SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1602 (63), Friday, August 20, 2010
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TITLE: Imports Of Grain May Exceed Exports
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will sharply increase imports of agricultural goods this season and may become a net importer of grain for the first time in 11 years as a severe drought continues to ravage the harvest, analysts said Wednesday.
The possibility comes just over a year after Russia pledged to double grain exports within 15 years to help improve global food security. Local grain powerhouses Ukraine and Kazakhstan were invited in June 2009 to help Russia form a supply pool that would stabilize prices and boost export opportunities.
Imports of barley alone — a key ingredient for the country’s booming beer industry — may rise more than tenfold to 700,000 tons this marketing year, from 50,000 tons a year before, according to SovEcon, an agricultural market researcher.
It is now looking very likely that Russia will become a net grain importer for the marketing year, which started July 1, said Andrei Sizov Jr., managing director of SovEcon.
Dmitry Rylko, director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, a research center, was more cautious, although he agreed that the possibility could “not be ruled out.”
Russia has not imported more grain than it exported since the 1998-99 marketing season, he said.
The Agriculture Ministry said last week that Russia might export 4.5 million metric tons of grain at most from July this year to the end of June next year.
It had already exported 3.6 million tons before a grain export ban entered force Sunday. The ban will last at least till the end of this year.
Barley crops are expected to be some of the worst in the past 40 years, dwindling by nearly half to 8.7 million to 9.3 million metric tons this season, compared with 17.9 million metric tons a year before, SovEcon said. As a result of Russia’s drought, the world grain market overheated in late July, with barley prices in Russia doubling from June, Sizov said.
The country’s intervention stock of 1.45 million tons of barley is unlikely to go on sale in full this season, SovEcon said Monday. Part of it may be deposited for the next marketing year, since the weather conditions for the sowing of winter crops remain unfavorable in a number of regions, it said.
SABMiller, a producer of beer brands including Zolotaya Bochka, Miller and Holsten, said it was possible for their prices to grow because of the more expensive barley.
“The increase of the barley and malt prices may affect our pricing policy, but it’s too early to judge,” the company told The St. Petersburg Times in an e-mailed statement.
SABMiller, which buys its malt from suppliers, said the suppliers were planning to increase imports of barley, although they have not yet gone through stocks secured last year.
Turkey’s Anadolu Efes Biracilik & Malt Sanayii, majority owner of Russia’s Efes brewery, will raise its beer prices in Russia, the Turkish company’s chairman, Tuncay Ozilhan, said in an interview to a Turkish newspaper published last week. Russia’s Efes declined comment Wednesday.
Denmark’s Carlsberg, the producer of Baltika, said Tuesday that the more expensive barley would not have a “material impact” on the company. The St. Petersburg-based Baltika brewery did not respond to a request for comment by Wednesday evening.
Beer prices have already grown sharply after a threefold increase of the excise tax on the beverage, which went into effect Jan. 1. Barley consumption might have been higher this season if it had not been for a 10 percent contraction in beer brewing in the first half of this year caused by the tax hike, the Russian Beer Union told The St. Petersburg Times in an e-mailed statement.
Any further increases in prices will not be big because barley accounts for a very modest share of production costs, Sizov said.
A major price hike would also reduce consumption, which producers want to avoid, Rylko said.
In addition to barley, Russia will import “significantly” more potatoes, onions, cabbage, beets and carrots — mostly from Europe, Rylko said, adding that the country would also need to take deliveries of 2.5 million tons of sugar from abroad.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Weather Warning
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Night frosts and heavy winds during the day are being predicted for the coming week by weather forecasters, Fontanka.ru reported. The St. Petersburg Center for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring has predicted air and soil temperatures to fall as low as minus 2 degrees Celsius on Friday night. An emergency warning has been issued.
A press release from the Leningrad Oblast office of the Emergency Situations Ministry predicts heavy rains and strong winds in the coastal areas on Saturday. The Ministry’s press office warned of particularly dangerous conditions close to beach areas, as well as of the danger of falling trees.
Strategy 31
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Hall has again rejected an oppositional event planned by the Strategy 31 protest movement, Fontanka.ru reported. According to the organizers, officials have suggested moving the event from Palace Square to the Chernyshevsky Gardens.
Bread Prices
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Hall will only be able to regulate the prices of two kinds of bread in an attempt to contain the inflation sparked by the current spate wildfires, Fontanka.ru reported. The prices for rye and “nareznoi” loaves will be regulated, said Yevgeny Elin, chairman of the city’s Economic Development Committee, speaking at a roundtable discussion.
“We are under no illusions about our ability to sustain the prices of all the items in the consumer basket. We just don’t have funds to do that. But we can confirm that, as a city, we are able to provide controlled price levels for these two items,” Elin said, adding that the city would have to set up its own bread production facilities to keep the prices down.
TITLE: St. Petersburgers Assail New Sharia Court
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — A Muslim lawyer’s attempt to create St. Petersburg’s first sharia court flopped just weeks after the court opened amid a storm of criticism from local Muslim leaders and human rights activists that climaxed with an order from prosecutors for its closure.
The court, which adhered to Islamic law, had no judicial power, and its activity was limited to civil disputes, such as reconciling members of estranged families, founder Dzhamaliddin Makhmutov said.
“Our resolutions have no judicial power; what we do would be perhaps best described as honor trials,” Makhmutov said before prosecutors intervened this week.
“We offer solutions and advice rather than punishment, especially in a physical form,” he told The Moscow Times.
Sharia law prescribes severe penalties for some crimes, such as the amputation of hands for theft and stoning for adultery.
“The solutions that we give to the people who come to us are based essentially on the ethics and principles of the Quran,” Makhmutov said, referring to the Islamic holy book.
But local prosecutors saw things differently, announcing that the court was in violation of the law and Makhmutov might face extremism charges if he refused to close it.
Makhmutov subsequently backed off on his comments about the court, calling it a “tribunal” instead of a sharia court and saying he had been misunderstood by journalists.
But Makhmutov explicitly said it was a sharia court in his interview with The Moscow Times.
Many Muslim and non-Muslim leaders in St. Petersburg also understood it to be a sharia court and roundly condemned it.
St. Petersburg deputy mufti Ravil Poncheyev slammed the court as anti-constitutional. “We refuse to recognize this group,” Poncheyev said. “It was created by charlatans who do not have any rights to engage in such an activity. Besides, any decision by such a court does not have any legal power, which makes the court an unnecessary and artificial organization.”
St. Petersburg ombudsman Alexei Kozyrev also spoke critically of the court, calling it “inappropriate” and “potentially damaging to the climate of ethnic tolerance in the city.”
“We have a stable judicial system in the country that works efficiently, and no substitutes are needed,” Kozyrev said. “In a multifaith country like Russia, it is especially important to adhere to the principles of an independent legal system where people of all religious beliefs are treated equally.”
He said his office was looking into the court’s work.
Makhmutov said criticism from the Islamic community might be motivated by reluctance to share power. He also said he had faced pressure to close his legal center and received anonymous telephone threats.
Before prosecutors stepped in, he sent a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev asking for protection from what he described as a “witch hunt,” and also sought the support of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov said in May that he considers sharia law to be more important than federal law.
Sharia courts were created in Chechnya in 1995, when the republic became a de-facto independent republic, and the secular judicial system was only restored after the beginning of the second Chechen war in 1999.
More than 20 countries in Africa and Asia, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya and Sudan, currently base their legal systems on sharia law, although most of them incorporate elements from other judicial systems as well.
Some Western countries, like Britain, have sharia courts based in mosques that handle civil disputes.
Several dozen people, many of them newly arrived immigrants, sought the advice of the court, located at the Islamic Prayer House on Moskovsky Prospekt in central St. Petersburg, in the weeks after it opened, Makhmutov said.
Issues brought up had little to do with the intricacies of faith, he said. People came to complain about bribes demanded by local schools and kindergartens to admit their children, impeded access to qualified medical help and threats from non-Muslim neighbors.
Shukhrat Mavlyanov, a leader of St. Petersburg’s Uzbek community, welcomed the court as a way to help Muslim newcomers integrate into St. Petersburg life.
“Uzbek immigrants find it very difficult to adapt to their new lives in St. Petersburg,” he told the Gazeta.spb.ru news web site. “They have lived in an Islamic state all their lives, and here they find a civil country. I think that for many of them it would be easier to seek advice from a Muslim qadi [a sharia judge] than a magistrate.”
But the court could have just the opposite effect by further isolating members of the Muslim community who already had problems adapting to city life, said Valentina Uzunova, a senior researcher with the St. Petersburg Museum for Anthropology and Ethnography.
“I would recommend an integration strategy, rather than locking themselves in seclusion,” said Uzunova, who often acts as a consultant on hate crimes in the city’s courts.
TITLE: Prime Minister Promises Visa-Free World Cup
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — When FIFA officials decide who will host the 2018 World Cup in December, the seemingly worst candidate just might beat European football giants like England, Spain and the Netherlands.
That candidate is where most stadiums do not meet FIFA requirements, where vast distances must be traveled and decent roads, airports and affordable hotels are scarce. In short: Russia.
But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday threw his weight behind what at first seemed a long-shot bid to host the world’s biggest sporting event, promising to waive visas for soccer players and fans.
“We are ready to extend extra, government guarantees on visa-free entry for participants and guests of the World Cup,” he told visiting FIFA officials, according to a transcript on his web site.
Russia waived visas for the thousands of fans who attended UEFA Champions League finals in Moscow in May 2008 — the first time it had ever lifted visa requirements on such a scale.
Putin on Tuesday praised Russia as a force to be reckoned with in world soccer. “We have about 6 million people who play football and, naturally, many more fans. That is precisely why we decided to launch a bid for hosting the 2018 championship,” he said.
He also stressed that because the World Cup has never taken place in Eastern Europe, Russia hosting it would be “extra important for that part of the world.”
Russia has launched a double bid for the World Cup, in 2018 or 2022, along with England, the United States, and joint bids from Spain/Portugal and Belgium/The Netherlands.
The 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil, and football’s world governing body, FIFA, will select the 2018 and 2022 hosts on Dec. 2.
The 2018 tournament is tipped to take place in Europe, while the one in 2022 is slanted toward Asia, having bids from Japan, Qatar and South Korea.
Visiting FIFA officials also met in the city’s Luzhniki stadium with Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who gave them a personal tour of the field.
Of Russia’s arenas, the 78,000-seat stadium south of the city center is thought to be closest to meeting FIFA’s World Cup requirements.
Analysts say the country will probably have to build 14 football stadiums from scratch and spend billions of dollars to refurbish crumbling infrastructure if it wants to host the World Cup.
Moscow’s bid envisages 16 stadiums in 13 cities, assembled in four separate geographical clusters — all situated in European Russia except for one in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
The FIFA delegation on Monday visited the site of the new 60,000-seat Zenit stadium under construction in St. Petersburg. From Moscow, the officials will travel to Sochi and Kazan, which both have plans for brand-new arenas.
Construction costs for a single stadium are estimated at $70 million to $300 million.
Putin promised on Tuesday that stadium construction would go ahead regardless of whether Russia hosts the World Cup. The stadiums are “just for the development of sports, for the development of,” he said.
But if Russia gets “this honor,” everything will be done in time and according to FIFA’s requirements, he said, adding that funds would come from federal and private sources.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said earlier this year that private investors would fund most infrastructure projects for the World Cup bid.
Andreas Herren, a spokesman for Russia’s bid, would not specify any figures but said it might be cheaper to build stadiums from scratch than refurbish existing ones.
The biggest plus for the bid are the comprehensive guarantees given by Putin personally and the fact that Eastern Europe has never hosted the World Cup before, Herren told The Moscow Times. “This is virgin territory for FIFA,” he said.
Putin’s personal weight has proven a winning strategy before. His English-speaking part in Sochi’s presentation to International Olympic Committee members in 2007 was judged crucial in swinging votes for the city’s winning bid for the 2014 Winter Games.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he cannot meet the FIFA delegation personally when it travels to London next week because he will be on vacation.
With more than 26 billion television viewers globally, the World Cup is far bigger than the Winter Olympics, which have between 4 billion and 6 billion viewers, Herren said.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who is on a working vacation in Sochi this week, is expected to meet with the FIFA officials.
Analysts said Russia’s chances were high given FIFA’s preference for giving the World Cup to developing football nations rather than developed ones, including its decision to award this year’s cup to South Africa.
“They are trying to go into countries that looked totally hopeless a few years ago,” said Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Russia, he said, offered a key geographical position in being both an Asian and a European country. “They can be the bridge to Asia,” he said by telephone from Berlin.
The lack of infrastructure might be Russia’s “weakest point,” but the ensuing investments could boost the economy by up to 1.5 percent, said Nikolai Podguzov, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, an investment bank.
“The impact on gross domestic product could be between an additional 0.5 and 1.5 points,” he said, adding that it would contribute to economic diversification and stability.
But Georgy Bovt, a co-leader of the opposition Right Cause party, warned that many of the stadiums built for a successful World Cup bid might end up left idle after the games were over.
He said construction for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow had been on such a grand scale that no major sports construction occurred in the Soviet Union for years afterward.
He also said the World Cup bid showed that the government was unable to modernize the economy from within.
“It is typical for Russia that it needs external stimulus for reform,” Bovt said.
TITLE: Barge Hits Ship With 111 Tourists
AUTHOR: By Alexey Eremenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than 100 foreign tourists experienced a short-lived Titanic-like scare on the Volga River early Wednesday when their luxury cruise ship sailing from Moscow to St. Petersburg collided with a sand-laden barge.
None of the 111 tourists from the United States, Germany and Italy were injured, while three of the 91 crew members sustained minor bruises during the incident on the Rybinskoye reservoir on the Volga River in the Yaroslavl region, emergency officials said.
But the ship, the Sergei Kirov, suffered a 5-meter-long gash along its hull, and the crew prevented it from sinking, officials said.
“The crew listed the ship immediately and began bailing water out and removing property from [flooded] cabins. The water was pumped out, and a patch was improvised from inside,” said a spokesman for the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Interfax reported.
News reports gave no information about damage to the barge, which was transporting 4,500 tons of sand to Rybinsk, the second-largest city in the Yaroslavl region. It was unclear Wednesday which ship was to blame for the accident.
Two motor ships were sent to the site of the incident to pick up tourists and bring them to Rybinsk, from where they were to be transported back to Moscow by bus later Wednesday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Eighty-three tourists refused to travel on a lower-class ship than the Sergei Kirov, and a third motor ship had to be sent for them, Lifenews.ru reported.
The Sergei Kirov, owned by a St. Petersburg company, was booked by the U.S. firm Viking River Cruises for trips between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. River cruises are a popular tourist attraction in Russia.
Viking River Cruises had no immediate comment on the accident.
Tickets for the Moscow-St. Petersburg cruise start at $2,396, according to the company’s web site. The cruise, called “Waterways of the Tsars,” promises a “monumental 13-day itinerary,” with stops in Moscow, St. Petersburg and “quaint riverside towns like Yaroslavl, Uglich and Goritzy that only a river cruise can provide.”
“See opulent palaces, discover fortified monasteries and visit beautiful cathedrals,” the web site says.
TITLE: Moscow on Alert After Pyatigorsk Blast
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow police went on alert Wednesday after a shock car bombing injured 29 people in Pyatigorsk, a southern city that acts as headquarters for the North Caucasus Federal District.
Police said they were closely monitoring railway and metro stations, airports and other public places, and searching buses arriving from the country’s south.
A bomb scare prompted the evacuation of about 1,000 people from the World Trade Center Moscow and the adjacent Crowne Plaza Hotel on 12 Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya.
Bomb experts with sniffer dogs searched the center after an anonymous phone tip but found no explosives, RIA-Novosti reported.
The heightened alert in Moscow came after a Lada car loaded with explosives equivalent to 40 kilograms of TNT blew up on Tuesday near a cafe in downtown Pyatigorsk, a Stavropol region resort with a population of 208,000 that had not been touched by the violence raging in the surrounding North Caucasus in recent years.
The blast left a two-meter-wide hole in the ground. Photos from the site showed a scorched and twisted car frame and buildings with windows shattered by the blast’s wave.
The 29 people injured in the attack were cafe customers and passers-by, officials said. Four people hospitalized with serious injuries were airlifted to Moscow hospitals.
The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, flew to Pyatigorsk on Wednesday to oversee the investigation after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Federal Security Service and the Prosecutor General’s Office to identify and capture those responsible.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, which the authorities have declared a terrorist attack.
Stavropol regional police have initiated a special operation to nab the attackers, RIA-Novosti reported Wednesday.
The owner of the car has been identified as Alexander Kim, 42, a Stavropol region resident, but he is not considered a suspect in the case, investigators said, adding that Kim’s whereabouts could not be established Wednesday.
Anatoly Safonov, the Kremlin’s anti-terrorism adviser, said Islamist militants affiliated with Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov might have carried out the attack.
Umarov’s rebels claimed responsibility for a small explosion near Gazprom’s headquarters in southern Moscow last week, but only three days after the bomb detonated. No one was injured.
Umarov also claimed responsibility for the twin suicide bombings that killed 40 people in Moscow’s metro in March. In June, the United States put him on the list of international terrorists.
Umarov said he was stepping down as the insurgents’ leader in an online video on Aug. 2, but he later backtracked on the statement, saying he changed his mind “in connection with the situation shaping up in the Caucasus.”
Analysts say his resignation attempt might reflect a split within the rebel community. But Safonov said the Pyatigorsk bombing might have nothing to do with any power struggle.
“It’s possible that the attack had been planned long before the split,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, said the attackers might have received help from unspecified foreign powers. “The external enemy does not sleep,” Zhirinovsky said, without elaborating.
He said in a statement that the attack was supposed to “scare” people and inflame tensions between ethnic Russians and people of other ethnicities, as well as inspire hatred against the authorities.
TITLE: Businessman Claims Police Lost Bribe Money in Sting
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Moscow businessman has demanded that the Interior Ministry return 15 million rubles ($492,000) that he says he provided to implicate a Kremlin official in a sting operation — and that disappeared after the suspect accepted it in front of police officers.
Vladimir Morozov sent his letter to Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev on Friday, two days after an investigation was opened into the Kremlin official, Vladimir Leshchevsky, deputy head of construction in the Office of Presidential Affairs, Kommersant reported Thursday.
The investigation was opened after Morozov claimed that Leshchevsky had demanded kickbacks for allowing his company, Moskonversprom, to win construction tenders for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
In his letter, Morozov said investigators videotaped several meetings in June 2009 during which Leshchevsky received part of the bribe money that he had demanded.
Morozov said he was asked to provide his own money for the sting operation but did not receive it back.
The case against Leshchevsky was only opened last week following a direct order from President Dmitry Medvedev.
“Officers told me that investigators prohibited them from arresting him,” Morozov said about Leshchevsky, Kommersant reported. “To my question, ‘What about the money?’ I was told Leshchevsky still had it. He left with it.”
TITLE: Studio Renews Fight For Soviet Cartoons
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Soyuzmultfilm will resume its 16-year battle Wednesday to regain the rights to its beloved catalog of Soviet cartoons, seeking to invalidate a 1992 agreement under which it transferred roughly 1,200 films to a U.S. company.
The state-run studio has filed a suit in the Moscow Arbitration Court seeking to cancel its contract with California-based Films by Jove. Soyuzmultfilm, whose creations include “Hedgehog in the Fog” and the Russian version of “Winnie the Pooh,” has argued that the deal was invalid because an unauthorized employee signed off on the sale.
Soyuzmultfilm almost immediately began seeking to regain control of the cartoons, and in 1994, the U.S. firm agreed to return about half the collection, leaving it with 547 titles.
But Films by Jove agreed to sell the rights to the “Golden Collection,” which also includes the iconic “Cheburashka” and “Mowgli” cartoons, for an undisclosed sum to Metalloinvest owner Alisher Usmanov in August 2007.
The billionaire donated the collection to the state-run children’s channel Bibigon in September 2007.
The purchase included “the entirety of intellectual property that the owner [Films by Jove] had purchased in 1992 and 1994 from Soyuzmultfilm,” Metalloinvest’s press service told Interfax at the time.
“Since then, nothing has changed. Mr. Usmanov has no relation to the collection at this point,” a spokesman for Usmanov’s metals holding told The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Soyuzmultfilm declined to elaborate on its expectations from the court hearing or comment on why it continued to pursue Films by Jove in court.
“It would be incorrect to comment on the hearing before its completion,” a spokesperson told The St. Petersburg Times.
Joan Borsten, who founded Films by Jove with her husband, actor and director Oleg Vidov, told The St. Petersburg Times in 2007 that they were “out of the Russian animation business.”
They could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
By the time of the sale, the couple had already gone through the ups and downs of the Russian and U.S. legal systems, defending their millions of dollars of investment to restore parts of the collection.
Russia’s Supreme Arbitration Court overturned the decisions of lower courts and gave the rights for the cartoon collection to Soyuzmultfilm in 2001, but U.S. courts backed Vidov and Borsten’s claims to the collection.
“The Americans found the agreement valid to the best of my knowledge. Even if the Russian court rules that the contract is invalid, it would be really difficult to enforce this decision in the U.S.,” said Denis Voyevodin, a partner at the Salans law firm.
“In this situation, the statute of limitations may become an issue. The case has been dragging on since 1992,” he said.
TITLE: July Car Sales Surge 50% on Clunkers
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Countrywide car sales jumped 50 percent year-on-year in July, making Russia the third-largest European auto market, thanks in large part to the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, a report said Tuesday.
Motorists snapped up a total of 161,100 vehicles in July, catapulting Russia from its previous fifth place in Europe in terms of market size, market research agency Avtostat said in the report. Sales were 107,841 in July last year.
Russia currently lags behind Germany, with sales of 237,500 cars, and France, with 169,800, the report said. Sales in Germany and France dipped by 30 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively, it said.
Italy ranks as No. 4, while Britain is fifth.
Overall, the European car market declined by 16.9 percent in July, compared with a year earlier, the report said. Russia had been on track to surpass Germany for the No. 1 spot in 2008, but fell far behind as the economic crisis took hold in the fall of that year.
Russia’s higher status stems from the seasonal decline in sales in Europe as well as the successful implementation of the government’s cash-for-clunkers program that started in March, Avtostat said.
“In Russia, the cash-for-clunkers program is in full swing,” said Sergei Udalov, deputy director of Avtostat.
People rushed to make use of the government’s rebates to trade in their used cars for new models because they saw that the government support drove the prices up, Udalov said.
TITLE: Sistema to Tap Rakhimov For Board Job at Bashneft
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Derbilova, Natalya Kostenko and Dmitry Simakov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Murtaza Rakhimov, who recently resigned his post of president of Bashkortostan, will help holding company Sistema manage Bashneft as part of the oil producer’s board of directors.
Two executives at Sistema and a source close to the oil company told Vedomosti about the coming election of Rakhimov to Bashneft’s board of directors. One of the sources said Rakhimov could become deputy chair of the board.
Rakhimov has already agreed to the election and gotten approval from federal authorities, another source said. Sistema owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov has gotten the approval of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, said a source in the presidential administration.
Vedomosti’s sources did not say when a new board of directors would be elected to Bashneft. To do so, an extraordinary shareholders meeting must be called, and that requires at least 70 days.
There is nothing personal or political in this appointment, one of the sources said. This is a person who participated in the creation of the republic’s oil-refining complex and led the region for a long time, he said, adding that it would have been stupid to miss this opportunity.
Rakhimov worked in the Ufimsky refinery for 34 years, reaching the rank of chief executive of the enterprise. After becoming president of the republic, he united all the fuel and energy companies into a single holding, control over which was thought to be wielded by his son Ural.
Federal authorities several times tried to take control of the holding, Bashkirsky Kapital, away from the Rakhimovs.
In 2003, the Audit Chamber called the privatization of Bashkortostan’s energy assets an “unprecedented theft of assets from federal ownership.” Within two years, Rakhimov gave an order to return his stock in Bashneft and Bashkirenergo to state ownership.
Ultimately, a peaceful resolution was reached with Bashkirsky Kapital. In 2006, the Federal Tax Service filed a suit calling for the holding’s stock in the Bashkir energy companies, but to no effect.
The legal proceedings surrounding the Bashkir assets were what helped Sistema gain control of Bashneft. In 2005, Sistema purchased blocking stakes in several Bashkir energy assets and last year gained control over them, after which Bashneft became the main company of the holding.
Officials in the presidential administration said the Kremlin views Rakhimov’s upcoming election as a sign of gratitude on the part of Yevtushenkov for Rakhimov’s agreement to sell the Bashkir energy assets to Sistema.
It recently became clear that Rakhimov would not stay on as adviser to the new Bashkir president, Rustem Khamitov. Rakhimov has lost his office in the administration building, a Kremlin and a Bashkortostan government official said.
TITLE: Thawing the Frozen Conflict in Transdnestr
AUTHOR: By Lyndon Allin and Matthew Rojansky
TEXT: The “frozen conflicts” in the post-Soviet space have largely lived up to their name over the past two decades. Two years ago, Russian intervention brought one set of conflicts — Georgia’s disputes with separatist regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia — to a dangerous boiling point. But recently, Russia has played a different, potentially positive role in warming a frozen conflict between Moldova and its breakaway region of Transdnestr. This means that there is a unique opportunity emerging to resolve a conflict that has implications for Russia, Europe and the United States before it enters a third decade.
Transdnestr declared its independence from Moldova during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The brief war that ensued was quickly stopped by Russian forces, which remain in the territory along with a massive Soviet-era arsenal.
Following a summit between Russia and the European Union in June, there were reports that President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the situation and that Moscow might be prepared to back a resolution of the longstanding conflict and possibly withdraw some of its forces from Transdnestr in exchange for a visa-free travel regime with Europe. This followed a meeting between Medvedev and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev in May, in which they said the conflict in Transdnestr was a top priority for both countries.
Meanwhile, the brief suspension of Russian aid payments to Transdnestr prior to Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin’s visit to Tiraspol in July may have been intended to remind the local leadership that the territory exists only with Russia’s support. What’s more, after the International Court of Justice ruled in late July that Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence was permissible under international law, Russia carefully avoided suggesting that this could be a precedent for a similar move by Transdnestr.
In short, Russia may be prepared to consider giving up its military foothold on the EU’s southeastern doorstep — and on Ukraine’s western flank — for more meaningful access to European markets. Russia now appears to recognize that its economic interests are more important than the costly projection of military power in the region. Offering a concession to European and U.S. interests in resolving this longstanding frozen conflict would strengthen Russia’s hand as it seeks economic engagement with the West and assistance with its domestic modernization agenda.
Conflict resolution is obviously a priority for cooperation between the EU and Russia. Transdnestr makes Moldova weak and less prosperous, and this presents a potential security vacuum on the border of the EU. But this is also a clear opportunity for U.S.-Russian cooperation and can take advantage of the improved atmosphere amid the “reset.” The United States wants to see stable and prosperous democracies take shape in the greater Black Sea region.
Solving the conflict over Transdnestr is the key to Moldova’s eventual integration with Europe. In turn, a thaw would help normalize and institutionalize Ukraine’s unique position between Russia and the West by increasing the security and transparency of interactions on its western border.
Moscow’s help is needed to ensure that the Russian peacekeeping mission itself is not an obstacle to a long-term resolution. Russia can play a productive role by encouraging the authorities in Transdnestr to embrace an internationalized peacekeeping force that would eventually allow the EU to shoulder most of the burden. While it may be difficult for Russia to disengage from its traditional role as Tiraspol’s exclusive patron, Russia stands to reap considerable benefits from demonstrating its commitment to behaving as a responsible stakeholder in the European security system.
It is also in the interests of both the United States and Russia to see the EU take greater initiative in addressing this challenge in its own backyard. Germany, which has invested considerable diplomatic capital in recent months, and Romania, which recently emphasized that resolving this conflict is a priority, should push the EU to speak with one voice and remind Moldovan leaders that nationalist provocations do not serve their own long-term interests in European integration. The EU can also make Moldova more attractive to residents of Transdnestr right now by finding a mechanism for visa-free travel for Moldovans to Europe.
Because Russia views the United States as its principal global counterpart and the most important potential opponent or guarantor of its interests in the post-Soviet space, Washington has a unique opportunity to make Transdnestr a priority of the bilateral presidential commission’s working group on international security. In addition, the United States is well-positioned to work with member states of the World Trade Organization, including Moldova, to lower barriers to Russia’s WTO accession as a benefit of cooperation on Transdnestr.
Capitalizing on the positive trends of recent months will require a cooperative, transparent and creative approach not only from Moldova and Transdnestr, but also from Russia, Europe and the United States. As the world remembers the violence that erupted two years ago this month in South Ossetia, it should not be forgotten that the formerly frozen conflicts in Georgia were also neglected for years as hopelessly complex and unworthy of attention by Western leaders and governments. If attention is not focused on Transdnestr in the near future, a valuable opportunity will be lost.
Lyndon Allin is a Washington-based lawyer who served as IREX embassy policy specialist in Moldova from 2008 to 2009. Matthew Rojansky is deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
TITLE: Putin’s Priorities
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The Shatursky district has the distinction of being one of the few areas in the Moscow region where not a single home or person suffered from the fires, despite the fact that the area had more dried-out peat bogs — and was thus more fire-prone — than other districts in the region.
Shatursky was spared largely because Andrei Keller, the district’s head, was one of the few administrative chiefs who took preventative measures and moved quickly and decisively when the fires broke out. Amazingly, 1,051 fires had been spotted in the district since April, yet not one of them ever spread beyond 20 hectares to 26 hectares in size. What’s more, Keller declared a state of emergency in the district as early as June 22.
This is a good illustration that in the modern world, there are no natural disasters — only social ones.
Disaster response can be gauged according to three parameters: the ability of the system to predict or anticipate the catastrophe; the ability to react to it quickly; and the ability to delegate authority to other systems if you are unable to cope with the problem yourself.
By each of these three parameters, Russia’s disaster response system failed miserably. After then-President Vladimir Putin signed the Forest Code in 2007 — which shifted the responsibility of protecting the forests from the federal government to enterprises that harvest the forest and to poorly equipped and underfinanced regional authorities — experts warned that the country would burn with the onset of the first unusually hot summer.
The authorities ignored the problem. Even after Russia was already in flames, Putin had other priorities. He took a trip to Crimea to ride a three-wheeled motorcycle with a group of bikers and to sing “Where Does the Motherland Begin?” with the 10 failed spies who had just returned after being kicked out of the United States.
The ability to delegate authority to other systems also turned out to be a bust. In the village of Barkovka in the Nizhny Novgorod region, local authorities did nothing to prevent the fires. They also threatened to bring criminal charges against villagers for trying to cut down surrounding trees, which was necessary to save their homes. This is a typical Putin-style knee-jerk reaction: Any action by the people that is not approved by the authorities is perceived as rebellious.
I would like the authorities to answer three simple questions. First, how many pregnant women live in the Moscow, Ryazan and Tver regions, and how will the toxic smog affect their unborn children? Second, how many people have died from the smoke — not the fires or heat, but the actual smoke? We know that Moscow’s morgues are overflowing with corpses, but the government has not released any solid figures on casualties. Third, how many more people will die in the next 10 to 20 years from lung cancer and other respiratory conditions because they inhaled toxic smog every day for three straight weeks?
We have not heard the government’s answers to these questions (and probaly never will as long as Putin remains in power). Instead, we are bombarded with news coverage of Putin co-piloting an airplane and personally dropping water on the fires. It is clear, however, that he couldn’t care less about the more than 50 people who were killed by the fires or the 30 million people across central Russia who were poisoned by the smog.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: chernov’s choice
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Some of Russia’s leading bands, both from St. Petersburg and Moscow, will perform at an outdoor protest concert at Pushkinskaya Ploshchad in Moscow on Sunday to support the defenders of Khimki forest — threatened by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-backed plans to build a new, paid highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
From St. Petersburg, DDT and Televizor will perform, while Moscow will be represented by Barto and Otzvuki Mu. More acts are to be confirmed.
The people defending the forest say that it’s being destroyed primarily in order to create space for elite cottages close to the planned road, as there are alternative routes for the highway that would spare the forest.
Numerous legal violations committed by the authorities have been extensively reported over the course of the three-year campaign against the plans. Some activists have beaten and arrested.
The show, which has “We all live in Khimki forest” as its slogan, is also aimed at bigger, political problems. Khimki forest has become a national issue, rather than a purely ecological problem, according to Televizor frontman Mikhail Borzykin.
“Khimki forest has become a symbol of total lawlessness and the destruction of nature, as well as an emblem of the culture and thinking of the authorities that we’ve seen over the past 10 years,” Borzykin said.
“It’s become a symbol of the gangster essence of the authorities. So we’re fighting not only for Khimki forest, but for the ecology of the Russian soul which has been polluted by the Kremlin myths.”
Although Noize MC was listed as taking part in early internet banners, the rapper had other plans for that day, his spokesman said Wednesday. The concert will start at 5 p.m.
New Zealand-born, St. Petersburg-based singer/songwriter Simon Patterson, who started to sing his songs to wider audiences earlier this month, will perform at Fish Fabrique on Saturday.
The venue’s web site says Patterson’s work has been influenced by Russian cheap wine and snacks, while his songs reference Irkutsk, cement and Polish spies. Patterson sings and plays guitar, backed by an acoustic bass player.
U.S. alt-country singer Nick Angelo will perform at Chinese Pilot Jao Da on Tuesday.
Describing himself as a “one-man band,” Angelo, who hails from Albuquerque, New Mexico, performs his own songs and, notably, a Bob Marley cover, “Three Little Birds,” though you would be hard-pressed to say it sounded like reggae.
The following week will bring The Tiger Lillies and The Real Tuesday Weld, British bands that have established a loyal following in Russia. Both will perform as part of the three-day Magerfest event, which opens with a concert by the local veteran art-rock band Auktsyon on Aug. 23.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: In the Spotlight: No Smoking
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Escaping the smog in Moscow has been everyone’s top priority this month, and show-business stars have been no exception.
Eurovision-winning pop singer Dima Bilan hissingly compared Moscow to “Chernobyl” on Twitter: “I’ve just come back from Israel, and what is going on here?” he wrote. “It’s just like Chernobyl. I’ll think about where to hide.”
“Everyone who has to live through the smog and smoke in Moscow should be paid alimony for becoming disabled,” he added.
For many pop stars, this is the traditional time to tour the Black Sea resorts, giving concerts for the hordes of vacationers — which is actually one of the main ways these celebrities make money. So it’s an ill wind.
“Morally, I am with my people,” crooner Lev Leshenko told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, calling the smog “a terrible tragedy,” although he conceded that physically he is in Sochi.
Pop singer Filipp Kirkorov told RIA-Novosti that he was “in shock” about the smog, and that he had never seen so many people where he is touring down in Crimea. “It has never been like this. Everyone is running away,” he said.
His ex-wife, pop diva Alla Pugach-yova, has left for Jurmala, Latvia, Lifenews.ru reported.
It scooped the sensational news that she has reacted to the smog by giving up smoking — a huge concession from a star who refuses to kick the habit, even while she’s getting her latest facelift. She was photographed smoking an electronic cigarette — a supposedly healthy fad that is growing in Russia.
Pugachyova is staying in the presidential suite at the resort’s most expensive hotel, where the management always turned a blind eye to her puffing away, but this time around she is smoke-free, a member of staff told the tabloid.
Meanwhile Lifenews.ru hounded Mayor Yury Luzhkov for being on vacation during the dire weather.
On Aug. 6, the newspaper sent an official request to Luzhkov’s press office, asking whether the mayor was planning to break off his holiday.
His press secretary, Sergei Tsoi, responded by telephone on Friday in a call that is recorded on the newspaper’s web site.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, arguing that the issue was in the surrounding region, and that the Moscow authorities had done everything needed to be done. He also declined to say where Luzhkov was vacationing.
Lifenews.ru posted the telephone call on its web site with the headline, “Luzhkov Does Not See Crisis in Moscow.”
This prompted Tsoi to take legal action against the news agency for slander — and Luzhkov is famed for never losing a court case.
Nevertheless, as a public relations move, it was a disaster. Luzhkov ended up breaking off his vacation — which he was spending getting treatment for a sports injury, Tsoi said.
“Of course, you did the right thing by coming back from vacation; you did it in time,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Luzhkov with a hint of menace.
Tvoi Den had a fantastic coup, and it followed up every angle on Luzhkov’s supposed callousness.
It reported that Luzhkov, known for his hobby of beekeeping, had evacuated his bees from a particularly hot spot in the Kaluga region.
“In such heat, Yury Mikhailovich could not but make sure his winged workers had comfortable hives,” it wrote in an article dripping with irony, assuring us that the bees are now cooling off amid lakes and buckwheat fields.
It also published a rather odd cartoon showing Luzhkov trying to get through the pearly gates into heaven, arguing that he rebuilt the Christ the Savior Cathedral and gave lots of money to the Orthodox Church.
“He said you can’t get into heaven, but your money will be returned,” a gatekeeper tells him.
TITLE: Finishing school
AUTHOR: By Kristina Aleksandrova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Seven portraits of young noblewomen who studied at the Smolny Institute painted more than 230 years ago go on display Friday at the State Russian Museum. The exhibition, titled “Smolyanki,” is dedicated to the 275th anniversary of the birth of their creator, the artist Dmitry Levitsky.
All of the portraits were painted at the request of Catherine the Great, who founded the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens in 1764. According to the empress’s decree, the objective was to raise “educated women, good mothers, and useful members of family and society.” Although the stated aim of the institute was to bring girls up “in beauty and happiness,” Russia’s first educational institution for women was famous for its strict discipline. Students had to get up at 6 a.m. and had virtually no free time. They were accompanied everywhere by schoolmistresses, and there was no opportunity for them to escape from Smolny — all the parents signed a document promising that they wouldn’t take their child home for 12 years.
Under Catherine the Great, the girls could only see their parents from the other side of a latticed screen. At the end of their studies, an exam was taken, after which most of the young noblewomen went on to become maids of honor at the imperial court.
Catherine wanted to show off her first students to high society, and with this aim in mind, she arranged for them to go for a walk around the Summer Gardens in 1773. Many people came to see the young women, who reportedly behaved modestly, and won over their audience. The empress was so proud that she ordered the painter Levitsky to create portraits of the institute’s most eminent students.
The artist depicted the girls in stage costumes, marking the beginning of a new genre in art — the “role portrait.” Levitsky didn’t want to simply copy the subjects’ faces; his portraits tell the story of heroines who exist both in theatrical appearances and in their own secluded reality.
All of the models are portrayed in action: playing the harp, dancing or moving in some other way. Some critics say the portraits can be considered to be allegorical, but according to Grigory Goldovsky, head of Russian painting from the 18th to 19th centuries at the Russian Museum, the portraits are “evidence of the epoch.”
When viewed as a collection, the portraits complement each other. Levitsky lowered the horizon line, because he wanted spectators to see the figures from that viewpoint — just as the audience in the stalls sees actors on the stage. All the models are drawn close to the edge of the canvas to intensify the effect.
The portraits were created with the help of Ivan Betskoy, Catherine’s personal secretary and advisor, who was also instrumental in the founding of the Smolny Institute. He was passionately in love with one of the students, Glafira Alymova, who is luxuriously depicted on her portrait. Although she is shown wearing regular parade dress, she has multiple accessories, including large pearls in her hair.
Another interesting portrait shows Yekaterina Khrushchova and Yekaterina Khovanskaya, who are depicted performing a scene from the pastoral opera “Le caprice amoureux, ou Ninette a la cour.” Khrushchova, dressed as a man, plays the role of shepherd.
In another painting, Yekaterina Nelidova, the future favorite of Tsar Paul I, dances a minuet. The poet and dramatist Ivan Dolgorukov wrote: “The girl is clever, but her face is rather ugly, with noble bearing, but short, and black as a bug. But she is so clever and kind that everybody who talks to her forgets that she is ugly.”
The completed portraits were moved to Peterhof Palace, where they were hung in the Empress’s bedroom. During the process of assembling the original collection of the Russian Museum in the late 19th century, the museum’s committee repeatedly asked the imperial family to donate the portraits, but the answer was always no. Only after the February Revolution were the portraits added to the museum’s other exhibits.
During their long history, the “Smolyanki” have undergone considerable change. Additions have been made to some of the portraits at various times. In the 19th century, for example, the paintings were considered too bright. The colors didn’t correspond to prevailing fashion, so the portraits were covered with yellow lacquer.
“Restoration started about five years ago,” said Goldovsky. “Of course, the paintings had a lot of signs of previous restorations, which had not always been done professionally. As well as various invasions, the portraits have also suffered some losses.”
The main task of the restorers was to remove all the layers that had been added to the originals. The portrait of Glafira Alymova, for example, revealed a lot of additional touches that didn’t match the artist’s tones. After restoring the portrait to its original appearance, the composition elements became visible.
Visitors can trace the whole story of the restoration of the “Smolyanki” at the exhibition.
“A lot of photos and videos showing the [restoration] process are exhibited, as well as historical documents,” said Goldovsky.
“Smolyanki. Dmitry Levitsky” opens Friday in the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum. 2 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova. Tel: 595-42-48.
M: Nevsky Prospekt.
TITLE: Caving in
AUTHOR: By Tobias Kuehne
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The abbreviation D.F.M. may be known to some as a group of Moscow radio stations that play mostly dance, R’n’B and Hip Hop. As we descended down the stairs into the subterranean D.F.M., then, we were expecting a flamboyant atmosphere, extravagant lighting and assertive music.
Our expectations were misguided. Instead of a voguish interior and a peppy atmosphere, D.F.M. — subtitled “Art Bar” — offered a simple, calm ambiance in warm orange and dark brown, interspersed with red brick arches across the low ceiling. Instead of windows, old Russian heaters adorned the basement walls of the cozy bar area, in which three tables offered seating for 15 people, and barstools for another six. Retro lamps were hanging from the ceiling, while astutely hidden halogen lamps provided just the right amount of lighting to prevent the establishment from appearing like a grotto. Jazz music supplemented D.F.M.’s general coziness, while also engendering the hypothesis that its name was completely divorced from any connection to the Moscow radio network (only later did we discern an R. Kelly song, but by that time we ascribed this correspondence to chance). Our young waitress was also unable to enlighten us on the thinking behind the bar’s name, nor did she seem to care.
We thus decided to abandon the mystery of D.F.M.’s etymology and directed our attention to the menu. Main courses such as “Hungry Childhood” (beef steak with cognac, 465 rubles, $15) and “Bourgeois Happiness” (beef, grilled vegetables, eggplant, pepper, garlic, parsley, 460 rubles, $15) caused a few chuckles, while the menu subsections “pizza to beer” and “beer snacks” induced much scratching of heads. These touches on the menu, as well as the expansive beverage menu (offering tea, coffee, beer, wine, vodka, gin, rum, cognac and cocktails) and the advertised live music (every Friday at 9 p.m.), reminded us that D.F.M. is primarily an “Art Bar” that happens to offer food.
The appetizers — chicken julienne (150 rubles, $5) and a seasoned salad (295 rubles, $9.50) — reinforced this hypothesis. The chicken julienne was described as “preserved champignons, onion, boiled chicken, cream, gouda.” The “preserved” must have applied to all of its constituents, and was especially evident in the chicken’s fibrousness and tenacity. As a result, the chicken greedily absorbed all of the dish’s moisture, despite the fact that it was smothered in cream and melted cheese. The salad (“boiled chicken breast, tomatoes, fresh cucumber, apples, mayo, walnut”) suffered from a similar problem, although the cucumbers and apples came as something of a relief.
A stroll about the restaurant provided some diversion from this experience and disclosed the main hall (seating 40) on one side of the bar area, and D.F.M.’s connection to the adjacent restaurant Pizzissimo with its intricate dungeons on the other.
The main courses continued where the starters had left off. The pepper steak (355 rubles, $11.50), which was all too simply just a flat slice of beef covered in a creamy sauce and topped with green peppercorns, as well as the grilled salmon (350 rubles, $10.50), were almost a match for the dryness to the starters’ chicken. To combat their aridity, we made liberal use of sauce and lemons, respectively. As the pepper steak came without a side, we ordered fries with it. There have been better fries. At McDonald’s, for example.
The service was similarly disenchanting. The waitress was both oblivious and overwhelmed, despite the fact that we were the only guests for most of the meal. Orders were jumbled, signals ignored and plates not taken away, even when the next course was served. After the main course, there were so many empty plates on the table that we were at a loss as to where to put our ice cream bowl, which the waitress had slyly managed to hand to us without having to find a clear space.
All that notwithstanding, the ice cream sorbet (50 rubles, $1.60 per scoop) had a rich, authentic taste and a delicious melt that made the outside taste like juice and inside like a frozen fruit. Unfortunately, the ice cream menu spoiled this last chance of redemption for D.F.M.: The ice cream came from the adjacent Pizzissimo.
TITLE: Volunteers Take Wildfires Into Their Own Hands
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: YUVINO, Ryazan Region — Maria Gladchenko was looking forward to her vacation — a rafting trip down a river in Marii-El. Instead, along with a dozen other volunteers, she found herself hauling 20 liters of water around a charred pine forest in the Ryazan region.
“My vacation has been spoiled because Marii-El is on fire,” Gladchenko said. “So I decided to do something about the fires here.”
With little information about the scope of Russian wildfires on the main, state-controlled television channels, a sense of doom and urgency dawned on most Muscovites only when the wind carried smoke from the Ryazan and Vladimir regions into the capital, as it did last Sunday.
But a grassroots campaign to direct donations to affected regions and to exchange information about the real state of affairs has been under way for the past two weeks, with hundreds of trucks and volunteers like Gladchenko distributing supplies and working to prevent wildfires from reaching more villages.
A promise by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu to bring the fires under control within a week in the Moscow region infuriates firefighters and volunteers, who have been battling seemingly unquenchable fires that quickly spread over dry forests and fields during this summer’s record heat wave.
Shoigu said Aug. 8 that fires in the Moscow region would be eliminated in seven days. But on Sunday, when a week had passed, the fires were still raging. The town of Noginsk resorted to street-cleaning trucks to stop the flames within just 1,500 meters of its buildings, local media reported. One volunteer, who was helping out firefighters by creating a fire line with a tractor, died in the Lukhovitsy district on Sunday after he failed to escape the flames.
“If the rain pours nonstop for seven days in a row, the fires could probably be suppressed. But otherwise there is no chance,” said firefighter Konstantin as he hosed down burning pine trees to stop the flames from going up into the crowns.
A brief thunderstorm around the village of Yuvino, where Konstantin is based, did not quench the flames but only temporarily lowered some of the bigger ones. Until the weather shifts in the fall, the only hope is to push fires back from villages, not put them out, firefighters said.
Konstantin together with eight other professional firefighters arrived from the Tula region to Yuvino, a village of 80 houses surrounded by the pine forests of the Meshchersky National Park. The firefighters, who have experience in extinguishing flaming buildings, do not normally work in forests. The night before, a 40-meter-high wall of fire nearly engulfed Yuvino, together with the firefighters and several residents who chose not to evacuate, they recalled. They were saved by a fortunate change in wind direction.
Many weeks with no rain have left the naturally moist forest bone-dry. Stepping on what was once moss turns it into dust. A mere spark ignites the biomass like gunpowder.
“It’s not a forest; it’s a disaster!” said Sergei, a lieutenant colonel in charge of the firefighters in Yuvino.
Sergei and other professional firefighters interviewed for this story spoke on condition that their last names be withheld, citing fears of a conflict with their superiors. While some did not want to be seen criticizing the authorities, one firefighter, bare-chested and wearing charcoal-stained pants, said he just did not want to get into trouble for not donning his firefighting uniform. “It’s too hot,” he said.
With two firetrucks at Sergei’s disposal, he has no pump to fill them up. He also lacks tents, so the firefighters have to sleep on the ground or on top of the trucks, covering themselves with their jackets. The bulky trucks cannot drive close to the forest fire, and the two fire hoses do not reach far enough into the forest from the road. With power lines to Yuvino toppled by falling trees, the firefighters were cut off from the outside world for some time after their cell phone batteries died. Volunteers later provided a generator.
Volunteers, widely snubbed by professional firefighters because of their lack of experience, have saved several villages by using basic shovels and buckets of water and sand. Even after a larger fire is suppressed with a fire hose, the underbrush often continues to burn, and a gust of wind can ignite it into a blaze once again. Using shovels and water backpacks, volunteers in Yuvino isolated burning groundcover, cleared a fire line around the village, and lent firefighters a pump to fill their trucks.
“When the fires just started, everybody thought of helping the victims. Nobody thought that the firefighters needed help because it is common knowledge that a firefighter arrives at the scene on a firetruck with a fire pump and fully equipped,” said Igor Chersky, a radio host and LiveJournal blogger whose blog has become a coordination center of sorts for volunteers.
“But after a few trips were made to deliver donations, it became clear that the firefighters had nothing but a few rusty trucks, not even food,” he said. “That changed our whole approach. Now the Internet is full of requests for fire hoses and other equipment.”
Supply and demand is coordinated through a few charity organizations and a LiveJournal community called pozar_ru, which is filled with urgent calls for help and drivers offering to deliver supplies as far from Moscow as the Voronezh region.
By Monday, almost 18 million rubles ($590,000), along with about 200 tons of goods, had been donated to the Synodal department of the Russian Orthodox Church, which oversees charity collection and whose church on Nikoloyamskaya Ulitsa in Moscow has become the city’s largest coordination center for donations and volunteers. Some of the money has already been used to buy fire hoses, face masks, pumps and fire extinguishers, it said on its web site, Miloserdie.ru.
About 170 people volunteer daily on Nikoloyamskaya, sorting through donated goods and supplies, sending out several trucks carrying donations every day and managing the process, which was set up within days of the first call for donations on July 31.
Some 100 volunteers rushed about on a recent afternoon, loading and unloading cars and directing food, water bottles, medicine and other donations to mounting piles on the premises. The volunteer coordinator gestured directions while holding on to a clipboard with the sign, “I have lost my voice.”
Valeria, a journalist in Moscow, said she first stopped by on Aug. 4 and has ended up coming almost every day.
“I stopped by my job yesterday, but as long as I turn in all the work they don’t care that I am gone,” she said in an interview, pausing every 30 seconds to take phone calls with one hand and searching for information on the Internet about a burned-down village in the Lipetsk region with the other.
“Ten or 12 families are homeless, and their church burned down,” she said. “We sent a group of volunteers who wanted to help put out the fire, and they have disappeared for the past three days. Now I am trying to find the head of the village.”
In a nearly complete information vacuum regarding the location and gravity of fires, coordinators in Moscow have had to rely on information handpicked by people who have gone to the regions with deliveries.
“Sometimes you have three sources who tell you three different stories,” Valeria said, so volunteers have been sent on reconnaissance missions to locate “decent local coordinators” and compile lists of the precise needs of fire victims.
The lack of organization and coordination is apparent.
On Friday, Emergency Situations Ministry representative Alexander Dudnikov, whose phone number was published on the ministry web site as a contact for volunteers, told The Moscow Times that volunteers were no longer needed in the Moscow region because “the threat has passed.” The next day, the ministry announced in a statement that “help is still needed.”
Curiously, potential volunteers calling the Emergency Situations Ministry’s fire hotline have been directed to Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth movement, bloggers said. Nashi confirmed on Friday that it had called the ministry and offered to help. “We provided a bus that our activists and other volunteers can use to reach the affected places,” said Maria Pititsina, a Nashi member who arranged the agreement with the ministry.
Chersky said that while he had seen Nashi activists in scorched villages such as Laskovsky, in the Ryazan region, he doubted that they were actually providing meaningful help. “They came there wearing shorts and flip-flops, and when the cars drove up bringing donations, they came by and asked to hand the donations out,” he said.
TITLE: World Ramps Up Aid to Pakistan
AUTHOR: By Nahal Toosi
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: GHAZI AIR BASE, Pakistan — The world ramped up assistance to flood-ravaged Pakistan on Thursday three weeks after the crisis began, and U.S. Sen. John Kerry said Washington did not want Islamist extremists to come out of the disaster stronger.
The U.S., Germany and Saudi Arabia all announced new pledges of aid, while Japan said it would send helicopters to help distribute food, water and medicine. The Asian Development Bank said it would redirect $2 billion of existing and planned loans for reconstruction.
“If we don’t do it quickly, if we don’t do it well, what will the Pakistani people think,” said Juan Miranda, the bank’s director general for Central and West Asia. “We have to put every road and every bridge back into the shape where they should be.”
The floods have affected 20 million people and about one-fifth of Pakistan’s territory, straining its civilian government as it also struggles against al-Qaida and Taliban violence. Aid groups and the United Nations have complained foreign donors have not been quick or generous enough given the scale of the disaster.
The United States has deployed 18 army helicopters to hard-hit areas and given other aid worth $90 million.
Kerry, who is visiting Pakistan to see the flood damage, said that would increase to $150 million. The figure is expected to be announced at a UN General Assembly meeting in New York on Thursday.
Saudi Arabia said it would donate $80 million to Pakistan, the official Saudi Press Agency reported, making it one of the largest donors. The country has for years sought to project its influence in Pakistan and has funded the spread of hardline Islamic theology there.
Pakistan is vital for America’s strategic goals of defeating militancy and stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan so its troops can one day withdraw. Before the floods, Washington had already committed to spending $7.5 billion over the next five years in Pakistan.
The UN children’s fund said Pakistan will need international aid for several months to cope with the flood disaster, and relief workers urgently need cash donations, said Daniel Toole UNICEF’s regional director for South Asia.
Toole said on Thursday parts of the country may remain flooded even after the rain stops and stagnant water increases the risk of malaria, diarrhea and cholera. UNICEF expects to raise its original appeal of $47 million fivefold to meet the increased needs, he said.
Recovering from the floods is likely to dominate the agenda of Pakistan’s army and government in coming months.
The state has been criticized for failing to respond quickly enough, and Islamist charities — at least one of which has alleged links to terrorism — have been active in the flood-hit areas. There are also concerns the extent of the suffering could stoke social unrest and lead to political instability that may impact Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban.
Kerry told reporters “we don’t want additional jihadists, extremists coming out of a crisis.”
He was speaking at Ghazi Air Base, a Pakistan military facility in the country’s northwest, after meeting U.S. military personnel taking part in helicopter relief missions.
TITLE: Mexican Mayor Found Dead 3 Days After Kidnap
AUTHOR: By Mark Walsh
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: MONTERREY, Mexico — The kidnapped mayor of a northern Mexican town was found dead Wednesday, extending a rash of deadly attacks on political figures in an area besieged by drug gang battles.
Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos’ body was found near a waterfall outside his town, a popular weekend getaway for residents of the industrial city of Monterrey, said Nuevo Leon state attorney general Alejandro Garza y Garza.
Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora traveled to Monterrey and pledged that the army would begin joint patrols with police in “conflictive neighborhoods” in the area.
Police have not determined a motive in the killing, but it bore the hallmarks of drug cartels waging vicious turf battles in northeastern Mexico: Cavazos’ hands were bound and his head was wrapped in tape.
Garza y Garza suggested it was a drug gang hit, saying Cavazos participated in state security meetings and was “showing his face in the fight against organized crime.”
However, Cavazos had not made any dramatic security decisions since taking office in November 2009, said Jorge Santiago Flores, the local president of the mayor’s National Action Party. He said it remains a mystery why anyone would want to kill Cavazos.
“He was a very kind person. He was a man who worked a lot in the community and always helped those in need, donating medicine and helping people who asked,” Flores said.
Gov. Rodrigo Medina appealed to the federal government to send reinforcements to the state and in a full-page newspaper ad Wednesday, Nuevo Leon business leaders called on authorities to act together to reduce insecurity in the region.
The ad by the CAINTRA chamber of commerce called for three army divisions and a division of the marines to be sent to the state. Blake Mora said there would be reinforcements, but did not set a specific number.
Cavazos, 38, was kidnapped from his home Sunday night by 15 armed men wearing uniforms from a defunct federal police force, a tactic frequently used by Mexico’s drug gangs.
Garza y Garza said the gunmen arrived in seven vehicles with police patrol lights. When Cavazos and his security guard went to see what was going on, the assailants forced them into the cars.
The security guard was driven around for about 15 minutes and released unharmed by the side of a road, Garza y Garza said. The guard then reported the kidnapping to police.
President Felipe Calderon, who belongs to the National Action Party, sent Blake Mora to Monterrey to meet with Medina and draw up security plans.
The region has been besieged by drug gang fighting, including a new war between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas gang of hit men.
Mexico’s drug gang violence has surged since Calderon intensified the fight against traffickers in late 2006, deploying thousands of troops and federal police to root out cartels from their strongholds.
More than 28,000 people have since been killed in the country’s drug war. The government says most are victims of cartel infighting. But assassinations of police, government officials and politicians have also increased.
In June, gunmen ambushed and killed the leading gubernatorial candidate for Tamaulipas state, which neighbors Nuevo Leon, a week before the elections. A mayoral candidate in Tamaulipas was killed in May.
A total of 191 soldiers have been killed fighting drug gangs between December 2006 and Aug. 1, 2010, according to a list of names on a wall of a Defense Department anti-narcotics museum. Reporters saw the list Wednesday during a tour of the museum — the first time the government has made the number public. Forty-three of the soldiers killed were officers.
The list also includes 503 military personnel killed in thirty years between 2006 and 1976, when the army formally started taking part in anti-drug efforts.
Last week, the government said 2,076 police have been killed since December 2006.
The army also allowed journalists to tour the armed forces’ anti-drug museum, in which artifacts seized from drug traffickers are displayed. They include a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted cellular telephone that allegedly belonged to Zetas drug gang member Daniel Perez Rojas, currently imprisoned in Guatemala.
TITLE: Blast In Urumqi Kills Seven, 14 Injured
AUTHOR: By Isolda Morillo
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: URUMQI, China — A bomb attack killed seven people and wounded 14 Thursday in China’s far west region of Xinjiang, an area beset by ethnic conflict and separatist violence.
The target of the attack wasn’t known, although an overseas activist for the region’s native Uighur ethnic group said the victims included members of the security forces.
The blast went off after a man drove a three-wheeled vehicle laden with explosives into a crowd of people in a suburb in Aksu city in southwestern Xinjiang, said Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government.
“Police say it was an intentional act because the suspect was carrying explosive devices,” Hou told a hastily arranged news conference in the regional capital of Urumqi, about 650 kilometers from Aksu.
She said the suspect, who was injured, was captured immediately.
Some of the wounded were in serious condition. “The casualties are innocent civilians of different ethnic minority backgrounds,” she said.
Xinjiang has been the site of ethnic conflict in recent years, including riots last summer when long-standing tensions between the Turkic Muslim Uighurs and China’s majority Han flared into open violence in Urumqi. The government said 197 people were killed, while hundreds of people were arrested and about two dozen sentenced to death. Many other Uighurs remain unaccounted for and are believed to be in custody.
While the riots marked China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, Xinjiang has seen a series of bombings and other violence, including attacks on security forces around the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The government also says it has broken up several groups intent on carrying out attacks, including a bomb-making operation near Aksu in 2009 and a gang last month that it said was linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a banned militant organization advocating independence for Xinjiang.
Anti-government sentiments among Uighurs are fed by the ruling Communist Party’s heavy-handed controls over their language, culture and Islamic faith, along with resentment of Chinese migrants and a perception that they are being favored economically to the detriment of Xinjiang’s native population.
The government claims attacks are often planned by exile Uighurs overseas, including across the border in Central Asia or Pakistan.
TITLE: Radioactive Boar Numbers Rising In Germany
AUTHOR: By Verena Schmitt-Roschmann
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: BERLIN — It was a big shot. A big hog. And a big disappointment.
When Georg van Bebber hauled back his wild boar from Ebersberg forest near Munich after a day of hunting, he was exhilarated about his impressive prey.
But before he could take it home, a Geiger counter showed a problem: The boar’s meat was radioactive to an extent considered potentially dangerous for consumption. It needed to be thrown out and burnt.
“I really would have liked to have this boar,” van Bebber said when he recounted the incident in a telephone interview from Bavaria.
Almost a quarter century after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, its fallout is still a hot topic in some German regions, where thousands of boars shot by hunters still turn up with excessive levels of radioactivity. In fact, the numbers are higher than ever before.
The total compensation the German government paid last year for the discarded contaminated meat shot up to a record sum of 425,000 euros (about $558,000), from only about 25,000 euros ten years ago, according to the Federal Environment Ministry in Berlin.