We end these summits empty, tired, but it’s our duty to participate,” he said.
European countries, in particular, have been rattled by the near-default of Greece on its government debt.
The document doesn’t endorse a bank tax advocated by Europe and the U.S. to set up a fund to pay for future bailouts. Canada, Australia and Japan, whose banks did not fail in the crisis, oppose the levy.
Instead, it says all countries should make sure taxpayers are not stuck with the bill when banks fail, and leaves it up to individual countries to decide how they want to do that.
Canada’s Harper urged leaders to “send a clear message that as our stimulus plans expire, we will focus on getting our fiscal houses in order.” He said global economies needed to walk a “tightrope” between deficit spending this year, ensuring the fragile recovery continues and then switching to deficit reduction programs.
The G-20 includes the world’s major industrial countries — the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, Italy and Russia — plus major developing nations such as China, India and Brazil.
Some countries will find it more difficult than others to meet the new deficit targets.
The United States ran a record deficit of $1.42 trillion last year, or 10 percent of its GDP. Private economists expect the deficit will decline only slightly to $1.3 trillion this year, which would amount to 9 percent of GDP.
TITLE: Former Dictator On Trial in France
AUTHOR: By Jenny Barchfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is speaking in a Paris courtroom in a trial that could send him to jail for another decade after 20 years in U.S. custody.
Noriega is accused in France of laundering cocaine-trafficking profits through French banks.
Asked Monday about discrepancies in his date of birth on legal documents, Noriega initially said he was born February 11, 1936, and then corrected himself, saying he was born in 1934.
Noriega’s shoulders were trembling. Wearing a black suit and with his black hair slicked back, he spoke through a translator.
His lawyer Olivier Metzner argued that Noriega should be sent back to Panama.
Noriega was deposed in a 1989 U.S. invasion.
TITLE: Australia’s New Leader Makes Few Cabinet Changes
AUTHOR: By Rod McGuirk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s first woman prime minister on Monday announced minimum changes to her cabinet in a reshuffle that analysts say points to an election within weeks.
Buoyed by opinion polls endorsing her new leadership, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promoted no fresh ministers to her cabinet ahead of an election she is set to call before the end of the year.
Former Trade Minister Simon Crean takes over Gillard’s portfolios of employment, industrial relations and social inclusion. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith adds trade to his portfolio.
“It is best to have as limited a reshuffle as possible to keep maximum stability among the team and to keep our focus on the work that Australians need the government to be doing,” she told reporters.
Gillard ousted her predecessor Kevin Rudd last Thursday in a leadership challenge for the ruling Labor Party. She dropped Rudd from the cabinet, but said she would offer him a senior cabinet post if Labor is re-elected at the looming election.
Norman Abjorensen, an Australian National University political scientist, said the scant cabinet changes betrayed Gillard’s plans to call an election soon.
Broader changes would have burdened Gillard with more inexperienced ministers who needed time to establish themselves before she could risk going to the voters.
Abjorensen predicted an election by Aug. 28 if a spectacular rise in the government’s popularity revealed in a respected opinion poll on Monday was maintained over the next few weeks.
A survey by Newspoll, a Sydney-based market research company part-owned by News Corp., published in The Australian newspaper on Monday found that the center-left government’s public support had bounced back to the levels it had enjoyed before Rudd’s popularity crashed in April.
Rudd, elected in 2007, had been one of the most popular Australian prime ministers of modern times until he made a series of policy backflips.
Many voters then abandoned Labor for the left-wing minor opposition Australian Greens party, earlier Newspolls indicated.
But with Gillard at the helm, Labor support had climbed seven percentage points to 42 percent since the previous Newspoll was conducted June 18-20. Greens support had slipped from 15 to 10 percent while the main opposition coalition remained steady at 40 percent.
The latest Newspoll is based on a random national telephone survey of 1,142 voters at the weekend and has a 3 percentage point margin of error.
Lesser known polls published at the weekend also showed the government gained popularity through the leadership change.
Newspoll chief executive Martin O’Shannessy said he expected that Gillard would call an election if her popularity was sustained in the next Newspoll or two. Newspolls are generally published every two weeks.
TITLE: NKorea Intends
To Expand Capability
AUTHOR: By Hyung-Jin Kim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea threatened Monday to bolster its nuclear capability in a new — though unspecified — way to cope with what it says is a hostile U.S. policy and military threats amid tensions over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship.
The North’s military also accused the U.S. and South Korea of bringing heavy weapons to the village of Panmunjom — which lies along the heavily militarized border between the Koreas — and vowed to take “strong military countermeasures” if they aren’t withdrawn.
Neither Washington nor Seoul had immediate comment on the accusation, though both Koreas have increased military preparedness in the wake of the sinking of the warship Cheonan. An international investigation concluded last month that North Korea torpedoed the vessel near the tense Korean sea border.
North Korea flatly denies the allegation and has warned any punishment would trigger war. Forty-six South Korean sailors died in the sinking.
“The recent disturbing development on the Korean peninsula underscores the need for (North Korea) to bolster its nuclear deterrent in a newly developed way to cope with the U.S. persistent hostile policy toward (the North) and military threat toward it,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, did not elaborate on how North Korea would strengthen its nuclear capability. The North is known to have a plutonium-based atomic program and has carried out two underground nuclear explosions, one in 2006 and the other in 2009. Pyongyang is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen weapons.
Analysts said Monday’s threat likely referred to recent statements from the North that have trumpeted new nuclear programs.
Last year, Pyongynang said it was in the final stages of enriching uranium, which could provide an easier way to make nuclear bombs. Also, North Korea said in May that it had succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction — a key technology necessary to manufacture a hydrogen bomb — though South Korean experts doubt the claim.
“North Korea is applying pressure on the U.S. by saying it can have additional nuclear capability,” said Koh Yu-hwan at Seoul’s Dongguk University.