SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1636 (97), Tuesday, December 21, 2010
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TITLE: Thousands Detained to Prevent Violence
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As the unprecedented nationalist protests continued over the weekend, police again resorted to mass detentions to prevent violent clashes between Slavs and ethnic minorities.
About 2,000 people — including many schoolchildren — were detained on Saturday in Moscow and the surrounding region alone, news reports said.
City police detained 1,192 people in the capital between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, an unidentified police official told Interfax on Sunday.
In the surrounding Moscow region, another 800 people were detained to prevent them from carrying out unsanctioned protests, regional police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev told national news agencies.
Officers confiscated numerous weapons from the detainees, including two handguns, 13 nonlethal guns, 21 knives, and pyrotechnic devices, the reports said.
City police on Sunday did not confirm the detention figures, which would rank among the biggest in years. A spokesman, Arkady Bashirov, merely referred to official statements late Saturday that said “hundreds” had been detained, adding that exact numbers were hard to tell.
Bashirov said the situation in the capital was calm Sunday as police presence was stepped up and riot police continued to guard sensitive places, including train stations.
While most of Saturday’s detentions took place around the city’s Ploshchad Yevropa and Manezh Square, where racist rioting erupted a week earlier on Dec. 11, the single biggest protest went ahead largely unhindered near the Ostankino television center before being disbanded by police.
The leaders of the National Democratic Alliance, a newly formed nationalist movement, first held a small police-sanctioned picket outside the center to protest what they called biased media reports.
Ostankino houses Channel One, the country’s main state television channel.
The small rally grew to a crowd of about 500 when the activists moved into a nearby park, where they were unexpectedly joined by scores of youths and schoolchildren shouting radical nationalist slogans, news reports said.
The protesters, many of whom wore medical masks, shouted slogans complaining that the rights of ethnic Russians were being infringed in the country.
The police did not follow the protesters from Ostankino, thus allowing the rally to escalate, a Radio Liberty report said.
But city police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told Interfax that practically all participants of the protest were later detained.
Among them were many schoolchildren, “girls and boys from Grades 8, 9 and 10. They were handed over to their parents or legal guardians at the police station,” he said.
Observers have been bewildered by the fact that the wave of nationalist protests, which broke out after a Spartak football fan was killed during a Dec. 5 brawl with North Caucasus natives, has been carried by students.
Smaller incidents were reported from cities throughout the country. In Tula, about 30 football fans held a peaceful gathering Saturday in memory of the killed football fan, Yegor Sviridov. The protesters offered no resistance when police disbanded them, a police spokesman told Interfax.
Protests were also held in Volgograd and St. Petersburg, the New Times magazine reported on its web site, quoting local bloggers.
The protests have been sponsored by some well-known ultranationalist groups like Russky Obraz, which helped gather some of the 5,500 people who descended on Manezh Square just outside the Kremlin on Dec. 11.
Analysts said Sunday that it was too early to say whether the protests posed a serious danger for the government.
Vladmir Priybilovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said the National Democratic Alliance might carry a risk because unlike Russky Obraz and other fascist movements, its leaders were completely independent from Kremlin influence.
“These people can whip up xenophobia where the Kremlin doesn’t want it,” he said.
But in an indication that the new movement is a serious worry for the authorities, the National Democratic Alliance’s web site, Nazdem.info, was unavailable Sunday, and its leaders said on their LiveJournal blog that it was targeted by massive denial-of-service hacker attacks.
Formed on Dec. 13, the National Democratic Alliance counts as its leaders a former neo-Nazi and a one-time Orthodox fundamentalist.
At the protest outside Ostankino, Ilya Lazarenko, one of the movement’s leaders, read out a statement titled “Down With the Empire of Lies” in which he accused the government of censoring media and not allowing objective coverage of the nationalist protests.
The statement, posted on the movement’s LiveJournal blog, also demands a public discussion “about the status of ethnic republics in the North Caucasus.”
Pressed by a Radio Liberty reporter, Lazarenko explained that his movement wants the Russian Federation to be an ethnically homogenous Russian state and the non-ethnic Russian territories to be allowed to become independent.
He also said his movement backed a change of power, but that it could not name any new leaders.
Lazarenko is a well-known figure in the country’s nationalist scene. He became notorious in the 1990s when he set up neo-Nazi and pagan movements, including the bizarre Church of Nav, an occult brotherhood inaugurated on Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1996.
In 1998, his National Front party staged a rally at the U.S. Embassy under the slogan “Freedom for Texas!”
Recently, he has become more moderate, Pribylovsky said, pointing out that the alliance’s program includes support for a liberal market economy.
He said Alexei Shiropayev, another leader of the movement, is “a very talented poet” and former Orthodox fundamentalist.
TITLE: West Decries Violence, Flaws In Belarus Vote
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau and Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus — International observers and Western governments accused Belarus’ strongman leader of using fraud and violence to remain in power after more than 16 years of repressive rule, saying Monday that President Alexander Lukashenko’s re-election had been seriously flawed.
Seven of the nine candidates opposing Lukashenko were taken into custody, including one whom witnesses said was beaten by government forces, then dragged from his hospital bed by men in plainclothes.
The country’s election commission declared that Lukashenko got almost 80 percent of the vote in a preliminary count, handing him a fourth term in office.
But the Organization for Security and Coooperation in Europe said the count in Sunday’s vote was “bad or very bad” in half the country’s precincts. It also strongly criticized the violent dispersal by riot police of a post-election protest rally. U.S. and European leaders criticized Lukashenko for a wave of violence directed at rival presidential candidates and their supporters in the hours after the election.
Lukashenko on Monday bristled at the criticism of how police handled the demonstration, saying it was beyond the OSCE election observers’ mandate.
“What does what happened at night have to do with the election? The election was over,” he said at a news conference.
Lukashenko’s continuing grip on power makes Belarus one of the last relics of Soviet-style dictatorship, a nation of 10 million on the edge of Europe with overwhelming state control of politics, industry and media. The country’s continuing repression has been an embarassment to the European Union, which offered 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in aid to Belarus if the elections were judged to be free and fair.
Despair and anger gripped many in the country on Monday.
“Lawlessness, dictatorship — what else can you call this?” said Natalia Pohodnya, waiting in the snow outside a Minsk jail where her son was being held after participating in a demonstration. “They are beating our kids!”
There were no signs of imminent unrest in Minsk’s downtown of wide streets lined with Stalin-era buildings. The riot police had vanished by dawn.
The run-up to the election had raised a glimmer of hope that Lukashenko was relaxing his grip. The number of candidates was unprecedented, they were allowed comparative freedom to campaign and were even allotted time for debates on state media. Belarus had also passed some reforms in its election code.
But evidence of fraud before and during Sundays’ vote drove tens of thousands of protesters into the streets at night to denounce alleged irregularities. Helmeted riot police bearing shields and swinging truncheons dispersed the protesters from near the main government building after some in the crowd broke windows and doors.
Police also arrested seven of the nine candidates opposing Lukashenko.
“A positive assessment of this election isn’t possible,” said the OSCE observer mission’s head, Geert-Hinrich Ahrens.
One of the top opposition candidates, Vladimir Neklyayev, was beaten in a clash with government forces as he tried to lead a column of supporters to the protest. He was taken to a hospital, but his aide said seven men in civilian clothing later wrapped Neklyayev in a blanket on his hospital bed and carried him away as his wife screamed.
Lukashenko, a 56-year-old former collective farm manager, has allowed no independent broadcast media, kept 80 percent of industry under Soviet-style state control and suppressed opposition with police raids and pressure. His fiery populism and efforts to maintain a Soviet-era social safety net have kept him popular with the working class and the elderly.
But in recent years, he has quarreled intensively with the Kremlin, his main sponsor, as Russia raised prices for the below-market gas and oil on which Belarus’ economy depends.
Lukashenko also had been working to curry favor with the West, releasing some political prisoners and making Belarus part of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership initiative. He has called for improved ties with the U.S., which in previous years he had cast as an enemy.
However, his tone changed this month after Russia agreed to drop tariffs for oil exported to Belarus — a concession worth an estimated $4 billion a year.
And the tainted vote and violent dispersal of opposition protests make any further rapprochement with the West unlikely.
“This election failed to give Belarus the new start it needed. The counting process lacked transparency. The people of Belarus deserved better. And, in particular, I now expect the government to account for the arrests of presidential candidates, journalists and human rights activists,” said Tony Lloyd, one of the mission leaders.
The U.S. Embassy said that Washington “strongly condemns all election day violence in Belarus.” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that “it’s not acceptable to harass, beat or arrest opposition candidates and their supporters who want to exert their right to freedom of expression.” Poland’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the crackdown, saying in a statement that “the brutality of the security forces is inadmissible.” It appealed for the immediate release of the opposition candidates, saying their arrests raise “particular concern.”
“At this moment I don’t know where my husband is,” Neklyayev’s wife told reporters. “I can’t imagine: They took him right from an emergency care unit as I was watching.”
Also arrested was Andrei Sannikov, who was among those beaten outside the government building. Sannikov was the next-highest vote getter after Lukashenko, tallying 2.5 percent, according to official figures.
The human rights center Vesna said a total of 400 people were taken into custody Sunday. Interior Ministry spokesman Anatoly Kuleshov said organizers of mass disturbances could face up to 15 years in prison.
Also according to Vesna, police early Monday raided the office of the web site for Charter 97, an opposition organization connected with Sannikov, and arrested its editor.
In previous elections, none of which were judged free and fair by Western observers, Lukashenko tallied 80 percent or more.
In a notable diversion from the OSCE report, the observers’ mission of the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States said it did not call the results into question. Despite recent tensions between Minsk and Moscow, Russia continues to see Belarus as a buffer with NATO.
TITLE: Actor Lashes Out at Governor in Open Letter on Failings
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mikhail Trukhin, one of Russia’s most popular film and television actors, who gained fame as Senior Lieutenant Volkov in the “Menty” (Cops) television series, has sent an indignant open letter to Governor Valentina Matviyenko, comparing the streets of his native town of St. Petersburg with hell.
“It is time to admit your failure and capitulate,” Trukhin wrote in his letter, which was published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Friday. “Open your armor-plated car window, and look into the eyes of the parents of the two-year-old girl who died under a snow-clearing machine. I have seen photographs and footage of wintry Leningrad during the siege: Today’s St. Petersburg is close to those horrifying images.”
Trukhin, who moved to Moscow six years ago and now performs at the Chekhov Moscow Arts Theater, grew up in St. Petersburg, which he visits regularly, sometimes several times a week. In his letter, the actor stressed that this was his first ever attempt at a public protest.
“I never take part in any round-table discussions or demonstrations, and I am not keen on writing angry letters, but this time I have not been able to control my emotions. Every time I come to this city I see one and the same thing: As governor, you have absolutely no respect for residents,” the actor wrote.
According to official reports, people are currently falling victim to slippery sidewalks and road surfaces, falling ice and even snow-clearing vehicles on a daily basis in St. Petersburg. In the second week of December alone, more than 115 locals sustained various injuries related to the heavy snowfall. Two people — a two-year-old girl and an 89-year-old woman, a prominent cardiologist — were killed by snow-clearing vehicles last week.
On Tuesday, the Petrogradsky District Court will host the first hearing in the case of 22-year-old Milana Kashtanova, who spent more than nine months in a coma after being hit by falling ice in February this year. Kashtanova only regained consiousness at the end of November and is still unable to speak. During an earlier court case initiated by Kashtanova’s father, the victim, who is currently undergoing treatment in a German clinic, was awarded 2,500 euros. Kashtanova’s treatment is being paid for with private donations.
“Last year, when the city was drowning in snow, you suggested that the residents themselves do the clearing with shovels and tubs,” Trukhin wrote. “What I’m wondering is if this wouldn’t be too much of a luxury for the authorities? Doesn’t every resident of the city duly pay for utilities and communal services? The money is apparently not very well spent.”
Like Matviyenko, Trukhin employs a driver to get around the city. The difference is, however, that the routes are rather different, he writes. “The very few avenues that Matviyenko uses are cleaned of snow. As for the rest of the city, where many streets are not even walkable, let alone open for transport, it appears that the authorities could not care less.”
Trukhin’s letter was welcomed not only by a number of fellow actors, including singer Eduard Khil and actress Yelizaveta Boyarskaya, but also by large numbers of ordinary residents, who posted Trukhin’s letter in their blogs, complete with angry comments.
No reaction has followed from Smolny. “No official comment is likely to be made,” said Yevgenia Altfeld, Matviyenko’s press secretary, by telephone Monday. The spokeswoman said she had “no information on whether or not Matviyenko has yet been able to read Trukhin’s address.”
In the meantime, Matviyenko has been given support by St. Petersburg filmmaker Dmitry Meskhiev, who fired back at Trukhin in an open letter of his own on Monday.
“I am surprised you put all this blame on Valentina Matviyenko,” Meskhiev wrote in his blog. “The governor provided vast funds and resources to deal with the problem, and if too many local officials are unable to do their jobs, then they should be held responsible, not Matviyenko. The only thing that you can do with your letter is destabilize the situation.”
Alexander Sergeyev, the deputy governor of the local administration responsible for communal services, said the authorities are struggling to cope with what he described as a very tough situation.
“We are having a lot of problems; we find ourselves under a lot of pressure,” Sergeyev told reporters on Friday. In the official’s opinion, one of the key problems is unsatisfactory work carried out by private contractors engaged by City Hall to clean up the city. “We will revise our contracts with many of them,” Sergeyev promised.
The official stopped short however of acknowledging that the entire system of cleaning the city of snow and icicles needs an overhaul.
TITLE: Ivanovo Doctor Fears Reprisals
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An Ivanovo doctor fears being fired or beaten after he told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on a call-in show last week that a local hospital had faked a display for a visit by Putin, installing borrowed equipment, dressing up staff as patients and forcing nurses to lie about their salaries.
The doctor, Ivan Khrenov, 24, was selected out of thousands of Russians to address Putin during his annual call-in show Thursday. Speaking as an anonymous caller, Khrenov told Putin that the administration of an Ivanovo hospital had created a Potemkin village for his visit on Nov. 9.
He said sick patients were sent home, replaced by clinic personnel surrounded by gleaming equipment borrowed from other hospitals, and nurses had to tell Putin that their monthly salaries had been raised to 12,000 rubles ($390), when in fact they get about 5,000 rubles ($165).
Putin replied that Khrenov’s comments were “strange” but promised that a special commission from the Health and Social Development Ministry would scrutinize how the hospital spent the 130 million rubles ($4.2 million) that it received from the federal government this year.
When the studio audience broke into applause, Putin asked, “What are you cheering at? The art of the [hospital] managers or the doctor’s bravery?”
Ivanovo Governor Mikhail Men, reappointed by the Kremlin to a new five-year term in October, voiced skepticism about Khrenov’s allegations Friday but promised to examine them.
The region’s top health official, Irina Atroshenko, released a statement late Thursday describing Khrenov as “insane” and denying that he had any connection to the hospital.
TITLE: Plans to Demolish Building on Nevsky Cause Uproar
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A letter-writing campaign urging President Dmitry Medvedev to save the Literary House on Nevsky Prospekt from the threat of demolition is underway in St. Petersburg after news broke that developer AvtoKomBalt is planning to tear down the building in order to construct a hotel with an underground parking lot on the site.
The four-story red building is located right in the center of the city, at 68 Nevsky Prospekt, on the corner with the embankment of the Fontanka River, next to Anichkov Bridge.
Preservationist organization Living City says that the reason for the planned demolition is not the poor state of the building — which was previously the developer’s official line — but the fact that it will be easier and cheaper to build an underground parking lot if the building is demolished.
According to Living City’s Antonina Yeliseyeva, the developer announced plans for the complete demolition of the building during a meeting at Deputy City Governor Igor Meshcheryakov’s office on Friday. She said that previously there had been talk of leaving the fa?ade intact, except for broadening the first-floor windows and adding an extra floor.
“[The proposal] was not backed unanimously, and, as far as I understand, they still don’t have the final permit,” Yeliseyeva said Monday. The telephone at AvtoKomBalt went unanswered when called Monday.
The side of the building facing onto Nevsky Prospekt is currently covered with a construction tarpaulin depicting the building’s fa?ade, and a section of the road next to it is partially closed to traffic.
Living City says that there was not a single month during the past five years when no portion of Nevsky Prospekt was closed, at least partially, due to building demolition.
“This means that for the sixth year, Nevsky will be partly blocked — first it was Nevskij Palace, then Stockmann and now this,” Yeliseyeva said.
The building, which was originally built in the late 18th to early 19th centuries, is also known as Lopatin’s House after one of its owners. A number of authors lived there at different periods, including the novelist Ivan Turgenev, poet Fyodor Tyutchev and literary critic Vissarion Belinsky.
In November 1941, the Literary House was badly damaged by a Nazi air bomb, and was rebuilt in 1950. Its current fa?ade contains elements of Classicism and Stalin-era Empire style, with a two-column portico, stuccowork and iconic statues of a worker leaning on a hammer and a collective farm woman holding sheaves of grain that crown the building.
The building, which housed the district administration in the Soviet era, and later — between 1993 and 2009 — the offices of the state tax inspectorate, is not officially a heritage object, unlike the two adjacent buildings.
Living City warns that the protected heritage buildings may be damaged if the building at 68 Nevsky Prospekt is demolished.
“We have already had two precedents on Nevsky,” Yeliseyeva said.
“When they built the Nevskij Palace hotel, the two buildings on either side collapsed, and when they built the Stockmann department store, the wall of the building at 114 Nevsky Prospekt (which they wanted to preserve) collapsed, while the building at 112 Nevsky Prospekt was severely damaged. It is still standing, but there are cracks in it and it’s actually in a critical condition. Unfortunately, this hasn’t taught the St. Petersburg administration anything.”
According to Yeliseyeva, dozens of people have sent letters to Medvedev since the campaign was announced on Sunday evening.
“People are writing a lot of angry letters, because this is Nevsky and there is the memory of the Siege of Leningrad,” she said.
The web site of the CrushMash demolition company that has been assigned to demolish the building says that the construction “has no historical value” and will be replaced by a “modern one that preserves the historical style of the adjacent buildings.”
According to Living City, if the Literary House is demolished, it will be the sixth building on St. Petersburg’s main street to be pulled down since Governor Valentina Matviyenko took office in 2003.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: 7 Hunters Killed
ROSTOV-ON-DON (AP) — Police said seven hunters and forest rangers were shot dead in a wooded area in the North Caucasus on Saturday.
All victims had two to four gunshot wounds to the head in the shootings in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, said a police official, who declined to be identified because the investigation was still at an early stage.
In November 2007, the bodies of nine hunters and forest rangers were found in the same stretch of woodland. Police at the time said they had inadvertently strayed into the territory of militants and were killed by them.
Soyuz Docks
CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) — The International Space Station got three new tenants Friday, doubling in crew size with the arrival of a Soyuz capsule.
The Soyuz delivered an American, an Italian and a Russian for a five-month stay. They floated into the orbiting lab two days after their launch from Kazakhstan.
Officials at Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow radioed congratulations, as did the families of the new residents.
Mission Control had lost communication with the Soyuz craft for about three hours late Thursday, Interfax reported, quoting an unidentified official in the space industry.
Loss of contact with space shuttles occurs from time to time but lasts only a short time.
Mission Control became alarmed after hours had passed without information regarding the spaceship’s whereabouts and contacted NASA’s Mission Control in Houston urging it to use its global positioning system to track the craft, Interfax said.
Journalist Jailed
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — A Moldovan journalist has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in the separatist region of Transdnestr for spying, Moldovan authorities said Friday, despite international objections that the charges are unfounded.
Ernest Vardanean, 30, was arrested in April in the breakaway region and was charged with spying and high treason after television footage showed him saying he was forced to join Moldova’s secret service in 2001, while he was studying in the capital, Chisinau.
Moldovan officials claim Vardanean, who worked for Novyi Region, a Russian news agency critical of Transdnestr authorities, had been coerced to make the statement.
Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Osipov said his country called on the region to drop the “unfounded accusations” but Vardanean was sentenced Thursday.
Trafficking Verdict
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A U.S. judge sentenced a Russian immigrant to one-year in prison for her role in a human trafficking conspiracy that recruited hundreds of women from Russia, Estonia, Belarus and Ukraine to work illegally at hotels in the United States.
U.S. prosecutors said Maria Terechina, 47, was a criminal who helped trick the women into taking hotel jobs in Ohio they couldn’t escape because she took their passports and controlled where they lived and how they got around.
Terechina’s lawyer said she was a hardworking grandmother who made mistakes and cooperated when tax authorities began an investigation two years ago.
TITLE: Aeroflot Orders 16 Boeing 777 Airplanes
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Aeroflot will buy $4 billion worth of Boeing airliners to expand its long-haul fleet, the airline said Thursday.
The flag carrier confirmed that it has sealed a deal with the U.S. aviation giant for 16 Boeing 777s to be delivered over a six-year period between 2012 and 2017.
Eight 777-200ERs and eight 777-300ERs will be delivered.
The 327-seater 777-200ER is priced at $232.23 million in Boeing’s catalogue, while the 300ER, with 365 seats, has a price tag of $284.1 million. That would put the total value of the deal at $4.13 billion.
A spokesman for Boeing refused to confirm the figure, saying it was against company policy to comment on negotiations with customers. Aeroflot spokespeople were unavailable last week.
Both models of the 777 are long-haul aircraft designed for intercontinental flights. They should fill a gap in Aeroflot’s fleet created by repeated delays in delivery of Boeing’s flag ship 787 Dreamliner.
Aeroflot originally ordered 22 of the 290-seat Dreamliners three years ago, but delivery has been repeatedly delayed. The two sides have set up a working group to look for ways to deliver at least two of the Dreamliners before the Sochi Olympics kick off in 2014, Aeroflot said.
Aeroflot is also waiting for its first deliveries of the Sukhoi Superjet, which were expected to arrive in December. The first two of the new medium-haul airliner ordered by Aeroflot are now expected to be delivered in the spring.
Aeroflot has ordered 30 of the new jets. Armenian flag carrier Armavia also has Superjets on order.
At this point Aeroflot may not be in a hurry to receive the 98-seat Superjets, since its flights are scheduled to begin only in March 2011, and the airline does not want to pay leasing fees on idle aircraft, Vedomosti reported.
Meanwhile, India and Russia may sign a contract to jointly produce a fifth-generation fighter aircraft during President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India from Tuesday to Thursday. Ashok Nayak, head of India’s Hindustan Aeronautics limited, told RIA-Novosti that the Indian version of the aircraft would cost $295 million, and that a final design should be ready within 18 months. The aircraft will be designed in Russia.
TITLE: Putin Hails Mine Repairs, Starts Intervention Over Grain
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Repair costs at the country’s biggest coal mine, Raspadskaya, which stopped operations after a fatal explosion in May, stood at 5 billion rubles ($162 million), or half the initial forecast, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
Speaking at a four-hour televised call-in show, Putin also announced the start of domestic grain intervention, praised Belarus for economic integration with Russia, called Ukraine to join the tripartite customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and discussed the pharmaceutical and aviation industries.
“We should give respect to the owners of the [Raspadskaya] mine. They invested more than 5 billion rubles in repairs. They were not saving money on solving social or production issues,” Putin said.
The announcement came as the coal producer resumed operations at the Kemerovo region mine for the first time since twin blasts ripped through it, killing 90.
Putin, who visited the region shortly after the disaster, estimated repair costs at 10 billion rubles, while the mine’s representatives spoke of 8.6 billion rubles.
Despite the Raspadskaya setback, the country’s coal production industry, which has undergone serious restructuring in recent years, is growing and is likely to reach the pre-crisis level soon, Putin said Thursday.
But, he said, the government still intends to resume a coal industry support program, ended last year, to help solve its social issues. Special funds will be created to compensate employees of mines that are being closed, Putin said, adding that similar funds exist in the energy industry.
The government will also start distributing grain from an intervention fund to support the agriculture industry after a two-month summer drought ravaged crops, Putin said.
“The work will start in the near future. The documents are signed,” he said, referring to the two orders he had signed on Wednesday.
A total of 1.3 million tons of grain of the 9.5 million tons accumulated in the intervention fund will be distributed, including food grain for Moscow and St. Petersburg and feed grain for regions nationwide, Putin said.
Putin reiterated that the country, once the world’s third-biggest wheat exporter, has enough grain to meet domestic demand. All exports are currently banned.
Next year, the government will allot 123 billion rubles ($4 billion) to support the agricultural sector, Putin said.
Speaking of Russia’s cooperation with its closest neighbors Belarus and Ukraine, Putin praised Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko — who ran for re-election Sunday — for policies that he said were aimed at economic integration with Russia.
“The Belarussian government set a distinct course for economic integration with Russia. … This choice undoubtedly deserves support and respect,” the prime minister said.
He also said Russia would lose $5.3 billion on duty-free oil supplies to Belarus next year, but added that “we do this intentionally to support the Belarussian economy.”
Belarus is to receive 20 million tons of duty-free crude oil from Russia next year. Moscow has cut down on economic support to Belarus in recent years, prompting a notable cooling in relations.
Putin also spoke in favor of Ukraine joining the customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, saying it would be beneficial for all countries involved.
“It will be a powerful and important impulse for preserving whole industries of the Ukraine’s economy and will help to increase competitiveness of many of our enterprises,” he said.
He reiterated a pledge that the country would gradually cease importing foreign medicines, saying the government would instead stimulate foreign investment in the pharmaceutical industry, supporting the creation of enterprises with 100 percent foreign capital.
Speaking of the aviation industry, Putin noted that the government has initiated a program to provide funding for regional airlines and airports, mostly in the Far East and remote regions of northern Russia.
TITLE: EU Backs
Sanctions Against Officials
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS — The European Parliament urged EU governments Thursday to freeze the assets of Russian officials involved in the prison death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and pressed the Russian government to do more to punish those who commit crimes against Kremlin critics.
The parliament also encouraged European Union states to ban visas for the officials but, after Russian lobbying in recent days, softened the language of the resolution focusing on Magnitsky’s death.
The resolution is nonbinding, and EU governments did not immediately comment on whether they would take action against Russian officials. Magnitsky’s lawyers, however, called the resolution a key step toward bringing justice and pressuring Moscow to show its commitment to rule of law. The Kremlin press service did not comment on the vote.
The parliament voted 318-163 with 95 abstentions for a measure that “encourages EU law enforcement agencies to cooperate in freezing bank accounts and other assets” in Europe of Russian officials involved in the case. The measure also urges EU members “to consider imposing an EU entry ban for Russian officials involved in this case.”
The U.S. Congress is considering a similar measure.
The measure does not name the targeted Russians, but Magnitsky’s colleagues have identified 60 officials, including relatively senior figures in the Interior Ministry.
Magnitsky died last year at age 37 when the pancreatitis he developed in jail was left untreated.
TITLE: What Lies Ahead After a Year of Thieving
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The 2010 annals of corruption stories took a creative twist last week when the public learned that Moscow’s metro chief is also a talented inventor.
Dmitry Gayev seems to have found time outside his day job to design automatic payment machines, video monitoring and ventilation systems, and unique technologies for building stations deep underground.
The Prosecutor General’s Office says Gayev took credit for metro employees’ work and personally earned 112 million rubles ($3.6 million) in payments and royalties from partners who sold his inventions to the metro.
Gayev has denied wrongdoing, indicating that the inventions are indeed his own, Interfax reported.
But the $3.6 million that he is suspected of collecting over 10 years is peanuts compared with the $33 billion that President Dmitry Medvedev says was funneled into bureaucrats’ pockets this year. Medvedev has made battling corruption a priority since he took office, and he admitted in his state-of-the-nation address late last month that progress was slow.
“According to the most conservative estimates, inappropriate expenses including direct theft and kickbacks amount to at least 1 trillion rubles,” he said Nov. 30.
The president, who has staked much on cleaning up corruption, “is in an unhappy position,” said Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee.
Here’s why.
The parade of big names and big events in the headlines began in February with the dismissal of IKEA’s director for Eastern Europe, Per Kaufmann, for overlooking a bribe given to a contractor in St. Petersburg. No Russians were charged in the case.
Hewlett-Packard was in the spotlight in mid-April, when its Moscow offices were raided in connection with an investigation that originated in Germany. The company was accused of paying $44.5 million in bribes in exchange for a contract to supply equipment to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, whose own Investigative Committee was conducting the investigation. No charges against Russians have been filed.
Forty out of 680 members of the Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber signed an anti-corruption pact later the same month. The signatories included Daimler and Siemens, both of which were in hot water in Germany and the United States for corrupt practices in Russia.
The summer got off to a dramatic start in June when a Federal Fisheries Service official threw 10 million ill-gotten rubles ($320,000) in 5,000 ruble notes out the window of his car onto Varshavskoye Shosse in southcentral Moscow during a high-speed chase that ended in a crash.
By November, the prosecutor’s office had also gotten around to investigating Daimler, accused of giving bribes in exchange for state orders of its automobiles. No charges against any officials have been filed.
The fall saw some actual arrests. A former Kremlin official, a former deputy health minister and three others were charged with extorting money from Toshiba and other makers of medical equipment.
The Toshiba case represents a major step forward, Kabanov said, noting that it was the first time officials of such a high level had been detained for corruption. Kabanov credited the Interior Ministry’s 3rd Operational Investigative Bureau — which specializes in fighting high-level official corruption — with exemplary fulfillment of its duty.
Gaining a Reputation
But the conviction rate for corrupt practices is low and not rising.
Medvedev is not alone in his alarm. Russia fell eight places in Transparency International’s influential corruption perception rating this year, from a dismal 146th place to 154th.
Vedomosti reported on Nov. 30 that the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption had given Russia low marks for its implementation of the group’s recommendations for fighting corruption.
The negative image of Russian business practices is pervasive. When Russia was chosen to host the 2018 football World Cup, for instance, both FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin felt it necessary to make statements denying that underhanded means had come into play in the choice.
“When bad things happen in Russia, investors know the next morning,” said Ivan Tchakarov, director of the global markets division at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Russia. He said American investors are particularly cynical of Russia.
International resistance to corruption is making itself felt. The U.S. Justice Department has pressed charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against a number of companies, including Siemens, Daimler and Swiss logistics firm Panalpina, for their activities in Russia.
The pressure will increase next year, when the U.K. Bribery Act comes into force.
But action is more important than mere legal words, experts said.
“The president has made a diagnosis, but the people don’t do anything,” Kabanov said. “Society is infantile. It says, ‘I can’t change a thing.’”
In fact, there are few mechanisms available in Russian society for fighting corruption, he said.
Analysts and opposition leaders have blamed the slow progress in Medvedev’s battle against corruption on the fact that the effort was entrusted to officials who are themselves most likely mired in corruption.
The president admitted as much in his state-of-the-nation address. Giving a greater place to noncommercial organizations in providing social services “will reduce corruption among government officials,” he said, “which is crucial.”
“For citizens,” he said, “the state is the official to whose office they come with their problems, the judge who makes a ruling in their case, a local police officer or a tax inspector. … Government officials should not discredit the state with their activities. Their main mission is to improve the conditions that people live in.”
These same officials — including State Duma deputies and federal ministers who were forced to declare their incomes by Medvedev — quickly figured out that there is no formal body to investigate their formally stated wealth, not to mention keep track of their real possessions and activities, and try to match them to what they claim to earn.
Resistance Is Dangerous
A survey by Transparency International published earlier this month found that 52 percent of Russians would be willing to report incidents of corruption. But, according to head of the Transparency International Russian office Yelena Panfilova, only 7 percent have actually taken action to resist corruption. Twenty-four percent of respondents believe that progress is being made in the fight against corruption.
Public inactivity in the face of corruption is understandable. The example of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is instructive to all. Magnitsky died, possibly of maltreatment, in late 2009 after almost a year in police custody. He had been arrested on tax charges after accusing senior Interior Ministry officials of corruption.
A WikiLeaks memo attributed to U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle, published in The Washington Post on Dec. 2, paints a tawdry picture of police partnership with organized crime and all-encompassing corruption in former Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s Moscow. The chilling massacre of 12 people in the village of Kushchyovskaya last month seems to bear out the ugly reality of the situation.
Georgy Satarov, president of Indem, an anti-corruption watchdog, told The St. Petersburg Times that he saw no progress against corruption this year.
“Corruption in daily life hasn’t changed in the last five years,” he said. “Business corruption is harder to talk about because there is less reliable information. But I don’t see a change.”
Exposure Shows Hope
A less expert observer cannot help but be impressed by the increased attention paid to corruption. In addition to the case of the Moscow metro director-inventor, this week saw Alexander Bulbov, a former senior official in the Federal Drug Control Service, convicted of receiving $21,300 in improper pension payments and granting traffic privileges to unauthorized people. (But, as is often the case in Russia, his trial is much more than a simple open-and-shut case into corruption.)
On Dec. 12, Vedomosti published excerpts from a 2006 WikiLeak memo attributed to former U.S. Ambassador Williams Burns that claimed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov pockets a third of the federal aid that Chechnya receives.
The publication of that and much more material in the domestic media is also ambiguous — simultaneous proof of the impotence of honest citizens and officials, and the mounting attention and opposition to corruption.
One weapon in the armory, whose potential may shift from its fragile nascent state this year to something more solid in the future, is the growing use of information technology and the Internet.
Campaigners like lawyer Alexei Navalny leverage a combination of their blogs, minority shareholder status and attention from the media to try to shed light on malfeasance by big companies and bureaucrats.
The Communications and Press Ministry is seeking 80 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) next year to help government agencies deploy systems that will allow citizens to get services through the Internet, a ministry official said in October.
“The battle against corruption is one of the main goals of this effort,” said Andrei Lipov, director of the ministry’s department for information technology policy.
“If we can provide even a part of the services people need via an e-government system, we expect corruption associated with government services to citizens to go down,” he said.
TITLE: Prime Minister Putin: The Tandem Is Always Watching
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is never abandoned by the watchful eye of one of its two rulers, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday during a record Q&A marathon in which he lashed out at the opposition, called former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky a criminal, and denounced the intelligence officer who betrayed Russian agents to the United States as a “brute” and a “pig.”
“We take turns sleeping,” Putin said, answering a question about who runs the country when he and President Dmitry Medvedev are asleep.
Thursday’s televised call-in show was Putin’s ninth and the third during his stint as prime minister. It lasted a record 4 hours, 24 minutes, and the number of questions sent to the show’s hotline exceeded 1,050,000, Putin’s press service said.
Curiously, none of the 90 questions Putin picked concerned whether he would run for the presidency in 2012. Also, Medvedev’s pet project of modernization never surfaced during the show.
Answering the first question, on racial unrest in Moscow and other cities over the past week, Putin said the government should nip in the bud any demonstration of extremism.
Police have detained hundreds of nationalist and Caucasus youth to prevent clashes after protesters turned violent last Saturday at an unsanctioned Moscow rally staged in connection with the killing of a Slavic football fan during a brawl with Caucasus natives.
Putin blamed the police for the unrest, saying Moscow investigators should never have released three Caucasus suspects linked to the killing.
“How could this happen, that people implicated in the murder were set free?” Putin said, without naming anyone.
He urged the public not to let their respect for the police drop “below the ground level,” and asked Russians living in Muslim provinces and Caucasus natives living in non-Muslim cities to respect the traditional culture of their surroundings.
“Our country is of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and some scholars say it is closer to Islam than to Catholicism,” Putin added.
Asked by a caller when order would be re-established, Putin responded curtly: “We will do our best.”
He also said he feels no shame for his country, but left the question of when Russia’s pervasive corruption would stop unanswered.
Putin grew animated speaking about liberal opposition leaders who formed a coalition recently and linked them Boris Berezovsky, the Kremlin kingmaker of the late 1990s who now lives in self-exile in London.
“They were stealing in the 1990s along with Berezovsky and with those who are serving prison sentences now,” he said, apparently hinting at Khodorkovsky. “Now they want to return and refill their pockets.”
One of the coalition leaders, Mikhail Kasyanov, served as prime minister for four years during Putin’s presidency, and Putin’s rapid ascent to power is widely credited to Berezovsky.
“If we allow them to do this, they will not be satisfied by billions. They will sell off all of Russia,” Putin said, adding that the opposition’s main goal in staging rallies was to clash with the police.
Twice during the show Putin returned to his 2004 decision to abolish popular gubernatorial elections and replace them with de-facto presidential appointments. Putin called this method “optimal for our country” because it “takes into consideration the interests of the federal government,” and he defended it as way to block criminals from gaining high office.
The reform is often criticized by civic activists as a trampling of democracy and harmful to residents because they can no longer hold governors accountable.
Putin dodged another sensitive question — about the use of flashing blue lights on the cars of senior government officials. The caller asked about several recent violent accidents involving cars with the flashing lights, and Putin said only that the traffic police should enforce the rules for all drivers.
Repeating disappointment over the disintegration of the Soviet Union that he voiced at the previous call-in show, Putin said no Russian statesman before Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had ever thought of separating Russia from Ukraine and Belarus.
Asked why Russia is waging a war of words against Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who ran for re-election Sunday, Putin said he had never personally spoken against him, and that Russia supports the Belarussian economy to the tune of several billion dollars every year.
Medvedev lashed out at Lukashenko on his Internet blog recently for his refusal to recognize the independence of the Georgian separatist republics of Abkhazia and North Ossetia.
Putin once again played up the popular notion that he is Russia’s good-luck talisman when a caller reminded him that Russia had received the right to hold the football World Cup in 2018.
“Are you really so lucky?” the caller asked.
“Yes,” Putin said, to the applause of the studio audience.
Turning to a more serious problem, the recent exposure of police officers in criminal gangs in the towns of Kushchyovskaya and Gus-Khrustalny, Putin said the development showed the “failure of the whole system of law enforcement.”
He said he hoped for “substantial changes” after the State Duma approves police reforms. The bill passed a first reading earlier this month.
A former KGB operative, Putin reserved his sharpest and most colorful language for a mole in the Foreign Intelligence Service who turned over information about a network of Russian sleeper agents in the United States to U.S. officials. Ten Russians were arrested there in June and subsequently exchanged for four Russians serving prison terms in Russia on espionage and high treason charges.
“The man betrayed his friends, comrades in arms, and the people who sacrificed their lives for the motherland!” Putin said, indignantly. “And here we have a brute who betrays such people! How can he look into the eyes of his children? Pig.”
Putin would not name the man, saying only that the special departments of the intelligence services that used to kill traitors no longer exist.
Earlier media reports identified the mole as Colonel Alexander Poteyev and said he fled to the United States shortly before the spy arrests in June.
TITLE: Universities Open For Business – and Profits
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Universities across the country are taking advantage of a law passed last year allowing them to invest directly in small, innovative businesses — with mixed results. The legislation, supported by President Dmitry Medvedev, helps create jobs, additional income and stimulate technological innovation.
Formerly, higher education institutions could only create noncommercial partnerships or rent space to companies, but the new law allows for direct investment, a greater role in the business and a share in success.
Nikita Petrov, a post-graduate student at Novosibirsk State Technical University, works up to four days a week in a small business developing novelty lighting. Some evenings he goes straight from his office to his studies. “It’s a lot of work,” he said, “and one is forced to divide one’s time carefully.”
Petrov’s company is called EON+ and has been set up to develop RGB technology — a way of manipulating color to produce decorative lights. Petrov wants to expand the company’s reach beyond Novosibirsk and plans to keep working there after he gets his degree in 2013.
In addition to Petrov’s venture, there are eight other companies at Novosibirsk State Technical University developing businesses based on concepts as varied as water purification, transistors for regulating temperature and power supplies for audio systems.
Leonid Lnogradsky, head of Samara State Technical University’s Computer Center, said that although his university created four small businesses under the new law, they have about 40 firms working in the “old style.” “We won’t rush toward the new direction,” he said. But “after some time, the majority of our university businesses will be in this new form.”
In January, Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko said that 200 small businesses had already been started under the new regulation. By Nov. 1 there were more than 500, according to the ministry’s web site.
Though the number of startups is impressive, moving to the manufacturing phase is another story. Petrov said his company, which has existed for 11 months, is still in the development stage and has not yet begun production.
Many university representatives who spoke with The St. Petersburg Times said it was too early to be talking about profitability.
Victor Tskhe, vice rector of Science and Innovation at Tomsk State Technical University, said that 70 businesses functioning under the old model were very profitable, while their 15 to 18 new businesses were “only just beginning to stand on their own two feet.”
Nikolai Kozlov, director of Bauman State Technical University’s Innovation Center in Moscow, drew a distinction between those businesses engaged with simple commercial activity and those focussed on innovation and complex products — which face a very complicated market entry while the economic crisis is not quite over.
Lnogradsky said that at Samara University there was some overlap between old-style companies and new ones. “The government makes a new law, and you simply change your old business a little — you change your black boots to white, but you continue to drink at the same bar,” he said.
He gave the example of an oil company with which his university had a longstanding intellectual and personnel exchange, albeit on a small scale. Now the university has a small innovative business within the company that employs many more staff and is much more dynamic. “I see the boots, though,” Lnogradsky said.
Large-scale direct financial investment in the new ventures by universities is uncommon.
Petrov’s Novosibirsk company needs 6 million rubles ($190,000) of investment over the next three years, he said. They are hoping to receive part of this money from the state-funded Start Program for the support of small enterprises in the field of science and technology, and the remainder from private investors.
Novosibirsk State Technical University will supply the company with premises, equipment, Internet connection, laboratory space, legal consultation and the opportunity to consult with specialists in the field. “Unfortunately our university cannot have a big financial influence, and we are forced to seek help from investors and various funds,” Petrov said.
The actual sums of money being invested by universities in these new companies are very difficult to quantify, said Igor Rozhdestvensky, director of St. Petersburg State University’s Business Incubation Center. “Frankly not too many universities use such enterprises as ventures that can lead to sizable profits in the near future,” he added.
In many cases a university will not “pay the expenses of the company or directly invest, but instead use its reputation and partnerships to help these companies get external funding,” Rozhdestvensky said.
Yelena Zhitenko, director of Novosibirsk State Technical University’s Innovation and Technology Center, said the potential for employing students once they graduate was significant. More than 30 percent of the employees of her university’s nine small businesses were students, she said.
Zhitenko added that the usual model for creating a startup was for a professor to develop an initial idea and then gather students to work in the business as it takes shape.
At present there are no students participating in Bauman State Technical University’s five functioning small businesses, Kozlov said. When the product has been developed and begins to be sold, only then will young people appear in the businesses, he said, “and exactly when that will be is extremely difficult to predict.”
Tskhe said that half of Tomsk’s new innovative businesses established since 2009 were student-led.
Students and professors may have the desire and intellectual potential to start businesses, but often the lack basic entrepreneurial skills, said Rozhdestvensky, whose Business Incubation Center provides training, help in identifying problems, business models and other forms of assistance. Many universities have similar programs.
Though strongly supported at the highest political level, the new law has received some criticism. Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said during the debates over the law that it might provoke “an upswell of conflict and scope for corruption,” RIA-Novosti reported.
Though he claimed overall success, even Fursenko admitted in an interview published on the ministry’s web site in November that “some fine-tuning is essential.”
Zhitenko of Novosibirsk said a serious problem is the “absence of financial support for startup innovation firms.” The law needs serious corrections and additions, she said, “for example in tax policy.”
TITLE: Medvedev Visits India to Secure Deals
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW DELHI — Russia and India are expected to sign billions of dollars worth of defense and nuclear deals during President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India starting Tuesday.
An expected highlight of Medvedev’s trip will be a $30 billion agreement for the design and development of a stealth fighter jet to be inducted into the Indian air force, Russian ambassador Alexander Kadakin told reporters. The aircraft would be the equivalent of the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptor.
“There is robust defense cooperation between the two countries,” said Vishnu Prakash, a foreign ministry spokesman. “It is not a mere buyer-seller relationship, but the two sides are looking at joint research and development and joint production.”
During the Cold War, India and the Soviet Union shared a deep relationship, while the United States tilted toward India’s neighbor Pakistan.
In the post Cold War period, India has moved closer to the United States, but its strategic partnership with Russia has endured.
“We can rightfully call it a privileged partnership,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Times of India newspaper published Monday.
India has emerged as one of the largest buyers of fighter jets, tanks, submarines and other defense equipment in recent years.
India and Russia are also expected to sign a general framework agreement for Russia to build two more nuclear power plants in Tamil Nadu in southern India, in addition to the two it is already building there.
India and Russia are also likely to discuss liberalizing visa regimes as part of plans to double annual trade from the current $10 billion in the next five years. Indian business leaders have long complained about the difficulty of getting multiple entry visas to Russia.
TITLE: Novartis to Invest $500 Million Over 5 Years
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA — Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG says it plans to invest $500 million in Russia over a five-year period.
Novartis says the investment will include the construction of a drug production plant in St. Petersburg as well as research and development partnerships with local companies.
The Basel-based company says construction of the plant starts in 2011. It will be used to produce 1.5 billion generic and proprietary drugs each year when completed. Novartis says the investment is one of the biggest it has ever made in local manufacturing.
Shares in the company rose 0.4 percent to 56.95 Swiss francs ($58.85) on the Zurich exchange during early trading Monday.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: New GM at GHE
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Orient-Express, the company that owns the Grand Hotel Europe, has appointed Leon Larkin its new managing director for Russia and general manager for the five-star hotel, the company announced in a press release last week.
Larkin was in the past the general manager of the Sheraton Nevskiy Palace Hotel in St. Petersburg. He has also worked in China, Australia, Finland, Singapore and Malaysia.
Mobile Merger
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — Metrocom will be integrated into Megafon network provider by the end of next year, Alexandra Makarova, the commercial director of Megafon’s northwest department said.
According to Makarova, after the merger is complete, Megafon expects to occupy 39 percent of St. Petersburg’s corporate cell market.
TITLE: Cables Reveal Gas Leak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Leaked U.S. Embassy cables reveal that the BP oil company was “fortunate” to have evacuated workers from a platform in Azerbaijan after a gas leak similar to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
The cables published by The Guardian newspaper on Thursday also reported that Azeri President Ilham Aliyev accused the London-based company of stealing billions of dollars of oil from his country and using “mild blackmail” to secure the rights to develop gas reserves in the Caspian Sea.
The cables were released as BP shares took a hit in London after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was suing the oil company and several other firms involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The U.S. government accused the companies of disregarding federal safety regulations in drilling the well that blew out April 20, triggering a deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and sending thousands of tons of oil pouring into the Gulf.
In one of the U.S. Embassy cables, BP Azerbaijan president Bill Schrader is reported as saying the “red button” was pressed after detection of a gas leak on the Central Azeri platform in September 2008.
The subsequent evacuation of 211 workers was BP’s largest emergency evacuation at the time.
The cable, released by the WikiLeaks site, says that given the explosive potential the company was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and prevent any gas ignition.
Schrader notes that the incident had escaped media attention, but added that it had the “full focus” of the Azeri government, which was losing $40 million to $50 million a day because of the shutdown.
A later cable revealed that BP believed a “bad cement job” was to blame for the Azeri leak.
That echoes comments by former BP chief Executive Tony Hayward that partly blamed a “bad cement job” by contractor Halliburton on the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Another WikiLeaks cable reveals that Aliyev said BP tried to exploit his country’s “temporary troubles” during a gas shortage in December 2006.
Aliyev is reported by U.S. diplomats in Baku as saying BP wanted an extension of its lucrative profit-sharing arrangement with the Azerbaijan government and the green light to develop key Caspian reserves in return for making more gas supplies available for domestic consumption.
BP is the biggest shareholder in the $4 billion Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries more than 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. It is also the largest shareholder and operator of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshi field, the country’s largest producing oil field in the Caspian reserve.
TITLE: Baturina, Anisimov Talks End Abruptly
AUTHOR: By Bela Lyauv and Maria Rozhkova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Inteko president Yelena Baturina on Saturday discussed the sale of assets to Vasily Anisimov’s real estate holding Coalco, but the meeting was brief because the two billionaires could not agree on a price, sources close to both sides told Vedomosti.
Anisimov, a 20 percent shareholder in iron-ore producer Metalloinvest, was interested in purchasing assets from Inteko for his development business, but the meeting with Baturina was very brief and unsubstantial, a source close to the businessman said.
A source close to Baturina, who is also the wife of former Mayor Yury Luzhkov, said she was not satisfied with the price of about $400 million that Anisimov offered. The source close to Anisimov said their weekend meeting didn’t even include talks on a price.
Inteko’s press service said Friday that the company and its development projects were clearly worth more than the $400 million figure that had been previously mentioned in the media. “If it were true that Inteko was being sold at that price, then it would simply be a case of racketeering,” the company said.
The company is receiving a low valuation because of debt, said sources close to Baturina and the participants in the talks. Inteko has about $1.2 billion in debt, with 22 billion rubles ($715 million) owed to Sberbank, 12 billion rubles to Bank of Moscow and 1.5 billion rubles to VTB.
A spokesperson for Bank of Moscow was not immediately able to comment on the matter, while Sberbank could not be reached for comment. VTB, which has conducted due diligence on Inteko’s property, has valued its development assets — excluding the closed joint-stock company Patriot — at 350 million euros ($460 million), a source close to Baturina said.
Inteko has 43 developments in Moscow, but only a few of them are generating serious cash flows, including the Dominion and Champion Park residential complexes.
“VTB is not interested in a purchase and is not lending to potential buyers. But as an Inteko creditor, it is concerned about the situation in the company and following it closely,” a spokesperson for the lender said.
Companies linked to billionaire Suleiman Kerimov have also been named in the media as potential Inteko buyers, though his spokespeople have denied any interest.
A source close to the participants in the current round of talks said that in addition to Anisimov, other interested parties include British firm Rexam, which is one of the world’s largest consumer packaging companies. In Russia, Rexam owns a factory that produces aluminum cans in the Moscow region town of Naro-Fominsk.
Spokespeople for Rexam could not be reached for comment. An Inteko spokesperson said the British company had not made an offer.
Baturina isn’t ready emotionally to sell her company, a source close to the talks’ participants said.
Russia’s wealthiest woman is, however, unloading individual assets. She agreed to sell her stake in a Moskva-City development to Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works owner Viktor Rashnikov, and she has also sold 98.12 percent of Russky Zemelny Bank to six Cyprus-registered companies. As of Nov. 1, the lender had assets of 5.4 billion rubles, according to National Bank Trust.
TITLE: Revised Forecast Finds $16Bln
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Pismennaya, Filipp Sterkin and Denis Sholokhov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The ruble will weaken, oil prices will go up, personal incomes will grow slowly and GDP will freeze — but more than 500 billion rubles ($16 billion) will be added to state revenues, according to an updated forecast from the Economic Development Ministry.
Analysts said the state budget will be the winner, and citizens will lose out.
The Economic Development Ministry has adjusted the forecast of socio-economic development for 2011-13. The most significant tweaks are to GDP growth, real income, the price of Urals oil and exchange rates.
Officials say oil will average $77.50 per barrel for this year — $2.50 more than forecasted this fall. In 2011, it will rise to $81 per barrel, which is $6 higher than the previous forecast. The price per barrel will be higher than originally forecasted for 2012 and 2013.
The ruble’s real effective exchange rate will fall by 2 percent to 8.7 percent this year and 3.1 percent to 2.6 percent next year, the ministry estimates.
But the population will not benefit from high oil prices and a weaker ruble. Consumer demand is falling, and growth of income is also slowing, said Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrei Klepach. In 2010, real disposable income grew just 3.8 percent, down from a forecast of 4.4 percent. Real wages increased in 2010 by 4.2 percent, falling 0.7 percent short of predictions. Retail turnover has grown 4.5 percent instead of 5.2 percent.
The adjustment of key indicators could benefit the federal budget to the tune of 500 billion rubles in 2011 alone, said Natalya Akindinova, director of the Higher School of Economics’ Center for Development.
The Finance Ministry estimates that tweaks in expected oil prices and the ruble rate could increase budget revenues by 523.5 billion rubles.
But Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Vedomosti that revising the oil price could be premature. “The price of oil cannot be projected accurately, especially for more than a year in conditions of unsustainable growth, fueled by quantitative easing and the Fed’s big budget deficits,” he said.
Recalling that pre-crisis forecasts were based on conservative estimates, Kudrin said: “Now, it’s always forecast higher. This price has only occurred for two to three years in history, and that was in a period of overheating.”
But officials defended their estimates. “We give a conservative estimate of oil prices, but the likelihood is that the price will be higher,” Klepach told Interfax. “It’s more likely to be higher than that prices will fall.”
The Economic Development Ministry said its projections were intended for information only and it would not push for a revision of the budget for the next three years.
According to one Finance Ministry official, the forecast adjustments were ready as early as three weeks ago but couldn’t be introduced to the government before President Dmitry Medvedev signed the law on the federal budget on Monday.
“But calls to increase spending will snowball. If they are met, then the macro-parameters will be even worse because of the surge in inflation if nothing else,” the official said.
Yulia Tseplyayeva, an analyst with BNP Paribas, believes that spending increases of 300 billion to 350 billion rubles in 2011, an election year, are inevitable.
TITLE: Cowboys, Cattle Sent From Montana for ‘Instant Ranch’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BILLINGS, Montana — Cowboys, quarter horses and 1,434 purebred beef cattle — just add grasslands, and you’ve got a transplanted Montana ranch.
Those livestock basics — plus some training in animal care — is what Montana cattle producers have shipped to southwestern Russia, where the landscape is similar to the grassy high plains of eastern Montana. It’s part of a Russian subsidized deal to make that country’s cattle industry more self-sufficient.
“It’s like an instant ranch,” said Kate Loose, a representative of one of the Montana ranchers involved in the deal.
Most of the cattle departed by aircraft, with the last shipment touching down Thursday in Moscow before heading to the Voronezh region.
Everything else — 545 cattle, five U.S. quarter horses bred for their speed and a veterinarian from Choteau, Montana — went by boat to Stevenson Sputnik Ranch, a partnership between rancher Darrell Stevenson and Russian investors. That livestock also was due to land Thursday.
The state’s agriculture officials said the shipment represents the state’s largest overseas export of live cattle to date.
Work on the export deal began two years ago, during a trade mission to Russia that included Montana Agriculture Director Ron de Yong, Stevenson and Jack Holden, of Holden Herefords.
Russia has only about a half-million beef cattle but wants to increase that figure sharply in the next decade. Its government also has made cattle import deals with European countries, Canada and Australia, but de Yong said the how-to-ranch services provided by Stevenson could give Montana producers a future advantage.
“The potential is so huge, it’s hard to put numbers on it,” de Yong said.
Sara Stevenson, Darrell Stevenson’s wife, said the Russians have a different way of handling cattle than Montana ranchers: No fences, fewer cattle per cowboy — and much more direct government involvement.
“Part of the subsidy is that they employ as many Russians as possible,” she said. “And since there’s no fences, instead of one cowboy, they need two to three herdsman for every 200 to 300 cattle.”
A rotation of Montana ranchers, working cowboys and veterinarians will teach Russian herdsmen how to care for the livestock in what Sara Stevenson called “cowboy training.”
The landscape will look somewhat familiar to the Montana group, even when they’re half the world away, said de Yong.
“It’s just like coming to Montana 100 years ago when it was just all grass,” he said of the Voronezh area.
TITLE: Gazprom Neft May Opt For
St. Petersburg Business Center
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Gazprom Neft may rent out the new Quattro Corti business center managed by Megapolis Property Management.
Gazprom Neft subsidiaries have agreed to rent premises in the A-class business center, which opened in October at 3-5 Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa, two real estate consultants told Vedomosti. A representative of Megapolis confirmed that a preliminary rental agreement had been signed by Quattro Corti and Gazprom Neft. A final agreement has not yet been signed, and the plan is for the company to rent out the entire building, he added.
Gazprom Neft reregistered in St. Petersburg in 2005. Representatives of its subsidiary, Okhta Public and Business Center, announced the state oil company’s intention to move its headquarters to St. Petersburg in 2011. Okhta changed its mind about building a controversial skyscraper for its headquarters opposite Smolny Cathedral earlier this month.
TITLE: Parents Hope Kids Won’t Follow in Their Footsteps
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A majority of Russians say they would rather not see their children follow in their professional footsteps, according to a survey released Friday.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents would prefer that their children pursued a different occupation, up from 56 percent in 2008, pollster VTsIOM and Internet recruitment firm HeadHunter said in a joint statement.
Twenty-three percent of Russians said they would like to see their children follow their career path — also up three points from two years ago.
At least 42 percent of legal professionals, software engineers and those in the natural resources sector are more likely than not to encourage their progeny to join their profession, the poll found.
On the other hand, at least 60 percent of medical personnel, autoworkers and those involved in transport and logistics do not want to see their children emulate their careers.
People without higher educations (71 percent) and military personnel (64 percent) were also more likely to say their offspring should choose another profession.
The least enthusiasm was from administrative personnel, salespeople, and restaurant and hotel workers, with 20 percent or less thinking it was a good idea to pass on the tradition of their work.
The same poll asked people what influenced them to take their current job. The most common answer, given by 37 percent of respondents was, “It’s just how things worked out,” followed by 32 percent who said the choice was based on their desire and interests. Just 8 percent said they had chosen their current job for the salary.
The VTsIOM survey, conducted in late October, included 1,600 people in 46 regions and 19 professional sectors. It had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
HeadHunter polled 3,300 Internet users across the country, the statement said.
TITLE: Economic Glasnost
AUTHOR: By Chris Weafer
TEXT: Twenty years after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost brought about the end of the Soviet Union, the government of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is again embarked on a strategy of openness. Only this time they are banking on economic glasnost to attract the investment flows that Russia needs to both create greater diversity in the country’s oil-dependent economy and to rebuild its aging infrastructure.
They are also hoping that the open door will swing both ways as Russia’s industries need to create strategic links with established companies, especially in Europe. That is what is behind the government’s greater determination to improve how foreign investors, legislators and major corporations view Russia. It also explains why the country is so keen on attracting major sporting events such as the World Cup and a Grand Prix, and why, after 17 years of hesitancy, there is now greater urgency to be admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2011. Russia needs the investment capital and the expertise of Western companies if it is to break the stranglehold of oil. That is why the modern-day economic glasnost is real and will be sustained.
The $1.5 trillion earned from exporting oil and gas since 2000 certainly has taken Russia out of the chaotic 1990s and has created a strong domestic consumer-driven economy. Russians spend almost $50 billion each month on consumer goods, and that figure is again growing by more than 5 percent annually. In addition the country is on course to sell almost 2 million automobiles by the end of this year. But according to Finance Ministry projections, the federal budget now needs oil to average more than $90 per barrel to balance. Most of the budget’s spending commitment is for programs in social sectors — mainly health care and education — and to pay for pensions and state employee salaries. No government anywhere can reduce this type of social spending without risking an increase in instability.
But at the current price of oil, there is no money left to fund many economic expansion programs or rebuild its infrastructure. The total cost of infrastructure spending over the next five years is conservatively estimated to be $500 million. The proceeds of planned privatization sales will only contribute less than 10 percent of that. The rest will have to come from an expansion of public-private partnership programs, from a very significant increase in foreign direct investment flows and from the debt market. All three categories are at a very low level today with, for example, foreign direct investment expected to reach not much more than 1 percent of gross domestic product this year. At the same time, however, Russia has plenty of scope to tap debt markets with a current debt-to-GDP ratio of less than 11 percent.
European legislators and investors who are not involved in Russia’s natural resource industries are skeptical of Russia, which is hardly surprising after the numerous events that generated negative headlines through much of the past decade. These are exactly the groups that now need to be convinced that Russia is changing and is becoming more open and welcoming for strategic investment, especially in the sectors that now need to be developed. As the recent huge PepsiCo and Thomas Cook deals demonstrate, there are no barriers to entry, either legal or administrative, to deals in the consumer areas. That is not often the case in the country’s so-called strategic sectors, of which there are 42, or in infrastructure projects.
Equally, the government continues to be frustrated by what it sees as barriers to investment in Europe by Russian companies. Medvedev highlighted the issue in his speech at the recent Group of 20 summit. Creating strategic relationships is key to speedier improvements in the country’s industry — for example, the Renault-Nissan project with Russia’s largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ, is a good case in point. Russia wants to create more of these long-term strategic relationships via equity cross-holdings.
The government does have a tough battle to change the lingering negative perception of the country and to clear the legal and administrative obstacles that still make it difficult for direct investors. A softer foreign policy, WTO membership, hosting high-profile sports events and a better public relations campaign will surely help, but to achieve a significant, long-term change in how investors view Russia and its high risk factor there will also have to be very visible success in lowering corruption, cutting business red tape and improving the reliability of the legal system to give greater investor protection.
Thankfully, the government has started making this process — mainly because it has no other choice if it wants to survive. Since the oil advantage has been all but used up, Russia now needs investment flows. If the country fails to attract that capital and if it remains overly reliant on the price of oil and gas, that would lead to average annual growth in the range of only 2.5 percent to 3 percent. Russia needs to achieve average annual growth of at least 5 percent. That will only be achieved by attracting a large increase in investment spending.
Just as was the case 20 years ago, glasnost is not an option. It is a necessity.
Chris Weafer is chief strategist at UralSib Capital.
TITLE: New Visa Rules Good News for High-Earners
AUTHOR: By Tom Stansmore
TEXT: I have just received a three-year multiple entry Russian work visa — without leaving the country — which until recently was not possible. Changes in the law, however, may have just made life a bit easier for foreign nationals working in Russia.
Employing foreigners in Russia has always been a significant administrative burden to both the Russian company and the individual, and over the years, additional requirements have been introduced that added to the number of steps, making the process additionally more complicated. Very simply stated, the procedure typically goes as follows:
1) The employer applies to secure a position within the quota system. At this stage, the name of the individual is not required, only the nationality and position within the company, but this application must be submitted before May 1 in order to secure their space in the following year.
2) Having reserved a space within the quota system, in January of the following years (and after the holidays) the company needs to provide the district employment center with a detailed description of the position so as to allow qualified Russian nationals to apply (although the job description was often tailored so that the individual whom the company was intent on hiring was the only person who met the criteria. The Employment Center then advertises this position on the Internet for one month.
3) Having not found any Russian nationals who were a perfect match, the company then applies to the Migration Authorities for “permission to employ” a foreign national, who check with the Employment Committee that the process has been followed correctly.
4) Following a positive result and having obtained permission, the company may then apply for a work permit (and simultaneously an invitation for a work visa) for the individual. The work permit is granted for a period of one year, and the work visa is granted for the same period with the possibility to extend it up to two more years.
In summary, once the work permit and work visa are granted, it is just about time to start the process once again for the next year. This procedure was previously the same for both migrant workers and technical specialists.
Last July, amendments to the law “On the legal status of foreign nationals in the Russian Federation” came into force, creating a category of foreign nationals referred to as “highly qualified specialists.” In order to qualify, the single tangible criteria that need be met is that the foreigner must earn an annual salary of 2,000,000 rubles per year (about $67,000), although “additional credentials establishing professional experience and skill” are also stipulated in the law.
If you meet the criteria, not only are you outside the quota system (which saves significant time), but the issuance of the work permit is “fast tracked” (the migration authorities have to issue the work permit within 14 working days of receipt of the application) and is valid for up to three years. In addition, the individual automatically qualifies for the 13 percent income tax rate (rather than the 30 percent for non tax-residents) regardless of the period of time he or she is in Russia.
During the period of employment, the employer must file quarterly statements to the migration authorities confirming the salary amounts paid, and is responsible for providing medical insurance to the foreign individual and their family. In my opinion, however, these small additional requirements pale in comparison to the fact that this is the first holiday season as far as I remember that I do not need to visit the Russian consulate in New York, nor will I need to for the next three years.
It should be noted, however, that many of the local departments of the Federal Migration Service that issue the visas (there are more than a dozen in St. Petersburg and yours will depend on the district in which your legal entity is registered), have yet to receive official legislative updates and instructions. In all the instances in which we applied for work visas, the local officials at first agreed only to issue visas valid for one year (with the possibility to extend twice at one year internals). It was only after significant additional discussions that they agreed to issue the three-year visa.
Tom Stansmore is the general director of Emerging Markets Group, a St. Petersburg-based Outsourced Accounting and Consultations Firm.
TITLE: New Museum Takes Hands-On Approach to Science
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s first Interactive Museum of Entertaining Science will open in St. Petersburg on Dec. 25.
The LabyrintUm museum will give children and adults in the city the chance to create lightning or an artificial tornado, get inside a giant bubble or find their way through a mirrored labyrinth.
About 60 of the museum’s exhibits enable visitors to become acquainted with the laws of physics, chemistry and nature in practice and in a humorous way.
Yekaterina Pustoshnaya, one of the museum’s organizers, said they had the idea of setting up such a museum after traveling abroad with their families and visiting similar interactive museums.
“We really wanted to have a similar educational and entertainment museum in St. Petersburg where children could spend time playing and learning at the same time,” Pustoshnaya said.
Yekaterina Andriyevskaya, another of the museum’s organizers, said “for children it is often more important not to reach a certain aim, but rather to take part in a process.”
“It is important for them to do something or learn something by themselves,” Andriyevskaya said.
“For instance, in the case of our mirror labyrinth, the ability to find one’s way through it depends on the child’s savvy, on their independence,” she said.
The new museum is also a reincarnation of sorts of a similar museum called the House of Entertainment Science that was founded by the city’s eminent scientist Yakov Perelman in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, in 1935, Pustoshnaya said.
Perelman, who wrote a number of very popular scientific books such as “Entertaining Physics” and “Entertaining Math,” set up the museum and gathered up to 20,000 exhibits there. The museum was destroyed during World War II and Perelman and his wife starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad.
Oksana Orlova, LabyrintUm’s third organizer, said that this time round, the museum’s founders collected exhibits from a number of the city’s leading educational institutions and technical plants such as the Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Union or LOMO, the Mirror Plant and a number of others.
The museum will also offer excursions for school classes, and LaboratoriUm — a specially equipped classroom where children will be able to have physics lessons using the most interesting equipment.
Vladimir Kutuzov, head of St. Petersburg’s State Electric and Technical University, called the opening of the museum “a momentous event for St. Petersburg,” saying the city “has long been lacking such a museum.”
“It’s no secret that in the 1990s, engineering education suffered a crisis in the country. It became difficult to convince young people to enter technical institutions. Therefore it is important that the museum involves more schoolchildren in its activities to make them interested in technical sciences,” Kutuzov said.
“Then it will be easier for Russia to have claims to being an innovative country,” he added.
Sergei Stafeyev, dean of the Natural Sciences Faculty at St. Petersburg’s State University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics, praised the idea of teaching entire school classes in the museum’s laboratory.
“Children should have more useful and interesting occupations to distract them from unnecessary activities and to give them food for thought instead,” Stafeyev said.
The museum has seven thematic zones: Children’s World, Mirror World, World of Physics Experiments, Black Room, Water World, Workshops and LabaratoriUm. Each zone presents exhibits illustrating the nature of mechanics, optics, dynamics, electricity, magnetic and various natural phenomena.
Children’s World offers a variety of development games for little visitors, while Mirror World involves its guests in games with reflection, such as the mirror labyrinth. In the World of Physics Experiments, children can observe the work of different pendulums, a magnetic bridge, an air cannon, and switch on a large lamp simply by holding each other by the hand.
The Black Room draws participants into a world of lighting effects such as lasers or lightning. In that room, visitors can try to catch their shadow. In the Water World, children and their parents can make an artificial wave or tornado, and climb inside a huge bubble.
The project cost $324,000 in investment, and the payback period is expected to be three years, Pustoshnaya said.
The museum plans to collaborate with foreign museums and to invite children from orphanages once or twice a month for free.
Entrance to the museum costs $6.50 on weekdays and $8 on weekends.
Similar museums in Europe include Evrika in Helsinki, the Prince Phillip Science Museum in Valencia, Spain, the Tom Tit Museum in Stockholm, Nemo in Amsterdam and Science Town in Paris.
LabyrintUm is located at 9A Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo, on the sixth floor of the Tolstoy Skver Design House. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tel: 328 0001. Metro: Petrogradskaya.
www.labirint-um.ru
TITLE: In the Spotlight: Expat Lawyer Sues Over Sex Discrimination
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Deidre Clark, the Moscow expat lawyer-turned-raunchy novelist, is suing her former firm, Allen & Overy, for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. She is fighting for the case to be heard in a London court after the firm sacked her for gross misconduct, and wants ?3.5 million ($5.4 million) in compensation.
Clark, who writes under the name Deidre Dare, was sacked in 2009 after publishing on the Internet a novel about a Moscow expat lawyer’s sexual shenanigans that did not go far to conceal her identity, especially as she added photographs of herself in net underwear.
She is suing A&O in a case that is now being considered at a London employment tribunal. The sex discrimination charges relate to her boss allegedly taking against her after they had a brief fling.
Clark wants the case to be heard in Britain, although A&O argues that she is based in Russia — and Russia is not a country where many people win sex discrimination cases. Clark said she should be tried in Britain because she gets her facials there, in an argument that sounds straight out of “Legally Blonde.”
The case prompted large amounts of coverage in the British press. Tawdry tabloid The Star called her the “dirty lit lawyer.” There were also plenty of pickups in the Russian media, with Newsru.com and Komsomolskaya Pravda insisting that Clark, a New Yorker, is an “English woman.”
Journalist and novelist Anna Blundy, who used to cover Russia for The Times, wrote a lengthy opinion piece for The Daily Telegraph about the sex, vodka and hard partying that supposedly go with the expat lifestyle.
Somewhat questionably Blundy argued that “as an English woman in Moscow, it is so lovely to have someone open doors, hold out chairs and light your cigarette for a change; casual sex often seems the least one can provide in return.”
I find a thank-you suffices.
Clark is certainly not the first expat woman to have a colorful love life in Russia — I know one British woman who entangled herself with a lion tamer, and an American who dated a famous foul-mouthed rocker. But it’s true that her gung-ho attitude stands out, while many are more risk-averse, or maybe just more realistic.
Judging from her Expat novel, Clark hobnobs with wealthy expats from a fairly closed circle but prefers Russian men for their gallant and romantic gestures, even if her companion once threw a glass of whisky at a journalist who joked about his manhood — and missed. Some comments grate, such as her casual generalizations about Russians, despite admitting that she does not know the language.
Nevertheless, everything she writes is pretty tame compared with the Exile, the hard-hearted newspaper where men used to review prostitutes in articles loaded with self-loathing and disgust.
Clark stopped posting the novel online after her firm complained, but you can read a tantalizing synopsis of her next book, pithily titled “Slut.” It features a “promiscuous and dangerously unconventional” American investment banker working in Sydney. You can download the whole thing for $3.
She also wrote a sex column in the Moscow News, canceled ostensibly because the content was too explicit for school-age readers — although I bet their English was coming on in leaps and bounds. The column caused controversy when in an ill-judged comment she talked about liking rough sex and appeared to argue that rape could be acceptable.
She still writes an advice column in Passport magazine. She gives a simple solution to an Australian man who complains of a lack of girlfriends. Why not try sleeping with me, she offers, since Australians are all well-endowed.
TITLE: Anger Rises as Travel Havoc Snarls Britain
AUTHOR: By Gregory Katz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Frustrated travelers in Europe expressed fury Monday at transportation officials’ inability to clear snow and ice from planes, runways and high-speed train tracks, failings that have caused holiday travel chaos and fears that many will not get home in time for Christmas.
The continent’s worst bottleneck was London’s Heathrow Airport, where thousands of travelers were stranded overnight as flight cancellations increased even as other major European airports resumed normal operations after several days of four weather delays.
London Mayor Boris Johnson summed up the exasperation as Britain suffered another day of travel setbacks.
“It can’t be beyond the wit of man surely to find the shovels, the diggers, the snow-plows or whatever it takes to clear the snow out from under the planes, to get the planes moving and to have more than one runway going,” he said as British Airways canceled its Monday short-haul schedule from Heathrow.
Air traffic control agency Eurocontrol said Monday on its web site that the situation at Heathrow had become “chaotic.”
Embarrassed British officials promised an inquiry into the poor performance of the transport network, with Transport Secretary Philip Hammond planning to address Parliament about the failures, which included massive delays on the Eurostar rail service linking England to France and Belgium.
At Heathrow’s sprawling Terminal 5, tired and disgruntled passengers faced lengthy waits without much information.
American Suzie Devoe, 20, was one of many who had spent two nights sleeping on the airport floor in a bid to get home for the holidays. She was desperately trying to rearrange a flight so she could get back to Washington to spend Christmas with her family. “The whole situation has been a complete nightmare,” said the Bristol University student. “I just want to get home, I want to be with my family. But I’m being held in a horrible limbo.”
Hundreds of passengers camped overnight in Heathrow terminal buildings after services were canceled or delayed.
British Airways said all short-haul flights from Heathrow would be canceled Monday.
Eurostar reported that its trains linking England to France and Belgium were also severely delayed or canceled and urged travelers to cancel or postpone their trips if possible. Lines of delayed passengers snaked outside the St. Pancras rail station in central London.
The Eurostar web site advised passengers holding reservations for later trains on Monday that the rail service would not be able to accommodate them because of the backlog.
The strain was also felt at Brussels Airport, which is facing a shortage of deicing liquid and can’t guarantee departures for planes that need deicing until at least midnight Tuesday, the airport said Monday in its Twitter feed.
The airport said that the shortage is due to transportation problems in France, adding that “the weather forecast is not so positive.”
In Germany, flight operations were slowed even though Frankfurt airport, Germany’s biggest, was clear of snow and ice. Officials canceled about 300 flights there Monday, out of a planned total of 1,340, because of problems elsewhere in Europe, airport operator Fraport said.
French civil aviation authorities, meanwhile, asked airlines to reduce their flights at the two main Paris airports by 30 percent.
Tempers were on the rise at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport.
Donna Gordon, a stranded Irish traveler, took her complaint directly to French Transport Minister Thierry Mariani who made a trip to the airport to check on passengers.
“We’ve been here since Saturday at 6 a.m. and our flight keeps saying on time, on time, on time ....,” she complained. “I’m standing in the same clothes I’ve been wearing for three days.”
More snow is forecast in some areas of Britain for Monday afternoon, adding to the problems, with British Airways warning of more flight cancellations, particularly in the greater London area, where all airports have been affected.
Winter storms forced British government ministers and bank executives to postpone their meeting Monday on the politically touchy issue of bank bonuses. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills did not announce a new date but said it hoped the meeting could be rescheduled later this week.
TITLE: N. Korea Says Won’t Hit Back Over Drills
AUTHOR: By Hyung-Jin Kim and Ahn Young-Joon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea — South Korea’s military staged live-fire drills from an island just miles (kilometers) from rival North Korea’s shores Monday, but Pyongyang said it would not strike back despite earlier threats to retaliate for the maneuvers.
Seoul launched fighter jets, evacuated hundreds of people away from its tense land border with the North and sent residents of front-line islands into underground bunkers in case of attack. But none came, and while the North condemned the drills, it said it would hold its own fire.
The 90-minute exercise came nearly a month after the North responded to earlier maneuvers by shelling Yeonpyeong Island, killing two marines and two construction workers in its first attack targeting civilian areas since the 1950-53 Korean War. That clash sent tensions soaring between the two countries — which are still technically at war.
In an emergency meeting Sunday, UN diplomats meeting in New York failed to find any solution to the crisis, but there was some sign of diplomacy Monday, as a high-profile American governor announced what he said were two nuclear concessions from the North.
North Korea called Monday’s drills a “reckless military provocation” but said after they ended that it was holding its fire because Seoul had changed its firing zones.
The official Korean Central News Agency carried a military statement that suggested that the North viewed Monday’s drills differently from the ones that provoked it last month because South Korean shells landed farther south of the North’s shores.
The North claims the waters around Yeonpyeong as its territory, and during last month’s artillery exchange, the North accused the South of firing artillery into its waters; the South said it fired shells southward, not toward the North.
The North on Monday, however, kept its rhetoric heated, saying it will use its powerful military to blow up South Korean and U.S. bases.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said its artillery was fired in the same direction as during last month’s maneuvers: toward waters southwest of the island, not toward the North.
“North Korea appeared to have issued this statement because it was afraid” of a full-blown war with South Korea, a Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said on condition of anonymity.
TITLE: Terror Suspects Arrested in U.K.
AUTHOR: By Paisley Dodds
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — British police on Monday arrested a dozen men suspected of plotting a large-scale terror attack — the biggest anti-terrorist sweep since April 2009, when 12 men were detained over an alleged al-Qaida bomb plot in the northern city of Manchester.
Police who swooped in on the men’s houses early in the morning were unarmed, suggesting any planned attack was not imminent.
The men were arrested in London, the Welsh city of Cardiff and the English cities of Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
The plot was directed at targets inside the United Kingdom but counterterrorism officials declined to give more details.
“The operation is in its early stages so we are unable to go into detail at this time,” said John Yates, Britain’s senior counterterrorism police officer.
Officers said the men range in age from 17 to 28. Police have up to 28 days to question them before they must be charged or released.
A British security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work, said the arrests were not thought to be part of any planned holiday season attack. Iraqi officials had claimed last week that captured insurgents believed a recent suicide bombing in Stockholm was part of a series of planned attacks during the Christmas season.
Those claims were rejected by both British and German officials, who insisted there are no specific threats to their countries over the festive period.
In October, the U.S. State Department advised American citizens living or traveling in Europe to be wary amid reports that terrorists were planning attacks on a European city.
Some of the details of a Mumbai-style shooting spree plot directed at cities in Britain, France or Germany came from Ahmed Siddiqui, a German citizen of Afghan descent who was captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July. More than 170 people were killed during an attack in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008.
Another government official on Monday downplayed reports that the latest raids in Britain were part of larger terror concerns across Europe.
“Although serious, we believe this raid may have been a one-off and not necessarily related to larger European terror plot concerns,” said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Europe has been the target of numerous terror plots by Islamist militants. The deadliest was the 2004 Madrid train bombings, where 191 people were killed.
TITLE: Chinese Envoy Arrives in Taiwan
To Sign Deal as Relations Improve
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAIPEI, Taiwan — A senior Chinese envoy arrived in Taiwan on Monday to sign an agreement on sharing medical information and cooperating in the development of new drugs, amid rapidly improving ties between the once bitter foes.
Chen Yunlin, head of the quasi-governmental Chinese organization responsible for implementing relations with Taiwan, is expected to remain on the island for about 48 hours.
His visit constitutes one of two high-level meetings held between the sides every year. They were begun as part of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s historic effort to strengthen links with Beijing and reduce cross-strait tensions, which have now eased to their lowest level since the island split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949.
Somewhat against the grain, a planned investment protection agreement will not be signed during this round of negotiations — the sixth since Ma became president in May 2008 — because China rejects a Taiwanese demand that international arbitrators adjudicate investment-related disputes.
Taiwanese officials have said the new medical agreement will facilitate cross-strait exchanges of information on epidemics in each other’s territories and cooperation in the development of vaccines to counter any outbreak.
The deal also will allow the two sides to work together on the clinical trial of new drugs, a step that Taiwanese officials say will accelerate the entry of Taiwanese products into the lucrative mainland market.
Since Ma took office 2 1/2 years ago, he has shepherded the signing of more than a dozen China-related commercial agreements, including a wide-ranging tariff reduction deal signed in June that his government says will help revitalize the sluggish Taiwanese economy.
A small number of anti-China activists are planning protests this time, but Taiwan’s main opposition Democratic Progressive Party is not endorsing their action — in contrast to the strong backing it gave for mass rallies to protest Chen’s arrival two years ago — a reflection of just how routine these meetings have become.
However, the DPP continues to insist that Ma’s push to link Taiwan’s high-tech economy ever closer to mainland markets is bad for the island’s future, because it undermines the competitiveness of its once strong light industrial sector, and opens the door to increasing Chinese influence. The party says that influence will erode the island’s democratic character and threaten its de facto independence.
TITLE: A Fairytale Christmas Holiday in the Finnish Capital
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The attraction of neighboring Helsinki — in some ways so Russian, in other ways a world away — shows no sign of fading, as 2010 looks set to see record levels of tourists. According to data from Travel.ru, the number of Russians visiting the Finnish capital increased by 8 percent this year.
By the end of this year, the consulate services in Russia will together have issued about one million Schengen visas, most of them in St. Petersburg, predicts Matti Anttonen, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Finland to the Russian Federation.
Finland’s popularity with Petersburgers was also boosted by the launch this year of the Princess Maria ferry and high-speed train Allegro between the two cities. Visiting Helsinki for a weekend is becoming more and more convenient and fast, and no longer necessarily involves queuing for hours at the border. The Finnish authorities are predicting a record number of Russian travelers going to Helsinki for the New Year holiday period.
The Finnish capital has been in a festive mood since the end of November, with streets decorated with Christmas lights, and shop windows displaying fairytale scenes in which toy characters move to Christmas music.
Holiday shoppers can also look for unique gifts on Helsinki’s Christmas markets, which sell designer handicrafts as well as traditional Yuletide snacks such as rice porridge, gingersnap and Gl?gg, or mulled wine. The biggest annual Christmas market is held at Vanha Ylioppilastalo — the Old Student House — and another, boasting more than 140 red wooden huts, stretches along Esplanade Park. Sadly for Russian tourists heading north after Dec. 25, all the markets close before Christmas.
There is still plenty of shopping to be done after Christmas, however, and indeed this is the most popular shopping period for Russian tourists, as the January sales kick off at most shops, from the biggest department stores to the tiniest boutiques.
After indulging in some retail therapy, visitors have plenty of other options from which to choose. One of the most popular wintertime activities in Helsinki is ice-skating in the center of the city, which has been an annual event since 2006. The skating-rink takes over the Railway Station Square in late November and stays open until March. Skates can be hired on site, and skating lessons are also available. The Helsinki Ice Park also hosts concerts and Friday night parties.
Many Petersburgers choose to greet the New Year itself in Helsinki. For revelers who wish to see in the New Year outdoors, the best place is Senate Square. The traditional speeches and fireworks have been accompanied in recent years by free concerts and spectacular light installations during the Season of Light. A light show is held regularly on the square until Jan. 9.
For indoors celebrations, Russian tourists can take advantage of Finland’s gambling legislation to enjoy a guilty pleasure that was outlawed in all but four remote regions of Russia at the beginning of last year. For a night around the roulette wheels and poker tables, the Grand Casino Helsinki is the place to be. Located in the center of the city opposite the Central Railway Station, the building of the Grand Casino was designed by an American casino architect who wanted to save the appearance of the historical building while simultaneously creating something modern. The dining and entertainment restaurant Fennia Salon represents a traditional, aristocratic atmosphere, in contrast with the contemporary buzz of the gambling area. Non-gamblers can amuse themselves by watching a show suitable for international audiences and enjoying a three- or four-course dinner. The show and dinner are seamlessly combined and are served in turns throughout the evening.
The Grand Casino plays host to international poker tournaments that take place twice a year. The Freezeout Poker Tournament is looming and will run from Jan. 8 through Jan 16, while the Midnight Sun tournament will be held in June.
Where to eat
In addition to fresh seasonal ingredients such as vegetables, mushrooms, berries and fish, Finnish food is known for its simplicity and purity. Finland has culinary treats for each season of the year. Ham, root vegetable casseroles, ginger biscuits, Christmas pies and mulled wine are served in December, and burbot and roe with blini in January. Some restaurants participate in the Helsinki Menu project, such as G. W. Sundmans, situated opposite the Old Market Hall. Resembling an upscale 19th-century house, the building was constructed by Carl Ludvig Engel, the architect of the plans for the historic center of the city. Gustaf Wilhelm Sundman was one of the most influential people in Helsinki and played a major part in developing the Helsinki harbor. The first restaurant opened here in the late 1980s. Diners can sample Sundman’s favorite dishes, such as veal and sweetmeat terrine, and fried perch. The wine cellar boasts a collection unique to Finland, consisting of about 200 varieties of wine.
Where to stay
For accommodation located near the main cultural and shopping attractions, the Hotel Haven, part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World chain, is a good choice situated fairly near the Harbor and Market Square. The Presidential Palace, Cathedral and Railway Station are in close proximity of the hotel, which has 77 rooms, each of which has a spa-style bathroom. The distinguishing feature of the hotel’s luxury interiors, which boast open fireplaces perfect for warming up in the winter months, are the depictions of dogs to be found throughout the hotel, from the sofa cushions to the door stops. According to hotel legend, this is due to the love of the hotel owner’s wife for members of the canine species.