SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1630 (91), Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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TITLE: City Struggles to Cope With Heavy Snowfall
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The thick blanket of snow covering St. Petersburg’s streets after five days of almost uninterrupted snowfall is making getting around the city a struggle, both on foot and by car. 
In a repeat of events seen during heavy snowfalls last winter, city residents have rushed to buy shovels and city officials have expressed their dissatisfaction with the work of the companies in charge of keeping the streets and pavements clear of snow. 
Andrei Podobed, head of the city’s Redevelopment and Road Maintenance Committee, who reportedly made a personal inspection of the city’s streets at the end of last week, said he had many serious criticisms, Fontanka.ru reported.
The committee said it would apply harsh administrative and economic sanctions against negligent contractors. 
According to the committee, on Thursday alone, the companies removed 29,000 cubic meters of snow from the city’s streets. More than 1,000 snow ploughs were employed, along with additional equipment including more than 200 new pavement sweepers.
On Friday, 50,000 cubic meters of snow were removed from the city, Fontanka reported.
After the first two days of heavy snow, comparisons were already being drawn with last year’s winter, when heavy snowfall caused chaos on the city’s roads and made walking around the city difficult, and when several people were killed by falling icicles.
“We live in the Nevsky district, and it’s quite difficult now to walk along a number of streets there because of the thick layer of snow,” said Alyona Ivantsova, 23. “I wonder where all those snow ploughs are now. I really fear we’ll soon face a similarly desperate situation to last winter,” she said. 
Even in the city center, on streets such as Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, Pereulok Antonenko or Muchnoi Pereulok, pedestrians are already reluctant to walk along icy and snowy pavements overshadowed by large, lethal icicles.
On Sunday, a 55-year-old man was taken to hospital after being struck by a falling icicle on Vasilyevksy Island, Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported.
Many car owners have substituted their cars for the metro and trams.
On Nov. 16, 10,700 people were counted entering Prospekt Veteranov metro station between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., while on Nov. 23 — the first day of the snowfall — that number had increased up to 12,700, Fontanka reported.
The number of bus passengers, on the other hand, decreased by 3 percent.
The snowdrifts themselves are not the only problem currently faced by the city. Two snowploughs and other equipment have been stolen. In one incident, a 30-year-old man hijacked a snowplough, and was detained by police the next day, Fontanka reported.
Meteorologists forecast that light snow showers will continue all week in St. Petersburg, with temperatures dropping to minus 10 to minus 14 degrees Celsius during the daytime. Night temperatures are forecast to drop even lower.

TITLE: TV Critique Boosts Hope For Media Freedom
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A daring speech by one of the country’s most acclaimed journalists, who publicly blasted federal television stations for their servile attitude and penchant for propaganda, set the media abuzz and even prompted talk of a new perestroika.
Leonid Parfyonov, a former editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek and television host with a slew of successful projects — most of them nonpolitical — gave the speech Thursday evening while accepting the inaugural Vladislav Listyev Prize, presented to people responsible for “the event of the year” on Russian television.
During the past decade “national television information services have become part of the government. Journalistic topics, like all life, have been irrevocably divided into those that can be shown on TV and those that cannot. … This isn’t information anymore, this is PR or anti-PR by the authorities,” he said in a speech that was not broadcast by state-run Channel One, which gave the award.
“For a federal channel reporter, top authorities aren’t newsmakers, they are his boss’s bosses. But then … a reporter is not a journalist, but an official,” he said in a prepared speech that he read out after accepting the award.
Listyev, the founding father of post-Soviet television, was shot dead by an unidentified assailant in 1995.
“It’s as if the authorities were someone who recently died — and you never speak ill of the dead,” Parfyonov said, adding that state-controlled television was resorting to Soviet-style propaganda tricks, such as showing protocol reports instead of real news.
“I don’t have the right to fault any of my colleagues, I’m no fighter myself and expect no heroics from others. But at the very least we have to say it like it is,” said Parfyonov, 50, who was fired from NTV in 2004, several years after it was taken over by state-run Gazprom, prompting a radical pro-Kremlin change in the channel’s stance.
Parfyonov also drew attention to this month’s beating of Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin, whom he said he had visited in the hospital earlier that day. Reporters face violence in Russia “not because of what [they] write, say or film, but because it is read, heard or seen,” he said.
The ceremony was attended by Russian television’s most prominent figures, including the directors of leading federal broadcasters Channel One and Russia One. Most of them listened to the speech stone-faced, and applause was timid after Parfyonov thanked his audience.
Channel One covered the ceremony, but political remarks from Parfyonov’s five-minute acceptance speech were not shown on television. The station posted a full, 30-minute recording of the ceremony, including Parfyonov’s main speech from around the 25th minute.
The speech sent ripples through the media, with prominent blogger Anton Krasovsky calling it “a perestroika manifesto” in an interview to GQ magazine.
It remained unclear whether the critical speech was approved by television bosses or the Kremlin — none of whom commented on it — or whether it was an isolated act of rebellion by Parfyonov, who noted in the speech that he had worked at the state’s Ostankino television tower for 24 years.
The St. Petersburg Times was unable to reach Parfyonov for comment Friday and Saturday.
On Saturday, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily cited Parfyonov’s wife, Yelena Chekalova, as saying she thought that her husband might lose his most recent show at Channel One after years of being kept away from television.
But Chekalova later said she was misquoted, and the daily’s television critic, Alexander Melman, admitted that the newspaper published an unedited version of her interview on its web site, Ekho Moskvy reported Saturday.
Parfyonov, who enjoys the respect of the country’s journalistic community, was supported by many liberal-leaning professionals, including Vladimir Pozner, who hosts a show on Channel One.
But Pozner said Parfyonov’s speech was directed at state officials, not television bosses who “simply follow certain instructions by authorities.”
“He thought about the contents of this speech for a long time, and it was his own personal act,” Anna Kachkayeva, a television analyst with Radio Liberty, told The St. Petersburg Times. She said she believed that Konstantin Ernst, the Kremlin-connected Channel One director, was “unprepared” for Parfyonov’s speech.
Parfyonov and Ernst are friends, and Parfyonov has made three nonpolitical documentaries for Channel One as a freelance producer in the last two years.
But Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, a think tank, said he thought that Ernst probably read Parfyonov’s speech ahead of the ceremony and that his statements were likely sanctioned by the Kremlin.
Without challenging Parfyonov’s liberal views, Mukhin called him “a good nonconformist who was used for concrete goals. He caught the fresh wind coming from the Kremlin,” he said.
Several commentators, including Ekho Moskvy’s Ksenia Larina, compared Parfyonov’s outburst to a televised meeting in May between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and rock star Yury Shevchuk, who asked Putin several hard questions about the country’s political regime.
Parfyonov cited the uproar that the broadcast caused as evidence that Russians want more diverse views on television.
Independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said critical statements from Parfyonov were in line with Medvedev’s statement last week about political “stagnation” in the country.
“After stagnation comes perestroika, and this is an indication that perestroika has begun,” Belkovsky said. The speech was allowed because Ernst, like most Kremlin-savvy television bosses, “sees the changes in the atmosphere,” he said.

TITLE: Law Brings Harsher Penalties for Abuse of Animals
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Nobody in the world could reproach us for occupying ourselves with trifles by gathering together ministers and discussing some cats,” said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during his speech at the International Tiger Forum in St. Petersburg last week.
Putin’s words at the forum, which was devoted to saving the endangered global wild tiger population, demonstrated that Russia has finally started to address animal rights at a state level, and more importantly, putting the words into practice: A bill regulating responsibility for cruelty to animals has finally been passed, and the new law comes into force on Jan. 1, 2011.
The new law stipulates fines for committing acts of cruelty to animals leading to the animals being injured or dying. People who commit such crimes will be obliged to pay from 1,000 to 5,000 rubles ($32 to $161) in fines. If officials are found guilty of such an offence, the fine is 5,000 to 10,000 rubles ($319). The fine is 10,000 to 50,000 rubles ($1,593) for corporations.
Last month, a woman in the U.S. was fined $255 for dying her poodle’s paws pink for Halloween. Although she used a dye made specifically for dogs that is applied like shampoo, the animal control officer regarded it an animal cruelty.
Such instances are widespread in most Western countries, where animal rights are well protected. In Russia, however, even the fine for killing a pet is smaller than that for dressing a dog up for Halloween in the U.S. 
“We cannot impose a fine of more than 5,000 rubles according to the federal legislation, as this is the regional law,” said Vitaly Milonov, chairman of the Legislation Committee of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly. 
“But it is the first brick in a major construction — the complex system of animal rights protection,” he said.
The new law will be the first act regulating animal rights in St. Petersburg and in Russia. Article 245 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which deals with cruelty to animals, is barely applied.
“The content of this article is such that nobody could commit such atrocities,” said Milonov. “In most cases, there are no criminal components and, as a result, there is no justice.”
“The law won’t cardinally change the situation, but now cruelty will be illegal and we’ll get an opportunity to fight these sadists,” he said. “Our society is at the early stage of awakening. Humanistic values, according to which tormenting and killing animals is wrong, are returning.”
But animals’ rights activists say the punishment is still too mild. In Italy, for example, abandoning a cat or dog carries a year-long prison sentence and 10,000 euro fine. 
In Austria, it is illegal to put puppies and kittens on display in shop windows. The fine for breaking the law ranges from 2,000 to 15,000 euros. In Switzerland, if pet owners divorce, the court decides with whom it would be better for the pet to stay.
Several years ago, the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture established new norms for the protection of animals. The law regulates how often pets should be fed and walked, where they should live and even the quality of air they should breathe. Even mice, rats and rabbits have to be provided with appropriate cages.  Pets that live indoors have a right to a window to see the sunshine. According to this law, animals have a right to “social contact.”
“No pet should be left alone for more than eight hours,” said Cheryl Jones Fur, a zoologist specializing in household pets at the Ministry of Agriculture in Sweden.
If the owner cannot provide this “social contact” at least twice a day, they should take their pet to a dog nursery. Those who do not follow these rules have to answer to the animal protection inspector.
“The punishment depends on the severity of the maltreatment,” said Cecilia Mille, international affairs manager at Animal Rights Sweden, the largest animal rights organization in Scandinavia. 
“The maximum punishment is a two-year prison sentence, but the most common punishment is a suspended sentence in combination with a fine. In most cases the maltreatment is reported by a neighbor.” 
But even with such a specific law, the situation with animal welfare is not satisfactory, according to Animal Rights Sweden experts.
“Naturally the legislation doesn’t work to perfection; I don’t think any law does in any country. But the last few years, Sweden has had problems when it comes to inspections and control,” said Mille.
Russian politicians hope that over time, animal rights legislation will come into line with European models.
“Everything is possible, but only if society understands that animal welfare is worth protecting and that maltreatment is illegal,” said Milonov.
In the meantime, neighboring Finland has extended a helping hand. Several Finnish organizations help abandoned cats and dogs from Russia and Estonia to find new homes in Finland. During the last three years, 300 abandoned dogs have moved from St. Petersburg to Finland, according to data from the Russian organization “Second Chance,” which works with Kodittomat Koirat in Finland.
Milonov said the new law could also help to prevent the exploitation of wild animals, when young bears are given harmful injections to make them calm so that tourists and passers-by can have their photograph taken with the animal. Very often, the bears do not live longer than one season.
“This ‘fun’ must stop for good,” said Milonov.
“Another point that could be regulated by the new law is so-called cat-fanciers, when an old woman keeps about 40 cats in horrendous conditions, and they get diseases or injuries and die,” he said.
A chilling example of just such a problem recently occurred in St. Petersburg in a building on Yachtennaya Ulitsa, when an old woman took in several abandoned cats. A year later, there were more than 50 cats in her one-room apartment. The neighbors complained as the conditions in the apartment were appalling, but nothing could be done as the woman refused to open her door and there was no law granting permission to enter the apartment. This winter, a group of volunteers offered to help the woman by renovating and cleaning the apartment and taking care of the cats, but she refused. Finally, after the neighbors’ water supply was cut off due to a problem with the water pipe in the woman’s apartment, the police were called and entered the apartment. The woman was diagnosed as mentally ill and was taken to hospital. 
The cats were left with two possible fates — to die in the apartment from infection, or to be left on the streets. Fortunately for the felines, the group of volunteers intervened to ensure they were not left to the mercy of fate.
“The conditions where the cats were kept cannot be described, everything was filthy, with lots of trash and clutter,” said Alexandra Yeremina, a volunteer. “There were insects and waste, and the smell was so awful that workers in respirators couldn’t stand it. The cats were wild, as the owner hadn’t taken care of them. 
“We took away all the animals, rented premises for them, and started neutering the cats, taking care of them, providing them with medical treatment, washing and feeding them. We are all volunteers, everyone has their own work and life, but we spend our free time saving these animals; we have a work roster,” she said.
Some of the cats have already found a new home, but 43 cats remain at the temporary shelter.
“We have encountered people who told us to put these cats out on the street and not waste time on them,” said Yeremina. “But how can we do that? It would be a death sentence for them. I don’t see why animals deserve less help than human beings, since they are dependent on people.”
According to the new law, inappropriate ways of keeping or transporting animals that harms their health is regarded as cruelty. Lawmakers hope that NGOs that protect animal rights will cooperate with the authorities.
“We need practice in the issue of animal protection,” said Milonov. “We believe that later we will be able to establish another law that will be broader and correspond to European norms.” 

People interested in volunteering at or adopting a cat from the temporary shelter described above should contact Alexandra Yeremina on  +7 921 366 50 63.

TITLE: Putin Harangues Europe on Business
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin likened ill-considered economic policy to terrorism and religious intolerance on Friday, telling a business forum in Berlin that Russian companies seeking to invest in Europe were facing a number of political and economic barriers.
Russian investors have to overcome unfair hurdles in Europe and often find that “the door is just shut,” Putin told chief executives of Germany’s largest companies.
But the main thorn in the prime minister’s side was the Third Energy Package legislation, which goes into effect in March and is intended to ensure that small gas suppliers can get unhindered access to European infrastructure and compete on an equal footing with the dominant players.
“What is this? What is this robbery?” Putin said, referring to plans by the Lithuanian government to separate the gas supply and transport business at the national gas company Lietuvos Dujos, which is partially owned by Gazprom.
Putin quipped that if Europeans did not want gas or nuclear energy, they would still have to rely on Russia for firewood to heat their houses.
“I don’t understand at all. How will you heat [your houses]? You do not want gas, you are not developing nuclear energy. Will you get your heat from firewood?” Putin said. “But even for firewood you will need to go to Siberia, do you understand? You do not even have firewood.”
The prime minister said he wanted to change the trend of Russian companies facing problems with their foreign investments, adding that the situation negatively affects European business as well.
He cited the rejected bid by a consortium of Sberbank and GAZ Group with Canada’s Magna International to buy General Motors’ German unit Opel in 2009, saying the carmaker was no better off “after the deal failed.”
He also said the Hungarian government was “doing it’s best” to illegally isolate Surgutneftegaz from management issues at the MOL refinery, where the Russian oil company holds a 20 percent stake.
Putin also brought up an investigation into billionaire Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova Group, which owns technology assets in Switzerland. Vekselberg and his associates were accused of not declaring the details of their actions when they acquired Oerlikon group.
“It was dragged from court to court. It seems [the problem] is resolved now, thank God. But it’s impossible to work this way!” he said.
Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag reported Sunday that the Swiss finance ministry was ordered to pay 194,150 Swiss francs ($193,454) to Vekselberg and his associates as compensation, in light of the not-guilty verdict.
Russian companies are treated with mistrust in Europe partly due to stereotypes of the past accompanying the country’s image and partly because of the negative experience of partnering with them, said Sergei Nikitin, head of the representative office of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Germany.
“This will be resolved over time,” he said by telephone from Berlin, adding that Russian firms should work on improving their image.
The business image of Russia doesn’t correspond to international standards, said Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council for Foreign Relations.
“They don’t look like European or even U.S. companies, that’s why it’s very difficult to talk to them,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Hanukkah Festivities</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG — St. Petersburg’s Jews will start celebrating Hanukkah, one of the most important holidays of the Jewish calendar, on Wednesday. Festivities will last for eight days.
On Wednesday, a large celebration will be held in the courtyard of the Grand Choral Synagogue located at 2 Lermontovsky Prospekt. St. Petersburg’s chief rabbi will light the first Hanukkah candle of the seven-meter menorah.
Another large menorah will be erected on Sennaya Ploshchad to celebrate the festival. The lights symbolize the miracle of the Temple in Jerusalem when according to Jewish scriptures, oil that was meant to last for just one day kept burning for an entire eight days.

TITLE: Custom Shirts From Kalashnikov’s Home
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: IZHEVSK — Izhevsk, an industrialized city of some 600,000 in the Ural Mountains, is known for its designs, from the first Russian motorcycle in 1929 to the world-famous Kalashnikov rifle nearly two decades later.
Now a local entrepreneur is calling on customers to produce their own designs — for custom-tailored dress shirts.
Vasily Muntyan, 28, said he picked up the idea while traveling abroad, though his own problems with finding a decent shirt back home were what convinced to him to launch Rubashka-na-Zakaz, or Custom-Made Shirt.
“Although none of us had any Internet experience, we decided to set up an online business,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
The venture cost $500,000 to launch, with the funding coming from Muntyan’s father, Andrei, an executive at local lender Mobilbank.
“He takes part in all of the brainstorming,” Muntyan said, adding that his family’s business connections had helped him to avoid red tape that can slow down Russian startups.
Since he started the company in February 2009, it has sewn about 11,000 shirts at a rate of 15 to 30 orders per day. Sales have reached $400,000 for the first year, and delivery is available worldwide, he said.
Regular shirts cost up to $70, but “test shirts” made from cheap Russian fabric are available for 300 rubles ($10) — as are more expensive handmade designs.
The company is already operating at a profit, and Muntyan expects to recoup the initial investment by early 2012. Labor in Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia, is cheaper than that in Moscow, though costs are driven up by the need to import fabrics from European countries and Malaysia, he said.
Most of the company’s 40 employees are directly involved in production at a rented 200-square-meter factory in Izhevsk.
In its advertisements, the company calls on clients to “use imagination” while designing their shirts, and so far, the results have been encouraging.
A regional student comedy team purchased several flashy shirts for their performances, Muntyan said. Television actors and even a few local bureaucrats have also placed orders.
But Muntyan hasn’t been shy about capitalizing on Izhevsk’s current claim to fame, either. His company’s web site features a photo of rifle designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, who turned 91 earlier this month, sporting one of his shirts with light-blue stripes.
“We wanted to remind people about our city’s most famous person and give him a shirt,” Muntyan said.
Most clients are Muscovites, though residents of other regions also make use of the service. A few orders placed on the site, which has an English-language version, came from the United States and China.
“The only thing that bothered me was that the delivery wasn’t a door-to-door service. I need to pick up the parcel from the local postal office,” a Chinese client, Zhai Linjing, wrote on the company’s site in October.
Most clients are men aged 25 to 40, although shirts for women are also available. Customers come from vastly different financial backgrounds, Muntyan said.
“Some people order up to 10 shirts, while for some, paying just 300 rubles is too much,” Muntyan said. A regular client once purchased five handmade dress shirts costing a total of more than $1,000.
The business caters to people who don’t like the cost or selection in retail shops.
Anton Bugayev, a 32-year-old lawyer from Bashkortostan who described himself as a “fan of quality shirts” on the company’s site, said he decided to order a shirt online after having problems finding one in the republic’s capital, Ufa.
“Quality shirts cost up to $300, and they are often hard to find,” Bugayev, who ordered a white shirt for $30, told The St. Petersburg Times by telephone.
Most customers are praising the idea and the site’s design, though several have also complained about the limited variety of fabrics and delayed orders.
It takes a week to ship out a custom-made shirt, Muntyan said. But about 40 percent of clients prefer to pay on delivery, not by credit card, which forces the company to send goods via the notoriously slow Russian Post.
“Russian Post is still the cheapest way to ship orders, but it is slow and this is one of the biggest minuses for us,” he said.
Only 24 percent of Russians make online purchases at least once a month, according to a January survey by the ROMIR polling agency. But the number of Internet users in the country is growing steadily, expanding the potential client base for Rubashka-na-Zakaz.
Competition, however, is also on the rise. The Moscow-based Legole offers a similar service, although it only produces 100 percent cotton shirts and does not use synthetic blends like Muntyan’s enterprise.
Still, Legole’s owner, Roman Sobachevsky, said his company “feels the strong presence” of its Izhevsk rival.
Meanwhile, Muntyan said he is planning to expand its offerings. The company has started to make ties and skirts, and designing your own pants online will also be available in the near future, he said.

TITLE: Bill on Journalist Attacks Goes to Duma
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A bill toughening punishment for attacks on journalists was submitted Friday to the State Duma, just as police said they had a “real chance” of solving this month’s brutal beating of Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin.
The bill proposes introducing a separate article in the Criminal Code on preventing journalists from fulfilling their duties through violence or threats, said Irina Yarovaya, a co-author of the bill, Interfax reported.
Killing or maiming journalists, or threatening to do so, would be punishable by jail terms of six to 15 years, while lesser violence, currently not subject to imprisonment, would land offenders behind bars for two to five years. 
Non-violent obstruction of a journalist’s work would carry a sentence of up to two years.
No date was set over the weekend for a hearing on the draft, submitted by several lawmakers with the ruling United Russia party.
Vsevolod Bogdanov, head of the Russian Union of Journalists, said the bill would help “defend the interests” of reporters, Interfax reported.
But Kommersant editor-in-chief Mikhail Mikhailin said current laws were “enough” to fight crimes against journalists and that “the best way to prevent crime is to make punishment inescapable,” Interfax reported.
Justice may be achieved soon in Kashin’s beating, a senior law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti on Friday, adding that investigators have achieved “real results” in the investigation.

TITLE: Duma Blames Stalin For Katyn Massacre
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Friday issued a declaration condemning the Katyn massacre and for the first time directly blamed Soviet leader Josef Stalin for the 1940 execution of more than 20,000 Polish officers.
The resolution, approved in a 324-57 vote, calls the killings committed by Soviet secret police a “crime by the Stalinist regime and the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state.” It adds that secret Kremlin documents show that the massacre was directly ordered by Stalin and other Soviet leaders.
“We strongly condemn that regime, which despised people’s rights and lives, and offer friendship to the Polish people and hope for a new era in our mutual relations,” the resolution says.
The text was supported by all Duma factions except the Communists, whose 57 deputies voted against it.
United Russia, which commands a two-thirds majority in the Duma, said the vote brought the parliament in line with the executive branch, thus helping avoid the falsification of history.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a senior United Russia official, noted that neither the Duma nor the supreme councils of the Russian Soviet Republic and the Soviet Union had ever addressed the issue.
“This uncertainty created fertile ground for fabricating history on both sides,” he said in comments on the party’s web site.
The Katyn massacre had long roiled Moscow’s relations with Poland because official Soviet propaganda blamed the German military for the killings.
In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to acknowledge that his country was responsible for Katyn, but the admission was never followed by an official act of parliament.
Warsaw welcomed the move as a significant step toward reconciliation.
“This gesture proves that there is no turning back from the truth-based dialogue between Poland and Russia,” the Polish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its web site.
Duma Deputy Sergei Markov, also from United Russia, said that while the declaration was a consequence of recently improving relations with Warsaw and the West in general, Moscow had not given up anything by issuing it.
“We have said this many times before, and now [the Poles] wanted to hear it again from us,” he told The St. Petersburg Times, adding that in return, Polish public opinion about Russia should improve.
The vote comes seven months after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, previously wary of criticizing Stalin, denounced the Soviet dictator’s regime during a visit to Katyn on April 7 with his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk.
Three days later, Polish President Lech Kaczynski and many of his country’s top officials were killed en route to a memorial ceremony at Katyn when their plane crashed.
That tragedy helped speed up reconciliation, and in September Russian prosecutors turned over to Poland 20 new files from a probe into the massacre that could be key in proving that the Soviets carefully planned the killings.

TITLE: Voina ‘Guru’ Flees to Estonia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Alexei Plutser-Sarno, the spiritual guru behind the controversial art group Voina (War), has fled to Estonia for fear of arrest, he wrote Saturday on his blog.
Plutser-Sarno, who is also known for writing a dictionary of Russian obscenities, said he crossed the border illegally with help from high-level Estonian friends following a tip that he could be arrested. He said he did not plan to return to Russia.
“I got absolutely credible information from my lawyer that I have become a suspect in the Voina case as the organizer and leader of the criminal group Voina,” Plutser-Sarno said on Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei radio Friday from Tallinn.
Earlier this month, a St. Petersburg court sanctioned the arrest of two Voina members for a September “performance.” The Palace Revolution, as they called the event, involved activists flipping over several police cars, some with officers inside, at night in downtown St. Petersburg to protest police corruption.
Plutser-Sarno did not participate in the event, but wrote about it on his blog.
The artists may face up to five years in prison for hooliganism. Investigators have not publicly described Voina as a “criminal group,” which could imply more serious criminal charges.
Investigators could not be reached over the weekend for comment about Plutser-Sarno’s allegations. Soon after the September stunt, Plutser-Sarno said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times that Voina was not afraid of prosecution.

TITLE: Researcher Sutyagin Claims Officer May Have Put Truth Serum in Cognac
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Researcher Igor Sutyagin, convicted of espionage in 2004 and deported to Britain in a spy swap this summer, published a story about how a Federal Security Service officer may have given him a truth serum in borshch and cognac during questioning.
The incident took place in 1999, Sutyagin wrote in a memoir-styled publication of 2,000 words, published on the rights activism site HRO.org last Wednesday.
Sutyagin began to experience recurring episodes of short-term memory loss after the incident, which suggests an unidentified medication regularly used by law enforcement officers to suppress a suspect’s will, the researcher wrote, citing a riot police officer he later shared a cell with.
The medication needs to be served in cognac and have its aftertaste hidden by greasy food, the officer said, Sutyagin wrote.
Yukos’ security chief Alexei Pichugin, who was jailed for life on murder charges in 2007, was also once given psychotropic medication in a cigarette, wrote Sutyagin, who briefly shared a cell with Pichugin in a Moscow pretrial detention prison.
No official reaction has followed, but unidentified law enforcement sources denied the story in comments to news agencies Thursday. State-run RIA-Novosti quoted a source who called the story a fabrication by Sutyagin’s alleged foreign employers.

TITLE: Women’s Group Says Domestic Abuse Up
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The number of children killed by husbands as revenge against their wives and the number of women who suffered violence from police have grown in Russia in the last two years, women’s rights advocates said Thursday.
Some 14,000 Russian women die from domestic violence every year, or one every 40 minutes, according to a report released Thursday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The report, drafted by Anna, a nongovernmental organization seeking to prevent violence against women, cited 2008 data from the Interior Ministry, the latest publicly available.
Andrei Sinelnikov, deputy director of Anna, said the actual figures are higher because the ministry did not count women who were hospitalized and subsequently died from injuries sustained in domestic abuse.
Sinelnikov and Nina Ostanina, a member of the State Duma’s Committee for Women, Family and Youth Affairs, both said it was unclear why the Interior Ministry had not reported data for last year.
Irina Petrova, a spokeswoman for the ministry’s department for protecting public order, could not say late Thursday why there were no new statistics.
In the United States — which has a population of 310 million, compared with Russia’s 142 million — some 1,000 women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends annually, or three women per day, according to the U.S.-based Family Violence Prevention Fund.
Russia’s poor record on domestic violence can be linked in part to the lack of a legal mechanism for courts to prevent an abusive husband from approaching or contacting his wife, Sinelnikov said.
Another problem is reluctance to assist women who are repeatedly abused, he said. The law requires women to compile the case materials for the court personally, and as a result 80 percent of such lawsuits are rejected based on the plaintiffs’ incompetence.
Sixty percent to 70 percent of Russian women fail to report beatings by their husbands, partially because of previous unsuccessful attempts, Sinelnikov said. Many women in abusive marriages die when they try to flee their husbands.
Russia has joined an international campaign to mark Nov. 25 with a series of events aimed at attracting public attention to the issue, he said.
Several public groups will hold a rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Saturday. On Dec. 9 they will hold a UN-supported round table to announce that they are seeking investors to create a nationwide, toll-free hotline for women who are victims of domestic violence, Sinelnikov said.
Events running from Thursday through Dec. 10 are collectively called the “16 Days Against Violence Toward Women,” an international campaign held since 1991 and supported by more than 1,000 organizations from some 130 countries, the Stop Violence Association of Crisis Centers for Women said on its web site.

TITLE: Chemical Weapons Disposal Plant Opened
AUTHOR: By Nataliya Vasilyeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: POCHEP, Bryansk Region — Russia will miss a 2012 deadline for destroying all of its chemical weapons, officials said Friday as they inaugurated a major new plant to dispose of them.
The facility at Pochep, tucked between the Ukrainian and Belarussian borders 250 miles southwest of Moscow, is the latest of six plants built in Russia in recent years to dismantle its Cold War-era chemical weapons arsenals — the world’s largest.
Pochep will process nearly 19 percent of Russia’s stockpile, or 7,500 tons of nerve agent used in aircraft-delivered munitions.
The plant, hidden in a dense birch forest, is key for Russia’s commitment to destroy all of its chemical weapons by April 2012 as the country deals with its vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
As a signatory to the international Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia has already destroyed about half of its chemical weapons, according to Russian officials.
Viktor Kholstov, the Industry and Trade Ministry official in charge of chemical disarmament, said at the plant’s opening Friday that Russia will honor its commitment on disarmament but will need two or three more years beyond the previously announced deadline.
The delay had been caused by a shortage of funds in the last two years, he said. Government funding has been scarce, while international donors have provided only 60 percent of the expected funding.
The Foreign Ministry issued a similar warning in August, saying that, because of the global financial crisis, Russia ran into “financial and technical difficulties” that would stretch the time required for completing the disposal of chemical weapons stockpiles by up to three years.
The United States has acknowledged that it will miss the deadline, too. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said at the United Nations last month that the United States had destroyed 78 percent of its chemical weapons stockpiles and was on pace to destroy 90 percent of its arsenal by April 2012.
Colonel General Valery Kapashin, a military official in charge of the storage and elimination of Russia’s chemical stockpiles, said Pochep was expected to eliminate its stock of chemical weapons by the end of 2014.
The weapons processed at Pochep are loaded with nerve gas such as VX, sarin and soman, which can potentially become a lethal weapon if they fall into the hands of terrorists. The first five tons of VX was destroyed at Pochep on Friday.
The munitions are transported from a nearby arsenal to the plant where they are drilled into. A fuel neutralizing their deadly agent is then added. The munitions will spend three months in underground storage before they are burned in special stoves at the same plant.
“The destruction of these weapons eliminates a potential threat to the public and environment,” Kholstov said, describing chemical weapons disarmament as a priority in Russia’s foreign and domestic policy.
Unlike other plants where foreign financing was sizable, the Pochep facility was built mainly on government money but with small contributions from Germany and Switzerland.
Switzerland has allocated 14.5 million Swiss francs ($14.5 million) for Russian disarmament projects, said Stefan Esterman, a minister in Switzerland’s Russian Embassy. He could not provide a specific figure for the Pochep facility.

TITLE: Leaking Arctic Ice Raises a Tricky Climate Issue
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHERSKY, Sakha Republic — The scientist shuffles across the frozen lake, scuffing aside ankle-deep snow until he finds a cluster of bubbles trapped under the ice. With a cigarette lighter in one hand and a knife in the other, he lances the ice like a blister. Methane whooshes out and bursts into a thin blue flame.
Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out for thousands of years. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.
Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon locked inside icebound earth is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.
“Here, total carbon storage is like all the rain forests of our planet put together,” says the scientist, Sergei Zimov — “here” being the endless sweep of snow and ice stretching toward Siberia’s gray horizon, as seen from Zimov’s research facility nearly 350 kilometers above the Arctic Circle.
Climate change moves back to centerstage on Nov. 29 when governments meet in Cancun, Mexico, to try again to thrash out a course of counteractions. But UN officials hold out no hope that the two weeks of talks will lead to a legally binding accord governing carbon emissions, seen as the key to averting what is feared might be a dramatic change in climate this century. Most climate scientists, with a few dissenters, say human activities — the stuff of daily life like driving cars, producing electricity or raising cattle — are overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that trap heat, causing a warming effect.
But global warming is amplified in the polar regions. What feels like a modest temperature rise is enough to induce Greenland glaciers to retreat, Arctic sea ice to thin and contract in summer, and permafrost to thaw faster, both on land and under the seabed. Yet awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it was not even mentioned in the seminal 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.
“In my view, methane is a serious sleeper out there that can pull us over the hump,” said Robert Corell, an eminent U.S. climate change researcher and Arctic specialist.
Corell, speaking by telephone from a conference in Miami, said he and other U.S. scientists are pushing Washington to deploy satellites to gather more information on methane leaks.
The lack of data over a long period of time casts uncertainty over the extent of the threat. An article last August in the journal Science quoted several experts as saying it’s too early to predict whether Arctic methane will be the tipping point. “Arctic Armageddon Needs More Science, Less Hype,” was its headline.
Studies indicate that cold-country dynamics on climate change are complex. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a scientific body set up by the eight Arctic rim countries, says that overall the Arctic is absorbing more carbon dioxide than it releases. “Methane is a different story,” said its 2009 report. The Arctic is responsible for up to 9 percent of global methane emissions. Other methane sources include landfills, livestock and fossil fuel production.
Katey Walter Anthony, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has been measuring methane seeps in Arctic lakes in Alaska, Canada and Russia, starting here around Chersky 10 years ago. She was stunned to see how much methane was leaking from holes in the sediment at the bottom of one of the first lakes she visited. “On some days it looked like the lake was boiling,” she said. Returning each year, she noticed this and other lakes doubling in size as warm water ate into the frozen banks.
“The edges of the lake look like someone eating a cookie. The permafrost gets digested in the guts of the lake and burps out as methane,” she said.
More than 50 billion tons could be unleashed from Siberian lakes alone, more than 10 times the amount now in the atmosphere, she said.
But the rate of defrosting is hard to assess with the data at hand. “If permafrost were to thaw suddenly, in a flash, it would put a tremendous amount of carbon in the atmosphere. We would feel temperatures warming across the globe. And that would be a big deal,” she said. But it may not happen so quickly. “Depending on how slow permafrost thaws, its effect on temperature across the globe will be different,” she said.
Permafrost is defined as ground that has stayed below freezing for more than two consecutive summers. In fact, most of Siberia and the rest of the Arctic, covering one-fifth of the Earth’s land surface, have been frozen for millennia.
During the summer, the ground can defrost to a depth of several feet, turning to sludge and sometimes blossoming into vast fields of grass and wildflowers. Below that thin layer, however, the ground remains frozen, sometimes encased in ice dozens or even hundreds of meters thick. As the Earth warms, the summer thaw bites a bit deeper, awakening ice-age microbes that attack organic matter — vegetation and animal remains — buried where oxygen cannot reach, producing methane that gurgles to the surface and into the air.
The newly released methane adds to the greenhouse effect, trapping yet more heat, which deepens the next thaw, in a spiraling cycle of increasing warmth.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in its 2010 Arctic Report Card issued last month, said the average temperature of the permafrost has been rising for decades, but noted “a significant acceleration” in the last five years on the Arctic coast.
One of those spots would be Chersky, an isolated town on the bank of the Kolyma River at the mouth of the East Siberia Sea. The ground in this remote corner of the world has warmed about 2 degrees Celsius in the last five years, to about minus 5 C today, said Zimov, director of the internationally funded Northeast Science Station, which is about 3 kilometers from town. The warming is causing the landscape to buckle under his feet. “I live here more than 30 years. … There are many [dirt] roads in our region which I used or built myself, but now I can’t use anymore. Now they look like canyons,” he said.
Buildings, too, collapse. The school in Chersky, a Soviet-era structure with a tall bronze statue of Karl Marx on its doorstep, was abandoned several years ago when the walls began to crack as the foundations gave way. The northern Siberian soil, called yedoma, covers 1.8 million square kilometers and is particularly unstable. Below the surface are vertical wedges of ice, as if 15-story-high icicles had been hammered into the soft ground, rich in decaying vegetation, over thousands of years.
As the air warms, the tops of the wedges melt and create depressions in the land. Water either forms a lake or runs off to lower ground, creating a series of steep hillocks and gullies. During summer, lakeside soil may erode and tumble into the water, settling on the bottom where bacteria eat it and cough up yet more methane.
The process takes a long time, but Zimov has done a simulation by bulldozing trees and scraping off moss and surface soil from 1 hectare of former larch forest, rendering it as if it had been leveled by fire. Seven years later the previously flat terrain is carved up with crevices three to five meters deep, creating a snowy badlands. Gazing across a white river to the apartment blocks on a distant hill, Zimov said, “In another 30 years all of Chersky will look like this.”

TITLE: Plane Crash in Pakistan Kills 11
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KARACHI, Pakistan — A cargo plane crashed in flames into a residential area in Pakistan’s largest city soon after takeoff Sunday, killing all eight crew members and at least three people on the ground, officials said.
The crash was the second this month in Karachi, the main port city in the south, and the third in Pakistan in less than five months.
The Russian-made plane slammed into a housing complex under construction in Karachi, sending fire and smoke into the sky and damaging about 20 buildings. The aircraft narrowly missed several large occupied apartment buildings only a few hundred meters away.
Authorities recovered three bodies from the smoking rubble by Sunday afternoon and one worker was still missing, Navy Commodore Mohammad Musra said. Another person on the ground was hospitalized with severe burns, local doctor Abdul Razak said.
The Sudan-bound plane crashed at about 1:50 a.m., when many people in the upscale neighborhood were asleep. One of the plane’s engines was on fire as it flew overhead, several witnesses said.
“I saw one of its wings was burning, and there was a blast, and the fire engulfed the aircraft very quickly,” Riaz Ahmed said.
Residents said most of the houses destroyed were under construction and believed to be unoccupied except for a few of the laborers building them.
Karachi police chief Fayaz Leghari said a larger catastrophe had narrowly been averted.
“It would have been a big disaster had the plane hit the residential apartments,” Leghari said.
Aviation authority spokesman Pervais George said the plane came down two minutes after takeoff from the city’s international airport. He said the eight crew members were dead.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleksander Dykusarov said seven Ukrainians were among the crew, including the commander, pilot and navigator. He told Interfax that the information was provided by the plane’s owner, Georgian firm Sunway Airlines.
George initially identified the crew as Russians, but another Pakistani aviation official, Mukhtar Ahmad, later said that the nationalities and identities of the eight on board had not been confirmed.
Many people initially thought that the blast was from a bomb, a regular event in Pakistan.
“I was sleeping, and the huge blast awoke me. I thought some suicide attack might have occurred, and I ran outside,” Rehan Hashmi said.
Fire trucks sprayed foam onto the crash site, and after two hours the blaze was extinguished.
Hundreds of people came to see the spectacle and film it with their mobile phones, hampering access for emergency workers.
Most of the housing complex was reserved for naval officers and their families.
George said the plane was an Ilyushin Il-76, a multipurpose cargo plane that is often used for ferrying humanitarian aid to developing countries, as well as other large items.
Earlier this month in Karachi, a small passenger plane crashed soon after takeoff, killing 21 people. In July, a passenger jet operated by Pakistani carrier Airblue crashed into hills overlooking the capital, Islamabad, during stormy weather, killing all 152 on board.

TITLE: $42-Million Fraud Shocks Survivors
AUTHOR: By Samantha Gross
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Walk along the boardwalk on a late autumn day, and Brighton Beach can seem like an old-age home by the sea, where stooped ladies wear rouge like armor and almost everyone lives in the shadow of a difficult past.
Along this Brooklyn outpost’s ocean edge — the heart of much community life here — residents are talking about the betrayal they feel after the arrest of 17 people, mostly from Brighton Beach, on charges of faking stories of Holocaust survival to profit from money meant for survivors of Nazi persecution.
“I cannot imagine that someone would lie like that; it’s a terrible crime,” said Klara Rakhlin, 72, her makeup stark against her black, coiffed hair as she speaks in Russian. “I lost my family in a concentration camp, and it’s disgusting that people would get compensation although they haven’t suffered.”
Rakhlin was just a toddler in 1941, when she entered the Pechora concentration camp in what is now Ukraine’s Vinnitsa region. By the time she left in 1944, she was school-aged.
The arrests don’t close the books on the purported scheme. The organization in charge of awarding the money continues to weed through hundreds more case files to see how much further any deception may have spread. Federal prosecutors say they have uncovered more than 5,500 fraudulent claims, many of them containing altered birth dates and faked stories of suffering.
Some people — overwhelmingly residents of this neighborhood and elsewhere in Brooklyn — have received letters informing them that they must either appeal or repay tens of thousands of dollars that the nonprofit group, the Conference on the Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, now believes were wrongly awarded.
Already, more than 90 people have told the Claims Conference, as it is commonly known, that they intend to appeal the cancellation. At least 35 more have returned the money or agreed to repay it on an installment plan.
Still, other recipients are getting letters telling them that their quarterly payments will be rationed out by the month, while the Claims Conference asks them to again detail their stories of persecution and re-evaluates their eligibility. Conference employees will work to find records that confirm each qualifying story, says Greg Schneider, the organization’s executive vice president.
“Ninety-nine percent of the cases are clear cases, and there’s no issue, and we won’t be distracted from the fact that helping survivors is our core mission,” Schneider said of the thousands of applications the group receives each year.
Some community leaders worry that requesting more information from some recipients will again turn survivors into victims.
“They are making survivors suffer even more. Why make them prove their status when they’ve gone through so much already?” asks Pavel Vishnevetsky, director of the Council of Jewish Immigrant Community Organizations.
But Schneider contends that asking survivors to pen a description of their ordeal is not too onerous a task. And the Nazis, he says, were meticulous record keepers — often making it possible to find a paper trail. If someone was on a train transport to a concentration camp, it was recorded. Those trapped in ghettos or disappeared into hiding can be harder to track down — but if nothing else, records involving someone who witnessed their suffering can usually be found, he said.
Any money claimed wrongly would not have come out of a finite fund for survivors but instead would have come more or less directly from the German government, Schneider said. Lawyers for those accused did not comment. Four of the 17 arrested in the case have pleaded guilty.
For those caught on the other side of the language and cultural divide, the Russian community here can seem closed off.
There are the fairly recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who after living for decades under Communism are often unwilling to talk to outsiders. There are the aging Jews, like Raisa Volokh, who would rather pull a photograph from her wallet to show off her great-grandchildren than speak of her years of starvation in a Ukraine ghetto, the boy who would become her husband suffering the same indignities alongside her.
“The community of Russians, they stay to themselves,” says 96-year-old Lillian Block, who was one of many American-born Jews living here when she moved in in 1941. Now, she says of her neighbors, “they still have the feeling of when they were in the Soviet Union, when everything was so secretive. … It’s very lonely.”
That perception of concealment has led some, in the aftermath of the fraud accusations, to look on this neighborhood with suspicion. Several residents spoke of hearing talk over the years of small-time scams and believing that such behavior could flourish here.
But Schneider warns against passing judgment on this community. While he believes that most or all of the 5,500 allegedly fraudulent claims were made on behalf of real people, he says large numbers of applicants may have been unknowingly involved by unscrupulous middlemen.

TITLE: Customs Union Stalls Over Foreigner Charge
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Almost five months after customs duties were slapped on household goods of foreigners moving into the country, the government has yet to fulfill its promise to lift the regulations, which made relocating to Russia significantly more expensive.
The commission of the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which oversees the issue, did not sign a protocol to remove the duty at its Nov. 18 session, although a reversal had been expected.
The protocol is ready but needs “finalization at the national government level,” commission spokesman Alexander Korsunov said Friday.
Foreign business groups have asked the government to lift the duties since they suddenly took effect July 1. Business leaders voiced concern that progress could be delayed into next year.
“We hope that the change will be approved at the next [Customs Union Commission] session on Dec. 8,” said Vladimir Kobzev, head of the Russo-German Chamber of Commerce’s legal department. If the December date is not met, the next chance would be in mid-January, he added.
But Korsunov said the agreement might be signed before Dec. 8.
Approval is just a “technicality” and will be done soon, he said. “The main message is that the political will is there — all sides are interested in good conditions for businesspeople.”
But this delay is not the first. The changes, which would add a clause allowing foreign work-permit holders to bring in “personal belongings” without cost, were agreed on in late September, the commission says on its web site.
At its Sept. 20 session, member states’ governments were asked to approve the changes by Oct. 10.
That deadline was missed because of opposition by some Russian ministries, Kobzev said. Now, he said, the Kazakh government has raised new questions.
Korsunov declined to comment on the reasons for the delay, saying only that “scrupulous and very thorough work is being done right now.”
The new customs charges have riled expats and foreign businesses since coming into force with little prior announcement.
They stipulate that every kilogram of household items, formerly customs-exempt, is subject to a 4 euro ($5) duty after the first 50 kilograms, which remain duty free.
The tariff can easily make an average family move to the country a pricey affair, with customs bills ranging up to $10,000 and $20,000.
Dmitry Degtyaryov, director of Team Allied Russia, a moving company, said his clients alone have paid some 500,000 euros in duties through late October.
The government, facing an uproar from foreign businesses, promised in August to scrap the duty.

TITLE: Watchdog Fines Supermarket Chain
AUTHOR: By Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The Petersburg branch of Rospotrebnadzor, the federal watchdog for consumer rights and human welfare, carried out an inspection into Lyubavushka company from Oct. 5 to Nov.1, and found a number of violations in all the supermarkets of the Polushka chain. 
The inspection found that regulations regarding food storage and staff working conditions are not fully observed, customers are not given all the information they are entitled to, and utility rooms and back offices are in poor sanitary state, the watchdog’s press office reported. The company has been issued with 86 fines, and its representatives have been called to account.
Sixty-seven Polushka supermarkets and two Ye-Da! stores were inspected, said Irina Busalayeva, PR manager of the Prodovolstvennaya Birzha holding company. She said, “some minor violations” of various laws were detected. Several executives have been fired and the violations are being corrected, she said.
The penalties for these kinds of infringements usually range from 10,000 to 50,000 rubles ($319 to $1,593) but the risk that sales will be suspended for 90 days may be more damaging for the chain, said Igor Gushchev, a partner at Duvernoix Legal law firm. Routine inspections by Rospotrebnadzor take place every year, said the two retailers.

TITLE: Russian Railways Signs $2Bln Memo With Italian Group
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Railways and Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica announced Friday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding on the creation of a joint venture to develop signaling, telecommunications, automation and safety technology for the Russian rail system.
The joint venture will develop and produce equipment for 100 stations, 100 vehicles and 50 railway lines by 2020. The value of the deal could reach 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion).
The deal will be implemented by Finmeccanica subsidiary Ansaldo STS, which will have a 49 percent share in the new company, and Russian Railways subsidiaries Institute for Systems Automatization and High-Speed Rail Lines, which will have 49 percent and 2 percent shares, respectively.
The joint venture will further develop the ITARUS-ATC safety and signaling system, which the Italian and Russian companies introduced last year, so that Russian trains entering Finland would meet European standards. New traffic management and centralized dispatching components will be created. The latter will use microprocessor and satellite technology.
Creation of new efficiency and safety strategies that will include new risk assessment and intelligent transportation systems are also part of the agreement.
Ansaldo STS spokesman Roberto Alatri told The St. Petersburg Times that, under the memorandum, Russian Railways will place five separate orders during the next five years for implementation through 2020.
Ansaldo “may provide technology that we have already developed, or there is the possibility of developing new technology” at the joint venture, which will be based in Russia, Alatri said.
Alatri said Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin stated in an interview published in Italy that the railway is satisfied with the performance of the ITARUS-ATC system, following a trial that began in January, and that it was the deciding factor in continuing the collaboration.
The Institute for Systems Automatization signed a contract with Ansaldo STS last year for the trial application of their signaling system in Sochi. That contract was for two and a half years and worth 7.4 million euros.
Russian Railways collaborates with world leaders in technology as a matter of policy, UralSib analyst Dmitry Baranov commented, and it stays abreast of safety developments.
“It has worked for a long time without serious accidents. That has been a top priority for the company, and it continues to be,” Baranov said.
Baranov cited Russian Railways’ agreements with Siemens and Alstom as examples of its international ties.
Russian Railways signed an agreement with Siemens last week on the creation of a new engineering center to produce electric trains. It also signed an agreement this month with Alstom to develop a new freight locomotive.
Baranov said Russian Railways has stated its intention to increase the speed of its passenger and freight trains, which will require new safety and management technology.
The Italian company will receive greater exposure in Russia, which could give it a strategic advantage while other CIS countries and the Baltic nations upgrade their rail systems, Baranov said. In addition, technology developed for the extremes of the Russian climate could find a ready market in other countries where the rail system also operates in extreme conditions.
The government approved a $28.5 billion investment plan for the railroad for 2010 through 2012 last December. Since then, those plans have undergone several revisions. At the end of September, Yakunin announced an increase in 2011 spending, boosting investment plans for the year by over $2 billion, to about $11.5 billion.
A future deficit is foreseen in the investment plan, however. Yakunin recently disputed Deputy Transportation Minister Andrei Nedosekov’s statement that the railroad’s controlling share package in the TransContainer shipping company might be reduced to less than 25 percent, with the proceeds of the sale going to cover the shortfall.
The railroad reduced its share in that company from 85 percent plus one share to 50 percent plus one share in an initial public offering earlier this month. TransContainer earned a net profit of more than $9 million in the first nine months of this year.

TITLE: Museum Ticket Prices Attract Criticism
AUTHOR: By Alla Tokareva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Travel agencies are calling for St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood to keep separate pricing systems for entrance tickets for Russian citizens. 
Both the museums are part of the Isaakievsky Sobor state museum complex, which recently announced a fixed uniform ticket price of 200 rubles ($6.40) from Jan. 1, 2011, to replace the current charges of 320 rubles ($10.20) for foreigners and 130 rubles ($4.15) for Russians. The prices changed when winter packages had already been compiled and sold, one of the tour operators complained.
Letters signed by representatives of 21 companies were sent earlier this month to Nikolai Burov, the director of the Isaakievsky Sobor group, as well as to the tourism department of City Hall’s Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects, and City Governor Valentina Matviyenko, reported Kirill Sokolov, head of the incoming tourism department of Nevskiye Sezony travel agency in St. Petersburg.
According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti, the incoming tourist flow to St. Petersburg decreased by 20 percent in 2009-2010 and will continue to fall if other museums follow suit. Travel agencies are concerned that the cost of a tour to St. Petersburg may increase by 25 to 30 percent in 2011. According to Sokolov, a five-day tour currently costs about 6,000 to 8,000 rubles ($192 to $256) excluding flight costs.
Burov pointed out that the museum complex is not increasing prices, but equalizing them. Isaakievsky Sobor has signed contracts with 160 travel companies, he said, and most of them did not express any criticism. 
City Hall forecast that 5.2 million tourists would visit St. Petersburg in 2010, 2.5 million of whom would be foreign.

TITLE: Government Considers Grain Imports
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia could import grain in the aftermath of last summer’s drought to help keep domestic prices low, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.
Global wheat prices skyrocketed in August after Russia, the world’s third largest grain exporter last year, announced an export ban following the hottest summer on record and a severe drought. Russian officials have since said that they could extend the ban until next July.
Putin said that leaders of grain-exporting nations unaffected by the drought had promised him to reserve surplus grain for Russia.
“If that proves necessary and we see prices growing, we will fulfill those agreements and supply the domestic market with extra volumes of grain,” he said in comments posted on the government’s web site.
The Agriculture Ministry previously mentioned Ukraine and Kazakhstan as possible suppliers.
The drought pushed up consumer prices in Russia, spoiling the government’s forecast for low inflation. Prices for cereals soared 42.5 percent in the first 10 months of the year, while bread, which is subsidized, added slightly less than 5 percent, according to the State Statistics Service.

TITLE: Growth Falls Below Forecast
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economy will expand at a slower rate than previously forecast this year after “disappointing” growth in the third quarter, Morgan Stanley said, Bloomberg reported.
Gross domestic product will probably rise 3.8 percent this year, compared with a previous estimate of 4.2 percent, Morgan Stanley’s London-based analyst, Alina Slyusarchuk, said in an e-mailed research report Monday, the news agency reported.
The government may miss its 4 percent target for economic growth this year “by a little bit,” Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said on Nov. 23.

TITLE: Kudrin, Cable Talk Banking
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vince Cable, the British Business Secretary, concluded a trade mission to Russia on Friday by co-chairing a meeting with Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, talks that the minister hailed as a “real breakthrough in our relations.”
Cable said he was “looking forward to seeing our relationship build in future years.”
The talks came as another sign of a general thawing in relations between Britain and Russia. The countries ties appeared to improve after a meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev and British Prime Minister David Cameron on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Seoul earlier this month.
Kudrin revealed that Russian banks, led by VTB, were actively looking to buy stakes in British financial institutions.
“Our banks, primarily VTB, are interested in buying stakes in large financial companies” in Britain, Kudrin said.
Britain would “welcome” Russian investors, Cable said.
Cable and Kudrin were co-chairing the 8th Intergovernmental Steering Committee between Russia and Britain, a meeting that has been held annually since 2008, following a six-year hiatus. 
The main issues discussed were financial services, high-technology industry, business environment, energy efficiency, small and medium-sized businesses and sports.
Asked about banking transparency and bankers’ bonuses, Cable said after the talks that, “it is necessary that companies should be open so that shareholders can hold them to account.” 
Kudrin added that governments, which had been forced to intervene during the financial crisis to save many financial institutions, were in a position to compel greater disclosure in banks.
“During the crisis, only with state support were we able to stabilize the situation with the biggest financial institutions,” Kudrin said. “Since such help is necessary, then we can ask about the principles of transparency and major expenses.”
Cable said Britain has “a lot of serious issues with our banks,” including disclosure of high-earning bankers’ incomes. “It is right. It is necessary that companies should be open.”
Banks are under scrutiny from governments worldwide to reduce compensation in response to public anger about bailouts of lenders. Cable told BBC Radio 4 that he was examining whether to force listed companies to review the pay of high earners.
Morgan Stanley senior adviser David Walker last year told the British government that banks should disclose the number of individuals who earn more than ?1 million ($1.6 million). A better way of achieving the same goal may be rules that cover all companies, according to Cable.

TITLE: Intourist, Thomas Cook Join Forces
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Intourist, the face of Russia for foreign visitors from Soviet days to the present, and Thomas Cook, Europe’s second-largest tour operator, signed a $45 million agreement on Thursday to create a joint venture.
Thomas Cook will get a 50.1 percent stake in the newly established company by paying $10 million in cash and the remaining $35 million in its own shares. The new venture will operate under the Intourist brand.
The deal should be approved by Russian authorities by January and will officially close in February, Thomas Cook’s chief executive officer Manny Fontela-Nova told reporters Thursday.
“The move into Russia is in line with our established strategy of capturing growth in emerging markets. I am glad we have taken our time to secure a strong partnership,” Fontela-Nova said. Negotiations between Intourist and Thomas Cook had gone on for two years.
“We think that Russia is a very attractive market. Within the next five to 10 years Russia will become Europe’s biggest market,” he said.
The joint venture has some grand plans in mind, hoping to take leadership positions in both domestic and international travel.
“We’ve joined together two very strong brands,” said Felix Yevtushenkov, Intourist board chairman, vice president of AFK Sistema and son of Sistema owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov. “Hopefully, we will eventually see the joint venture as one of the world leaders,” he said.
Sistema owns 66.2 percent of Intourist, while the remaining shares belong to the Moscow government and GAO Moskva, a company that works on hospitality and tourism projects for the city.
Thomas Cook, which boasts $14.9 billion in revenues, said it is planning to diversify its business by moving away from Europe’s saturated market through the purchase of Intourist’s tour operator and retail business. The Intourist hotels, which include the Cosmos and Pekin in Moscow, and Oktyabrskaya in Nizhny Novgorod, are not part of the deal.
In exchange for access to the Russian market, Intourist, with $324 million in revenues, wants to tap into Thomas Cook’s European clientele.
After 81 years in business, Intourist is still a leader on the incoming tourism market and is one of the top five tour operators for outbound tourism, which is shrinking because more Russian travelers are booking independently.
The new venture is hoping to revamp Russia as a tourist destination by launching a new marketing campaign and introducing new products, Alexander Arutyunov, Intourist president, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Developing ecological tourism, specialized packages and online products and services are some of the innovations that Arutyunov hopes will help boost Russia as a destination.
“It is not the first time that a foreign company enters the Russian market,” said Maya Lomidze, executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia. “Each time the market was hopefully looking at what was going to happen. Each time the overall market dynamic did not change fundamentally.”
“As for the incoming tourism market, this is where the new company has a chance to make a difference. This is the first time when a major international company is buying this type of business in Russia,” Lomidze said.
TUI Russia, which is considered the main competitor to the new venture and is majority-owned by Europe’s leading travel agency TUI German, said it has been expecting the deal.
“I believe in the positive effect of competition — this is an excellent stimulus for market development,” TUI Russia marketing director Darya Kaplunova said, adding that her company is preparing new products for the spring and summer. 

TITLE: Sechin Praises Foreign-Built Factory
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — German power company E.On, majority owner of Russian energy company OGK-4, launched a 400-megawatt, advanced-efficiency, gas-fired electricity plant on Friday at Shatura, 150 kilometers east of Moscow.
The new unit is the first of its kind to be launched in Russia and only the second in Europe, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said at a news conference in Moscow, following the launch of the unit.
Sechin was quick to highlight the government’s support for investors, in a sector that has been surprisingly devoid of domestic financing.
“The Russian government also fulfills its obligations to create a regulatory framework, to control existing investment programs,” the deputy prime minister said.
The investor and main contractors for Shatura are foreign: General Electric and Turkish construction company GAMA Power Systems were hired by E.On to build the plant, which took just under three years to complete.
This is the first major energy generating facility built after the breakup of Unified Energy System, the country’s electric power holding, which monopolized the electricity market from the early ‘90s to the late 2000s.
The project itself is considered a state-of-the-art endeavor, gaining recognition by the United Nations as the first Russian joint implementation project under the Kyoto Protocol, established to help fight global warming.
The power station’s efficiency is 55.93 percent, compared with about 30 percent in many older domestic power plants. It also has far lower carbon-dioxide emissions than the older, less-efficient plants with a similar capacity, E.On said in a statement.
“With this power station alone, carbon-dioxide emissions can be cut by over a million tons by the end of 2012,” the statement said.
Sechin took the opportunity to compliment the foreign investors and made it clear that the state expects companies to stick to committed deadlines for finishing projects.
“Solutions aimed at modernizing electric energy must be exactly fulfilled,” Sechin said. “We will fulfill our obligations to investors as a government, but our primary obligation is to the Russian consumers of electric energy. Energy consumption in Russia is going up, and we must take the interests of the Russian consumer into consideration,” Sechin added.
The downside of the technologically advanced project, experts say, is its cost: $1,300 was spent per kilowatt of the Shatura project, compared with the average $700 to $900 per kilowatt for similar projects in Europe.
One of the reasons behind the disparity has to do with how the state has structured its obligations to the power companies. Companies that have purchased state electricity-generating assets have fixed obligations to deliver electrical power.
“Investors have no choice but to build a plant, many companies have to build capacities at the same time, and construction contractors, a relatively small and closed-off market in Russia, see that and immediately elevate the prices,” said Mikhail Rasstrigin, an energy analyst at VTB Capital.
“According to our plans, six more units with the same characteristics will be launched in Russia,” Sechin said.
The new unit was completed as part of E.On’s investment program in OGK-4, which totals 2.3 billion euros through 2014, by which time the company is scheduled to deliver 2,400 megawatts of energy capacity.
In addition to Shatura, E.On has been the primary investor in power plant projects in Surgut and Yaiva, and is beginning work on an 800-megawatt coal-fired plant at Beryozovskaya in the Krasnoyarsk region.
Head of E.On Russia Sergei Tazin told Interfax on Friday that the company is looking for a contractor and had received applications from Kvarts, Tekhnopromexport, Energoproyekt and E4.
Analysts view the launch positively — as an important step toward revamping the energy sector — but point out that domestic companies missed out on a good opportunity to work on a big energy project.
“When Unified Energy System was being restructured and assets were being sold off, foreign companies jumped at the opportunity and Russians had a difficult financial situation and generally just did not buy into the idea that first you need to build something and then you’ll get paid,” Rasstrigin said.
“Meanwhile foreigners honestly took on the responsibility,” Rasstrigin told The St. Petersburg Times.
“When E.On or Enel come to Russia, reputational risks for them are high. They cannot fail to deliver something if they signed up for it,” Rasstrigin said.

TITLE: Foreign Firms Could Help Build Moscow Metro Lines
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin proposed on Friday that the capital should attract big international firms to participate in the construction of new metro lines, which may be worth up to 1.5 trillion rubles ($48 billion).
“Construction of the metro alone requires 500 billion to 1.5 trillion rubles,” Sobyanin said at a conference, citing his conversation with an unidentified minister.
He said that attracting foreign builders would ensure the enforcement of contracts and improve the quality of work.
“I request that not only two to three homegrown companies work in this field, but that an international tender be announced in order to attract the largest international organizations that specialize in this area,” he said at a separate City Hall meeting.
The funds that City Hall plans to spend on constructing the metro lines are huge and would be theoretically enough to attract foreign builders, said Andrei Tretelnikov, a transportation analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities.
“But they should be very long-term projects,” he said.
Sobyanin didn’t specify over which period of time the funds would be spent, but he said earlier this month that City Hall planned to build more than 50 kilometers of new metro lines by 2015.
Sobyanin complained that there were may problems in metro construction, including unstable financing of contracts and a lack of project design and engineering survey works.
“And the metro construction infrastructure itself is not in the best condition,” he said.
Moscow now has a total of 300 kilometers of metro lines.
General requirements to participate in a tender include having an efficient track record and using modern equipment.
“If a builder’s construction efficiency is two to threefold lower than the market, it shouldn’t win the tender, or must at least upgrade its equipment and resources,” Sobyanin said.

TITLE: Time for Journalists to Close Ranks
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The brutal beating of Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin has outraged the professional community and human rights activists. Signatures are being gathered for an appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev calling for an investigation into this and a host of other crimes against journalists.
The goal is to make the authorities enforce Article 144 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a crime to obstruct a journalist’s professional work. The authors of the appeal point out that the murders of Vladislav Listyev, the former head of ORT television, precursor to Channel One, and Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as well as the savage attack on Khimki journalist Mikhail Beketov, have not been solved. In fact, eight journalists have been killed and 40 attacked this year alone.
The president has already ordered Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to oversee the investigation personally. Unfortunately, in many similar cases, oversight by the top officials has led nowhere. Just the same, we hope that with the order coming directly from the president, a timely and thorough investigation will be conducted. Of course, a long wait under the present circumstances would be difficult.
The numerous attacks and killings have established a pattern defining journalists’ relationship with the public and the state in contemporary Russia.
The Russian media have long ceased to be regarded as the Fourth Estate. Both the professional community and the state itself are equally at fault for the fact that society holds journalists in such low regard. Much of the media is controlled by the state, blunting economic incentives and preventing the development of a market for independent media. Legal and judicial barriers such as the loosely worded law on extremism severely limit journalists in their activities. The understanding that journalists fulfill a vital function beneficial to the state has yet to take root in Russian society. In this regard, nobody ever recalls that the law on mass media contains a clause providing guarantees to journalists as professionals performing a public duty. The professional community should lobby for legislation that would equate attacks against journalists as attacks on the state, making it the same crime as attacking senior officials, State Duma deputies or judges.
The people who order these beatings and murders bear a deep grudge against journalists for what they have published, and they are convinced that violence is the most appropriate method to “solve the problem.”
Perhaps this is because of the common misconception that journalists are all biased, which explains why the perpetrators view the elimination of journalists as the eradication of foes. After all, in their view, war is war. Since receiving the official green light to hold power in government and business, 1990s-era bandits have retained the same familiar methods in their new jobs, and the undermining of mass media’s standing in society is a logical outcome.
The mass media are a means for society to monitor itself — including the authorities and the business community. But in Russia that system of oversight is ineffective. Freedom of speech exists, but the media have no influence as an institution.
Press reports do not necessarily lead to the punishment of wrongdoers or the overturning of unjust rulings. But those reports can result in the murder, beating or discrediting of their authors. Maybe these are acts of vengeance against journalists for having spoken the truth. If so, that means the question of reputation does matter in Russia.
But that would mean that law enforcement bodies, which do not solve these crimes against journalists, do not care about their own reputation. Otherwise, the state is either intentionally concealing the identity of the offenders, or else the system itself is so ineffective that it cannot control its own actions, much less those of the criminals.
The limp reaction from the professional community to previous attacks on journalists has further contributed to the impunity of the perpetrators. The distorted view of competition among the media, the dominance of state-controlled media, and the resulting lower standards and expectations of the public have led to a dearth of serious investigative journalism and the inability of independent media outlets to band together for concerted action. The letter to the president and demonstrations in front of the Interior Ministry are good steps, but they alone are not enough. The influence and standing of Russia’s Fourth Estate would increase if it were to conduct joint investigations into the most important issues, simultaneously publish their findings and coordinate lobbying efforts for better legislation. Like scattered soldiers confronting a common foe, it is time they unite. War is war.

This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: The World’s Two Sick Men
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: In mid-November, I went to hear Boris Nemtsov speak at Columbia University. A leading opposition figure, he began not by criticizing the Russian government but by stressing the importance of ratifying New START.
A few days later, at the NATO summit in Lisbon, defense ministers from former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries — now NATO members and no friends of Russia — tried to impress upon U.S. journalists how vital it is to ratify this treaty, which will cut both sides’ strategic warheads by roughly 30 percent. But it seems that U.S. Republicans, who cut the Democratic majority in the Senate to a minimum after the November elections, will not allow a vote on its ratification to be held by the end of December, when the lame-duck session ends. When the new Senate convenes in January, Republicans will probably kill the treaty.
It is a remarkable show of U.S. weakness. As history demonstrates, a country’s strength is not measured by its number of fighter planes or aircraft carriers but by its ability to understand national interests, set national goals and act decisively to achieve them. The goal of the Republican Party is to make U.S. President Barack Obama a one-term president, and they are willing to sacrifice U.S. national interests to do it — and kill the economy and cohesion of society to boot.
Obama is also weak. In his place, President Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, would have torn his opponents to shreds had they handed him a powerful political weapon by revealing that they were willing to risk the long-term security of the nation for a blatantly partisan political purpose. Yet it seems that Obama and his Democrats have neither the guts nor the conviction to fight for U.S. national interests.
The United States faces major challenges in the world as well as in its domestic economy. What’s more, the country is entering a difficult period, one in which it is weaker than at any other time since perhaps the Civil War.
Meanwhile, a similar problem looms over Russia. Nemtsov’s Columbia speech was focused on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the corrupt political system he has created. But I couldn’t shake off the impression that, even though Putin’s system is still very much in place in Russia, his era is coming to an end. True, nothing has changed outwardly and no key political player has been removed. The state machinery is still firmly in place, and journalists and Putin critics are beaten up as before. But there are changes being made on the periphery, the language of the political debate is changing, and the shifting mood among most Russians suggests that the people are preparing themselves for a post-Putin world.
Few people would shed tears for Putin if he stepped down in 2012. The country will probably be better off without him. But the transfer of power in Russia has always been an extremely painful and uncertain process. Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, it has involved turmoil and factional strife. Russia, too, is heading into a period of weakness.
Russia no longer plays a key role on the global arena. If it were Russia alone that was entering a period of instability, it would not have mattered quite as much.
But when both of the world’s military superpowers — the countries that control the lion’s share of the world’s nuclear arsenal — face an uncertain future, the world suddenly begins look like a very dangerous place.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: In the Spotlight: Leonardo DiCaprio
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Last week, Hollywood staLeonardo DiCaprio came to St. Petersburg for a conference on saving endangered Amur tigers and met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who called him a “real man.”
In a speech, Putin said DiCaprio “broke his way through to us as if he were crossing a front line.” The actor arrived late for the forum because his plane from New York had to turn back after an engine burst into flames. Then his second private plane was diverted to Finland in a snow storm.
“I am sorry for the mauvais ton, but in our country we call people like that ‘a real man,’” Putin said admiringly.
Putin was also photographed drinking tea with DiCaprio, in an A-list encounter to outshine Medvedev’s hobnobbing with U2 frontman Bono this summer. “Leo and Putin get on grrreat,” the British Sun wrote.
While in St. Petersburg, DiCaprio visited the Hermitage museum with British model Naomi Campbell and her Russian boyfriend Vladislav Doronin and spent a long time gazing at the Picasso paintings, Lifenews.ru reported.
This visit is apparently the first time DiCaprio has crossed the front line into Russia, although he told Putin of his Russian origins, with his grandmother originally having the surname Smirnova. Russian media commented on his strong resemblance to Lenin in his youth, before he lost his hair and grew a beard.
DiCaprio had been due to visit Russia several times before pulling out. He was announced as coming to promote pop singer Justin Timberlake’s clothing range in 2009. He was also invited to a charity gala that Campbell held in Moscow in May this year but did not turn up.
The actor, a serial dater of leggy models, was once linked to a blond Russian-born underwear model called Anne Vyalitsyna. He seems to have close ties with Campbell and property developer Doronin, and in August, he was photographed vacationing on Doronin’s yacht.
At the tiger forum, Campbell got her moment of glory as she shook hands with Putin. The handshake features in Hello! magazine and will boost Campbell’s profile in Russia. It was also an excuse to bring up Campbell’s “black panther” nickname.
Campbell apparently admires Putin’s macho antics. Oddly enough, she once interviewed ultra-leftwing Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez for Britain’s GQ magazine and asked him whether he would go topless like Putin, to which the chunky leader replied, “Touch my muscles.”
DiCaprio is a board member at the WWF animal charity and gave a personal donation of $1 million to save the tigers. Russian papers were more skeptical about the cause. “Personally I would rather have preserved some rare butterfly,” Andrei Kolesnikov wrote flippantly in Kommersant. “I couldn’t understand why everyone picked on the poor Ussurian tiger.”
Putin is a friend of tigers. The Amur tigers are elusive and number only in the hundreds, but when Putin visited a reserve in the Russian Far East in 2008, one obligingly turned up in a trap set up by naturalists. The female tiger unexpectedly freed herself and bounded out, only to be floored by Putin firing a tranquilizer dart, as Russian media slavishly reported. Putin then gave her a kiss on the cheek before she was tagged up.
She has since been tracked on a map on his web site. Last year, Putin proudly announced that she had gotten pregnant and given birth, launching jokes about his manly prowess.
Also in 2008, he showed journalists a tiger cub in a basket at his country residence, although with typical reticence he refused to say who gave it to him. He enthusiastically stroked the blue-eyed kitten, although journalists kept their distance.

TITLE: U.S. Tries to Contain WikiLeaks Damage
AUTHOR: By Matthew Lee
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The release of more than 250,000 classified State Department documents forced the Obama administration into damage control, trying to contain fallout from unflattering assessments of world leaders and revelations about backstage U.S. diplomacy.
The publication of the secret cables amplified widespread global alarm about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and unveiled occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea. The leaks also disclosed bluntly candid impressions from both diplomats and other world leaders about America’s allies and foes.
In the wake of the massive document dump by online whistleblower WikiLeaks and numerous media reports detailing their contents, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was expected to address the diplomatic repercussions on Monday. Clinton may deal with the impact first-hand after she leaves Washington on a four-nation tour of Central Asia and the Middle East — a region that figures prominently in the leaked documents.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, called the release very damaging to U.S. interests.
“The catastrophic issue here is just a breakdown in trust,” he said Monday, adding that many other countries — allies and foes alike — are likely to ask, ‘Can the United States be trusted? Can the United States keep a secret?’” 
In London, David Field, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron, said, “We work very closely with the U.S. and we will continue to do so.” But he also said that “it’s important that governments are able to operate on the basis of confidentiality of information.”
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said “we strongly deplore the deliberate and irresponsible release of American diplomatic correspondence by the site WikiLeaks.”
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it was an “irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official documents” while Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, called the document release “unhelpful and untimely.”
In Australia, Assange’s home country, Attorney General Robert McClelland said law enforcement officials were conducting an investigation into whether WikiLeaks broke any laws.
The cables unearthed new revelations about long-simmering nuclear trouble spots, detailing U.S., Israeli and Arab world fears of Iran’s growing nuclear program, American concerns about Pakistan’s atomic arsenal and U.S. discussions about a united Korean peninsula as a long-term solution to North Korean aggression.
None of the disclosures appeared particularly explosive, but their publication could become problems for the officials concerned and for any secret initiatives they had preferred to keep quiet. The massive release of material intended for diplomatic eyes only is sure to ruffle feathers in foreign capitals, a certainty that already prompted U.S. diplomats to scramble in recent days to shore up relations with key allies in advance of the leaks.
At Clinton’s first stop in Astana, Kazakhstan, she will be attending a summit of officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a diplomatic grouping that includes many officials from countries cited in the leaked cables.
The documents published by The New York Times, France’s Le Monde, Britain’s Guardian newspaper, German magazine Der Spiegel and others laid out the behind-the-scenes conduct of Washington’s international relations, shrouded in public by platitudes, smiles and handshakes at photo sessions among senior officials.
The White House immediately condemned the release of the WikiLeaks documents, saying “such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government.”
U.S. officials may also have to mend fences after revelations that they gathered personal information on other diplomats. The leaks cited American memos encouraging U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to collect detailed data about the UN secretary general, his team and foreign diplomats — going beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles.

TITLE: S. Korea Cancels New Drill On Island
AUTHOR: By Hyung-Jin Kim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s military announced provocative new artillery drills on a front-line island shelled in a deadly North Korean attack, then immediately postponed them Monday in a sign of disarray hours after the president vowed to get tough on the North.
Similar live-fire maneuvers by South Korean troops one week earlier triggered the North’s bombardment that decimated parts of Yeonpyeong Island, killed four people and drew return fire in a clash that set the region on edge.
The new drills originally planned for Tuesday could have had even higher stakes: South Korean and American warships are currently engaged in separate military exercises in waters to the south.
Officials at the Joint Chiefs of Staff told The Associated Press on Monday that the latest drills were postponed after the marine unit on the island mistakenly announced them without getting final approval from higher military authorities. The cancelation had nothing to do with North Korea, and the drills will take place later, one official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing agency rules.
Earlier Monday, President Lee Myung-bak gave his first address to the nation since the attack, taking responsibility for failing to protect his citizens, expressing outrage at the North’s “ruthlessness” and vowing tough consequences for any future aggression.
Lee has come under withering criticism for what opponents have called lapses in South Korea’s response to the attack just eight months after the sinking of a South Korean warship in nearby waters.
On Yeonpyeong Island after the speech, authorities announced new live-fire drills for Tuesday morning, and issued a warning over loudspeakers for residents to take shelter in underground bunkers. Hours later, another announcement over the loudspeakers said there would be no live-fire exercise.
The North’s artillery attack last week also wounded 18 people on an island that lies within sight of North Korean shores. North Korea had called the drills a violation of its territorial waters and a deliberate provocation after Pyongyang had urged South Korean officials not to carry out the exercises, and has warned of a “merciless” attack if further provoked.

TITLE: Irish Bailout Helps Banks, Angers Taxpayers
AUTHOR: By Shawn Pogatchnik
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBLIN — Ireland’s international bailout relieved investors Monday but outraged many across the country who find that a requirement to raid state pension funds to protect foreign creditors unjustly burdens average taxpayers for the mistakes of a rich elite.
Shares in Ireland’s banks rose sharply as markets were encouraged by the bailout’s immediate focus on injecting 10 billion euros into the cash-strapped banks out of a total of 67.5 billion euros ($89 billion) in loans.
But the Irish were shocked by a key condition for the rescue — that Ireland use 17.5 billion euros of its own cash and pensions reserves to shore up its public finances, burdened by bailing out banks’ irresponsible risk-taking.
Opposition leaders and some economists warned that the EU-IMF credit line’s average interest rate of 5.8 percent would be too high to repay — and questioned why the senior foreign bondholders of Ireland’s struggling banks still weren’t being asked to help bear the cost.
“This is not a rescue plan. It is the longest ransom note in history: Do what we tell you and you may, in time, get your country back,” said Fintan O’Toole, a commentator and author who led a weekend protest by labor-union activists in central Dublin against the imminent bailout. He called the average interest rate being demanded “viciously extortionate.”
The mood on Dublin’s snow-covered streets was just as icy.
“We’ve been screwed by the IMF. It’s going to be years and years until we’re free of this,” said Paul Flood, an unemployed 53-year-old Dubliner sheltering from the cold in a pub doorway. “We have to use our own pension reserve, and we’re still being stung with a 5.8 percent interest rate. It sounds ridiculously high.”
But the senior International Monetary Fund negotiator, Ajai Chopra, insisted that Ireland’s interest bill was reasonably cheap and its redeployment of Irish pension funds the most cost-efficient course to take.
Chopra said Ireland was now well positioned to reassure investors and eventually resume normal borrowing once interest rates being demanded on open markets fall.
“This is a very good deal for Ireland in current circumstances,” said Chopra, who arrived in Dublin 12 days ago to oversee negotiation of a bailout deal that leaders of all 27 EU nations approved Sunday at an emergency Brussels meeting.
“It’s clearly much better than what Ireland could get if it had to borrow on the market right now. ... As the program begins to work, we would expect that Ireland would be able to go back into the markets and borrow again,” he said.
The yields on Ireland’s 10-year bonds eased slightly Monday to 9.14 percent. They reached a euro-era record high of 9.24 percent Friday.
The euro currency initially gained but then dropped back as investors remained unconvinced that the Irish deal would soothe wider fears of eventual debt defaults somewhere else in the 16-nation eurozone.
Bond yields rose for Portugal, Spain and Italy, the other three eurozone members whose debt financing needs most worry economists. The 10-year bond yields for Greece — the highest in the world since its own EU-IMF bailout in May — dipped to 11.69 percent.
Chopra said it was smart to require Ireland to use its long-term pension money, which was earning around 1 percent interest, to reduce a bailout bill costing far more to finance.
“It’s making the best use of the money that Ireland has set aside. It’s a sign of strength,” Chopra told Irish state broadcaster RTE.
Ireland’s three publicly listed banks surged on the Irish Stock Exchange following Sunday’s deal.
After an immediate 10 billion euros to boost the banks’ cash reserves, the EU-IMF deal offers 25 billion euros more to draw down if banks still have trouble borrowing on markets.

TITLE: NATO: 6 Service Members Killed In Afghanistan
AUTHOR: By Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan — A gunman wearing an Afghan border police uniform killed six NATO service members during a training mission Monday in the east of the country, NATO forces said in a statement.
The shooter turned his weapon on the NATO troops and then was killed in the shootout, NATO said, but did not provide additional details.
NATO and Afghan authorities have launched an investigation, the international military coalition said.
NATO declined to identify the nationalities of the victims. The majority of forces in eastern Afghanistan are American.
The incident occurred in Pachir Wagam district of eastern Nangarhar province, according to an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not officially released.
It was not immediately clear if the gunman was a police officer or someone who had infiltrated the training mission. In the past, insurgents have donned police or army uniforms to attack Afghan government installations.