SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1668 (30), Wednesday, August 3, 2011
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TITLE: Opposition Slams Governor for ‘Secret’ Vote
AUTHOR: Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The opposition has slammed Governor Valentina Matviyenko for running in “secret” elections which City Hall has concealed from the public for more than a month. 
City Hall said on Sunday that Matviyenko would run in the elections for municipal deputies in the Krasnenkaya Rechka and Petrovsky districts, making the announcement four days after the registration of the candidates had ended. The elections are due on August 21.
Previously, local opposition leaders and activists said they would run at the same elections as Matviyenko and registered in the municipal district of Lomonosov, where four United Russia and Just Russia deputies had resigned simultaneously in what was seen as an attempt to clear the way for Matviyenko’s election. 
A United Russia deputy in the municipal district of Posyolok Alexandrovskaya also resigned, which led to speculation that Matviyenko might also run there.
But, surprisingly, it turned out on Sunday that she would run in two different municipal districts instead, with registration already closed, thus preventing key opponents from standing against her.
In St. Petersburg, a municipal district or okrug is a lower-tier administrative division.
President Dmitry Medvedev offered Matviyenko the job of Chairman of the Federation Council, which became vacant when the former chairman and A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov was dismissed by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia in June. The new position forces Matviyenko to give up her current position as St. Petersburg Governor.
Despite Medvedev describing her as an “absolutely successful governor,” the media and opposition have claimed that the decision resulted from Matviyenko having fallen out of favor with the Kremlin as a result of her unpopularity among St. Petersburg residents, in turn caused by mismanagement and an unprecedented rise in corruption. 
The Kremlin was said to have had doubts about her ability to secure The United Russia’s victory at the State Duma election, due in December.
Matviyenko, however, needs to be an elected deputy to occupy the seat of Chairman of the Federation Council. 
The Other Russia political party’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev, who submitted an application for candidacy in Lomonosov and was in the process of collecting signatures, described the scheme as a “cover-up operation.”
“I can imagine her PR people laughing about how they deceived everybody, but in reality they’ve done a disservice to her,” Dmitriyev said.
“It’s obviously dishonest, it’s illegal, it’s simply ugly. It shows that Matviyenko is afraid of competition and of St. Petersburg residents.
“In reality, it makes it easier for the opposition. We will not compete with one another, but unite our efforts to block Matviyenko from the municipal district and, further, from the Federation Council.”
Yabloko Democratic Party said it does not recognize the elections, which were not properly announced and thus illegal in a statement on Monday, which described them as a “shameful and undignified farce.” 
It said that Matviyenko has a “panicked fear” of any democratic procedures and the scheme’s goal was to save her from any political competition at the election.
“It’s an utter shame and disgrace,” said Yabloko’s local chair Maxim Reznik by phone on Monday.
“And this is a person who once was the governor! She simply humiliates herself.”
A Just Russia party’s local chair Oksana Dmitriyeva said in a statement Monday that none of the municipal districts except Alexandrovskaya and Lomonosov had confirmed it would be holding elections over the next few months when replying to the party’s official letter sent to every municipal district.
She said that the St. Petersburg Election Commission was also not informed about the upcoming elections, referring to a written reply from its head Alexander Gnyotov.
Dmitriyeva said her party would sue Matviyenko over the upcoming elections, so that their results would be dismissed as illegitimate.
“This is surrender and shameful defeat from the very start,” she said.


TITLE: Dozens of Arrests Made at Strategy 31 Meeting
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Around 70 were detained as the police shut down a peaceful rally in defense of the right of assembly on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, on Sunday, the organizers said. The police admitted to “around 50” arrests during the demo which drew from 500 to 700 people.
The detained were charged with violation of the regulations on holding public events and failure to obey police officers’ orders. 
Five people were released later on the same day after being brought to a court that agreed to move their cases’ hearing to their local courts, but most were left at four police precincts overnight. Two women were hospitalized after they fell ill in police precincts, according to the organizers.
Court hearings continued on Monday.
Apart from dispersing the rally, the authorities made preventive arrests, a practice they have not used since the Strategy 31 campaign was launched in St. Petersburg in January 2010. 
Olga Kurnosova, the local chair of the United Civil Front and one of the rally’s organizers, said she was detained by plainclothes men, who refused to introduce themselves, near her home as she was heading to the demo. She said she was held in the car for around three hours.
“They were trying to brainwash me telling me that it’s time to stop demonstrating on the 31st day of the month, that I had better think about my children and nonsense like that,” Kurnosova said by phone Monday.
Three activists of the Other Russia political party were detained before they reached the site near Gostiny Dvor, where the event was held.
The police have frequently shown unnecessary cruelty. The St. Petersburg Times witnessed two women being dragged by their wrists, with their backs dragging across the ground. One of them, Alexandra Kachko, had her wrist broken by an unidentified policeman during the May 31 demo.
A passing Navy veteran, celebrating Navy Day which also fell on July 31, was evidently shocked by how Kachko was treated and tried to speak out on her behalf to a police officer. He was also seized and put in the bus, where the detained were held.
The police officers also were seen twisting arms and feet of the detained as they made arrests and pushing people around. Although they tended to arrest people who identified themselves as demonstrators by sitting on the ground or shouting slogans such as “Russia Will Be Free,” a number of the arrested were passers-by and onlookers. 
The police claimed that one demonstrator kicked an officer in the jaw, but did not give the name. They said a criminal case would be filed against the alleged offender.
Author Nina Katerli, who came to the demo for the first time with a homemade poster to support a bill introduced by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin into Congress in May to freeze assets and block visas of individuals who commit gross human-rights violations against whistleblowers and activists in the Russian Federation, only just managed to escape arrest.
Katerli, 77, who walks with a stick because of a broken leg, said she wanted to make a speech to urge U.S. sanctions against Russian officials connected to the persecution of imprisoned businessmen Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.
“But I failed, because, first, I had no microphone or anything, and, secondly, as soon as I came I was seized and dragged towards the police bus,” she said by phone Monday.
Katerli said she was won back by people around who were indignant at the sight of her being dragged and that they prevented the police from detaining her until a senior officer arrived and ordered that she be left.
She described the arrests of the activists as “illegal” and a “violation of the constitution.” “Before Putin, you didn’t need any sanctions to hold a demo, it’s outrageous that Putin introduced them,” Katerli said.
Kurnosova said that the participation of Katerli was important. “It’s crucial that people have started to come with their own agendas,” she said.
“Even if they arrest the leaders, people will be coming to the demo on their own; the authorities have to understand that this tactic doesn’t work. The fact that people come to the rally is perhaps the campaign’s main result in the long run.”
The Other Russia local chair Andrei Dmitriyev said that the St. Petersburg authorities showed more intolerance to the demonstrators than the Moscow authorities.
“If in Moscow, they let people sit for two hours and only began arresting people when there was an attempted march, in St. Petersburg they shut down the demo as soon as people sat down on the ground,” he said.


TITLE: Collision On River In Moscow Kills 9
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An overloaded motorboat, apparently carrying a group of partyers, rammed into a moored barge near Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium early Sunday, sinking on the spot and killing nine people.
The Moscow River accident is the second of its kind in less than a month after the Bulgaria riverboat sank in the Volga River, killing 122.
An investigation was ongoing Sunday, but investigators said they were inclined to blame the motorboat’s owner, with a reputation for giving rides to celebrities and ignoring navigation rules. He died in the accident.
The boat, identified in some news reports as the Swallow, collided with the Oka-5 barge at around 1 a.m. It was carrying 16 people despite a maximum capacity of 12, Interfax said, citing an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman.
Other boats in the vicinity and sailors from the barge managed to pull six people out of the water, including at least two Turkish nationals, the report said. One more survivor swam to the shore by himself.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told reporters that one survivor said he works at the U.S. Embassy. The survivor’s citizenship was unknown.
Traffic was blocked on the Moscow River until Sunday afternoon, when rescuers managed to raise the motorboat — lying 3 meters directly under the barge — to the surface and plant it on dry land. Pictures of the boat showed that it was heavily damaged, with twisted metal rails along its decks and a mass of crumbled wooden beams where the main cabin once stood.
The boat was registered in the far eastern region of Chukotka but authorized for operation on the Moscow River, Interfax said.
Markin said the boat’s owner, Gennady Zinger, who captained the vessel, was likely to blamed for the accident. He did not elaborate on what exactly prompted the collision.
Zinger, 50, had been fined three times this year for operating an overloaded boat, Markin added.
Zinger used the vessel for parties, not commercial rides, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, citing his business partner, who was only identified by first name, Boris.
Zinger’s circle of friends included veteran rocker Andrei Makarevich and film star Ivan Okhlobystin, who often took river rides with him, although not this Sunday, the report said. Neither has commented publicly on the accident.

TITLE: Dark Clouds Over U.S. Reset of Russia Relations
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dark storm clouds are collecting over the much-heralded “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, with both sides working to blacklist the other’s officials, new tensions over U.S. missile defense plans and a leaked CIA paper supposedly blaming Russia for a bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy in Georgia.
But analysts said it was too early to write off the reset, and that much of this week’s disquiet had more to do with both countries’ domestic politics than a sharp change in relations.
“The reset will continue, but with irritations, even if the Republicans return to power,” said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
This week’s cacophony started Tuesday when U.S. media reported that the U.S. State Department had put a number of Russian officials on a visa blacklist who are thought to be linked to the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. 
The reports were later confirmed, prompting the Foreign Ministry to announce late Wednesday that Moscow would retaliate to such “hostile steps.”
A Kremlin spokeswoman said by telephone Thursday that President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Foreign Ministry to prepare measures against U.S. citizens to counter a travel ban against the Russian officials.
The spokeswoman declined further comment but confirmed a statement made by Medvedev’s spokeswoman Natalya Timakova to Kommersant, which reported the president’s orders Thursday.
Timakova denounced the U.S. blacklist as a step that went beyond the worst days of the Cold War. “We are bewildered by the State Department’s position,” she said. “No such measures were taken even in the deepest Cold War years.”
 Medvedev’s response might be all the more frustrating for U.S. President Barack Obama because the State Department’s authorization of the blacklist was actually a desperate attempt to save the reset with Moscow, which he considers a hallmark of his presidency. His administration had hoped that the blacklist would convince U.S. senators to abandon a bill that foresees much more sweeping sanctions like asset freezes against a broader number of people.
Obama’s administration makes it clear in its comments to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, better known as the Cardin bill after its main sponsor, Democrat Senator Benjamin Cardin, that it wants the legislation abandoned because it, among other things, could cause the Kremlin to make good on a threat to cancel cooperation on issues like Iran and Afghanistan.
But the furious response from the Kremlin, the Foreign Ministry and numerous State Duma deputies seems to point another way. 
 “Moscow has not appreciated Washington’s generosity,” Kommersant wrote Thursday.
 Duma deputies already are preparing a bill that would introduce similar sanctions on foreigners deemed to have violated the rights of Russian citizens.
Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of Medvedev’s human rights council, criticized the conflict Thursday, saying it was foolish to deny entry in a tit-for-tat manner.
Fedotov said Russian officials should worry less about the U.S. blacklist than about a list that his council is compiling as part of an independent investigation ordered by Medvedev into Magnitsky’s death. “Our list is much more fearsome. It does not close the road to America but opens the road to the Butyrskaya prison,” he told reporters in comments carried by Interfax.
In a new uncomfortable development, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s representative to NATO, complained Thursday that influential U.S. lawmakers are opposed to cooperating with Moscow on NATO’s planned missile shield in Europe.
 “They’re practically not hiding the fact that the system will be directed against Russia, not against some mythical state in the Middle East,” Rogozin said after returning to Brussels from talks in Washington, Interfax reported.
 Rogozin said an opportunity remained for joint cooperation, touted by NATO officials as a key element in the Western alliance’s future strategy, but it all depends on the political will in Washington.
 He also warned that if Obama is not re-elected next year and “Russophobes” come to power, this might “destroy the global political stability that has been built with so much effort over the last decade.”
 Rogozin was bristling after meetings with Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk, both staunchly conservative Republicans.
 Kyl, the Senate’s Republican whip, also made Russia-related headlines this week when he was called for a congressional investigation into reports that Russian military intelligence officers were behind a bomb blast next to the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi last September.
Kyl’s comments appeared in a Washington Times report Wednesday that says a highly classified report drafted by the CIA but with input from other U.S. agencies has concluded that the General Staff’s intelligence directorate, or GRU, is to blame for the explosion.
No one was hurt in the minor blast outside an embassy wall, but Georgian police later arrested six people whom they accused of being Russian agents responsible for staging a series of explosions, including the one outside the U.S. mission.
Last month, a Tbilisi court found 15 people guilty of terrorism and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms. The court sentenced the suspected ringleader, Russian Army Major Yevgeny Borisov, to 30 years in prison in absentia.
The Georgian Interior Ministry accuses Borisov of working as a GRU officer in Abkhazia and has put him on an Interpol wanted list.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has denied the allegations. It also says Borisov has not been in Abkhazia since August 2010 and could not have been involved in the explosions, which occurred last fall.
The case has attracted little international attention, partly because Tbilisi, which has poor relations with Moscow, has accused the GRU of spying in a number of cases in recent months.
As evidence of the CIA report, The Washington Times report quotes two unidentified U.S. officials whom it says have read it.
Andrei Soldatov, who tracks the Russian intelligence community with the Agentura.ru think tank, said the GRU has in the past acted “autonomously” in Georgia but he has not seen enough evidence to support its involvement in the blasts.


TITLE: Lost Pants Lose Lebedev Parole
AUTHOR: COMBINED REPORTS
TEXT: MOSCOW — An Arkhangelsk regional court late Wednesday rejected a parole plea by former Yukos co-owner Platon Lebedev, saying he was not eligible because of two breaches of prison rules, including the loss of a pair of trousers.
His lawyers promised to appeal, Interfax reported.
Last month, Lebedev was sent to a prison colony outside the town of Velsk in the Arkhangelsk region to continue serving a 13-year prison sentence. He is eligible for parole now that he has served half of that sentence.
However, hopes for Lebedev’s release were dealt a heavy blow Tuesday when prison officials spoke out against it in an official appraisal form, mentioning the missing pants and an oral reprimand for unspecified misbehavior.
Lebedev blamed prison authorities for losing his uniform. His lawyer Yevgeny Rivkin scoffed at the authorities’ reasoning. “Do you truly believe that all the personal references read out today, witnesses’ evidence, awards and diplomas can outweigh the fact that he gave a cigarette or food to a cellmate, or lost a pair of pants?” Rivkin told prison representative Anatoly Korsunsky in court.
In his final statement to Judge Nikolai Raspopov, Lebedev said it is “unacceptable” there are “political prisoners” in 21st-century Russia. “You have a historic chance to change that.”
After a seven-hour session on Wednesday in a hot, non-air conditioned courtroom, journalists were tweeting complaints about the “banya,” and live television footage showed audience members sweating and a court guard with half his blue shirt drenched in perspiration. Raspopov responded by adjourning the session until Wednesday night.
Lebedev has been in jail since 2003. He and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky were arrested on charges of tax evasion widely seen as politically motivated and were convicted of those charges in 2005.
Lebedev and Khodorkovsky were tried together again last year and convicted of stealing oil from Yukos and embezzling the proceeds.
Lebedev was arrested several months before Khodorkovsky, and some observers speculated that he had been held hostage to prevent Khodorkovsky from fleeing the country. Lebedev has four children and three grandchildren.
Yelena Liptser, another Lebedev lawyer, choked back tears as she read a letter to the judge at the parole hearing that was written by the prisoner’s 9-year-old daughter.
“I cry almost every day. I cannot sleep at night thinking about my father,” Maria Lebedeva wrote in the letter.
Lebedev’s wife had asked the judge for permission to read the letter in court, and some news reports said she had actually delivered it.
Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, and film star Natalya Fateyeva also spoke in defense of the Yukos officials in the courtroom. 
(AP, SPT)

TITLE: Ex-TV Contestant May Challenge Matviyenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former contestant of the kitschy television reality show “Dom-2” may compete against St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko in an early election meant to pave the way for Matviyenko to become the speaker of the Federation Council, news reports said Thursday.
Maria Belousova has filed her application with the election committee of the Leningrad region town of Alexandrovskaya, which has a population of 1,100, a source in the town’s administration told Interfax. But the committee denied receiving papers from Belousova, Rosbalt.ru said. 
Officials did not comment on photos of a Belousova campaign poster published by Saint-petersburg.ru that calls on voters to “practice parachuting, go to the movies with her, and stop smoking.”
President Dmitry Medvedev steered Matviyenko toward the Federation Council vacancy after United Russia ousted former Speaker Sergei Mironov, who leads the Just Russia party.
Matviyenko needs to be elected as a legislator to take up the senator’s seat. She is expected to run in elections in Alexandrovskaya or the Leningrad region town of Lomonosov, which both have called for early elections on Sept. 4. Matviyenko’s silence on where she will run appears to be an attempt to prevent the opposition from fielding a strong rival, Vedomosti reported.
Belousova, 27, a graduate of a legal college in Vladivostok, spent 147 days in 2009 on TNT television’s “Dom-2,” where contestants work at building a house while engaging in romance along the way. The program, on air since 2004, has made the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-running reality show.


TITLE: Consumer Companies Teach Western Ways to Russians
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Soviet women washed dishes with soda and salt for decades, while men had never heard of deodorant and teens scrubbed their pimples with soap and water. 
Not anymore.
Western consumer goods companies have flooded what remains in many aspects a virgin market, spending tens of millions of dollars to research consumer habits and conduct increasingly elaborate marketing campaigns aimed at selling products that many Russians never imagined needing.
The companies like Reckitt Benckiser, a British consumer goods company that recently rolled out an advertising campaign for Calgonit dishwasher tablets, view their efforts with an educational slant.
“We are launching a comprehensive brand campaign to raise awareness for Reckitt Benckiser in Russia,” said Andraea Dawson-Shepherd, Reckitt Benckiser’s senior vice president of corporate communications.
Polish consumers, for example, spend six times more on dishwashing tablets, because dishwasher penetration in Russia is very low, according to company research.
Reckitt Benckiser spends about 12 percent of its 300 million euro ($440 million) revenue from Russia and other former Soviet countries on consumer research, marketing and advertising, said Bruno de Labarre, the company’s general manager for the former Soviet Union.
In one of its television commercials, a little girl clutches a “Sleeping Beauty” book as she watches her mother struggle with a sink full of dishes. “She won’t read her a bedtime story, she is not a woman, she is a dishwasher,” booms an ominous voice, embellished by scary music.
The commercial moves on to women carrying posters proclaiming their desire to be free from washing dishes, “We want to return to our families,” the posters read. A package of Calgonit tablets flashes in the end, paired with an offer for a discount to buy a dishwashing machine.
In trying to sell these products, the company has to change consumers’ perceptions. In the case of Calgonit, it is changing women’s attitude toward washing dishes, which has always been considered a natural part of home life, said Tatyana Komissarova, dean of the Higher School of Economics’ School of Business and Marketing.
She said Western companies have succeeded in some areas, such as replacing soda and salt with dishwashing detergent. 
“If someone doesn’t have it, it’s like, are you cheap?” she said.
Washing the floor with just water, as Soviet women did, is also now “nonsense,” Komissarova said. 
The same goes for Clearasil, the anti-acne treatment made by Reckitt Benckiser. Most teenagers now use Clearasil to treat acne, instead of plain soap just a little over a decade ago.
A marketing campaign for another recently launched Reckitt Benckiser brand, Airwick air freshener, aims to convince Russians to perfume their whole home, not just the bathroom. More than 90 percent of Russians who use air freshener use it strictly in the bathroom, the company’s research found.
The best marketing campaign, however, doesn’t guarantee a product’s success. After the Calgonit TV commercial, Reckitt Benckiser rebranded the dishwashing tablets as Finish.
Reckitt Benckiser hopes for 15 percent annual growth in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States and to double sales by 2016.
Unilever, the British-Dutch consumer goods giant, found that the amount of deodorant the average Russian uses per year is less than one unit, which is considerably less than in Western Europe, said Yegor Yevteyev, senior brand manager for Rexona, a deodorant brand owned by Unilever.
This is a huge opportunity for the company, which has blanketed Russian television airwaves with a Rexona deodorant commercial in which blond and beautiful pop star Vera Brezhneva asks, “What do you do to be perfect?”
Before kicking off the campaign two years ago, Unilever surveyed Russian women on who they believe to be the perfect woman — successful, beautiful and feminine — and they chose Brezhneva.
“When advertising personal care products, we try to educate the consumer on the necessity of following the basic rules of hygiene,” Yevteyev said.
U.S.-based Kraft Foods started a new advertising campaign in April to promote TUC crackers, introduced to the Russian market in February. A special salt and pepper flavor was created to cater to Russian tastes. Besides a television commercial and billboards with the slogan “Always tasty, always with you,” the company hired young people to rap about the product on the streets of central Moscow and hand out free samples.
The Russian market provides 3 percent of Kraft’s annual revenues and is growing fast, it said.
Before releasing products on the market, companies conduct much painstaking research, and often adjust their merchandise to customer tastes. Company representatives watch shoppers in stores, distribute questionnaires, visit consumers’ homes and hold forums to study shopper behavior.
Nestle opened an innovation center last year to study customer behavior more closely. The center includes a mock shopping area, a kitchen and special rooms to make drinks.
The Swiss-based company has put out several products to meet the needs of the Russian consumer looking for healthier food, including Maggi chicken seasoning, ice cream called 48 Kopeks modeled on a Soviet-era brand and Bystrov Prebio instant hot cereals.
Several years ago, after Procter & Gamble research showed that there is no universal cleaner on the market, the U.S. company introduced Mr. Proper, the Russian version of popular American all-purpose floor cleaner Mr. Clean.
The company also found that Russian consumers are very sensitive toward the smell of the products they use. Procter & Gamble adjusts the smell of household products such as laundry detergent, fabric softener and cleanser to make them more attractive.
There is more competition among companies now and a wider range of products, and Russian consumers have become more aware of what they buy, said Dale Clark, a retail and consumer specialist with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Advertising has grown significantly in the past 10 years but accelerated in the last five, Clark said.
Begemot advertising agency head Yulia Dydichenko said a new trend toward more sophisticated advertising emerged about a year ago. 
New products, like flower-scented toilet paper and cosmetic products for men, are filling niches that had never existed in the country.
Today’s Russia, in terms of consumerism, is a lot like the post-Reagan United States of the early 1990s, when the vast consumer service industry was in its infancy, Komissarova said. As more products and services are offered, companies will have to continue to innovate or fall behind. 
Russia will reach Western consumer standards very quickly, said Denis Shirikov, a retail analyst with Nielsen, which tracks consumer habits in more than 100 countries.
“Russia’s young market is maturing. Advertising is changing,” Shirikov said.

TITLE: Poland Sees Russian Role in Cause of Crash Killing 96
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW — Russian air traffic controllers gave incorrect and confusing landing instructions to pilots of a plane that crashed, killing Poland’s president and 95 other people, a Polish report said Friday — a finding that could further strain ties between the countries.
But the report into the crash proportions most blame on Polish officials and procedures. Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich, whose ministry oversaw the training of the crew of the 2010 flight, resigned Friday.
The report challenges a Russian aviation commission report published in January that put sole blame for the disaster on Polish officials — striking Poles as an attempt to avoid any responsibility for the crash in heavy fog at a rudimentary airport near Smolensk.
Since then, Poles have eagerly awaited their own experts’ report, hoping it would create a more balanced picture. The accident on April 10, 2010, killed dozens of senior officials along with the president and first lady in the worst Polish disaster since World War II.
As key causes of the crash it cites incorrect positioning of the Tu-154 during an attempted landing due to insufficient training of the pilots. It also cites a lack of proper cooperation among the crew and an overly slow reaction to an automatic terrain warning system that warned pilots they were flying too low.
Incorrect information from the airport’s control tower on the plane’s position also prevented the crew from realizing they were making mistakes, it said.
“There was no single cause, but an accumulation of causes led to the crash,” Jerzy Miller, interior minister and head of the investigation commission, said during a presentation that lasted three hours.
In Moscow, the deputy chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, Andrei Klimov, said fault lies with the Polish pilots and lashed out at Warsaw for politicizing the investigation.
“This report is not a technical but a political one,” Klimov said. “The results were compiled with a nod to the political situation in order to show that Russians were to blame for at least something.”
Alexei Morozov, deputy head of Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, said some of the report’s conclusions were unclear.
He cited the report’s “certainty that the aircraft commander had no intention to land, or that the presence of outsiders inside the cockpit, especially the Air Force commander of the Polish Republic, did not affect the decision of the aircraft commander.”
He added that the committee would respond in more detail once it reads the entire report.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Klich submitted his resignation Thursday evening, knowing that the report would point to mistakes in the military training of pilots and flight procedures.
The report did not point to any individual wrongdoing by Klich but painted a picture of overall negligence and an overly relaxed approach to security procedures. Klich said he was stepping down so as not to burden the government.
General elections are scheduled for this fall and Tusk’s centrist party, Civic Platform, hopes to hold onto power.
Tusk immediately announced a replacement for Klich — Deputy Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak — and said the new minister would be charged with overhauling security procedures for government flights.
The report says the main pilot, Captain Arkadiusz Protasiuk, 36, did not have sufficient experience in flying a Tu-154 or in landing under difficult conditions. The only crew member who spoke Russian and could communicate with the airport, Protasiuk, was overwhelmed by many tasks and difficult conditions in the final moments, the report said.
It insisted that Russian air traffic controllers played a role in the tragedy. Polish investigators found that the Polish plane was flying about 60 meters lower than the crew believed in the moments before it clipped a tree and crashed. The Polish commission said Russian air traffic controllers confirmed the plane was on the right course for descent, information that made the crew continue in the false belief that they were making a proper approach.
The Polish report [komisja.smolensk.gov.pl</a>], which is available on the Internet in Polish, Russian and English, said the Russian airstrip had insufficient lighting, contributing to a lack of visibility that morning. 

TITLE: Sliska Speaks Out Over Con
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a rare public outburst, a senior United Russia deputy offered on Thursday to personally pay an Arkhangelsk region prison for a missing pair of trousers that cost former Yukos co-owner Platon Lebedev his appeal for parole this week.
Lyubov Sliska, who serves as a deputy State Duma speaker, criticized the two-day parole hearing as “irritating performance” that discredits the country’s law enforcement system, Interfax reported.
Prison officials told the court in the town of Velsk, where Lebedev has been incarcerated since June, that they opposed his parole appeal because he had allegedly lost his prison-issued trousers, robe and slippers and improperly spoken to a mid-level official on a first-name basis.


TITLE: Jailed British Businessman Linked to Magnitsky Case
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A British businessman who is being held in a Moscow detention center has fallen so severely ill that his lawyer says he could die at any moment.
Darren Keane, 43, CEO of the Storm International gambling holding, is accused of letting two of the company’s casinos operate in the city even after gambling was banned in July 2009.
He was arrested by Federal Security Service agents June 22, charged with illegal business activities, and sent to a pretrial detention center, Vedomosti reported Friday, citing an unidentified city police source. 
Keane has since unsuccessfully tried to have his arrest overturned by the city’s Tverskoi District Court, which originally sanctioned it, his lawyer told the news site Rosbalt.ru late Thursday.
The lawyer, Viktoria Vasilyeva, said Keane’s condition was alarming because, among other things, he suffers from thrombophlebitis, an acute inflammatory form of clotted veins, or thrombosis. 
Vasilyeva warned that Keane “could die at any moment” and drew a parallel to the case of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow pretrial detention center in 2009. “Nobody needs a repetition of what happened to Sergei Magnitsky, yet they would not lift my client’s detention,” she said.
The Magnitsky case grabbed headlines in Washington and Moscow last week after it was revealed that the U.S. State Department had imposed a visa ban on a number of Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death.
The decision caused an outcry in Moscow with President Dmitry Medvedev ordering the Foreign Ministry to prepare retaliatory steps.
The decision to keep Keane in detention was based on fears that he might flee the country, media reports said. “The Tverskoi court sanctioned his arrest on June 23 because he is not a Russian citizen and might go into hiding,” the police source told Vedomosti.
Vasilyeva, the lawyer, complained that the court then rejected a plea to free him on bail of 6 million rubles ($200,000). “Darren Keane has long lived in Russia, he owns real estate here and has a Russian wife and a child. He is not planning to hide,” she said. 
She added that the charges against him are moderate and that if convicted he would face a maximum of five years in prison.
Keane arrived in Russia in 1997, according to his biography on Storm International’s homepage. Three years later, he became general manager of Shangri-La, for years the city’s most luxurious address for gamblers. In 2005, he was made a vice president, overseeing Storm International’s five casinos and 20 slot machine halls.
He has been the company’s CEO since September 2008. He also co-founded the Expat Football League in 2003, one of the longest-running sports organizations for expatriates in Moscow.
The British Embassy said it was aware of Keane’s detention. “Consular staff are in contact with the British national and their next of kin and providing consular assistance,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement, requesting anonymity in line with embassy policy.
Repeated calls to the press services of the Tverskoi and Moscow City Court went unanswered Friday, as were calls to Storm International. A city police spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. 
The case is apparently part of a bigger investigation against illegal gambling in the city. A police official told RIA-Novosti on Friday that a national search warrant had been issued for other foreign executives of Storm International who are allegedly in hiding. The report did not specify their number nor publish any names.
Apparently the Federal Security Service, or FSB, has been suspicious about the company’s activities since gambling was restricted to just four far-flung regions in mid-2009.
Back then “it was established that Storm International’s management failed to close its Shangri-La casino and a gambling machine hall located in a concert hall on Pushkin Square,” the police official said.


TITLE: Continent Airlines Collapses
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Hundreds of holidaymakers spent the weekend stranded at airports on the Black Sea coast and in the Amur region after the mysterious collapse of Continent airlines on Friday.
Regional authorities were left scrambling to find replacement routes and airport operators after Continent declared itself bankrupt — even drafting aircraft from the government’s Rossiya squadron, which usually flies top officials, to get people home.
Norilsk-based Continent unexpectedly announced that it was ceasing operations Friday when it ran out of money to pay airports to refuel its planes.
News agencies reported that the Federal Air Transportation Agency revoked the airline’s operating license at the request of Continent chief executive Vladimir Krasilnikov. Online business magazine Marker identified the majority owner of the airline as Stanislav Leichenko, a former military pilot who founded Atlant-Soyuz airlines, which was later taken over by the Moscow city government.
The company owes some 32 million rubles ($1.16 million) to Russian airports, RIA-Novosti reported.
The Transportation Ministry said the company was so short of money it could not even contribute to providing the stranded passengers with food or water.
Transportation Minister Igor Levitin on Saturday ordered the seizure of Continent’s aircraft and asked the Federal Air Transportation Agency to forward information to prosecutors to investigate the company for “non-provision of passenger services.”
Continent was founded in 2007 as a charter flight company, but started scheduled flights between Norilsk and Moscow last winter, according to its web site.
The company started scheduled flights connecting Norilsk and Krasnoyarsk with Black Sea resorts on April 26 this year. It had a fleet of nine Tu-154m aircraft.
It is not clear what went wrong, though sources in the Amur region administration told RIA-Novosti that they had been concerned about the “stability of the company’s work” for the past two weeks.
There were more than 600 passengers still stranded in Sochi, Anapa, Krasnodar and Gelendzhik by Sunday afternoon, Sergei Lekharev, chief executive of airport operator Basel Aero, told Interfax. Others were stranded in Simferopol in the Crimea.
The government has promised to compensate airlines that help return the stranded passengers.
The Transportation Ministry on Sunday urged passengers to avoid travel and try to redeem tickets for cash at travel agencies, or buy new tickets on other airlines. The company is believed to have sold tickets for flights up to September this year.
“The general director of Continent airlines has said the company is ready to sell its aircraft in order to refund the tickets,” the ministry said.
Meanwhile, regions are looking for new operators to take over routes operated by the defunct airline, presenting an opportunity for domestic carriers to expand.
Officials in the Amur region, where Continent airlines ran regular flights to southern Russian resorts including Sochi as well as connections to Vladivostok, told RIA-Novosti that “we have begun looking for new companies. In particular we are in negotiations with UTair.”


TITLE: President Claims Investment Climate Improving
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The investment climate in Russia is changing for the better, President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with state court justices Tuesday. 
“It’s true I said it’s not very good, but that climate is changing,” Medvedev said, according to the Kremlin web site. 
The Tuesday meeting was the first time the president discussed directly with judges the role of courts in making the investment environment better. Improvements discussed include developing pretrial procedures, the creation of a financial arbitration and patent court, and a more functional court system in general. 
The announcement comes four months after Medvedev said at a conference in Magnitogorsk that the investment climate has gotten worse in the last year and needed to be improved. At that meeting he identified 10 areas, including some of the issues discussed Tuesday. 
The meeting is the latest attempt in Medvedev’s campaign to strengthen rule of law in Russia. Earlier this year the first ever international legal summit in Russia was held in St. Petersburg, where Medvedev and government officials discussed how to improve the country’s legal system with global law leaders. 
Although the cases of jailed former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in police custody, still make investors wary of Russia, the level of foreign direct investment in Russia is high. 
Foreign direct investment in the Russian economy increased 39 percent in the first half of this year, compared with the same time period last year, and is now valued at more than $27 billion, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last week. He expressed hope that the number would soon grow to $60 billion to $70 billion, RIA-Novosti reported. 
Analysts hesitate to affirm total investment climate recovery. 
“The government says what it wishes were true, instead of the truth,” said Alexei Minayev, head researcher at Rye, Man & Gor Securities.
Although there has been more attention paid to rule of law in the country, it is still too early to say the investment climate has improved. Investors need to see concrete proof of rule of law, such as guarantees that their property rights will not be violated, and that has not happened yet, Minayev said. 
“These tendencies take time, so it is not yet clear that anything has really changed,” Minayev said. 
The level of foreign direct investment is rather high in Russia, the government just needs to improve the environment, Troika Dialog chief strategist Kingsmill Bond said. 


TITLE: Yukos Bankruptcy 5 Years On
AUTHOR: By Tim Osborne
TEXT: The Yukos Oil Company was forced into bankruptcy by the Moscow Arbitration Court five years ago on Monday. Its assets were seized by the state,and its top managers imprisoned or chased from the country. Its legacy of progressive corporate governance and transparency was decimated in favor of shadowy state control.
Nobody knows for sure why the Russian government destroyed its most successful post-Soviet company. It is certain, though, that the Yukos affair was a clear marker of Russia’s economic torpor and a signal to domestic entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike that their assets are simply there for the taking.
The biggest victims of the destruction of Yukos, however, are not former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky or his business partner Platon Lebedev, who have nonetheless endured an ordeal that would test anyone. Rather it is the Russian people — on whose behalf the government supposedly acted — who have lost the most.
Although Russian stock trades around a 30 percent discount to other emerging markets and Russia’s economy lagged the other BRICs’ GDP growth by nearly 5.5 percent in 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund, the fallout from the Yukos affair cannot be measured in financial terms alone. The longer-term and far more detrimental effect is that there is now an assumption of political interference, corruption and the arbitrary use of state powers in civil disputes.
In June, the IMF confirmed that strengthening property rights and the rule of law together with reform of the judiciary and civil service are critical issues for Russia’s economic development. The fund said Russia’s poor business climate discourages investment, which, combined with political uncertainty, contributes heavily to net capital outflows. Reform or recession was the IMF’s underlying message.
Even almost a decade after Khodorkovsky’s arrest, the specter of the Yukos affair still haunts investors’ decision making. In Jochen Wermuth and Nikita Suslov’s June 16 comment in The Moscow Times titled “20 Ways to Improve Russia’s Investment Climate,” a chief investment officer of one of the world’s largest pension funds perhaps put it best: “The government stole assets from Yukos and Shell. You complain, you get expelled, like the BP manager. If you push too hard, you may even get killed in London, Vienna, Dubai or in pretrial detention. Now tell me why should I invest my clients’ money in Russia.”
With aging infrastructure in dire need of modernization, you might reasonably expect the government to bend over backward to tempt investors back and offer them, at least, a level playing field. Eventual Russian entry to the World Trade Organization will undoubtedly help, but the decision to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty was a big step backward, removing protection mechanisms for investments made after the date of withdrawal.
As the former majority shareholder of Yukos, we are critically aware of the need for that protection. Without recourse to binding international arbitration, we would be nowhere. Instead, an independent tribunal sitting in The Hague is currently hearing our arguments in the largest-ever commercial arbitration. Despite the Kremlin’s protests, the tribunal confirmed that Russia was fully bound by the Energy Charter Treaty until its formal withdrawal in October 2009.
President Dmitry Medvedev’s subsequent proposals to replace the energy treaty included clauses that would actually sanction discriminatory treatment against foreign investors. This measure will hardly encourage those same investors to part with the $2 trillion the Energy Ministry says is required to modernize the energy sector, increase production and improve supply.
But access to funding is not the most problematic factor for doing business in Russia. In its 2010-11 Global Competitiveness Report, the World Economic Forum reported that corruption was overwhelmingly identified by global businesses as the single most problematic factor for doing business in Russia.
The tragic case of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky shows how devastating that can be. Magnitsky, after uncovering a massive fraud allegedly perpetrated by corrupt officials in the Interior Ministry, was arrested on falsified charges and then refused medical treatment while in pretrial detention unless he testified against his client. He died in prison. Only now — three years later and following pressure from Western governments and international human rights organizations — has the Russian government initiated an investigation, although no one has been arrested yet.
No one should be under any illusions: Corruption was a problem before Yukos was destroyed. Some even speculate that Khodorkovsky was targeted because he was too vocal in highlighting corruption in state-owned companies. It has become much clearer since the beginning of the Yukos affair that corruption in Russia is now so endemic that it is simply a fact of life.  
As the Russian government once again prepares to embark on a major state privatization program, foreign investors must clearly make their own calculations about whether the potential success of their Russian ventures outweighs the risks. For us, that calculation is simple. We have lost far too much already.

Tim Osborne is director of GML Ltd.


TITLE: reading the kremlin: Medvedev Has Lost His 2012 Bid
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Frolov
TEXT: Earlier this year, I argued on these pages that the continued uncertainty from the ruling tandem over which member was going to run for president was undermining the political stability that the tandem justifiably viewed as their key achievement and hampering long-term economic growth.
I further argued that the best option for Prime Minster Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev was to quickly announce that they would maintain the tandem arrangement into Medvedev’s second presidential term. It seemed at that time a no-brainer. All other options looked bad, including Putin’s return to the Kremlin or Medvedev’s ouster by a third candidate nominated by Putin.
Theoretically, this option is still on the table as long as no tandem member has announced his candidacy. Many in the West still hope and pray that this is what will happen in December. But it won’t.
The window of opportunity for this closed in early May, the day Putin announced the creation of his All-Russia People’s Front. It was a clear sign that he was laying the political groundwork to justify and ensure his return to the Kremlin in 2012. 
Medvedev’s liberal advisers have arrogantly sought to frame his second term and his program for modernization as a repudiation of Putin and his system of “managed democracy,” labeling Putin’s so-called stability as “stagnation.” This raised the specter of a Mikhail Gorbachev-style unraveling of the country with Medvedev’s Kremlin losing control as it pushed for faster political liberalization during his second term despite insufficient public support.
One of Medvedev’s mistakes was not to distance himself from radical proposals from his advisers, particularly from the Institute for Contemporary Development think tank. These include dismantling Russia’s security services and adopting a subservient pro-Western foreign policy. Medvedev’s own public statements beginning in May have also indicated his willingness to push for deep political changes during his second term, including significant easing of registration procedures for political parties and opening the door to return direct popular elections for governors. In foreign policy, some of Medvedev’s actions, such as Russia’s mediation efforts in Libya  and discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the future of Transdnestr, have also raised eyebrows.
Medvedev’s advisers have cast him as a Boris Yeltsin-style destroyer of Putin’s system, while in fact all he needed to do was to run as a Chinese Communist Party incremental modernizer. By the time Medvedev realized that, as he made it clear during his May news conference, it was already too late. Putin could no longer trust Medvedev with continuing his cause.
It is a sign of despair in Medvedev’s camp that some of his advisers are now calling upon him to openly challenge Putin and declare his presidential candidacy at the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum in September.
The strategy is to pre-empt Putin and force him into a position where he has to either endorse Medvedev as his own choice for president or repudiate his protege with public arguments why Medvedev did not live up to Putin’s expectations and, thus, does not deserve to serve a second term. But Putin would never challenge Medvedev openly because this risks an all-out war of the elites.
If this strategy doesn’t work, Medvedev might be urged to throw a Hail Mary pass and exercise his constitutional right to fire Putin before Medvedev loses this power six months before the presidential vote.
Medvedev would be wise to ignore this self-serving advice to become another Yeltsin or former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. Instead, he should focus on finding the right political role to continue his modernization agenda in another capacity. This might help him return to the main political stage, perhaps as a contender in the 2018 or 2024 presidential race.

Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government-relations and PR company.

TITLE: the word’s worth: Rednecks & Rabble
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Áûäëî: sheep, lemmings, cretins, rabble

I have a tattered and dog-eared mental manila folder called “Intriguing and Possibly Highly Indicative Fun Facts about Russian and English” where I put grammatical, syntactical and lexical differences between the two languages that reveal fundamental differences in worldview. I keep pulling it out to scribble something and then shoving it back in exasperation because there are too many exceptions and too little evidence.
But I can’t help hauling it out to ponder because the differences reflected in language usually cause havoc for the translator. Take the ëè÷íîñòü-íàðîä distinction in Russian. The collective noun íàðîä (people, nation) describes a kind of undifferentiated mass of humanity. In contrast, ëè÷íîñòü (vibrant personality, striking individual) is a person of heightened energy, intelligence and individuality who stands out against the background of the íàðîä. 
You can say this in English — with a few added qualifiers — but this distinction is not natural to the language. This is particularly true of American English, where the national myths stress the diversity and individuality of the citizens. Americans tend to say “the people are” rather than “the people is.”
There is another collective noun in Russian that describes a subset of íàðîä: áûäëî. Derived from the same western Slavic root that gave us áûòèå (existence, reality), in Polish the word evolved to mean house, then property and then livestock. At that point, áûäëî arrived in Russia. In the 19th century, áûäëî was a highly unflattering term used by land- and serf-owners to describe peasants as sheep-like, devoid of personal initiative and content to be told what to do.
Today áûäëî has retained the notion of sheep-like docility, but it has been expanded considerably. In fact, defining and describing áûäëî seems to be something of a Russian national pastime.
Most of the áûäëî-describers — who are, incidentally, áûäëî-loathers — begin something like this: Áûäëî ÿâëÿåòñÿ îïïîçèöèåé ê ëè÷íîñòè (The rabble stands in opposition to individuality). They go on to assert that these folks have no personal taste: Äëÿ áûäëà õàðàêòåðíî îòñóòñòâèå ñîáñòâåííîãî ìíåíèÿ, õóäîæåñòâåííîãî è ìóçûêàëüíîãî âêóñà è äàæå âêóñà ê åäå.?×óâñòâà ñòèëÿ òîæå íåò. (The rabble has no personal opinion, no taste in art, music or even food. They also have no individual sense of style.)? 
But unlike U.S. rednecks or trailer trash, in Russia, ñîöèàëüíûé ñòàòóñ áûäëà, åãî âîñïèòàíèå, îáðàçîâàíèå, óðîâåíü äîõîäîâ çíà÷åíèÿ íå èìåþò (a cretin’s social status, upbringing, education and salary make no difference).? Even a highly placed official can be áûäëî.

Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.

TITLE: Screen siren
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hollywood diva Nastassja Kinski spoke to The St. Petersburg Times during her visit to the Second St. Petersburg International Kinoforum.
When asking Kinski about her most important achievement in life, you might expect that this fine-boned aristocratic-looking actress would go straight to her roles in the films of Roman Polanski, Wim Wenders and Andrei Konchalovsky. Her actual answer was somewhat more unorthodox and emotional.
“I am a fighter; I never give up, no matter how painful the fall,” Kinski said. “And this part of my personality is what I am most proud of.”

<i>Your career is closely connected with Russia and Russian filmmakers. How emotional was this visit to St. Petersburg for you?</i>
I am very moved and touched. It has been a while since I made my last movie. At the opening press-conference I almost felt dizzy in front of so many cameras. 

<i>Was it any better in the evening on the red carpet?</i>
Of course! It was a totally different atmosphere. I physically sensed the warmth of the public, the people who greeted me. Naturally, this visit to St. Petersburg brought back so many precious memories. Nearly 20 years ago, the Russian director Andrei Eshpai was filming Dostoyevsky’s “Insulted and Injured” here, and I played Natasha. It was an incredible emotional drain and huge challenge because Dostoyevsky is one of the deepest novelists in the history of literature, and the demands of the prose itself were enormous.

<i>Andrei Konchalovsky’s film “Maria’s Lovers,” where you played the central female character became one of your best films. What makes it special for you?</i>
Yes, “Maria’s Lovers” is indeed a very special movie. It carries a message that is very close to my heart and my own values. The message there is that war claims people’s lives not only in the direct physical sense, when people die from bombings, killings, wounds —  it destroys them from within, burns them out. People’s souls die as well, they become filled with sorrow, revenge, mourning, painful memories. Love is the only force, the only source of energy that brings hope and gives one the strength to survive. Love fills the future with meaning.

<i>Would you call Konchalovsky a friend of yours?</i>
Yes indeed. We haven’t spoken in ages and haven’t seen each other for a long time but for true friends it doesn’t really matter. If it is genuine, it won’t go anywhere, won’t vanish, won’t fade. It is not weekly phone calls that makes a friendship last.

<i>What makes you and Konchalovsky so close?</i>
We have known each other for many years, and I always admired his capacity for compassion and understanding. When I was in my early twenties, he helped me understand something very important about life. We cannot always be perfect, and we should not try to, Andrei told me. Everyone has the right to make mistakes, and we need to learn to forgive ourselves. However, and most importantly, one must remember about the moment of truth — when your every word, every gesture carries a huge meaning; when it is crucial that you do not lie, do not ignore one’s plight, do not pretend that something does not concern you. A moment of truth, a sort of situation that puts a human being through a tough test, usually happens most unexpectedly, at the worst possible time, when we are exhausted, demotivated, preoccupied…and here is a situation when you need to make a choice and show whether or not you have a heart.

<i>You gained international fame after playing Tess in Roman Polanski’s take on the Thomas Hardy novel. What did you appreciate about working with Polanski?</i>
Roman took months to prepare me for the role of Tess. We read together a lot, traveled to England. What was especially precious about Polanski is that he became the first director who gave me respect as an actress. It meant the world to me. It was through working with him that I developed a taste for the finer things in life. I have learnt to identify a fake quickly. He helped me with a sort of navigation in life, he taught me what is best in the world of filmmaking, who the best actors, actresses and directors are. Together we watched “Gone With the Wind” with the fabulous Vivienne Leigh and “Romeo and Juliet.”
I really enjoyed talking with Polanski about life. We would talk about his youth in Poland, his student years, his first experiments in filmmaking. These recollections are very dear to me.

<i>What do you respect yourself for?</i>
I never give up. There have been serious losses, disappointments and failures in my life but every time I had the strength to get up and carry on. And I do not like to blame the past. Everyone has a past. It’s not an excuse to allow your life to go straight into the waste bin. If you do not sober up, your drama will win you over and eat you from within.

<i>What was this disappointment that was such a catastrophe?</i>
There is a wise old fable about the two brothers who grew up in a terrible family with an alcoholic father, a lot of violence at home, and a mother who did not care at all. One of the brothers grew up and became a criminal, a brutal beast, worse than his father. The other one, on the contrary, became an honest and successful self-made-man. Then people asked each of them, how did they manage to become what they have become. And then these very different brothers gave an absolutely identical answer. They said: You know what my family was like; did I really have a choice? The point of this story that there is always a choice and several ways to go, no matter the starting point.


TITLE: Provincial players
AUTHOR: By Nosheen Shakil
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — “You got seven minutes,” warns a stressed-out promoter as we walk into a Soviet-style dressing room to meet the king of gypsy punk: Eugene Hutz.
Hutz is the frontman of Gogol Bordello, a group as famous for the raucous, energetic concerts that have given it a reputation as one of the best live bands in the world as the eight albums it has released since 1999.
The band’s music is a difficult-to-pin-down mix of gypsy folk music and punk that comes along with a mix of diverse influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Manu Chao.
With his Ukrainian stylized mustache, Hutz, 38, who sits wrapping his feet in pieces of cloth as he prepares for the concert, is a charismatic figure with music in his blood.
Born Yevheniy Alexandrovich Nikolayev-Simonov in Boyarka, Ukraine, Hutz has a Russian father and a mother of Roma ancestry.
“Music is the family business — my father played in the Ukrainian group Meridian, one of the first rock bands of the country. I still play with the same guitar my father used to conquer my mother’s heart,” says Hutz, who speaks with a thick Russian accent. “I grew up with rock, gradually discovering punk rock. The music scene in the ’80s evolved into ethno-rock, which only exists in peripheral areas such as Ukraine or Ireland.”
In 1986, when Hutz was 14 years old, his family left Ukraine after the nuclear disaster in nearby Chernobyl.
“When we heard about Chernobyl, we fled to my mother’s gypsy village of my mother, eventually leaving the country and roaming for years through Europe till we finally arrived in Vermont, U.S.A., in 1992,” says Hutz, whose immigrant experience and Romani heritage pertzmeate his songs. “I am very grateful to the gypsy culture — to me it is as big an inspiration as The Doors or The Stooges.”
Hutz eventually moved to New York City, took his mother’s maiden name and formed Gogol Bordello, once called “the world’s most visionary band” by influential American music critic Robert Christgau.
“NYC gave us everything. They understood us as a band,” Hutz says.
In Moscow the band played a well-orchestrated chaos of gypsy punk, abundant sweat, theater and explosive dance for more than two hours.
They played the favorites such as “Wonderlust King,” “Start Wearing Purple” and “Alcohol,” and, after a third encore, finished off the concert with a Dynamo Kyiv song. Sensing a hint of discomfort in the air — Hutz laughed it off by saying, “Don’t be angry, it is only football!”
Hutz also plays in the Kolpakov Trio gypsy band and acts, most famously with Ethan Hawke in “Everything Is Illuminated,” Hutz’s 2005 film debut, and infamously in Madonna’s universally derided “Filth and Wisdom.”
“Madonna is a good friend, but my favorite movie directors are [Emir] Kusturica and [Jim] Jarmusch,” Hutz says.
At Moscow’s show, he climbed off the stage to give out autographs to die-hard fans. When a female fan begged to touch his moustache, he played a sensual game of cat and mouse, getting closer, backing away, getting closer before allowing her to lay a finger on his facial hair. She is thrilled.
“I am a Roma wunderkind,” as he sings in his latest album.
Before playing in Moscow, Gogol Bordello played in Kazan and Yekaterinburg.
“Touring for the first time in Russia’s provinces completely changed our image of the country. It was a dark hole before — now we understand the place better,” he says. “We definitely want to continue doing so. It is interesting to see how provinces have their own reality which is very different from the one in big towns. The core of the band is Eastern European, and we keep this aspect very fertile. People in the provinces can relate to this, and we find the audience super inspiring.”
Hutz says the group has plans to release a record specially for its Russian audience.

TITLE: in the spotlight: Love in a Cold Climate
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week, rock star Courtney Love sang at Kolomenskoye with her band Hole and treated the audience — and several hapless journalists — to some choice phrases.
At the concert for Afisha magazine’s annual picnic, Love “regularly dished out ripe obscenities,” the RBC business newspaper wrote in its review. She asked a member of the audience whether he wanted to have sex with her, it said, hinting that she used a more earthy term. “Seeing a positive reaction, the singer said: You have good taste,” it added.
Spotting an audience member wearing a T-shirt with a picture of her late husband Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994, she told him to get out of her sight, KM.ru reported.
But Gazeta.ru reported approvingly that she sang her set of love songs “like a hungry cat” and said she gave a more striking performance than the picnic headliner, Russian rock star Zemfira.
In a paparazzi investigation, the Utro newspaper reported that Love avoided the usual Red Square sightseeing and stayed in her hotel, allegedly ordering two bottles of whiskey.
Before the concert, Love did some uncomfortable phone interviews with Russian journalists, showing that she does not bear fools gladly.
Afisha magazine headlined its interview with Love to go with the event “Who, me? What the [expletive]?” That was her reaction in a prickly interview to a question about her “unflattering” comments regarding other celebrities on Twitter.
She was also fairly dismissive about Russia. Asked what she knew about the country, she replied: “Not much, except I knew a girl called Yeva from Ukraine. We did rehab together.”
In another interview for artsy web site Openspace.ru, she launched into her mother, saying she forced her children to pay rent, despite a multimillion-dollar fortune, and married a series of “idiots.” Asked what she was going to do after the interview, she confided that she was going for Botox injections.
At the beginning, she ticked the journalist off for asking boring questions and threatened that she would put down the receiver unless the next question was entertaining. Rather cleverly, the journalist went for the well-meaning idiot option, instead of fuming. “Has anyone ever terrified you like this?” the journalist asked, prompting Love to relent and become quite friendly.
As Love sang at the Afisha magazine picnic — an event that always has an alcohol prohibition — the news came out that another wild singer, Amy Winehouse, had died. Winehouse had visited Moscow several times for private concerts. She once sang for Roman Abramovich and his partner Darya Zhukova at the opening of the Garage contemporary art gallery in 2008.
Last year, Lifenews.ru got a shot of Winehouse arriving at the airport to play at the New Year’s party of an unidentified “oligarch,” alleging that she received a payment of $1.5 million. It also posted a clip of her singing in a leopard-print dress. It wrote that she behaved impeccably, with her only diva-like request being a particular brand of hair spray. But it said she had also ordered whiskey to her hotel room and did not appear to be sober at the concert, where audience members included billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.
Izvestia published a mean opinion piece on Winehouse, saying she let her talent and other people down and that she “lived and died in the manner of the rougher parts of Golyanovo — in an ugly and mediocre way.” Golyanovo is an outlying part of northeastern Moscow, near the ring road. 
But Kommersant wrote that despite halting performances lately, Winehouse was still “the No. 1 pop heroine.”


TITLE: THE DISH: Dachniki Soviet Cafe
AUTHOR: By Emma Rawcliffe
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>A Home From Home</b><br />This centrally-located restaurant is the place to come if you want an authentic Russian dining experience unmarred by excessive Soviet paraphernalia. The very welcoming Dachniki (cottagers) offers a decent selection of very decent Russian Cuisine at very reasonable prices and in a very Russian setting. Every section of this brand new 3-roomed restaurant offers a different view of Soviet Russia. Don’t be put off by the fact that the menu outside is only in Russian; the sign is bright green and in English and Russian so you can’t miss it. As you descend the steps into the spacious restaurant, you will be welcomed with shelves of potted plants and rustic foods, all surrounded by light, stripy wallpaper and black and white photographs.
Following our waitress to our table, we walked past the bar, open coal fire (where you can see your meat being cooked) and very rustic but squeaky-clean toilets. We were seated in a cozy booth in the second room, which was well-lit and decorated with pleasant paintings and cute country-style white furniture.
The dacha (country house) style interior continues in the smoking room, its walls decorated with guitars, a fireman’s hose and a spade, among other things.
Thankfully the service and food matched up to the high quality of the setting. Our waitress was very friendly and attentive and spoke enough English. Despite the fact that we had to wait fifteen minutes for our drinks, it was worth it for the absolutely delicious, very fresh apple juice (130 rubles, $4.72). However, the rather tasteless strawberry milkshake (150 rubles, $5.45) left much to be desired. The honey beer soup (190 rubles, $6.90) was worth trying, though the taste of beer may be a little overpowering for some. The baked cheese (180 rubles, $6.54) was also scrumptious and its accompaniment of sweet, crisp homemade cranberry jam made for a winning combination. 
Having watched our main courses being cooked on the open coals, they certainly met our expectations. The veal cutlet (390 rubles, $14.16) was very tender, served with onions and spicy salsa and well-seasoned with pepper and herbs. My companion also commented that his smoked trout (350 rubles, $12.71) was very tender, well cooked and thus exquisite. Don’t be fooled by the deceptively small-looking dishes — they are in fact very filling. Despite this, we somehow managed to find room for dessert. The pancakes with (plentiful) orange caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream (190 rubles, $6.90) were not too sweet and sickly; the orange cut through the sweetness of the caramel very nicely and was perfectly complemented by the ice cream. I decided on the classic cheesecake (180 rubles, $6.54) — a risky move as I am somewhat of a cheesecake connoisseur — but fortunately it was delectable, particularly with its cinnamon base. 
This cute, authentic cafe comes highly recommended: the excellent, tastefully-presented food, efficient service, friendly atmosphere, charming decor and entertainment all contributed to a very pleasing dining experience. An added bonus: thanks to the air-conditioning, the bright, airy atmosphere proved to be a very welcome contrast to an otherwise stiflingly hot evening.