SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1600 (61), Friday, August 13, 2010
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TITLE: Firefighter Longs For ‘Good, Old System’
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The devastating wildfires have shown severe shortcomings in Russia’s firefighting organization, deficits that are all the more bizarre because until recently the country possessed one of the world’s biggest task forces specialized in combating burning woods and fields.
That organization, the Aerial Forest Protection Center, or Avialesokhrana, employed some 9,000 firefighters specially trained and equipped to put out wildfires in Soviet times.
Most of them were so-called smokejumpers, who fly and parachute right into remote fire-hit areas.
In the 1990s, their number was slashed to about 4,000, and in 2007, the center was reduced to the status of a monitoring agency, with just 1,800 personnel left at its disposal.
This summer’s catastrophic fires have shown that the reform was a failure and the best way out is to re-establish a unified wildfire fighting center, Andrei Yeritsov, deputy director of the Aerial Forest Protection Center, said Wednesday.
“It would be good if the responsibility for putting out fires were handed back to the federal level,” Yeritsov told The St. Petersburg Times.
The reform was part of the new Forest Code, which came into effect on Jan. 1, 2007.
The code, which has been lambasted by environmentalists as the result of timber and real estate industry lobbying, transferred responsibility for the country’s vast woodlands to local owners and regional authorities, effectively crippling the woodland fire control system.
The case of the Aerial Forest Protection Center highlights the environmentalists’ argument.
With the reform, most of the center’s resources went into the hands of the country’s regions, which seriously impeded effective firefighting activities, Yeritsov said.
Much of the center’s staff and equipment ended up in the regions where they happened to be based, leading to massive misallocations, he said.
As an example, he named the center’s once formidable fleet of firefighting planes and helicopters. All 106 aircraft, mainly consisting of An-2 biplanes, were given to the regions, where just half of them are now being used for firefighting.
The Vladimir region, east of Moscow, got 16 planes, although it needed only one, meaning that the aircraft sit mostly on the ground or are used for other, commercial purposes.
“This is absurd,” Yeritsov said.
The regions also laid off many of the firefighters they inherited, leading to the current shortage of wildfire specialists, he said.
“These people have enormous experience in putting out wildfires — they did it every year. Normal fire brigades do this maybe once in a decade,” he said.
Officials with the Aerial Forest Protection Center have asked the government to consider re-establishing the center’s position as the central institution for fighting wildfires and hope that they will be successful, Yeritsov said.
“We know our suggestions are being considered. It would be good to return to the old system,” he said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who signed the Forest Code as president in 2006, said Tuesday that the Federal Forest Agency, which oversees the Aerial Forest Protection Center, should be placed under direct government control. The agency now answers to the Agriculture Ministry.
Oleg Aksyonov, a spokesman for the ministry, said he could not comment on further reforms because they would be taken directly by the government.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not answer repeated calls to his cell phone Wednesday.
The situation is unlikely to improve soon because regional governors will be reluctant to hand back their powers to the Aerial Forest Protection Center, said Johann Goldammer, head of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
In a telephone interview, Goldammer assailed the Forest Code for transferring responsibility from the state to commercial owners.
“These owners are more interested in quick profits than in sustainable forestry,” he said.
State control should be reinstated because the country’s vast forests and carbon-producing marshes are hugely important for the global ecosystem, he said.
But Russia is not alone when it comes to disorganized firefighting capabilities. The most widespread problem is that traditional firefighters are not trained and equipped for wildfires, Goldammer said.
In that respect, the Aerial Forest Protection Center had been a model agency. “In good times they had very good equipment and trained specialists,” he said.
Decentralization often makes things more complicated, yet some European regions have successfully built efficient structures.
“Catalonia in Spain and regions in the south of France probably have Europe’s best capacities to fight wildfires,” Goldammer said.
Others, notably Greece, have failed by introducing reforms aiming at shifting powers from forest authorities to firefighters.
Europeans and Russians could also learn from the United States, where state-level organization is backed up with national coordination.
A specialist team from the U.S. Forest Disaster Assistance Support Program is currently in Moscow to assess how Washington can help fighting the wildfires, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
“They’re working — continuing to consult with the Russian government about how we can be helpful,” he said, according to a transcript on the State Department’s web site.
The meetings come after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week offered help to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Both countries have a history of cooperation in fighting fires. In the 1970s, they began an exchange of smokejumpers, according to the U.S. government’s web site.
In 2008, representatives of the Aerial Forest Protection Center held an exchange of ideas with American wildfire managers in California, and U.S. Forest Service specialists participated in a June conference on cross-border forest fires in the East Siberian city of Irkutsk.

TITLE: Norilsk Dispute Taken To London
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Company RusAl stepped up its game in an ongoing dispute over the fate of Norilsk Nickel on Wednesday, as it filed a request to a London court to arbitrate its conflict with fellow Norilsk shareholder Interros.
RusAl has accused Interros of foul play since the aluminum major lost a seat on Norilsk’s board in a June election, and since then the two have been engaged in a high-profile feud that will likely end with a change in the shareholder structure.
In 2008, RusAl and Interros, which each own 25 percent of Norilsk, agreed that all decisions would be made jointly, that they would have equal representation on the board, and that the board would be chaired by Alexander Voloshin, representing state-owned Vneshekonombank.
But at the June shareholders meeting, RusAl unexpectedly came in with only three board seats, compared with Norilsk’s four, causing Voloshin to lose his seat.
Interros has said the vote was conducted in accordance with the rules, but RusAl says it was unfairly manipulated.
According to the 2008 agreement, the two sides chose the London Court of International Arbitration as arbiter in case of any disputes, a spokeswoman for RusAl said.
RusAl asked the court to force Interros to fulfill the terms of the agreement so that the balance of Norilsk Nickel’s board of directors is restored. It may also ask to be compensated for losses incurred because of the breach of agreement.
A date for the court hearing has not been fixed yet, but RusAl “seeks the speedy determination of this dispute in order that the parties’ rights and obligations are established by arbitral award as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.
RusAl may be fighting an uphill battle if it hopes to undo the changes to Norilsk’s board, however.
“According to Russian legislation, a decision made at the shareholders meeting can’t be annulled even if it violates the terms of the companies’ agreement,” said Alexander Kovalev, head of corporate practice at Korelsky, Ishchuk, Astafiev & Partners. “Russian arbitration courts also can’t tell shareholders how to vote.”
RusAl’s claims for compensation may be possible, Kovalev said, but only if they were provided for as part of its agreement with Interros.
“In order to have losses compensated it’s necessary to prove that these losses had been borne. … And just electing a board of directors that RusAl is not satisfied with is unlikely to cause any losses for the company,” Kovalev said.
For its part, Interros welcomed the moving of the battlefield to London.
“[RusAl’s threats] have finally come to fruition. We’re glad. It’s better than ceaseless and quite contradictory statements in the media,” an Interros spokesman said.
The posturing by both sides in the wake of the shareholders meeting has been fierce. Both RusAl and Interros made high-profile offers to buy out the other’s Norilsk stake.
RusAl has tried to get the state involved by reviving an earlier proposal calling for the state to take control of Norilsk and use it to create a state-owned mining champion.
Media reports have quoted Kremlin officials as ruling out such a move, but earlier this month, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate whether any legal violations had taken place at Norilsk’s annual shareholders meeting.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin is unlikely to take a side in the ongoing dispute and instead will play the role of peacemaker.
“The Kremlin will be trying to make the sides sit down at the negotiating table and seek ways to resolve the conflict,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, a political scientist with the Center of Political Technologies.
But a peaceful accord is unlikely, and the conflict will probably end by one side selling its stake, she said.
Norilsk Nickel declined to comment Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a request by RusAl to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting to re-elect Norilsk’s board was approved by the board of directors on Wednesday.
The shareholders meeting will be held on Oct. 21, Norilsk said in a statement.
The announcement came after Norilsk Nickel’s independent directors, Gerard Holden and Brad Mills, sent a letter to new chairman Vasily Titov expressing their support for RusAl’s request to hold the extraordinary shareholders meeting.
“We believe that further urgent consideration should be given to requesting … a review of the results of the AGM voting and that this report be commissioned quickly and made available publicly,” they wrote in a letter.
They also called for the structure of the next board to include a maximum of three representatives from the management, three Interros representatives, three RusAl representatives and a minimum of four independent directors, including the board chairman.

TITLE: Court Rules Against Unique Genetic Field Bank
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The scandal surrounding the site of the Vavilov Horticultural Research Institute in Pavlovsk is escalating dramatically. The institute lost its case in Moscow’s Arbitration Court and now looks set to lose its land, which is home to more than 4,000 fruit and berry species, some of which have become extinct in their natural environments.
The institute’s site is the world’s largest and most valuable field collection of genetically diverse fruits and berries — including almost 1,000 types of strawberries from 40 countries — from which commercially grown varieties are derived. The court’s verdict gives the land to property developers who plan to build exclusive residential houses on the site.
The developers first tried to get access to the land two years ago, but back then their initiative was stopped by pressure from the country’s scientific community and international organizations.
The plight of the Vavilov Institute fields is now once again receiving international attention, with scientists from around the world crying foul at the court’s decision, and news articles emerging across the globe.
In an interview with The New York Times, Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust slated the plans to pass the Pavlovsk facility to property developers as “the most deliberately destructive act against crop diversity, at least in my lifetime.”
Fowler said he finds it especially bitter and ironic that the destruction is happening in Russia, the country that once pioneered genetic research.
According to the trust, as much as 90 percent of the plants grown at the institute’s fields do not exist anywhere else in the world.
Experts say the Pavlosk research station, comprising 910,000 square meters, is the largest genetic field bank in Europe.
Having lost the battle in court, scientists are now pinning their hopes on political lobbying and the influence of the international academic community.
The Communist Party is preparing an official appeal to the country’s government and President Dmitry Medvedev, calling for the authorities to intervene.
Lawmakers from the Just Russia and Communist factions in the State Duma have already spoken out against the destruction of the unique fields.
“Our efforts have so far been fruitless,” admitted Vladimir Kashin, deputy head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia. “All we are getting is formal replies and no action whatsoever.”
The institute’s acting director at the facility, Fyodor Mikhovich, said one of the plots of land that belongs to the research station is up for auction for property developers from Sept. 23. A five-year rental agreement on the land is expected to fetch at least 98 million rubles ($3.2 million).
Moscow’s Arbitration Court ruled that the institute must hand the land over to the Residential Construction Development Fund. Mikhovich said the task of transferring the specimens would be impossible, even if they were given three years instead of the three months that they have been granted for the task. He said that the consequences of the move would be devastating, and that in order to properly carry out the move at least 15 years would be needed.

TITLE: Chechens Claim Gazprom Blast
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechen rebels claimed responsibility Thursday for a small explosion this week near Gazprom’s headquarters in southwestern Moscow, Reuters reported.
“The aim of this operation was to show Kremlin businessmen … that the war is not over,” Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov said in a statement posted on the rebel web site Kavkaz Center. “On the contrary: It has come to your homes and your comfortable offices.”
A homemade bomb containing three to five kilograms of TNT exploded on Monday on the roof of a garage several hundred meters from the headquarters of Gazprom, the state-controlled gas giant.
No one was hurt, and the incident had passed largely unnoticed until the rebel claim of responsibility on Thursday. A Gazprom spokesman declined to comment.
Umarov said Gazprom had been targeted to show that the Kremlin had failed to defeat Chechen insurgents.

TITLE: Two Killed 
In Shootout
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A dramatic nighttime shootout between policemen and car thieves in southwestern Moscow early Thursday left two people dead and two others injured — and was captured on a video posted on YouTube.
A three-member police patrol caught two thieves breaking into a car but came under gunfire after approaching them, RIA-Novosti reported.
The men were later identified as professional car thieves from Dagestan: Shamil Ismailov, 22, and his brother Abdul-Zair, 25.
One of the policemen, Anton Akatov, 31, was killed on the spot, and Shamil Ismailov used his body as a shield during a shootout that lasted about 30 minutes, the tabloid Lifenews.ru reported.

TITLE: Fires Stir Fears Of Chernobyl Radiation
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Wildfires threatened to stir radioactive particles left over from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster back into the air over western Russia, and authorities boosted forest patrols to keep the flames from contaminated areas.
Environmentalists and forest experts warned that the radioactive dust could be harmful, even though doses would likely be small.
“The danger is still there,” said Vladimir Chuprov of Russian Greenpeace.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said at least six wildfires were spotted and extinguished this week in the Bryansk region — the part of Russia that suffered the most when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s Reactor No. 4 exploded during a pre-dawn test on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive clouds over much of western Soviet Union and northern Europe.
The ministry had also reported sporadic wildfires last week but said all were put out.
Radiation experts from Moscow determined that there has been no increase in radiation levels in the Bryansk area, on the border of Belarus and Ukraine, ministry spokeswoman Irina Yegorushkina said Wednesday.
The forest floor holds radioactive particles that settled after the Chernobyl disaster, which environmentalists warned could be thrown into the air by the fires raging across western and central Russia. The particles could then be blown into other areas by the wind, they said.
“A cloud may come up in the air with soot and spread over a huge territory,” said Alexander Isayev of the Moscow-based Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity.
The most dangerous radioactive elements left by the Chernobyl accident are cesium and strontium, which with repeated exposure could raise the risks of cancers and genetic disorders, environmentalists said.
“There is a higher threat of cancers and future mutations, especially for children, [or] embryos, if a woman is pregnant,” said Anton Korsakov, an environmental researcher at Bryansk State University.
A leading nuclear security scientist in Moscow, however, dismissed the danger. Even if forests in the most polluted areas catch fire, the amount of radiation would be many times lower than the natural background radiation, said Rafael Arutyunyan, director of the Moscow-based Institute for Safe Development of Nuclear Energy.
The Bryansk forestry service has increased patrols around the Bryansk forests, particularly in the southwest section affected by Chernobyl, agency chief Vladimir Rozinkevich said. “There is a danger, but we are controlling the situation,” he said.

TITLE: Co-Pilot Putin Helps Put Out Wildfires
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took the pilot’s seat in the government’s fight against wildfires Tuesday, hopping on a firefighting plane to put out two blazes in the Ryazan region.
Putin, wearing a blue shirt and jeans, boarded a Russian-built Be-200 amphibious aircraft as a passenger for a flight over the Ryazan region. But he later went into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot’s seat, holding the throttle and pushing a button to dump 24 tons of water on forest fires about 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Footage on Channel One television showed Putin hitting the button and asking the pilot, “Was that OK?”
The pilot replied, “A direct hit!”
Putin, who has no known pilot training, is no stranger to the co-pilot’s seat, operating a Tu-160 supersonic heavy bomber during the MAKS air show in 2005 and flying in a Su-27 jet over Chechnya in 2000.
After the firefighting flight, Putin visited the Ryazan regional village of Kriusha, where wildfires have destroyed 54 houses, and met with residents. He once again pledged that everyone who had lost a home would be paid cash compensation or receive a new house. Regardless of the size of the burned house, claimants can only collect up to 2 million rubles ($66,600), Putin said.
The residents complained that their village did not have a firetruck, and Putin said the government planned to purchase more firetrucks in the future. He also promised to build a school, kindergarten and a sports center in the village.
Ahead of his visit to the Ryazan region, Putin met with Mayor Yury Luzhkov and praised him for ending a trip to Europe “in due time.”
Luzhkov left Russia on Aug. 2 for what his spokesman Sergei Tsoi initially described as a vacation and later as a trip to seek treatment for an unspecified sports injury. He flew back Sunday night after initially resisting calls to return as thick smog cloaked Moscow.
An unidentified Kremlin official told Interfax on Tuesday that Luzhkov should have returned to Moscow earlier because his absence “didn’t contribute to making the necessary decisions on time.”
Luzhkov, who faced no criticism from Putin at their meeting, called the situation in Moscow “not simple, but under control,” even as a blue sky appeared over the city for the first time since last Thursday.
Putin also asked Luzhkov to assist in reconstructing houses in the Ryazan and Voronezh regions, which together with the Moscow region are among the seven regions where the government has declared a state of emergency because of the fires. With Luzhkov overseeing the wealthiest economic center in the country, he is often asked to help out in needier areas. His billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina, owns the Inteko construction company.
Putin said during his visit to the Ryazan region that Luzhkov agreed to provide 1 billion to 1.5 billion rubles from a reserve fund.
He suggested that the Federal Forestry Agency be placed under the Cabinet’s control. The agency now answers to the Agriculture Ministry.
The economic damage caused by the wildfires amounts to about $15 billion, equal to 1 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, Kommersant reported Tuesday. The government has not tallied the economic cost yet, although economists largely agreed with Kommersant’s estimate.

TITLE: Cop Killer Claims Officers Attacked His Pregnant Wife
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A cart driver detained on suspicion of stabbing two police officers to death in the Voronezh region this week was trying to protect his pregnant fiancee from the drunken officers’ blows, the tabloid Lifenews.ru reported Wednesday.
The driver, Alexander Kuleshov, is accused of killing the two officers and stabbing a third in an argument that broke out after the police car carrying the officers flipped over as it tried to avoid a collision with the horse-drawn cart Sunday.
Kuleshov’s fiancee, Tatyana Larina, told Lifenews.ru that the three officers were drunk and assaulted Kuleshov and the other people on the cart, which was carrying Larina’s family, including two children and an elderly woman.
“They bore down on us like animals. They cruelly beat up Sasha and then dragged him to the gutter to finish him off,” she said.
She said that when she recognized one of the officers, they switched to her.
Larina, 32, said Kuleshov snapped after the officers hit her on the head and knocked her to the ground, stabbing to death Sergei Fetisov and Alexei Shcherbakov, and injuring the third, Alexei Seleznyov.
Larina, who was in the third week of her pregnancy, lost the child after the incident.

TITLE: Winter Sowing Looks Unlikely
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s worst drought in half a century is unlikely to ease by the end of this month to allow for sowing of winter crops, the head of the state weather service said.
“We don’t expect intense rains in the next 10 days,” Roman Vilfand told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. “We forecast rain for the last third of August, but the level will be insufficient to dramatically increase soil moisture for winter-crop sowing. An enormous volume of precipitation would be needed for that.”
Many Russian regions may skip winter grain sowing if no rains come before Sept. 5, Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said Wednesday. Russia will boost spring grain plantings 30 percent should winter sowing be skipped, the government said.
A record heat wave has fuelled the drought that forced 29 crop-producing regions to declare a state of emergency. The 2010 grain harvest may be as low as 60 million metric tons, compared with 97.1 million tons last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday. The government has banned grain exports at least until the end of the year.
Other crops have also been affected. More than half of the potato crop has been lost, which may lead to a 67 percent jump in wholesale prices, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the government’s newspaper of record, reported Wednesday. The Sugar Producers’ Union cut its sugar beet forecast by 20 percent.
Agriculture accounts for about 4 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, according to Moscow-based VTB Capital.

TITLE: Economic Growth Gains Speed on Commodities
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economic expansion accelerated in the second quarter as commodities prices rose and a recovery in domestic demand gathered speed.
Gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent from a year earlier, compared with 2.9 percent growth in the January-March period, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday. The Economy Ministry previously estimated quarterly growth of 5.4 percent.
“Growth accelerated compared with the first quarter on sizable retail-sales increases and investment,” Dmitry Polevoy, chief economist at ING Groep in Moscow, said by telephone. “The figures were worse than the Economy Ministry expected, though. It’s possible that stable exports and a growth in imports played a role.”
Russia’s recovery from last year’s record 7.9 percent contraction has gained strength from household demand and revenue from energy sales that, including oil and gas, account for 72 percent of total exports. While the impact of the country’s worst drought in 50 years is unclear, Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach said on July 27 the ministry may raise its 2010 growth forecast from 4 percent.
“Significant signs of recovering economic activity are the continued dynamic growth of capital investment and retail sales, as well as a further growth of credit volume in the banking sector,” Bank Rossii, Russia’s central bank, said in a statement on July 30. The bank left its main interest rates unchanged for a second month in July.
The ruble closed at 30.29 against the dollar in Moscow on Wednesday after weakening 0.3 percent to 30.1300 at the start of trading. 
The price of Urals, Russia’s export blend of crude, averaged $76.66 a barrel in the second quarter, compared with $58.59 a barrel in the year-earlier period. The price of oil averaged $74.92 a barrel in the first three months of this year, according to Bloomberg data.
Energy, including oil and gas, accounted for 72 percent of all exports to the Baltics and countries outside of the former Soviet Union in the first half, according to the Federal Customs Service.
Retail sales surged the most since November 2008 in June as the number of unemployed slid for a third consecutive month. Bank lending expanded the most this year in June, with corporate loans rising 2.1 percent and retail lending gaining 1.6 percent, according to the central bank.
“Current weather conditions are likely to adversely affect the services sector and we may see an overall slowdown in economic activity in August,” Anton Nikitin, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow said in an e-mailed note Monday.
UBS AG investment bank cut its economic growth forecast to 7 percent from 7.5 percent this month because of the weather. A smaller grain harvest, lower exports and faster inflation, which is set to eat into household consumption, will probably slow growth, the bank said in a note to investors e-mailed on Aug. 9.

TITLE: Russia Aims for Arctic Oil Boom Despite Tax Obstacles
AUTHOR: By Stephen Bierman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, aims to raise output in two Arctic regions in the next 10 years, even as officials acknowledge that investment in the country’s far north is unprofitable.
Russia’s tax regime “does not allow investors the ability to gain large enough returns on their investments to develop a large part of the hydrocarbons reserves” in the Yamal Nenets and northern Krasnoyarsk regions, the Russian Energy Ministry said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement.
The ministry targets output of 1.57 million barrels a day in the two regions, more than Britain produced on average in 2009, according to BP data. Russia’s overall production rate in July was 10.1 million barrels a day. The Energy Ministry did not disclose separate production rates for the Yamal Nenets and northern Krasnoyarsk regions alone.
Russia will need additional oil from the Arctic to compensate for an anticipated decline in production in other regions in the same period, the statement said. The country pumped a total of 314.2 million barrels of crude last month, according to Energy Ministry statistics.
The ministry said it is working on a new tax plan for Arctic investments that will strike a balance between state and investor interests. Russia reduced tax breaks on investments in some oil fields last month, in the face of protests from the ministry and companies.
Growth in Russia’s oil output has slowed in recent years as companies exploited most of their cheap, Soviet-era fields and faced higher costs to develop remote and more expensive deposits, such as those in the Arctic. Because companies must increase spending to maintain output, they argue that taxes are becoming a bigger, even prohibitive cost.
Taxes on the production and export of oil are the largest source of revenue for Russia’s budget, which will run a deficit this year equal to 5.4 percent of gross domestic product, according to a government forecast.
“This looks like some sort of wishful-thinking scenario for every field in the region, assuming a good oil price and tax relief,” Alexei Kokin, an oil and gas analyst at IFC Metropol, said by telephone from Moscow on Wednesday.
In the Arctic Yamal peninsula, the Energy Ministry also wants to increase natural gas production by more than 140 billion cubic meters a year, greater than Iran’s gas output for all of 2009. This higher target for gas, which the government taxes differently from oil, may be more realistic than the ministry’s goal for increasing crude output, Kokin said.
The ministry plans to raise gas condensate output by an additional 35.7 million tons a year, or 717,000 barrels a day, in both the Yamal Nenets region and the northern part of the Krasnoyarsk region, the statement said.

TITLE: WBD Rises on News It Will Buy Back Stake
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Wimm-Bill-Dann surged by the most in almost six months after French food group Danone said it will sell back its 18.4 percent stake to the Russian juice and dairy group for $470 million.
The Russian company’s stock rose as much as 17 percent to 1,629.5 rubles, its biggest intraday gain since Feb. 26, and traded 2.6 percent higher at 1,430 rubles as of 12:08 p.m. in Moscow on Thursday.
Wimm-Bill-Dann said the deal involving both local shares and American depositary receipts will be funded from its own resources and will not require additional financing. 
“We regard the news as positive for WBD, given the size of the discount,” Moscow-based Vladimir Kuznetsov, an equity analyst at UniCredit SpA, wrote in an e-mail. “The deal compares favorably with a similar recent case of Lukoil, which was forced to buy back its own shares from ConocoPhillips at the market price.”
ConocoPhillips said July 28 that Lukoil agreed to buy back 7.6 percent of its shares from the Houston-based company, which will sell its remaining Lukoil interest of about 12.4 percent by the end of next year. Standard & Poor’s Rating Services said July 29 Lukoil may have its long-term corporate credit rating cut to junk should the company decide to buy more than 7.6 percent of its own shares.
Wimm-Bill-Dann should have no problem financing the deal as it had about $200 million in cash and equivalents as of the end of the first quarter this year and raised 10 billion rubles ($328 million) from domestic bonds in July, Kuznetsov wrote.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Casino Zone May Close</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may close its only operating casino zone because neither gamblers nor investors have shown interest in the remote location in the country’s south, Vedomosti said, citing industry officials.
Alexander Tkachev, governor of the Krasnodar region, urged President Dmitry Medvedev to have the zone moved to the Black Sea resort of Anapa, which has more tourists and potential gamblers, from Azov, Vedomosti said.
Casinos in cities were ordered closed and moved to four special zones in remote regions of the country as of July 2009.

<strong>Merger Mentioned</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Silvinit gained for the second time this week after the company said PhosAgro proposed a merger, raising speculation there may be a bidding war for Russia’s largest potash producer.
The stock closed 0.8 percent higher at 18,835.79 rubles in Moscow on Wednesday after earlier advancing as much as 5.1 percent. 
Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, who headed a group of investors in the purchase of Russia’s second-largest potash producer, Uralkali, in June, may buy a 52.4 percent stake in Silvinit as early as this month, Vedomosti reported Aug. 2. 

<strong>Bank Deposits Increase</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian retail bank deposits may increase by a record 2.2 trillion rubles ($71.9 billion), or 29.5 percent, this year as households seek safer investments than real estate and stocks, the Deposit Insurance Agency said.
Deposits in personal bank accounts may rise between 1.9 trillion rubles and 2.2 trillion rubles to a total of as much as 9.7 trillion rubles, the Moscow-based agency said Thursday in a report published on its web site. The regulator previously predicted an increase of 27 percent.
Bank deposits advanced 12.7 percent in the first six months to 8.4 trillion rubles after a gain of 9.9 percent in the same period a year earlier, the agency said. Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, accounted for 48.3 percent of all deposits, compared with 49.4 percent at the start of 2010.

<strong>Ukraine’s VTB Loan</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ukraine may seek to extend a $2 billion loan from Russia’s second-biggest bank, VTB Group, if market sentiment prevents the former Soviet country from selling its first Eurobond since 2007.
Ukraine’s government may ask the Moscow-based lender to prolong the loan agreement, due to expire in December, Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko said at a press conference in the capital Kiev on Thursday.

TITLE: The Myth of Authoritarian Growth
AUTHOR: By Dani Rodrik
TEXT: On July 31, several hundred pro-democracy activists congregated in a Moscow square to protest government restrictions on freedom of assembly. They were promptly surrounded by police officers, who tried to break up the demonstration. A leading critic of the Kremlin and several others were hastily dragged into a police car and driven away.
This is par for the course in a country that is ruled by the strong hand of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, where persecution of the government’s opponents, human rights violations and judicial abuses have become routine. At a time when democracy and human rights have become global norms, such transgressions do little to enhance Russia’s global reputation.
Putin and other authoritarian leaders in the world understand the reputational risk very well, but what is most important is exercising unbridled power at home. What authoritarians understand less well, however, is that their politics also compromise their countries’ economic future and global economic standing.
The relationship between a nation’s politics and its economic prospects is one of the most fundamental — and most studied — subjects in social science. Which is better for economic growth: a strong guiding hand that is free from the pressure of political competition, or a plurality of competing interests that fosters openness to new ideas and new political players?
East Asian examples (South Korea, Taiwan, China) seem to suggest the former. But how, then, can one explain the fact that almost all wealthy countries — except those that owe their riches to natural resources alone — are democratic? Should political openness precede, rather than follow, economic growth?
When we look at systematic historical evidence, instead of individual cases, we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every President Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Democracies not only outperform dictatorships when it comes to long-term economic growth, but also outdo them in several other important respects. They provide much greater economic stability, measured by the ups and downs of the business cycle. They are better at adjusting to external economic shocks, such as terms-of-trade declines or sudden stops in capital inflows. They generate more investment in human capital, including health and education, and they produce more equitable societies.
Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as fragile as their political systems. Their economic potency, when it exists, rests on the strength of individual leaders or on favorable but temporary circumstances, like high oil prices. They cannot aspire to continued economic innovation or to global economic leadership.
At first sight, China seems to be an exception. Since the late 1970s, China has done extremely well, experiencing unparalleled rates of economic growth. Even though it has democratized some of its local decision making, the Chinese Communist Party maintains a tight grip on national politics, and the human rights picture is marred by frequent abuses.
But China also remains a comparatively poor country. Its future economic progress depends in no small part on whether it manages to open its political system to competition, in much the same way that it has opened up its economy. Without this transformation, the lack of institutionalized mechanisms for voicing and organizing dissent will eventually produce conflicts that will overwhelm the capacity of the regime to suppress. Political stability and economic growth will both suffer.
Still, Russia and China are both large and powerful economies. Their example can sway leaders elsewhere to think that they can aspire to economic ascendancy while tightening the screws on domestic political opposition.
Consider Turkey, a rising economic power in the Middle East that seemed destined until recently to become the region’s sole Muslim democracy. During his first term in office, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan relaxed some restrictions on Kurdish minorities and passed reforms that aligned the country’s legal regime with European norms.
But more recently Erdogan and his allies have launched a thinly disguised campaign to intimidate their opponents and cement government control over the media and public institutions. They have incarcerated hundreds of military officers, academics and journalists on fabricated charges of fomenting terror and plotting coups. So widespread is wiretapping and harassment of Erdogan’s critics that some believe the country has turned into a “republic of fear.”
This turn toward authoritarianism bodes ill for the Turkish economy, despite its strong fundamentals. It will have corrosive effects on the quality of policymaking, as well as undermine Turkey’s claim to global economic standing.
For the true up-and-coming economic powers, we should turn instead to countries like Brazil, India and South Africa, which have already accomplished their democratic transitions and are unlikely to regress. None of these countries is without problems, of course. Brazil has yet to recover fully its economic dynamism and find a path to rapid growth. India’s democracy can be maddening in its resistance to economic change, and South Africa suffers from a shockingly high level of unemployment.
Yet these challenges are nothing compared with the momentous tasks of institutional transformation that await authoritarian countries. Don’t be surprised if Brazil leaves Turkey in the dust, South Africa eventually surpasses Russia and India outdoes China.

Dani Rodrik, professor of political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is author of “One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth.” © Project Syndicate

TITLE: Will the Real Caucasus Emir Please Stand Up
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: On Aug. 1, Chechen militant Doku Umarov — head of the Caucasus Emirate, an umbrella group loosely connecting rebels in the North Caucasus republics — announced his voluntary resignation and named Aslambek Vadalov, an obscure mid-ranking Chechen rebel, as his successor. According to the Russian media, the name of the third person appearing in the video remained unclear, but that person was a Jordanian known as Muhannad.
Muhannad, who was leader of the mujahedin in Chechnya, became deputy in 2007 to military emir Ali Taziyev, a.k.a. Magas. Muhannad is essentially the top al-Qaida representative in Chechnya. All the connections and financial assistance coming from abroad move through him, and it is surprising that the Federal Security Service — the only intelligence agency in the world that claims to have exposed al-Qaida agents operating secretly in Georgia — hardly ever mentions the name of Muhannad.
A few days after announcing his resignation, Umarov retracted his statement, calling it a “fabrication,” and announced that he would remain head of the Caucasus Emirate. This indicates a complete breakdown in the communications and command structure of the emirate.
The situation apparently has gotten much worse after Russian security forces seized Magas — once the No. 2 man in the mujahedin hierarchy — in  early June. The problem is so bad that the only method of communication remaining for Umarov is to post his messages on the Internet and then ask his subordinate emirs to post their responses. This is clearly not the best method for a chief and his subordinates to exchange important messages, and it raises serious questions about how the organization is managed.
Umarov’s decision to retract his statement was apparently linked to tensions among the mujahedin themselves. Vadalov is a former Chechen separatist. For some reason, Umarov and Muhannad placed their bets on the part of the mujahedin that fights for the independence of Chechnya, rather than for liberating the entire Caucasus from infidels. It seems that the decision upset the emirs of the other Caucasus regions so much that Umarov was forced to retract his resignation immediately.
History is filled with examples of rebellions in which military commanders overthrow their leaders, but you can count on one hand the number of rebellions during which commanders refused to accept the resignation of their chief. That type of situation only arises when the leader is a nominal head of a movement and has extremely weak powers. Umarov is no more the head of the Caucasus Emirate than Dmitry Medvedev is the president of Russia. This state of affairs suits the strong and independent emirs in the region, and they have no desire to change it.
This is not the first time that Umarov has retracted his own statements. It happened following the terrorist bombings in the Moscow metro as well. This is typical when you are talking about a paranoid, totalitarian ideology. A normal politician might find it unpleasant to have to say, “Sorry, I changed my mind,” but he will do it if it is absolutely necessary. Not so in a totalitarian ideology. As author George Orwell wrote in “1984,” “If we are at war with Oceania today, it means we have always been at war with Oceania, and anybody who speaks differently is an enemy of the people.”
Umarov has changed his mind about stepping down, and that means he never considered leaving in the first place. Therefore, the first video in which he announced his resignation was a fake.

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

TITLE: V is for vegan
AUTHOR: By Kristina Aleksandrova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s vegan community is set to get a unique new addition to its scene Friday with the opening of V-Club. 
The organizers of the club say they want to popularize a way of life based on spiritual and physical self-improvement, and tell visitors about health and moral attitudes to animals and nature. 
“Our objective isn’t to earn money,” said Mikhail Semyonov, one of the organizers.
“V” stands for vegan — people who refuse to eat or use any products of animal origin. The club is not only for practicing vegans, however — organizers welcome everybody who would like to get more information about the movement. 
“The storage facility [where the club will be housed] was previously a furniture factory, and at first we wanted to think up a name for it that would somehow be connected with the story of the place,” said Semyonov. “But for me, the name isn’t the most important thing, so I let everyone decide. 
“I suggested the word ‘Genesis,’ because the creation of the club could be compared to birth. I wrote the word in English in our group on one of the social networking sites, but some people don’t speak English and they wanted to see something understandable,” he said. 
People who don’t know much about veganism often want to find out what vegans eat. V-Club hopes to provide an answer to this frequently asked question. During concerts, visitors can sample dishes suitable for vegan lifestyles such as falafel, made from fried chickpeas. For those who would like to learn how to cook vegan meals at home, master classes will be organized.
V-Club also aims to help vegans to save time. It can be difficult to lead a vegan life in Russia, because there are only a few stores where vegan food products or cosmetics that are not tested on animals can be found. The club’s organizers plan to open a specialized store where vegans will be able to buy everything they need.
The club  — a non-commercial organization — will have a stage on which independent musical collectives will perform. Historically, the vegan movement has been associated with hardcore punk music, so five hardcore bands have been invited to Friday’s opening party. But the organizers say they will vary the musical program in the future. 
“It’s important to give a chance to musicians who can’t afford to perform or record their songs in professional studios,” said Semyonov. “We have the necessary music equipment in our club.” 
Various workshops, discussion clubs and exhibitions will also be held at the club, and artists do not necessarily have to be strict vegetarians to be able to show their work at V-Club. 
“For example, photographic film isn’t an ethical thing, but we won’t prohibit photographers from exhibiting their photos here,” said Semyonov.
Most of the repair work at the premises has been done by vegans, though according to the organizers, it doesn’t matter if volunteers are vegan, vegetarian or meat-eaters. Everyone who would like to know more about leading a vegan lifestyle and making positive change can take part in the development of the club. Information published on the Internet has already attracted a lot of people from other cities to take part in the creation of the club. 
In Russia, vegetarianism is far less common than in some Western countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., though it is becoming increasingly popular among young people. Vegans — who go a step further than vegetarians by cutting dairy products and all animal products out of their diet — are even rarer.
“I know that most people don’t understand us or think that we are crazy,” said Semyonov. “Some people are even scared, because they don’t have enough information about this way of life, so we would like to organize some lectures or seminars.”  
The club’s administration says it will not thrust its opinion on visitors. Despite rumors to the contrary, the club is not connected with “pro-life” radical or violent movements. Money made from hosting concerts will, however, be given to animal rights organizations and wildlife and environmental funds. The club’s organizers also have a plan to produce T-shirts with vegan logos on them and sell them at the club. The money raised will be donated to city orphans. 
“We would like to go to orphans ourselves and to tell kids how to treat animals or what they can do to stay healthy in the modern world,” said Semyonov. 

V-Club will host its first concert at 
7 p.m. Friday at 50, Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel: 8 911 718 1914. M: Ligovsky Prospekt/Ploshchad Vosstaniya.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Despite a campaign launched by musician Mikhail Borzykin of Televizor in support of the imprisoned rapper <strong>Noize MC</strong> — which garnered more than 850 signatures from musicians, artists and journalists — he was not released until he had served his full 10 days in a Volgograd jail. 
Ivan Alexeyev — Noize MC’s real name — was charged with “disorderly conduct” during his set at an outdoor festival, when the local police took offence to the rapper mocking them with a song and improvised rap and arrested him immediately after the show.
In a great new song rush-released on Wednesday, he sarcastically thanks the police for the inspiration and 10 days spent in paradise, while the video demonstrates endless and extremely diverse instances of Russian police brutality — from two policemen stopping and beating a lone cyclist to the recent outburst of police violence at the July 31 demo in St. Petersburg.
Known both as “10 Days in Paradise” and “10 Days (Stalingrad)” — in a reference to Volgograd’s Stalin-era name — it describes Russia as a “police state” and Volgograd as its “capital.”
The song features a sarcastic “apology” — a brief videoed rap that Alexeyev read from a piece of paper distributed by the Volgograd police’s press service while he was in prison.
In an interview with the Gazeta.ru online publication, Alexeyev explained that he wrote and performed the “apology” rap under pressure, when he was threatened with having his charges changed to “insulting a policeman,” an offence punishable by up to one year of “correctional labor,” but the sarcasm was lost on the police — as well as on some of the public, as he later discovered.
The “apology” rap in its entirety has been included in “10 Days” as the chorus.
The Volgograd authorities might have taken 10 days from Alexeyev’s life, but what the state got is perhaps the strongest anthem to date against police brutality and arbitrariness, and a powerful, high-profile protest singer.
One of the first musicians to sign a letter written by musicians in support of Alexeyev last week was Alexei Nikonov of punk band <strong>Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe</strong> (PTVP), which is also renowned for its anti-establishment stance.
“I signed it because at the very least, it represents solidarity among musicians, and at the most, because the police have no right to introduce censorship,” he said Thursday.
“Many people want to censor things, and now even rank-and-file policemen have started doing so. That’s not right.
“What’s important is that it was a precedent, and I had to react, even though I hate signing anything.”
PTVP will perform two concerts at Zoccolo on Wednesday and Thursday. “We’ll play everything mixed up,” he said.
Nikonov said his band’s new album will be out in three months.  He described it as “sort of dark.”

<em>—  By Sergey Chernov</em>

TITLE: In the Spotlight: Indecent Exposure
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At the end of July, Channel One started a new game show called “Lie Detector,” where contestants have to truthfully answer questions to win a cash prize of one million rubles ($33,086).
The first contestants should really have been the members of the U.S. spy ring, whom I imagine were submitted to similar tests by the secret services when they returned to Moscow. That would have been a ratings winner. But they were apparently too busy singing songs around the campfire with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Instead, the first show featured a middle-aged nanny and a 23-year-old businessman, who were grilled about their love lives in a way that made viewing uncomfortable.
The show is hosted by Andrei Malakhov — whose delivery is so insincere that you want to strap him to a lie detector — and is billed as a “psychological project.” It’s based on a show from the United States, “The Moment of Truth.”
The idea is that participants initially answer questions while wired to a lie detector — although this is not shown onscreen. Then in the studio, they have to answer the same questions with their nearest and dearest watching. If they give answers exposed earlier as lies, then they immediately lose all the money.
It’s a strange format, because viewers don’t see the lie detector results. In the first episode, the contestants gamely gave away secrets about family feuds and infidelities, only to walk away without a ruble because they were deemed to have lied about their feelings.
The show has provoked some predictable outrage.
Commentators on Channel One’s web site called the show “revolting” and “amoral.”
A headline in the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid asked, “Is this a new level of freedom on our TV or the degradation of society?”
“Maybe it will now become the norm to go up to someone on the street and ask them whether they had sex on Thursday,” the newspaper warned.
The first contestant on Saturday, Yelena, a nanny, had her husband and mother in the studio as she answered questions that focused on her husband’s straying.
Question five was: “Do you think you’re wise because you are able to ignore your husband’s infidelities?” Yelena answered yes, adding, “Forgive me, Sasha,” as her husband of 25 years looked on.
She then said yes to a question about whether she had ever wanted to cheat as revenge. That answer took her up to 50,000 rubles. “That’s not bad money for a teacher in a Russian school,” Malakhov said.
Another question was, “Do you remember what day you last had sex?”
Yelena’s mother commented, “For 100,000 rubles you could remember,” but she said no, an answer that came up as true.
She finally came unstuck after an innocuous question about whether she thought her salary was decent. She said yes, arguing that she recently got a raise, but the machine said no.
The next contestant, Alexei, 23, had his mother, aunt and girlfriend in tow. He had a clear-eyed guileless way to him and admitted to group sex, smoking weed and disliking his mother’s new husband.
“Go on Lyosha, tell it like it is,” his girlfriend, Valentina, egged him on, calling him her “best friend.”
But she had a nasty shock when he was asked whether he had not married Valentina yet because he was not 100 percent sure about her. He answered no, but the machine said he lied. The camera zoomed in on Valentina’s face as her smile disappeared and a tear fell from her eye.
“Maybe you should check your feelings and understand why you aren’t ready,” Malakhov empathized smarmily. “For some girls, a stamp in the passport is more important than flowers and presents.”

TITLE: Soviet chic
AUTHOR: By Antonina Kerner
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With a menu comprising a wide range of traditional Russian dishes, this “Soviet” cafe on Nevsky Prospekt attempts to give visitors an experience of life in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and ’70s. 
Decorated to look like a typical apartment during that era, Kvartirka (“little apartment”), attempts to recreate the atmosphere and intellectual culture once so prized at the legendary cafe Saigon, that famous gathering place once housed in the next building over that attracted the likes of Joseph Brodsky. From the black-and-white photographs on the wall to the Westerns playing in the background, the restaurant does a good job of recreating such an atmosphere, though a few quirks and ironies give the place its own unique modern flavor. 
If the menu is meant to continue the Soviet theme, a simple glance at the list of appetizers — which includes crab-stuffed tomatoes and herring with marinated vegetables — makes it clear that this must have been the food of the Soviet elite, though prices are extremely democratic. There are also separate sections devoted entirely to pelmeni (Russian ravioli) and pirogi, or pies. 
The more adventurous diners might select the cold starter of “Mother-in-law” tongue with green peas, followed by veal liver as the main course (though, in an additional Soviet twist, they might find, as we did, that the pike cream soup or Georgian stew are not available). For the less courageous explorers of Soviet-Russian cuisine, there are beef, fish and plenty of pork dishes.
While waiting for their order to arrive, guests may play with the dominoes present on every table while their children color in the sheets provided; many, however, will find simply examining the surroundings to be the best entertainment. In recreating the atmosphere of Soviet life, the owners have decided to spare their patrons excessive posters, slogans and flags, but the combination of elements sometimes makes for a comical effect. Over each small section of tables hangs a different antique-looking light fixture, and in the corners, ancient looking teddy bears or dolls can be spotted. A tapestry on one of the walls looks like it might have come from one of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, but the large buck at a forest pond who stared down at us from the tapestry near our table seemed a little out of his natural habitat. One thing that for sure recalls the Soviet Union, though perhaps unintentionally, is the fact that the toilets can’t handle toilet paper.  
In case anyone had forgotten, the elegant presentation of the dishes is enough to remind diners that they are in the apartment of an elite party member. Although the food is delicately arranged, the size of the portions does not disappoint. The exceptionally efficient waitresses (who speak broken, though adequate, English) ensure that empty dishes do not stay on the table for more than a minute after they have been polished off. Inevitably, there is a prevalence of oil, sour cream and dill in the dishes, but it is not overdone, and, what’s more, the chef has mastered fitting combinations. 
Vinaigrette salad (140 rubles, $4.60) was excellent, with just the right amount of oil to keep the flavors of the beetroot, carrot and potato distinct. The herring with potatoes (150 rubles, $5), though rather salty, was enjoyable, served with marinated red onions, while the Kotleta po-Kievsky (Chicken Kiev, 220 rubles, $7.30) was notable for lacking the usual excess of butter. Perhaps the strangest-looking dish to appear on the table — worth all 280 rubles ($9.30) — was the “Monastic” beef stew, which was served in a terracotta pot with a large pastry-bubble on top. The light, fluffy, slightly sweet pastry proved a good combination with the rich stew. After such a hearty meal, a glass of light and very refreshing traditional Russian birch juice (70 rubles, $2.30) is an irresistible follow-up. 
Along with the dainty, upmarket desserts, such as Tiramisu (139 rubles, $4.60) or pistachio ice cream (100 rubles, $3.30), there is a choice of more than 70 alcoholic drinks, from good old Soviet champagne at 120 rubles ($4) a glass, and various kinds of vodka to more decadent Western concoctions such as margaritas and mojitos. 
The atmosphere in the cafe does not provide relief from the bustling clamor of Nevsky Prospekt — the music, which recalls a ’70s disco, makes sure of that — and Kvartirka may not be the ideal spot for a romantic date. For a business meeting, however, or an as-authentic-as-it-gets Soviet experience, Kvartirka quite fits the bill. Who knows? You might even meet the next Sergei Dovlatov or Joseph Brodsky here.

TITLE: U.S. Calls For Iraq To Pay
AUTHOR: By Marjorie Olster
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMADI, Iraq — Off a dusty street flanked by piles of rubble and bombed-out car skeletons, the Saleh family is rebuilding their home with American aid money they got because three family members were accidentally killed in crossfire between U.S. forces and insurgents.
In another neighborhood of the battleground city of Ramadi, a new boat motor and fishing nets are tucked into a corner of the Zeyadan family’s courtyard, bought with money from the same U.S. aid fund.
The aid for these families and hundreds of others like them came from a special fund earmarked by Congress for innocent civilians killed in U.S. military operations in Iraq. But recently, members of Congress asked the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad, which manages the fund, to explore having Iraq take over financing and management of the project.
Though no timeframe was given for the transition, the request is one small example of how the U.S. is looking to cut more than just military ties with Iraq as it withdraws its remaining troops over the next 17 months. Already some victims are worried they will never see the compensation if Iraqi authorities — seen as corrupt and inefficient — run the process.
Christopher Crowley, USAID director in Iraq, said the push for Iraqis to take over the U.S. victims aid program is part of a general trend for all American assistance programs here. The U.S. is “seeking a larger contribution from the (Iraqi) government to these programs so they will become more sustainable as time goes on,” he said.
But the move is rankling some Iraqis. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has criticized the U.S. for rushing to cut ties to Iraq, saying: “Their message to us is: ‘Solve your problems quickly so that we can withdraw quickly.’”
Crowley said many in the U.S. believe Iraq has the means to pay its own way to rebuild after the war, with the world’s third largest proven reserves of crude oil — though so far infrastructure woes mean Iraq is far from producing as much as it could.
“Presumably, when Iraq is reaching its full potential with regard to its oil resources, it’s not going to need this kind of assistance,” he said.
Asked why the Iraqi government should pay compensation for deaths during American operations, he said the victims “are Iraqi citizens. We would like to see an expansion of the definition of victims beyond those injured and wounded in U.S. military action” to include all the innocent war victims.
The Iraqi government already has its own program to give money to families of the approximately 100,000 civilians killed since the 2003 U.S. invasion. But the program is patchy and underfunded, run by each province. In Baghdad province, for example, some payments were made in 2007 and 2008 but none since 2009 since no budget was appropriated, according to a spokeswoman, Shatha al-Obeidi.
No payments have been made by the Iraqi government since 2004 in Anbar province, once the bloodiest front in the fight against the insurgency, where the government estimates up to 50,000 Iraqis have been killed.

TITLE: Advocaat Makes Uncertain Start as Russian Manager
AUTHOR: By Tobias Kuehne
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Wednesday’s friendly match between Russia and Bulgaria (1:0) was supposed to be the beginning of a new era in Russian soccer. The team’s first game under new manager Dick Advocaat was intended as a signpost, hopefully pointing to a successful Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. The Dutchman Advocaat replaced his compatriot, Guus Hiddink, after Russia failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
“I am convinced that Dick Advocaat’s rich coaching experience will help him to form a competitive team that has the strength to solve the most challenging tasks,” Russian Football Union (RFU) President Sergei Fursenko stated in his introductory note to the game’s program. 
Bulgaria, a team that hasn’t particularly distinguished itself as a powerhouse in soccer (excluding a surprising semi-finals appearance in the 1994 World Cup), was thought to be the right kick-off for the “Dick Advocaat era.”
Russia started the game well and capitalized on its first big opportunity in the sixth minute. Russia’s star player Andrei Arshavin flicked a free kick from the left side into the penalty area. Bulgaria’s goalkeeper Nikolai Mikhailov caught the innocuous cross but, possibly blinded by the sun, fumbled the ball, which landed in front of Roman Shirokov. Standing with his back to the goal, Zenit’s midfielder showed great control when he turned and volleyed the ball into the left corner of the net. It was Shirokov’s first goal for the Russian team, and it would remain the only goal of the game.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan at this point. “You came here in order to lose!” a confident fan in the stadium shouted. Russia dominated the game with play that already showed the first signs of the signature Dick Advocaat style: short, precise passes in midfield, keeping the ball moving along the whole width of the pitch before playing the deadly pass onto the wing or to one of the strikers. Pavel Pogrebnyak received a few chipped passes of this kind early in the game, but lacked the necessary control to create compelling opportunities.
With fifteen minutes gone, however, Russia’s game began to disintegrate. Although Bulgaria’s strikers were unable to pose a substantial threat to goalkeeper Igor Akinfeyev’s goal, its defense adapted to Russia’s style of play, which resulted in Russia losing ball control and passing accuracy. Fans began to boo and whistle. Although the Russian defense didn’t allow any major chances for Bulgaria, the team revealed that it still has a long way to go to fully internalize and sustain Advocaat’s style of play throughout the length of the game. 
“We know what we have, and we know what we have to work on,” Advocaat told reporters at a press conference after the game.

A Work in Progress
Advocaat’s arrival as the new national manager has been highly anticipated. 
“He’s a real workaholic. He knows all our [top] players, which is a big plus,” Fursenko told reporters at the presentation of Advocaat as the new team manager on May 17. In St. Petersburg, Advocaat has made himself a name as the coach of local side Zenit. Under his guidance, from 2006 – 2009, Zenit won the Russian league championship in 2007, ending a 23-year drought since Zenit’s topping of the Soviet table in 1984. Advocaat was the first foreign coach to win the Russian national championship ever.
The national title allowed Zenit to compete in the UEFA Champions League the following year. The club finished third (out of four) in the group stage, which relegated them to the UEFA Cup, the second most prestigious European club trophy behind the Champions League. Zenit would go on to win the UEFA Cup, their first European trophy ever. A second, the European Super Cup, followed a few months later, as Zenit won the face-off against Manchester United, that year’s Champions League victor, which made 2008 one of the most successful years in Zenit’s 85-year history. In recognition of his stunning achievements, Advocaat was showered with national honors, such as Russia’s Coach of the Year 2008, and Honorary Citizen of St. Petersburg (the first foreigner since 1866 to receive this honor).
Under Advocaat’s guidance, Russia’s current star and team captain, Arshavin, 29, stepped into the international spotlight. In 2009, he was signed by his current club Arsenal London.
As the support in the stadium showed, Advocaat had not been forgotten in St. Petersburg. Fans cheered at his introduction and chanted his name during the first minutes of the game. Another supporter who evidently remembered Advocaat’s accomplishments with Zenit was Fursenko. The current president of the Russian Football Union, who succeeded Vladimir Mutko in 2008 after President Dmitry Medvedev’s directive that all Russian sports federations be run by full-time professionals, was the president of Zenit during Advocaat’s time with the club. When Hiddink failed to lead Russia to this year’s World Cup in South Africa, rumors surfaced that Advocaat would succeed Hiddink.
Notwithstanding the fact that Russia missed the 2010 World Cup, Hiddink led the team to its greatest success in recent years. Under his management, the team put up a strong showing at Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland by advancing to the semi-final of the competition. Russia came up short 0:3 against the eventual winners Spain, after having eliminated tournament favorite Netherlands 3:1 in the quarter-final. 
The country’s most glorious period came in the ’60s and early ’70s, when the Soviet squad won the 1960 European Championship in France, finished runner-up at the 1964 and 1972 Euro, and reached the semi-final of the 1966 World Cup in England. The Soviet squad also won the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. During this period, the Soviet goal was tended by the legendary Lev Yashin, who is widely considered to be among the best goalkeepers to have ever played. 
1988 marked another successful year for the Soviet soccer team, with a gold medal in Seoul, and a second-place finish in the European Championship. After Russia’s score of first-round exits and failures to qualify for World Cups and Euro Championships throughout the 90s and 2000s, Hiddink’s success at the 2008 Euro was a pleasant reminder of past soccer glory.
Hiddink’s popularity, which was higher even than Vladimir Putin’s during the Euro 2008, began to wane in 2009. After controversies between Hiddink, the RFU and Roman Abramovich’s national football fund over his alleged 7 million euro ($9 million) annual salary in October 2008, and Russia’s less successful showings on the pitch, Hiddink decided to resign from his post in early 2010. Advocaat was presented as his successor on May 17, 2010.
As the second half of Wednesday’s game revealed, Advocaat still has a long road ahead of him to bring the team up to par for the Euro 2012 in Poland and the Ukraine. Advocaat made three substitutions at half-time, one of which replaced Pogrebnyak, largely detached from the game in the first half, with English Premier League striker Roman Pavlyuchenko. The game continued where it had left off, although both sides began to commit more fouls. Russia only became dangerous from set pieces, as the last pass into the penalty area would often not connect.
The game opened up a bit after the 55th minute, and Bulgaria slowly won control over the match. Their left flank in particular created a few runs, with defensive midfielder Zhivko Milanov frequently sending his teammate Martin Petrov into open space with a long ball. In the 58th minute, Petrov dangerously crossed the ball into the Russian penalty area, but failed to find the heads of the waiting Martin Kamburov and Dimitar Rangelov. It was Rangelov again who appeared alone in front of Akinfeyev in the 69th minute, giving the Russian goalkeeper a chance to show his reflexes and positional play skills in the penalty area. It was only thanks to Akinfeyev and Bulgaria’s lack of outstanding striking talent that Russia was still up 1:0.
The Russian fans returned the poor showing of their squad with furious whistling and booing. The team’s players struggled to maintain their composure during this phase of the game. 
Arshavin put up a particularly disappointing performance, with many of his passes going into empty space. He was substituted off in the 78th minute and replaced by Dmitry Sychev, who reanimated Russia’s game for the remaining ten minutes.
Fans at the Petrovsky Stadium had their own way of dealing with the game — in the 90th minute, fans began to repeat their pre-game chant of “Dick Advocaat,” only in a clearly derisory manner. The mood at the stadium was largely humorous, with fans applauding an injured player who managed to hobble off the pitch unaided.
Bulgaria, however, didn’t manage to equalize, giving Russia a 1:0 victory. Although Advocaat told reporters that “it is always important to win the first game” and that “we have achieved a good result,” Wednesday’s game has left a lot of unanswered questions about the future of Russia’s national squad. It certainly takes time for a new tactical concept to take root among a team, and Advocaat himself had stressed to reporters on Wednesday that “I need to understand how the players react to my demands. That concerns those players who haven’t previously worked with me in particular.”
However, Advocaat doesn’t have too much time left to make adjustments. Russia’s next game is a Euro 2012 qualifyer in Andorra on Sept. 3. While Andorra should not pose much of a challenge to the Russian squad, their qualifying group features two tricky opponents — Slovakia and the Republic of Ireland (Macedonia and Armenia are also in the group). 
Advocaat has demonstrated an ability to unlock a soccer team’s potential, especially with Zenit and two of his earlier clubs, Glasgow Rangers and Dutch PSV Eindhoven. It remains to be seen if he will be able to do the same with the Russian national side. With the five national teams he has previously managed — the Netherlands (twice), the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Belgium — Advocaat’s successes have been limited. Both of his terms as the Netherlands manager were marked by media criticism and unpopularity in his home country. Advocaat has also rarely coached a team for longer than 3 years.
When Advocaat resigned as Belgium’s head coach, announcing that he would become Russia’s new team manager, he told Dutch media that “Russian soccer is of a higher level than Belgian soccer. It matches the level I am used to working at.” 
Advocaat’s task is to establish which event was more indicative of the abilities of Russia’s soccer squad — the successful showing at the Euro 2008, or the failure to secure a ticket to the 2010 World Cup.

TITLE: Iran Claims Woman Confessed
AUTHOR: By Ali Akbar Dareini
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN — Iranian state television has broadcast a purported confession by an Iranian woman who had faced death by stoning for adultery, a case that has drawn statements of concern by the U.S. administration.
The stoning sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was commuted last month after international outrage over the brutality of the punishment, but she still faces a possible death sentence by other means.
A woman identified as Ashtiani said in the interview broadcast late Wednesday that she was an unwitting accomplice to her husband’s murder.
The woman’s face was blurred and her words were voiced over in what the TV report said was a translation into Farsi from Azeri Turkish, which is spoken in parts of Iran.
The outcry over the death sentence is one of the latest thorns in Iran’s relationship with the international community, as the United States, Britain and international human rights groups have urged Tehran to stay the execution.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier this week the U.S. remains troubled by the case.
Brazil also formally offered asylum to the 43-year-old mother of two.
In the interview, the woman also criticized her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, for publicizing her case.
Mostafaei maintained a blog that sparked a worldwide campaign to free his client. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the woman could still face execution by hanging for her conviction of adultery and other offenses.
The lawyer fled to Norway, where he has applied for asylum while expressing hope he can someday return to Iran.
Human Rights Watch has said Ashtiani was first convicted in May 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men following the death of her husband — for which a court in Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, sentenced her to 99 lashes. Later that year she was also convicted of adultery, despite having retracted a confession which she claims was made under duress.
Stoning was widely imposed in the years following the 1979 Islamic revolution, and even though Iran’s judiciary still regularly hands down such sentences, they are often converted to other punishments.
The last known stoning was carried out in 2007, although the government rarely confirms that such punishments have been meted out.
Under Islamic rulings, a man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her chest with her hands also buried. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies.
Ashtiani’s stoning was approved by the country’s Supreme Court, but the law could allow the judiciary head to order another trial or appeal for a pardon from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters.

TITLE: Study Indicates New Superbugs Moving From South Asia to U.K.
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: PARIS — Plastic surgery patients have carried a new class of superbugs resistant to almost all antibiotics from South Asia to Britain and they could spread worldwide, researchers reported Wednesday.
Many hospital infections that were already difficult to treat have become even more impervious to drugs thanks to a recently discovered gene that can jump across different species of bacteria.
This so-called NDM-1 gene was first identified last year by Cardiff University’s Timothy Walsh in two types of bacteria — Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli — in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.
Worryingly, the new NDM-1 bacteria are resistant even to carbapenems, a group of antibiotics often reserved as a last resort for emergency treatment for multi-drug resistant bugs.
In the new study, led by Walsh and Madras University’s Karthikeyan Kumarasamy, researchers set out to determine how common the NDM-1 producing bacteria were in South Asia and Britain, where several cases had turned up.
Checking hospital patients with suspect symptoms, they found 44 cases — 1.5 percent of those screened — in Chennai, and 26 (eight percent) in Haryana, both in India.
They likewise found the superbug in Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as 37 cases in Britain, where several patients had recently travelled to India or Pakistan for cosmetic surgery.
“India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and it is likely that NDM-1 will spread worldwide,” said the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
NDM-1 was mostly found in E. coli, a common source of community-acquired urinary tract infections, and K. pneumoniae, and was impervious to all antibiotics except two, tigecycline and colistin.
In some cases, even these drugs did not beat back the infection.
Crucially, the NDM-1 gene was found on DNA structures, called plasmids, that can be easily copied and transferred between bacteria, giving the bug “an alarming potential to spread and diversify,” the authors said.
“Unprecedented air travel and migration allow bacterial plasmids and clones to be transported rapidly between countries and continents,” mostly undetected, they said.
The emergence of these new drug-resistant strains could become a serious global public health problem as the major threat shifts toward a broad class of bacteria — including those armed with the NDM-1 gene — known as “Gram-negative,” the researchers warn.
“There are few new anti-Gram-negative antibiotics in development, and none that are effective against NDM-1,” the study said.
NDM-1 stands for New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1.

TITLE: Suriname Scrutinized As Dictator Returns
AUTHOR: By Ben Fox
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARAMARIBO, Suriname — A former coup leader, convicted drug trafficker and accused murderer was sworn in as Suriname’s president Thursday, and shop owner Sunil Oemrawsingh was so appalled he couldn’t even watch the ceremony — or understand why so few of his countrymen agree with him.
The 50-year-old has a particular reason for outrage: The new president, Desi Bouterse, is on trial for his alleged role in the summary execution of Oemrawsingh’s uncle and 14 other leading citizens, all suspected enemies of the military regime, on a December night in 1982.
“I must admit, I am bitter about this,” Oemrawsingh said.
Bouterse’s return to power has people in ethnically diverse Suriname and abroad wondering whether it will also mean a return to the dark days of the past, when human rights were trampled and isolated Suriname was a launching pad for drugs bound for the United States and Europe.
“Has he changed? I hope so,” said Henri Behr, a management consultant whose younger brother — a muckraking journalist and violinist in Suriname’s symphony orchestra with two young children — was abducted and executed by Bouterse’s soldiers. “I’d like to think he will be different, but perhaps that’s being naive.”
The immediate question for many in this thickly forested Amazon basin nation of about 500,000 people is what will happen with the trial for the “December killings.” So far, there is no indication of any changes.
“The trial goes on,” said Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, the speaker of parliament and a close ally of the new president. When asked to elaborate, she changed the subject and called criticism of Bouterse propaganda.
Bouterse and nearly 20 others face charges that include murder in a case that has proceeded fitfully before a three-judge panel since November 2007.
The former dictator was scheduled to make his first appearance as a witness Friday, but the hearing was delayed — ostensibly because security forces would have been spread too thin between the inauguration and trial.
In the past, Bouterse has accepted “political responsibility” for the killings but denied a direct hand in them. As president he is not required to testify and he could engineer a pardon if convicted in a case that could get him a 20-year sentence. Some fear he could interfere with the trial if testimony gets too uncomfortable, denying the families a resolution.