SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1608 (69), Friday, September 10, 2010
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TITLE: Pilots Praised as Heroes After Crash Landing
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Seventy-two passengers settled into their seats as their Tu-154 jet lifted off the runway of the Sakha republic’s Polyarny Airport for a five-hour flight to Moscow.
But 3 1/2 hours later, the plane suffered an electrical failure and made a remarkable emergency landing at an unmapped, abandoned military airfield in the Komi republic — with no injuries among the passengers and nine crew members.
In fact, rescuers found some of the passengers foraging for mushrooms in the taiga forest where the plane had come to a stop after overrunning the short runway, said Pyotr Dityatev, head of the Izhma district, where the airfield is located.
“I saw from a distance how it was landing quietly. The speed was quite high,” Dityatev said of the plane.
“When we arrived at the scene, the captain came out and said no one was hurt,” he said Wednesday by telephone from the village of Izhma.
The plane’s four pilots are being praised as heroes, and the Federal Air Transportation Agency, which oversees civil aircraft, is considering presenting them with awards, RIA-Novosti reported.
The aging Soviet-built Tu-154, operated by Alrosa airlines, took off from Polyarny Airport near the town of Udachny at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a regular flight to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.
Just over halfway through the flight, the plane began to shake in what passengers thought was light turbulence.
“We were flying and everything was fine,” passenger Tatyana Plavdis said in an interview with Rossia television.
She said that after the plane began shaking, a pilot asked the passengers to prepare for an emergency landing.
What the passengers were not told was that the plane’s electrical systems had failed, leading to a loss of navigation devices and fuel pumps, crash investigators said.
But the cockpit crew, headed by pilot Yevgeny Novosyolov, 41, managed to dump the fuel and somehow spot the Izhma military airfield, which was abandoned 12 years ago and is not listed on the latest maps.
Without electrical systems, the pilots had no radio support as they prepared to land, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.
With the passengers and flight attendants ducking down in their seats in crash positions, the plane quickly overran the short, 1,400-meter runway and plowed about 180 meters into the taiga forest of pine and birch trees before grinding to a halt.
No one was injured in the incident, and the aircraft only sustained minor damage, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. But Gazeta.ru said it was unclear whether it would be possible to get the plane out of the forest.
“We didn’t even have time to get frightened. Only when we got out and saw the mowed-down field, then it was scary,” passenger Alexei Grishin told Rossia after arriving in Moscow.
The passengers, including three children and one pregnant woman, slid down emergency chutes and calmly bided their time, waiting for rescuers.
Dityatev, the official from Izhma, located 400 kilometers northwest of Syktyvkar, the capital of Komi republic, said he was surprised to see some of them hunting for mushrooms, a popular Russian pastime.
The passengers were taken to the village, fed and provided with beds for the night, he said.
Several helicopters were dispatched to take the passengers to Sakha’s Ukhta Airport on Tuesday.
Only one couple chose to take a train to Moscow, while the rest of the passengers flew to Domodedovo on another Tu-154.
A preliminary investigation has found that an unspecified disruption to the plane’s power supply caused the electrical failure, prosecutors said.
Data from the plane’s black boxes were not made public on Wednesday.
The Alrosa airline is owned by the state diamond monopoly Alrosa.
An airline representative, Igor Zakharov, said the airline had no clear answers about what had prompted the electrical failure and was waiting for the results of the government’s investigation.
Zakharov praised the pilots’ teamwork and professional skills, saying the landing had been very difficult.
“In such circumstances, few can land such a heavy aircraft at an absolutely unprepared airfield,” Zakharov said by telephone.
“There might have been a bit of luck, too,” he said.
Valentin Dudin, a former pilot and an expert in aviation security, said the landing was a rare but not unique event.
In January 2009, an Airbus crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York with 155 people on board and no casualties.
Dudin said the Tu-154 crew was lucky that the plane landed on small taiga trees.
“If there had been bigger and harder trees, the aircraft would have been chopped up — like what happened with the Polish plane,” he said, referring to the Tu-154 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people in a forest near Smolensk in April.

TITLE: Design Bureaus To Pitch Zoo Plans
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A spacious new zoo looks set to be built at the Yuntolovsky National Reserve Park to the northwest of the city by 2014. Three respected design bureaus, including Beckmann-N’Thepe (France), Amusement Logic (Spain) and Studio 17 (Russia) have been commissioned by City Hall to develop their concepts for the new zoo. A public exhibition of the projects will be held in the middle of December. By the end of December, Governor Valentina Matviyenko is expected to make a final choice on the winning design.
The costs of the new projects would amount to at least 7 billion rubles ($227 million) and may reach 9 billion rubles ($292 million), according to the estimates of Yury Mityurev, the city’s chief architect. At least half of the money will come from the federal budget, while the rest of the costs will be met by the local government.
Irina Skiba, the director of the Leningrad Zoo, located in the center of St. Petersburg, with more than 600,000 visitors annually, said its current historic site in the Alexandrovsky Gardens on the Petrograd Side will be kept to accommodate smaller animals. “The new zoo will be more like a park, making a home for elephants, pandas and other large and exotic animals,” Skiba said. “Because of its small size, our zoo has not had the chance to purchase such large animals as elephants or rhinos for a very long time, more than 30 years. Our conditions simply aren’t up to it.”
It is expected that the new zoo in Yuntolovo will cover a total area of almost 300 hectares and would boast up 900 species. The size of the current zoo is limited to modest 7.5 hectares.
According to Skiba, City Hall would not have to spend money on the new exotic animals as they are expected to be given to the new zoo as presents from other cities. “Exchanging such presents is common between zoos,” she explained. “Besides, elephants, for instance, are not as pricey as one might think: the market price for an elephant is just under 10,000 euros.”
Anton Gubankov, head of City Hall’s Culture Committee, said the annual budget of the current zoo — fully provided for by the state — amounts to around 60 million rubles ($2 million).
The idea of providing St.Petersburg with a new zoo emerged more over a century ago, but has so far failed to take shape. In the past 136 years, there have been more than five attempts to move the zoo or close it down, and all have come to nothing. The first attempt failed as a result of the start of the First World War, while the last, 
led by the city’s governor at the time, Vladimir Yakovlev, in 2001, revealed at conflict of interests arising from Irina Yakovleva’s [then the governor’s wife] tireless lobbying to move the zoo.
At issue were plans by the Zoosad Fund — under the patronage of Irina Yakovleva — to relocate the zoo and its 2,000 animals to the more verdant environs of the Dolgoye Lake district in the far northwest of the city. 
The Zoosad charitable fund was created by gubernatorial decree in August 1996 — two months after Yakovlev defeated the late Anatoly Sobchak for the city’s top post — with the mission of attracting investment to the perpetually ailing zoo. 
In August 1996, shortly after Zoosad’s foundation, Yakovlev vowed to pour money into the zoo at its current location and even import an elephant to make it, as he said at the time, a “real zoo.”
Besides a critical lack of funding to build a new zoo, another factor that prevented the plan from taking shape was the support of the general public for the zoo in its current location and the stubborness of the zoo itself, which resisted the move.
A poll of 2,000 visitors conducted by the zoo in 2001, during the last attempt to move the zoo, indicated that more than 90 percent of those questioned wanted the current zoo to remain in its current location, even if a new zoo were eventually to be built. 83 percent of respondents said any money raised should simply be spent on refurbishing the old zoo.

TITLE: Suicide Bomber Kills 16 At Market
AUTHOR: By Dina Teziyeva
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia — A suicide bomber killed at least 16 people and injured 100 Thursday at a market in the Russian Caucasus, the deadliest militant strike for months in the troubled region.
Officials said the blast in the city of Vladikavkaz was caused by a suicide bomber who drove up to a local market in an explosives-packed car and whose headless body was later discovered.
The bomb, stuffed with metal bolts and metal bars, created carnage around the busy market just before lunch, reducing several cars to wreckage and shattering windows of nearby buildings.
Half-naked charred corpses with disfigured faces were laid out on stretchers amid the remnants of tomatoes and melons from fruit stalls as people wept looking for their loved ones.
“A headless man was sitting in a car and I realized that it was probably terrorists,” Zhanna Margiyeva, an office worker who went to the market during lunchtime, said through tears.
“I am scared. My kid uses public transportation every day. This can happen to any of us any time.”
Officials warned the death 
toll was likely to go up as many of the injured were in a critical condition.
The attack in the capital of the mainly Christian region of North Ossetia was the latest strike to hit the Russian Caucasus, plagued by an Islamist insurgency that has claimed scores of lives in the past months.
President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to do everything to track down those behind the bombing.
“We will do everything to capture these monsters... these bastards, who carried out a terrorist act on ordinary people,” Medvedev said. “We will do everything to find and punish them.”
The death toll rose to 16 after an 18-month-old toddler died of his injuries, medical sources said. The boy’s three-year-old brother was also in intensive care.
Maria Gatsoyeva, a spokeswoman for the regional investigators, said nearly 100 people had been wounded.
“A terrorist suicide bomber in a car parked at the entrance to the central market of Vladikavkaz ignited an explosive charge at 11:20 am,” the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement.
“The people who do this, these are people without a soul, without a heart,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in his first reaction to the bombing.
“They have nothing holy. It is our common duty to fight these criminals,” he said at a meeting with Russian Muslim leaders to mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Gatsoyeva said the blast had been caused by explosives weighing 30-40 kilograms of TNT equivalent.
North Ossetia lies at the heart of Russia’s troubled Northern Caucasus region, north of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia over which Moscow and Tbilisi fought a war in August 2008.
It is the only majority-Christian region in Russia’s largely Muslim North Caucasus and borders the Muslim region of Ingushetia, which has been beset by deadly attacks over the last months.
North Ossetia was the site of one of Russia’s most shocking tragedies in 2004 when more than 330 people died after armed Chechen rebels took more than 1,000 people hostage at a school in the town of Beslan.
Although it has seen increasing unrest over the past years, North Ossetia has traditionally been more stable than the Muslim regions of the North Caucasus.
Separately, officials indicated Thursday that rebels had aimed to blow up the Irganaiskaya power plant in Dagestan, the second-largest in the Russian Caucasus.
Elena Vishnyakova, a spokeswoman for major power producer RusHydro that runs the plant, said that an explosive device had been found at the plant following a fire on Tuesday night.
Officials had earlier said that the fire was caused by a technical failure. Islamist website www.kavkazcenter.com said that the explosives had been planted by rebels.
Russia has been on a state of high alert after the double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29 that killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

TITLE: Scandal-Tainted Governor Of Novosibirsk Removed
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Novosibirsk Governor Viktor Tolokonsky as his new envoy to the Siberian Federal District on Thursday, a reshuffle that rids Novosibirsk of a corruption-tainted leader weeks before key elections.
Tolokonsky will replace Anatoly Kvashnin, a former chief of the General Staff who has held the envoy post since 2004, the Kremlin said.
Tolokonsky will be succeeded by Deputy Governor Vasily Yurchenko, whose popularity United Russia is banking on to attract votes in October elections by placing him at the top of its list of candidates running for the regional legislature, even though Yurchenko is not expected to take a seat.
United Russia snubbed Tolokonsky, a party member for five years, in favor of Yurchenko, 50, who just joined the party last year, when it drew up its party list in August.
Tolokonsky’s reputation took a beating this year after two officials close to him were detained in February on suspicion of having links to a local gang blamed for a series of crimes over the past 20 years.
Tolokonsky personally vouched for the two officials, Novosibirsk Deputy Mayor Alexander Solodkin and his father, Alexander Solodkin, who serves as Tolokonsky’s aide on sports issues, but investigators still refused to release the men from custody.
Analysts said Thursday’s reshuffle gave the authorities an easy way to remove Tolokonsky gracefully.
“It looks like an honorable resignation for Tolokonsky,” said Mikhail Vinogradov, an analyst with the Petersburg Politics Fund.
Kvashnin’s ouster had been expected because he was one of the least active envoys in the country, Vinogradov said, adding that he had thought Medvedev would replace him with former Chuvashia leader Nikolai Fyodorov, who was dismissed in July after heading the region for 16 years and still has not been appointed to a new position.
“Fyodorov could have given momentum to the [Siberian Federal] District,” Vinogradov said. “The appointment just proves that the institute of envoys in Russia is suffering a period of decay.”
Kvashnin, 64, who served as head of the General Staff and a deputy defense minister for seven years, fell seriously ill last year and considered resigning to undergo treatment, news reports said at the time.

TITLE: Analysts: Kalmykia to Get Pragmatist
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Flamboyant Kalmykia leader Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is stepping down after 17 years in office, will likely be replaced by a pragmatic-minded business manager, analysts said Tuesday.
Ilyumzhinov, 48, said Monday that he would not seek reappointment after his fourth term expires in October. He cited President Dmitry Medvedev’s policy of not keeping regional leaders on the job for more than three terms as the reason for the decision.
Analysts said Medvedev’s policy made Ilyumzhinov’s removal unavoidable.
“If Ilyumzhinov had been left in office for one more term, it would be a clear blow to Medvedev’s reputation, meaning that he couldn’t find a replacement,” said Sergei Titkov, an analyst with the Institute of Regional Politics.
Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the next leader, in line with the Kremlin’s policy for republics, would likely be a native of Kalmykia.
The official list of possible successors, which is to be filed with Medvedev by the ruling United Russia party, was not made public Tuesday.
But Vedomosti, citing party and regional sources, confirmed Petrov’s forecasts by naming as possible candidates Kalmykia’s incumbent prime minister, Oleg Kichikov; two of his deputies, Sandzhi Khonyayev and Badmu Salayev; and deputy chief of the local administration, Batra Vankayev.
Two other potential candidates hail from the Volgograd region: Mikhail Murzayev, chief of the regional branch of the Investigative Committee, and Deputy Governor Alexander Dorzhdeyev. Both are ethnic Kalmyks.
“There will be a new type of leader who can act like a business manager,” Petrov said, adding that Ilyumzhinov’s departure signals a positive change for Kalmykia, where political conflicts have intensified in recent years.
But Titkov said it was hard to predict how the new appointee would influence the republic because of the challenges he would face. “For the region, it means adapting to a new leader,” Titkov said.
Under Ilyumzhinov, Kalmykia, one of the poorest Russian regions, earned notoriety for human rights abuses. Ilyumzhinov also puzzled the public when he repeatedly said he had made contact with extraterrestrials dressed in yellow space suits during a stay in Moscow in 1997.
Ilyumzhinov said Monday that he would continue living in Kalmykia and would try to organize a visit by the Dalai Lama.
He also said he hoped to keep his job as the leader of the World Chess Federation in elections this month where he faces competition from former chess master Anatoly Karpov.
Ilyumzhinov enjoyed the support of Medvedev’s aide Arkady Dvorkovich in his re-election bid. Speculation has swirled that the Kremlin sees the chess post as a consolation prize for the outgoing Kalmykia leader.

TITLE: Local Hacker Gets Suspended Sentence
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Kalininsky court has given a six year suspended sentence to local computer hacker Viktor Pleshchuk, who cracked the Royal Bank of Scotland’s computer system.
Pleshchuk, 29, was charged with taking part in a major banking fraud committed by an international group, which was alleged to have stolen more than $9 million with the help of fake banking cards. 
The court convicted Pleshchuk of theft through illegal access to computer information and gathering data that contained banking secrets.
The court hearings in Pleshchuk’s case were held in closed session following threats from anonymous callers to his parents and brother, Fontanka.ru reported.
Pleschuk was not a key organizer or mastermind of the fraud, though his knowledge and skills were crucial, allowing the group to break into the computer system of American RBS WorldPay Corporation, a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Atlanta, according to Fontanka.ru.
Pleshchuk copied personal details from the bank’s database, as well as pin-codes. His accomplices then created fake banking cards in the names of the banks clients, using them to make withdrawals.
U.S. police officials said the group, which consisted of Russian, Estonian and Moldavian citizens, managed to withdraw almost $10 million within just 12 hours through 2,100 bank machines all around the world.  The group withdrew money in 280 cities in the U.S., Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Italy, Japan, and other countries.
Pleschuk was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) following a request from the U.S. FBI.

TITLE: U.S. to Speak Up for Activists
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two senior U.S. officials promised that Washington would speak openly about its concerns over Russia’s human rights record during a meeting with the country’s top rights activists Wednesday, two activists said.
President Barack Obama’s top Russia expert, Michael McFaul, and Undersecretary of State William Burns also said the state of human rights in Russia “must be one of the main topics” of talks between Washington and Moscow, said Oleg Orlov, head of Memorial rights group.
McFaul and Burns, a former ambassador to Moscow, said they hoped to improve the human rights situation in Russia through “public criticism” and “consultations to exchange experiences on particular issues,” Orlov said by telephone.
“All of the Russian participants said they especially valued public statements because behind-the-scenes talks are known only to officials but not to civil society,” Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said in a phone interview.
Prominent human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov failed to attend the meeting because he was jailed Tuesday for four days after a court found him guilty of ignoring police orders at an unsanctioned Moscow opposition rally on Aug. 12. Burns and McFaul called his absence “extremely unpleasant,” Orlov said.
The State Department said last week that it had “concerns about intimidation of citizens” after police detained dozens of opposition activists trying to rally on Aug. 31 for their constitutional right to free assembly. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a Kommersant interview published a day before the rally that the protesters deserved to be beaten because they had not received City Hall’s permission to gather. City Hall has rejected all opposition requests to rally.
Orlov said a working group of Russian and U.S. rights activists would hold future discussions on issues like freedom of assembly, police reform, migration, conditions in prisons for minors and Russia’s judicial and penitentiary systems.

TITLE: Finns to Outsource Visa Process
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Consulate General of Finland has announced that it will be outsourcing work surrounding the visa application process. The diplomatic mission believes that this innovation will improve the quality of client service.
In late February or early March, 2011, a Finnish Visa Center will begin operations in the city.  The Finnish diplomats believe the outsourcing of the process to an external firm will also help to make the visa procedure faster, the Finnish Embassy said on its website.
Visa applications will still be considered by the Consulate General, but the receipt of visa applications and issuing of the documents will be done by a different organization.  This will give the Consulate’s workers more time to consider the applications and at the same time will speed up their work, the Consulate said.
A similar setup in Moscow has shown that such outsourcing makes sense, the Consulate said, with facilities on hand to make the process easier for applicants. Thus, for 200 rubles ($6.50) clients will be able to take a photograph for the visa with the help of a photo machine right at the visa center. Similarly, applicants will have the option to have their completed documents couriered to them for an additional charge, and the visa center will also accept payments in cash, rather than by making bank deposits. 
Application for visas will be done online, with a facility to track your application on the Internet. 
The center will, however, make the process more expensive as, in addition to the 35 euro cost of the visa, a service commission of 21 euros will be charged, Fontanka.ru reported. 
VFS Global, which already handles the issuing of Finnish visas in Moscow, will be responsible for the outsourced work in St. Petersburg. The firm stands to make a considerable profit, as the 500,000 people a year are issued with Finnish visas in St. Petersburg, making for a total turnover of 8 million euros per year. 
A number of other countries have already opened outsourced visa centers in St. Petersburg, including Spain, Malta, Bulgaria, Belgium, France and Great Britain.

TITLE: As the Smoke Clears, Shantsev Tries to Court Investors
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NIZHNY NOVGOROD — The Nizhny Novgorod region has had its share of tribulations in the past few years.
The heavily industrial region saw the number of registered unemployed quadruple last year, and foreign investment fell 63 percent from $708.5 million to $263 million.
The region was also among the worst hit when wildfires swept through central Russia in late July and August. One-third of all houses lost to the blazes — or 2,209 separate homes — were in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin said late last month.
At its center, on the convergence of the Volga and Oka rivers, is the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth largest. Nicknamed “Russia’s pocket” for its historical importance as a center of commerce, the city of nearly 1.3 million is now home to carmaker GAZ Group and the Sokol aviation factory, which manufactures Russia’s MiG fighter jets.
Once known as a relative haven for businesses, Nizhny has also fallen out of favor in recent years. Forbes Russia ranked it as the 27th-friendliest place for business out of Russia’s 30 largest metropolitan areas, and it came in dead last for stability amid last year’s economic crisis.
But the regional administration is betting that both the city and the region can bounce back from the rough spell. Governor Valery Shantsev, who has headed the Nizhny Novgorod region since 2005, is confident that once the smoke clears, investors will come rushing back.
“Wise investors know very well that it is during the crisis when one should conquer new markets and spaces. … It is important to them what place they are going to take when the economy recovers,” Shantsev told The Moscow Times. “This is the main criterion for a decision on whether companies should invest money in a new project.”

<strong>‘Russia’s Pocket’</strong>
Recent arrivals in the region say they are happy with the support they’ve found from local officials, although financial support was limited when the crisis bit into corporate investment plans.
German manufacturing group Liebherr agreed in 2008 to build a factory in Dzerzhinsk, a city just outside the regional capital. The facility will produce earthmoving equipment, construction cranes and aircraft equipment, and should be ready to start work next spring or summer, said Kristian Kueppers, a spokesman for Liebherr-International.
“This is one of the biggest-scale investment projects in our region,” Shantsev said of the project, which Kueppers says will create 600 permanent jobs.
The governor’s investment committee gave the project “priority” status in July, offering 1.28 billion rubles ($42 million) in tax breaks through 2017 for investments of 11 billion rubles.
Kueppers said the regional government has created “favorable” conditions for investment.
“That was also one of the reasons why we chose this location for the construction of our plant in Russia. We felt that we had the necessary support of both the Nizhny Novgorod government, as well as the city of Dzerzhinsk,” he said.
Other foreign investors have had similar experiences in the region.
Danfoss, a Danish heating- and refrigeration-equipment maker, started production there three years ago.
“We have received good support in the process of purchasing land from the government of the Nizhny Novgorod region,” Mikhail Shapiro, head of Danfoss in Russia, said in an interview.
“This is one of Russia’s industrial centers. There are many industries, perspectives for the companies who work in our segment. Geographically, it is close to Moscow and is in the center of Russia,” he said.
Expenses in the region are much lower than in Moscow, and it is easy to reach decision makers, Shapiro said. But the “financial capabilities in the region are quite limited if we talk about the municipal market.”

<strong>Shadow of Moscow</strong>
Nizhny Novgorod’s proximity to the capital has been one of its key assets, and with the opening of a new high-speed train route between the two cities in July, the distance has gotten even smaller.
Regional officials hope that the Sapsan train, which cuts the travel time to just under four hours, will help reinvigorate the regional economy.
“The launch of Sapsan has been long-awaited in Nizhny Novgorod because now our … city will be connected to Moscow and St. Petersburg with a faster, more reliable and comfortable means of transport,” said Shantsev, a former deputy mayor of Moscow.
“The high-speed railroad will make us closer to Moscow, which is overloaded with business, [and] create new opportunities for the development of big and medium-sized businesses in our region.”
But while the train may help, Shantsev’s critics say he has done little as governor to attract investment to the region and help restore Nizhny Novgorod’s status as a trade and industry leader.
“Had the investors not come to the region on their own, the administration would have just sat there,” said State Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, a United Russia member and longtime critic of Shantsev.
Many large companies depend on good relations with local and regional authorities to speed projects through bureaucratic restrictions and other hitches in development, and Shantsev’s ability to do so may help him attract further investment.
Danfoss was forced to put further project development on hold when the crisis hit but hopes to resume next year.
“The numbers [for engineering infrastructure on the plot] that we have seen from local providers of this infrastructure are much higher than our expectations,” said Shapiro, the company’s head.
“We hope that before the construction stage begins, we’ll be able to get support from the administration and lower the connection costs, and we will be adjusting our plans accordingly,” he said.

<strong>‘Oust Him’</strong>
What was perhaps Shantsev’s biggest challenge came in late July, when the region was devastated by the wildfires that swept across central Russia and locals took issue with what they saw as his slow response to the blazes.
A video taken in Verkhnyaya Vereya, a regional village devoured by the blazes, received massive plays on YouTube as a rare public outpouring of rage.
In the video, villagers surround Shantsev and visiting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who were surveying the site where the village once stood. While Putin tries to listen and respond to the locals, a pale Shantsev stands nearby.
The locals curse at Shantsev and yell to Putin, “Oust him!”
Despite the scandal — and one-term Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos’ ouster amid a lack of public support — Shantsev was allowed to stay on in Nizhny Novgorod.
President Dmitry Medvedev nominated him on June 9, before the fires, and he was cleared by local lawmakers to start his new term on Aug. 8.
“I believe that the region’s investment attractiveness does not depend on a natural cataclysm,” Shantsev said, when asked whether the fires would put a hitch in his region’s economic development.
“The full extent of the damages is yet to be calculated, but the count may run into the billions of rubles. These kinds of fires are a terrible tragedy for any region, but no one is impervious to them,” he said.
Shantsev defended his achievements in office, pointing to increased investment and rising wages.

TITLE: 3 Priorities, 3 Solutions in EU-Russian Ties
AUTHOR: By Janos Martonyi and Alexander Stubb
TEXT: Russia is our strategic partner and a major player in many areas. Russia is also a European country and our close neighbor. The time is ripe to give a new boost to European Union-Russian relations, while continuing open and sincere dialogue based on common interests and values. It is no secret that the relations between the EU and Russia have suffered from differences of opinion and action and that a lot of work remains to be done on both sides to optimize the potential that the EU and Russia share.
The questions we should put to ourselves are quite simple: What are the fundamentals in our relationship, and, more importantly, what do we want to achieve together in 10 years?
Finland and Hungary share a long history with Russia, and both have joined the EU rather recently. In future relations with Russia, we see three priority goals.
The first relates to the economy. The EU is the most important export market for Russia, and Russia is among the top-three trading partners of the EU. Of foreign direct investments to Russia, about 80 percent come from EU countries. In energy, the interdependency is evident. Geographic proximity could contribute to the competitiveness of both Russia and the EU, but that should not be taken for granted in today’s world of global competition.
Currently, the most pressing issue is Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Another key factor that would integrate our markets further is harmonization of technical standards. The EU has no reason to press Russia in this matter and no need to dictate the rules. But let’s be frank. A set of carefully prepared standards and legislation is there for Russia to grasp — that is, “euro standards” of proven high quality and earned consumer trust in Europe and elsewhere in the world. President Dmitry Medvedev, a committed supporter of modernization and innovation, has said European standards can’t be that bad. Also for Russian consumers, the euro standard has been synonymous with good quality for decades. Russian companies would be the ones benefiting the most from harmonized regulation because that would bolster their competitiveness in the European market.
The ultimate goal is a free-trade area between Russia and the EU. We should not see our economies as rivals but make them more attractive by means of enhanced integration. This could open a new window of opportunity for both in the increasingly competitive global market.
Second, we need to facilitate interaction between our people. Visa-free travel would benefit tens of millions of people. The EU and Russia agreed to pursue visa freedom as a long-term goal in 2003 and are committed to reaching it. But all technical and societal criteria have to be met. Russian and EU experts need to continue the discussions and examine where sufficient progress has been made and where steps still need to be taken. This paves the way for the negotiations on a visa-waiver agreement.
The third goal relates to foreign and security policies. Partnership can only be successful in the long run if it is value-based and pursued in the spirit of mutual respect and confidence. Progress has been made in the area of external security — for example, in international crisis management on the coast of Somalia and in Chad. But we could do much more together, including in the areas close to the EU and Russia, as well as in the civilian sector, like cooperation in emergency situations.
The initiative put forward by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Medvedev on deepening cooperation between the EU and Russia in foreign and security policies should be explored further. The potential of the existing Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and NATO structures can and should also be made use of more effectively. Such an approach could be a good starting point for finding solutions to conflicts. Any efforts to find solutions in conflict areas of common interest, however, can and must only be pursued through involvement of and cooperation with other Eastern European countries, especially the countries directly affected.
Our strategic aim should be a common area not only for external but also for European security as both the EU and Russia are stakeholders of European stability and security and keen to enhance it.
What steps need to be taken to improve the EU-Russian partnership?
First, the EU has to do its own homework. We should be more united and act faster. A strategic discussion on Russia within the EU would be very welcome. We also need to discuss our common priorities and actions together with Russia to move from partnership to equal ownership, that is, an equal and genuine commitment to enhancing our relationship.
Second, we need a modern, legally binding basis for our relationship. Both sides are already negotiating what is called the “New Agreement” to achieve this goal.
Third, more effective working structures are required to implement the New Agreement and the so-called four common spaces of cooperation including the partnership for modernization. We propose to start evaluation work immediately, together with our Russian partners.
With the new structures created in the Lisbon Treaty, the EU is now in a better position to strengthen its foreign policy. High Representative Catherine Ashton and the future EU’s External Action Service, or EEAS, have an important role to play in fostering EU-Russian relations. These relations should be one of the priority areas for the EEAS from the very start.
Committed and active member states are essential for the EEAS to be successful. The EU-Russian relations rely to a large extent on bilateral experience. Bilateral relations and EU-Russian relations do not contradict one another but are complementary. It doesn’t matter whether the spokesman is in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London, Warsaw, Stockholm, Budapest, Helsinki or any other EU capital as long as the main messages are the same and we practice what we preach. For its part, Russia should be clear in its EU policy and willing to enhance its own working structures.
The most important factors in building a strong EU-Russian relationship are mutual trust and playing by the same rules. On many issues, the ball is now in Russia’s court, but when the ball comes back to our court, we have to be ready and fit to play. Together, Russia and the EU can do a lot to help make the world a better and safer place.

<i>Janos Martonyi is the foreign minister of Hungary, and Alexander Stubb is the foreign minister of Finland.</i>

TITLE: The Coolest Leader in the World
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: After Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cruised around the Far East in a Lada Kalina for 11 days, political pundits claimed that it was the start of his presidential campaign. But what is the point of conducting an election campaign in a country that has no real elections?
I have a much simpler explanation. Putin set out on his road trip just for the hell of it and to show how cool he is. Only losers like Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili squander their time building roads.
But Putin would do well to take a lesson from that Georgian loser whom he despises so much and whom he is itching to hang by his private parts. After all, Russia still lacks an uninterrupted asphalt highway from Moscow to Vladivostok (although Putin promised that it would be completed by 2008).
Putin is cool. Only cool leaders take road trips surrounded by dozens of black, bulletproof Mercedes Gelandewagens in the motorcade — and a couple of ambulances and spare yellow Ladas to boot.
The road trip underscores one of Putin’s biggest problems as the national leader — how to spend his time. He certainly doesn’t waste it by worrying about trivial problems such as health care reforms, corruption or modernization. He has a press secretary by the name of President Dmitry Medvedev to tackle the boring and tedious issues.
Putin’s real challenge is in finding ways to fight off boredom. It’s good to be the king.
Putin is not alone. His dilemma is shared by all absolute rulers. For example, Chinese emperors amused themselves by keeping harems, and Turkish sultans enjoyed shooting from the palace windows at passers-by as a way to kill time, so to speak.
But Putin has his own ways to have fun. He likes taking a minisubmarine to the floor of Lake Baikal, river rafting in Tuva, tagging Siberian tigers, riding in the cockpit of fighter jets and flying co-pilot in firefighting aircraft to drop water on the leaping flames. Now that’s exciting!
There was another autocrat, Nero, who, as the legend goes, set fire to Rome and then sang an ode to Troy while watching the flames. Putin, thankfully, is not Nero, and he did not set fire to the forests. Instead, while half of Russia burned, Putin spent his free time singing with Russia’s pitiful spies and riding a three-wheeled Harley-Davidson with bikers in Crimea. How could anyone criticize Putin for that?
Putin is leading a dream life. He calls all the shots, doles out money right and left to his friends and has lots of fun. Medvedev is stuck tackling the country’s toughest problems, like corruption and modernization.
But there is only one drawback for Putin. Since he is still the country’s national leader, he must limit his adventures to Russian territory. As much as he wants, Putin can’t just go traipsing off at the drop of a hat to Mount Kilimanjaro, for example, like the oligarchs do.
But there is still plenty of adventure left in Russia for Putin. After all, where else in the world can you drive for 2,000 kilometers straight and not once encounter a modern highway? That might have been possible in China at one time, but now Russia is in a class of its own.

<i>Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.</i>

TITLE: Inflation Could Trip New Exchange-Rate Crisis
AUTHOR: By Martin Gilman
TEXT: A ruble exchange-rate crisis in two or three years is not inevitable, but if inflation is allowed to accelerate and real interest rates — adjusting for the effects of inflation — become negative again, an exchange-rate crisis just becomes a question of time.
The ruble exchange rate against the U.S. dollar has appreciated by almost 5 percent in real terms since the beginning of the year in view of a virtually unchanged bilateral exchange rate and the inflation differential between the two countries. The cumulative real appreciation relative to January 1998 has been more than 25 percent. This means that the margin of competitiveness in the wake of the 37 percent ruble devaluation between early November 2008 and late January 2009 is being rapidly eroded by a combination of nominal appreciation and inflation.
A resurgence of inflation in Russia implies that the real ruble will surpass its previous peak of October 2008 sometime in 2012. This looming loss of competitiveness is all the greater because of the deflationary trend in the United States. Such a view is no doubt mechanistic — and possibly alarmist. In fact, much will depend on policies.
Russia finally broke the back of its seeming inflation curse starting just two years ago. In 2009, inflation came in at 8.8 percent, down from 13.4 percent in 2008. Except for an anomaly in 2006, inflation had never even touched single digits in post-Soviet Russia. It was a long and hard-won battle, and it was too early for a skeptical public to change its inflationary expectations significantly.
The disinflationary trend continued in the first half of this year. By June and July, annualized rates were well below 6 percent. It suddenly seemed that Russia could end the year with an increase in the consumer price index of no more than 5.5 percent, or relatively close to other major emerging market economies like Brazil and India.
This happy outcome was a result of serious efforts by the Finance Ministry to contain budget expenditure and by the Central Bank to restrain excessive monetary growth. Inflation control became the most important priority for the government because, apart from aiding economic recovery, a low inflation rate allows the Central Bank to keep its nominal rates relatively low. With decelerating inflation, average deposit rates at commercial banks became positive in real terms from December 2009 until June. Affordable borrowing rates for mortgages, consumer goods and small businesses are an important part of the government’s strategy for economic growth. Most important, it meant that interest rates became positive in real terms for savers as well as for borrowers. Negative real interest rates, a frequent occurrence in the last decade, are a monetary distortion. The problem with negative real borrowing costs is that they distort capital formation over time and destroy the incentives for saving.
Assuming conducive structural policies, higher domestic savings and more productive investment guided by positive real interest rates can lay the basis for higher productivity. This would mean that over time there would be scope for a more appreciated ruble exchange rate without losing competitiveness. This is just the kind of favorable scenario that some analysts expect — that a strong medium-term appreciation of the ruble would be based upon higher oil prices as the world economy recovers from the severe recession and as Russia increasingly joins the other major emerging market countries in self-generated domestic demand.
But the latest data, as well as the underlying policy directions, are disquieting.
Inflation in August was 0.6 percent, against zero a year earlier. This pushed the year-on-year outcome to 6.1 percent from 5.5 percent at end July. This is still considerably lower than the 8.3 percent for the comparable period a year earlier, but if continued, could put us back on an upward trajectory toward last year’s numbers and higher.
If the drought were the main factor, our concerns would be short-lived. Although the supply shock in the agricultural sector was a decisive blow, money supply growth accelerated significantly in July. Inflation expectations then surged amid an unanticipated negative supply shock. People started hoarding foodstuffs, such as cereal grains, while some food prices rose significantly on fears of limited supply.
Underlying this inflation resurgence is a burst of liquidity. Lulled by buoyant oil prices, budget amendments were adopted in July to raise 2010 expenditures to 10.2 trillion rubles. At the same time, there was a renewal of the Central Bank’s old, bad practice of printing money via reserve accumulation. From Jan. 1 to the end of August, international reserves grew by $37 billion, implying that an equivalent amount of rubles were printed. Even if temporarily sterilized in part, excess liquidity can clearly increase inflationary pressures later on.
Given inflationary expectations and the amount of free liquidity in banks, inflation in September and October will obviously exceed the previous year’s levels of no change. Despite the acceleration of inflation in this quarter, the 2010 figure should be lower than 8.8 percent in 2009. But this demonstrates how fragile the process of disinflation can be. If there is abundant free liquidity in the economic system, inflation has a chance to return.
Too much is at stake to allow a policy drift. Unfortunately, simply muddling through is the operative policy that results from high oil prices and a political leadership reticent to pursue serious structural reforms or a tough macroeconomic policy as originally agreed for the period to 2013 unless provoked by a shock.
The irony is that reigniting inflation would take place in a deflationary global environment. Underlying and expected rates of inflation in the United States and most of Europe are trending downward. To keep Russian inflation decelerating in the longer term, the government needs to reduce the budget deficit — that is, contain or strictly limit increases in spending — and the Central Bank will need to refrain from intervention on the foreign exchange market. Uncertainty about what the government will do and in what order remains high, and the inflation outlook is still uncertain.
The coming months are critical. Perhaps a negative oil price shock associated with an economic slowdown in China and stagnation in the United States, Europe and Japan would actually be the wake-up call that Russian policymakers need to do what they should be doing to ensure the country’s noninflationary, nonoil future.

<I>Martin Gilman, former senior representative of the International Monetary Fund in Russia, is a professor at the Higher School of Economics.</I>

TITLE: The Reasons the World Loves to Hate Bankers
AUTHOR: By Howard Davies
TEXT: Even after the passage of new financial regulations in the United States — the Dodd-Frank Act — and the publication of the Basel Committee’s new capital requirements, the financial sector’s prospects over the next few years remain highly uncertain. There has been some recovery in prices for bank shares from the lows of 2008, of course, but that rally has faltered recently. Quite apart from their concerns about the robustness of the rebound in the economy, investors are uncertain about many financial firms’ business models — and about the future size, shape and profitability of the financial sector in general.
After all, banks remain deeply unpopular in all developed countries. Bankers are still social pariahs, as lowly valued by the public as drug dealers or journalists. They are reviled if they lose money and assailed if they make it. For banks and their shareholders, it looks like a case of heads they win, tails we lose. Thus, as banks return to profitability, politicians in North America and Europe have begun to talk again about new taxes that would skim those profits off to the benefit of taxpayers, whose support kept banks in business at the height of the crisis.
This is a huge contrast to the financial sector’s position in the previous three decades. From the late 1970s until 2007, the financial sector grew far more rapidly than the real economy. In 1980, financial assets — stocks, bonds and bank deposits — totaled about 100 percent of gross domestic product in the advanced economies. By 2007, the figure was more than 400 percent in the United States, Britain and Japan.
During this period, credit expanded rapidly as a share of GDP, reaching more than 300 percent at the peak. In Britain, the profits of financial intermediaries, which had averaged about 1.5 percent of the whole economy’s profits in the 1970s, reached 15 percent in 2008. In the United States, bank profits were an even larger share of the total.
This was the golden age of finance. Bankers’ pay soared alongside profits — indeed, it grew even faster. To paraphrase 19th-century English poet William Wordsworth, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a derivatives trader was very heaven. But the expansion came to a shuddering halt in 2008, the first year in decades in which aggregate financial assets fell, and there is still little sign of a sustained recovery.
Is this a short-term phenomenon? Will the financial sector return to pre-crisis growth rates when the economic situation has been fully stabilized? Will financial “deepening” continue? Will bank stocks once again outperform the market?
A recent study led by Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, casts doubt on the prospect of a return to the status quo ante. Haldane and co-authors of the study note that the golden age was in fact an unusual period if you look at the last two centuries of economic history.
Haldane bases his analysis on the trend in the gross value added, or GVA, of the financial sector. Over the past 160 years, the GVA of finance has grown by 2 percentage points a year faster than that of the economy as a whole. But this excess growth has not been evenly spread. During the two decades leading up to World War I, the financial sector grew almost four times faster than the economy — the first wave of financial deepening and globalization — but from 1918 until the 1970s finance expanded less rapidly than average economic growth.
Only when markets were deregulated and liberalized from the early 1970s onward did finance once again leap ahead. In the United States, financial sector GVA was only 2 percent of the total in the 1950s, but stands at 8 percent today.
Haldane believes that this growth spurt is well and truly over. He argues that much of the apparent growth in value added has in fact been illusory, based on increased leverage, excess trading and banks writing deep out-of-the-money options — for example, credit-default swaps, a $60 trillion market in 2007.
“What all these strategies had in common,” writes Haldane, “was that they involved banks assuming risk in the hunt for yield — risk that was often disguised because it was parked in the tail of the return distribution.”
From a regulator’s perspective, this is a powerful argument for requiring higher capital to constrain the risk that banks can take on. Indeed, the Basel Committee plans to require more capital in the future, though the new requirements will be delayed, owing to concerns about the cost and availability of credit to sustain the recovery.
Against that backdrop, it is hard to believe that we will quickly return to the heady growth in financial assets, credit and risk we saw from the 1970s to 2007. Financial sector returns are likely to be lower. Returns of 20 percent on equity targets are a thing of the past. And lower profitability will reduce pay more effectively than any direct regulatory controls.
For most of us, unless we remain seriously overweight in financial stocks, this may not be a bad prospect. We do not want to inflate another asset-price bubble on the scale of the one that burst in 2007-08. But there is a risk for regulators and central banks. If they overconstrain the financial sector, risk may migrate outside the regulatory frontier, where it will be harder to measure and monitor.
That is why it is important to maintain some flexibility, to allow currently unregulated institutions like hedge funds and private-equity funds to be swept into the regulatory net if they become large and systemically important. The tighter their controls on risk in banks, the more frontier police the regulators will need.

<i>Howard Davies, former chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority and former deputy governor of the Bank of England, is currently director of the London School of Economics. His latest book is “Banking on the Future: The Fall and Rise of Central Banking.” © Project Syndicate</i>

TITLE: Autumn marathon
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: September is set to be a very busy month at the country’s oldest drama theater, according to Artistic Director Valery Fokin, speaking at a recent press conference. Two major events are taking place simultaneously, setting the theater’s autumn marathon on track.
First, there is the opening of the Alexandrinsky’s 265th season with a new production of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” which premieres on Sept. 14 and 15 and promises to be the main show of the year. Then, for the fifth time, it hosts the International Theater Festival with several of Europe’s leading companies participating.
For “The Taming of the Shrew,” the theater has invited in Lithuanian director Oskaras Korshunovas. Though this is his first appearance at the Alexandrinsky, Korshunovas is known to Petersburg theater-goers thanks to his participation in the Baltic House Festival. He is based in Vilnius, where he heads the OKT Theater.
At the press conference, Korshunovas noted that during rehearsals he felt everyone was having a good time and laughing, which may not be surprising when staging a comedy. And yet, Shakespeare’s comedy is not as straight forward as it might appear superficially to be. Although everything ends well, and after a number of challenges the main characters find themselves and unite, fundamental questions remain unanswered – questions about understanding yourself and your beloved, about what to do to preserve yourself if you have fallen in love, how to remain free if you are in love, and how to grant the same freedom to your beloved.
Korshunovas commented that he is well aware of the challenges and complexity of Shakespeare plays, finding in them reflections of human nature, the limits of freedom and chances for happiness. As he said at the press conference: “I see this comedy as a play about the theater. We use improvisations and actors’ fantasies.” 
The production employs the best actors of the Alexandrinsky troupe, including Victor Smirnov, who recently celebrated his 65th birthday, and Semyon Sytnik, who this year was awarded the Golden Sofit for best actor. Original music was composed by Gintaras Sodeika.
Two days after the premiere, the Warsaw Teatr Narodowy opens the International Theater Festival at the Alexandrinsky. Poland’s principal drama theater will present the play “Tango” by Mrozek in a staging by the well known Polish director Jerzy Jarocki.  In a career spanning over 60 years, Jarocki  has staged literally hundreds of shows and has received all of Poland’s main theater prizes.
The modern Polish classic “Tango,” written in 1964 and shown in London in an adaptation by Tom Stoppard in 1966, discloses the roots of despotism and shows the way an idealist turns into a dictator. In the concluding scene, the actors perform a tango while the corpse of the lead character’s  murdered rival remains on the stage.
The Israeli theater Gesher (The Bridge) this year celebrates its 20th anniversary and brings to the Festival a play by the celebrated Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Enemies. A Love Story,” staged by Yevgeny Arye. For Arye, this is a home-coming, as he grew up and was educated in Leningrad, spending 15 years working at the Tovstonogov Theater and the Maly Drama Theater, as well as in TV, before emigrating in 1991. Several of his colleagues and friends left for Israel with him and today they form the core of the Theater Gesher.  
On Oct. 17 and 18, Petersburgers will have a chance to see the Comedie Francaise perform at the Alexandrinsky – their first appearance in the Northern Capital after an absence of 25 years. For this we can thank the Year of France in Russia which has provided a framework for many cultural events, including exhibitions at the Hermitage. The Comedie Francaise will be presenting the French classic “The Marriage of Figaro” by Beaumarchais. 
While the Comedie Francaise will be performing in St. Petersburg, the troupe of the Alexandrinsky Theater will be in Paris, presenting its production of “The Marriage” by Gogol. As Fokin joked at the press conference, “Our theaters will exchange Marriages.” 
For the Alexandrinsky Theater, this is a very significant moment. They have not been in Paris for 50 years. Back then they were led by Artistic Director Leonid Vivien and presented “The Optimistic Tragedy” by Vsevolod Vishnevsky in the French capital. Now, they will perform at the Theatre de la Ville, the same venue where they appeared 50 years ago, and Vivien’s daughter, who lives in France, will be in the audience.  There is a hope that this could revive a rich tradition of cultural exchanges.
The International Theater Festival is a vital undertaking because it not only gives actors a chance to see the works of their colleagues and allows the public to get acquainted with  new plays and new performers, but has also become a forum for exchanging ideas and opinions. There will be master classes, lectures, demonstrations and many useful discussions among colleagues. 
In his remarks on the forthcoming theater season, Valery Fokin also directed attention to the second new production of the year, a staging of the Maeterlinck classic “The Blue Bird” by the well known director Andrei Moguchy.  Fokin said of the new adaptation: “We want to attract young people, and for them the classic Moscow Art Theater staging of the 1900s doesn’t mean a great deal.”
The theater’s financial situation remains precarious in regards to its day-to-day operating costs, Fokin said. He explained that while the troupe consists of just 60 actors – the smallest among Russia’s academic drama theaters - it remains a challenge to cover salaries and production expenses. 
Paradoxically, the theater’s capital investment budget is doing fine. Valery Fokin has headed the troupe since 2006, when the theater underwent major reconstruction. Now, the theater is undergoing a similar momentous transition as it builds a Theater Center on the Fontanka. Completion is scheduled for the end of 2011. 
Fokin used the press conference to explain his vision for the new center: “I hope it will become a center for experiments, innovations, for young professionals and also a new school for actors and stage directors.” Fokin said that he feels that a propitious time has come for the creation of a challenge to the St Petersburg Theater Academy.
Fokin is a follower of Vsevolod Meyerhold and most likely a new school will teach young stage directors and actors in the traditions of Meyerhold. In addition, the Center will have an auditorium for 350 spectators. After completion of the Theater Center, the Alexandrinsky is poised to take a leading position on the cultural landscape of the city, Fokin said.

TITLE: In the orchard
AUTHOR: By Tobias Kuehne
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ginza Project is already a household name among the culinary connoisseurs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Known for endowing each of their restaurants with a carefully planned concept and design, the franchise has been at the forefront of raising restaurant culture in Russia to a new standard. And as their popularity grows constantly, Ginza Project opens a new restaurant every two to three months.
We were consequently quite surprised to find not a single guest at the BarAnka, recently reopened after renovation. The deserted, capacious main hall, seating at least 70 around its liberally spaced tables, appeared like a still life with its citrus yellow walls and elongated flower pots, filled to the brim with prismatically stacked apples and oranges. A long corridor led out into a winter garden-like hall with seating for another 40 between the establishment’s white wooden wall and a false partition. Below the ceiling hung a billowing white sheet, behind which an array of light bulbs evoked the sensation of a starry sky later in the evening. An old TV set and Jamiroquai’s summery tunes completed the impression that we had seized grandmother’s orchard dacha for the weekend to unwind in a retreat of sounds and tastes.
The Classic Caesar chicken salad (290 rubles, $9.50) did not fall short of any measure of expectation. With a sauce that, in itself, seemed to comprise the tastes of the lush lettuce, the mild chicken and the zesty parmesan, all of the salad’s ingredients came together in a marvelously organic whole. Our obliging and observant waiter recommended fish for our main courses, arguing for their appropriateness for a late summer evening. He convinced us with his genuine and comprehensive opinions and observations on BarAnka’s entrees, as well as with swift and accurate service.
A curious feature was the small size of the yellow cardboard menu, which, in its triangular fold, could have easily passed as a table tent. Non-Russian speakers may be a bit challenged by the densely listed dishes, which ranged from about 150 to 450 rubles ($5 – $15) for starters and main courses alike. Nonetheless, everything from BarAnka’s dishes to its desserts and drinks, as well as its breakfast and lunch offers, found space on it.
The cod under sauce marinade (370 rubles, $12), with an extra side of grilled vegetables (150 rubles, $5) was decent. The carrot-based sauce was a bit strong on the onion, which slightly overpowered the cod. The portion was not very large, and the grilled vegetables could be counted on two hands: One asparagus, one slice of zucchini, two broccolis and a few pieces of pepper were not so much filling as they were indicative of the cook’s extraordinary talent to grill vegetables while preserving their fresh taste. The smoked salmon with fried potatoes, vegetables and tartar sauce (450 rubles, $15) constituted the highlight of the evening. The salmon was baked to such perfection that with every bite, the smoky flavor had just enough time to unfold, before it was succeeded by a detonation of the salmon’s inner juicy taste.
BarAnka, as is usual for the Ginza Project, accomplished an excellent integrity and cohesion of style and atmosphere, save only for the rear view onto an old parking lot, a run-down carwash and a decrepit red brick former factory building.
To distract ourselves from this sight, we ordered freshly pressed pineapple juice (300 rubles, $10) — pleasantly refreshing and complete with a foamy hat, the unmistakable sign of freshly pressed juice — to go with our dessert: raspberry cake (250 rubles, $8) and banana cake (200 rubles, $6.50). Both of them provided felicitous closure for a felicitous evening. While the sweetened raspberries showered the pudding on which they came in a sweet juicy flavor, the banana cake was a single sweet waft of banana, caramel and a hint of chocolate.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Things got even more bizarre in Russia this week as a singer was summoned by investigators who asked, among other things, whether she had a permit to perform the song she recited into a megaphone at last month’s outdoor concert in defense of the Khimki Forest in Moscow.
Maria Lyubicheva, singer with Moscow’s electro punk band Barto, had to recite the song rather than to sing it, because the police had blocked the truck carrying the PA system in an attempt to prevent the previously authorized event. They said the truck had dirty license plates and that the PA system had no proper certificates.
The musicians, who opposed the destruction of the forest and managed to get through the police cordons (some were not let into the square), had to sing unplugged, like Yury Shevchuk, or into a megaphone when the protesters managed to get hold of one. 
The destruction of a large section of the Khimki Forest was allowed by the authorities in order to give way to a project backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for a paid highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ecologists say that the road could be built without affecting the forest, although the authorities are clinging to the original plan.
Speaking by phone from Moscow on Thursday, Lyubicheva said that the song called “Ready” (Gotov) was about love, telling a story about two young people who met at a rally in today’s Moscow. 
A young woman in the song asks her would-be lover if he is ready to burn cop cars at night, as she is, explaining that doing things like that is a “sign of good taste with regard to those who treat the law as trash.”
During what the investigators called an unofficial conversation, Lyubicheva was asked a series of questions about the organizers of the event and about the song itself.
She was told that the line about “burning cop cars” was being investigated for “signs of extremism” by two experts in linguistics and she may face criminal charges when the examination is finished by the end of this month.
“They said they already believe that the song contains extremism, according to the experts’ preliminary opinion,” she said. “When it becomes official, an investigation will be conducted and a criminal case will be opened.”
Lyubicheva said she was especially perplexed when asked whether she had a permit to perform the lyrics. 
“I was surprised and even asked them why I should get a permit for the lyrics,” she said.
Official permits to perform the songs were required in the Soviet Union until Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev abolished censorship in 1990. In Russia, censorship is forbidden by the constitution, which makes the song’s line about “treating the law as trash” sound very relevant.
<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Swords and sandals
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After the summer break, the Mariinksy Theater’s new 2010/11 season will open on Sept. 14 with Mussorgsky’s opera “Khovanshchina,” conducted by maestro Gergiev.  On the following day, the ballet troupe will commence with Leonid Yakobson’s 1956 production of “Spartacus” which was revived in July during the Stars of the White Nights Festival. Its premiere was the highlight of the ballet programs during the summer’s Stars of the White Nights Festival.
This Yakobson ballet is actually the first ever ballet production set to Aram Khachaturian’s bombastic score, though it is less famous than Yuri Grigorovich’s later 1968 production for the Bolshoi Ballet. This important revival, supervised by former Mariinsky dancer Vyacheslav Khomyakov, who himself danced in this ballet back in the 1970s, is a worthwhile undertaking, as this production was originally created for the Mariinsky, albeit back in its Kirov incarnation. It’s also timely, as an earlier 1950 work by Yakobson, “Shurale,” was also revived by the Mariinsky Ballet last year.  Igor Zelensky and Viktoria Tereshkina, who led the premiere cast of “Spartacus” on July 1, will dance again on 15 September.
Compared with Grigorovich’s Bolshoi version, this Yakobson production is far more substantial in mime and spectacle than in actual dancing.  There is a lot of splendid pageantry on stage, especially with the endless grand processions in the first two acts.  The costumes and sets are far more sumptuous, providing a richer, more engaging visual spectacle.  The marble decor depicting Imperial Rome is particularly lavish.  An excellent touch comes at the end of each of the eight scenes, when the action is frozen and then depicted immediately on a backdrop.  
The Yakobson production also does a better job of developing the story. There is more emphasis on the courtesan Aegina and Harmodius (Spartacus’ friend who later deserts him).  Phrygia’s pas de deux with Spartacus are rather dull in comparison with the lustful duets of Aegina and Harmodius, which are far more emotionally charged.  Aegina’s characterization is deeper and more profound than that of Phrygia’s.  While the ruthless Roman General Crassus is essentially limited to a pantomimic role, the numerous, extensive sword-fighting scenes are brilliantly realistic white-knuckle rides. 
It’s not all good news, though. In the final act, the various divertissements drag on for too long and could have done with some judicious cutting.  Similarly, Phrygia’s grief over the body of her dead husband in the closing scene could be accused of being too melodramatic.  Overall, however, this Soviet period curiosity, so grand and spectacular, is still fascinating and of historical interest.
The performance of “Spartacus” that I attended in late July on the closing night of the White Nights Festival was admirably danced by Yuri Smekalov in the title role.  Konstantin Zveryev, a handsome and stylish young soloist, was outstanding as Harmodius.  He was well matched with the talented newcomer Yulia Stepanova, who was compelling as Aegina.  They definitely made more dramatic impact, and outshone Smekalov and Daria Vasnetsova as Phrygia.  The best in this cast was Crassus, danced with incomparable weight and authority by Vladimir Ponomaryov, at present the greatest male character dancer in the Mariinsky Ballet.

http://www.mariinsky.ru/en

TITLE: Church Says Koran Will Be Burnt
AUTHOR: By Mike Bernos
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: GAINESVILLE, Florida — A small Florida church has shrugged off global outrage and vowed to go ahead with a Koran burning ceremony amid growing fears it will ignite a wave of Islamic rage.
Condemnation rained down from top US officials, the military, the Vatican and other religious and world leaders, but the church refused to halt plans to torch the Islamic holy book on Saturday’s anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“As of this time we have no intention of canceling,” Pastor Terry Jones told a press conference here Wednesday, adding his evangelical church, the Dove World Outreach Center, had received numerous messages of support.
Jones had indicated he was praying for guidance on whether to go ahead with the incendiary event after warnings from U.S. Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus that U.S. and allied troops could be targeted in revenge.
“We understand the general’s concerns and we are still considering it,” Jones said, but swiftly added he had been contacted by a special forces soldier who told him “the people in the field are 100 percent behind us.”
After his press conference Wednesday, Jones reportedly met inside his church with a Florida imam, in a sign that the renegade pastor might be willing to tone down or even cancel his event.
According to the Gainesville Sun, the imam of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, Muhammad Musri, met with Jones for 40 minutes in the pastor’s office.
“I told him the world would admire your courage if you come out and say, ‘Because of my devotion to Christ and the Bible, I’m going to do the right thing.’” the Sun quoted Musri as saying.
“I strongly believe at the end of the day that he is going to make the right step and call off this event.”
The gun-toting pastor, who has received death threats, says the aim of Saturday’s three-hour evening event is to send a message to radical Islamists.
“Our burning of the Koran is to call attention that something’s wrong. And it is possibly time for us in a new way to actually stand up and confront terrorism,” he said.
The planned torching of some 200 Korans — many of which have been donated to the church — comes amid an angry debate over plans to build an Islamic cultural center in New York close to where the World Trade Center once stood.
Many fear if the Koran burning goes ahead it will further raise anti-Islamic sentiment.
Late Wednesday the imam of the mosque to be built near Ground Zero, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told CNN that burning the Koran is “not the right thing to do” because “it’s going to feed into the radicals in the Muslim world. It’s dangerous.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denounced the Florida church’s plans as “disgraceful,” and the State Department sought Wednesday to downplay an event likely to be shown on television screens around the world.
“We hope that the world will appreciate that this is the action of a very small fringe group and does not represent the views of the United States or Americans as a whole,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply disturbed by the plans, with his spokesman releasing a statement saying: “Such actions cannot be condoned by any religion.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel decried the plans as “abhorrent” at an event honoring a Danish cartoonist whose 2005 drawing of the Prophet Mohammed sparked protests around the world.
And former Republican vice presidential candidate and leading conservative Sarah Palin slammed the move as an insensitive provocation “much like building a mosque at Ground Zero,” urging Jones to think again.
“It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don’t feed that fire,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
Officials in the small university town of Gainesville — reluctantly dragged into the global spotlight — met Wednesday to draw up contingency plans.

TITLE: Mullah: NATO Losing The War
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: DUBAI — Taliban leader Mullah Omar said the NATO-led coalition is losing the war in Afghanistan, calling on Afghans to redouble their struggle and pressing the United States to withdraw.
Omar was speaking in a message to mark Eid al-Fitr, the feast that ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan, made available by the US-based monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group.
“The victory of our Islamic nation over the invading infidels is now imminent and the driving force behind this is the belief in the help of Allah and unity among ourselves,” he said.
“Put all your strength and planning behind the task of driving away the invaders and regaining independence of the country,” he told Afghan mujahedeen (fighters).
He claimed that “those military experts who have framed strategies of the invasion of Afghanistan or are now engaged in hammering out new strategies, admit themselves that all their strategies are nothing but a complete failure.”
And he said “other foreign forces which have come here for occupation of our country... are now under pressures from their people due to the growing and heavy military expenditures, casualties and the fruitlessness of the war. Each of them is hastily seeking ways of exit from Afghanistan.”
Addressing Americans, he said “you tested all your might... to maintain your occupation over the Afghan Islamic and independent country but you achieved nothing except a dashing defeat.”
“But your rulers, instead of admitting their wrong policies, and seeking a rational exit, want to try the hackneyed and failed process once more as an effort to compensate for their defeats and distract your attention and that of the public of the world from their debacles.
“What we want to convey to you through this message is that (you) withdraw your soldiers from our country unconditionally and as soon as possible. This is in your interest and in the interest of your people and the best option for regional stability.”
“You should know that your rulers have continuously told you lies since the beginning of the aggression on Afghanistan until this very day.
“They have wasted hundreds of billion(s) of dollars of your tax money in the shape of financial expenditures and your manpower in Afghanistan and have still been wasting them. You shall be witness to another economic melt-down.”

TITLE: Nigerian Police Hunt Hundreds of Escapees
AUTHOR: By Aminu Abubakar
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BAUCHI, Nigeria — Police hunted hundreds of inmates Thursday who escaped when suspected Islamists used machine guns and bombs in a Nigerian prison attack, while authorities warned other jails may be vulnerable.
The Islamist sect suspected in the attack that freed more than 700 prisoners had launched an uprising in the country’s north last year put down by a brutal assault, and Nigeria’s government said it would move to prevent a repeat.
More than 100 alleged members of the extremist group were among those who escaped in the Tuesday night siege in the northern city of Bauchi, police said.
The interior minister said the attackers, believed to be from a sect known as Boko Haram, used “overwhelming firepower,” and police described them as being armed with machine guns and homemade bombs.
They set fire to a section of the prison complex and fought a fierce gun battle with authorities. Police said four people were killed.

TITLE: France to Propose Emegency Roma Plans for Romania
AUTHOR: By Amer Ouali
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BUCHAREST — France will call on Romania to draw up an emergency plan to integrate its Roma community, France’s European affairs minister said Thursday in Bucharest ahead of talks with the countries’ leaders.
“France will call for commitments on police and judiciary cooperation, fight against human trafficking and integration of Roma in Romania, as part of a national emergency plan spanning 2010-2013,” Pierre Lellouche told reporters.
His comments came a day after Romanian President Traian Basescu warned that the French ministers’ visit would be useless if they had come to lecture Romania.
Lellouche, arrived in Bucharest with French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, said European funding would finance such an emergency plan to the tune of a billion euros.
“The truth is the Roma are not integrated in Romania,” he added.
Paris was seeking a commitment from Bucharest that they would help Roma, including those expelled from France in recent months, integrate into Romanian society, the minister added.
Paris in its turn pledged to mobilize funds to help Roma in France return and benefit from social inclusion programs in Romania.
They would also help Romania implement the emergency plan, he added.
“We have a road map on Roma inclusion, we have made several proposals, but things are not progressing,” Lellouche said.
France has deported almost 1,000 Roma migrants to Bulgaria and Romania since President Sarkozy’s government launched a high-profile security crackdown in July.
Its policy has attracted criticism from both within the country and abroad, increasing tension between France and Romania in particular.
On the eve of the ministers’ visit, Basescu warned that if they were coming “to lecture, that will resolve nothing.”
But he added: “If they are coming to find solutions, we will find solutions.”
And Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi attacked France’s expuslion of Roma immigrants in an opinion piece in Thursday’s edition of the daily Evenimentul Zilei.
“Neither a security crackdown nor a paternalist form of welfare are the answer to Roma problems”, he wrote.
“Only a European strategy will allow for a lasting response to the problems and legitimate expectations of this vast community.”
Besson and Lellouche were due to meet Prime Minister Emil Boc, Interior Minister Vasile Blaga and Baconschi later Thursday.
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers have defended their policy in the context of a crackdown on foreign-born criminals.
But Bucharest has said that of the hundreds of Romanian Roma expelled, none had a criminal record.
In the latest international criticism of French policy, Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, on Wednesday likened France’s rhetoric on the issue to that used by the Nazi and fascist regimes
The remarks brought a sharp response from France, with Lellouche saying he would be calling for an explanation of the comments, which came in a Twitter posting to the Internet.