SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1695 (6), Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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TITLE: TV Defense Lawyer Had Fake Law Degree
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A lawyer on a popular TV court show has become embroiled in a bribery scandal that exposed him as a fraudulent lawyer and will put him behind bars for two years.
Co-host of popular TV show "The Court is In Session" Vladimir Oreshnikov was convicted of soliciting a 500,000-ruble ($17,000) bribe from a client in exchange for halting a criminal investigation against him, Kommersant reported Monday.

The client, businessman Sergei Slobodnyak, also accused the TV host of having earlier asked for 20 million rubles ($668,000) in exchange for having the charges against him dropped. Oreshnikov's demand for an additional 500,000 rubles came after Slobodnyak had paid the larger sum, the businessman said. The second request for money prompted the businessman to go to the authorities, who set up a sting operation to catch Oreshnikov taking the 500,000 rubles.

He admitted guilt and was convicted to two years in prison for fraud.

Oreshnikov is well-known in law circles in the Moscow region and specializes in defending security service members.

After he was arrested, investigators discovered that Oreshnikov's law degree was a fake and that he had never in fact attended law school. He worked illegally as a lawyer for 12 years, and the cases he tried may be reexamined as a result.


TITLE: State-Run Poll Has Putin Winning Election in First Round 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The state-run All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) predicts presidential candidate Vladimir Putin will win the election in the first round of voting with 58.6 percent of the vote, a press release from the polling agency said Monday.

The remaining candidates are headed by Communisty Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with 14.8 percent of the vote, followed by LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 9.4 percent, businessman Mikhail Prokhorov with 8.7 percent, and A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov trailing the pack with 7.7 percent.

Of eligible voters, 55 percent said they are following the election, with 9 percent of those following it very closely, and 44 percent said they are not following the election at all.

Regional variations play a large role in voting patterns, with residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg indicating that 43.7 and 46.7 percent respectively will support Putin. Prokhorov is projected to gain the second-most votes in Russia's two largest cities, at 17.2 and 16 percent.


TITLE: Ag Industry Seeking 400Bln Rubles to Stay Afloat After WTO Entry
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The head of an influential business lobby wrote a letter to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov requesting support for the agriculture industrial complex that will be necessary after Russia joins the WTO, Vedomosti reported Friday.

Alexander Shokhin, chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, estimates in the letter that 400 billion rubles ($13.4 billion) will be necessary to protect the industry.

Despite high production figures for 2011, the industry's profitability dropped from 9.4 percent in 2009 to 8.3 percent in 2010, and without government subsidies this figure could have been as low as minus 5.4 percent, Shokhin calculated, the business daily reported.

High costs, low prices, old technology and low incomes mean that entry into the WTO will only make the situation worse, with Russia likely to become uncompetitive domestically, Shukhov wrote.

One large barrier is the high and growing cost of almost all the necessary resources for agricultural production and continually rising costs for construction and infrastructure.

The real problem, however, is the indebtedness of agricultural enterprises, which at 1.57 trillion rubles ($52.6 billion) is more than total gross revenue, initiators of the RUIE's letter said.

In the letter, Shokhin proposes measures that focus on the over-indebtedness of the industry, including compensating agricultural enterprises up to 100 percent for modernization and loan costs, extending current zero-percent tax on profits until 2020, and canceling outstanding debt on loans. He also says the government should become more active in setting prices in the industry.

The Russian Grain Union told Vedomosti that the main problems in Russia's agricultural industry were not connected to credit, but were more fundamentally connected to poor trade policies that, if corrected, would eventually boost profits and lead to the solution of credit problems.

TITLE: Volgograd Explosion Victims to be Treated in Germany
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the wake of a fiery Valentine's Day explosion in Volgograd, 10 victims have been sent to the Russian capital for treatment and three patients with serious injuries will be flown to a burn center in Germany in a specially equipped plane.

The three patients going to Germany, two residents of Volgograd and a third from Kazan, received burns on 60 to 70 percent of their bodies, RIA-Novosti reported.

Doctors say their injuries are not limited to external burns, but include serious damage to internal organs, especially the kidneys.

Volgograd's City Hall ordered the purchase of two artificial kidney units at a price of 4 million rubles ($133,000) to treat the three most critical patients, still in a city treatment center.

The 10 patients sent to Moscow are listed in critical condition but are stable, with burns covering 30 to 60 percent of their bodies.

On the evening of Feb. 14, a gas cylinder intended for heating ruptured and exploded at the Italian cafe Bellagio, injuring 23. Temperatures in the region have been extremely low in the region, prompting the restaurant management to purchase two new gas heaters.

Security cameras show patrons of the restaurant fleeing out a window to escape flames and smoke billowing from the first-floor restaurant.

The owner of the cafe, who was questioned about the explosion and ordered not to leave the city, has offered to pay for the medical treatment of one of the victims in Germany.

He may face criminal charges under two articles of the Criminal Code: provision of services that do not meet safety requirements resulting in grievous bodily harm and violation of fire safety requirements. The maximum penalty for these charges is up to six years in prison.

The cafe was closed for 30 days in December 2010 after an inspection revealed numerous safety violations. A second check was made with no violations reported, and a repeat check in December 2011 also found no violations.


TITLE: Harsher Charges Reinstated for Martial Arts Champ Accused in Death of Teen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: World fighting campion Rasul Mirzayev's saga continued Thursday when charges of manslaughter in the death 19-year-old Ivan Agafonov were returned to the more serious crime of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, Echo Moskvy reported.
The new charges could carry a prison term of up to 15 years.

On Monday, a Moscow court ruled that Mirzayev could be freed on bail on the grounds that his original charge was replaced with a lesser one last month, but an appellate panel on Tuesday overturned the decision.

Nationalist groups had seized on the case, protesting the decision to charge Mirzayev, a native of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, with a lesser crime.

In August, Ivan Agafonov and Mirzayev got into a fight at the Garage nightclub after Agafonov allegedly started flirting with Mirzayev's girlfriend. Mirzayev punched Agafonov in the head, causing him to fall and hit his head on the pavement. The 19-year-old was hospitalized in critical condition and died four days later.

On Jan. 12, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment.


TITLE: Gay-Rights Activists Paint Rainbow on Party Headquarters
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of gay-rights activists spray-painted a rainbow and the words "We cannot be banned" on the facade of the United Russia party headquarters in Moscow on Sunday evening, to protest a St. Petersburg law that effectively outlaws gay-pride parades and other displays or discussion of gay and lesbian sexual orientations.

The activists also painted a rainbow and the same slogan on a Moscow patriarchate building to protest homophobic remarks made by Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin, Novaya Gazeta reported.

The activists targeted United Russia for its leading role in advancing the highly controversial St. Petersburg law, which would introduce fines for advocating gay and lesbian relationships in the presence of children and for promoting pedophilia. The draft law was approved by city lawmakers in a second reading earlier this month.

The law has drawn outrage among gay-rights activists and liberal lawmakers in Russia, as well as condemnation by the international community, including by the U.S. State Department.


TITLE: Ekho Editor in Labor Inquiry, Host Hacked
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Speculation of an orchestrated attack on the country's most high-profile radio station grew stronger Wednesday after Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov said prosecutors had summoned him for questioning and a prominent show host said hackers had taken over his e-mail and blog accounts.

Venediktov said prosecutors contacted him in connection with a month-old complaint from a citizen regarding questions about the radio station's compliance with the Labor Code.

The editor later said that the request had been canceled, but that the timing was suspicious.

"This [complaint] lay one month in the prosecutors' office, and suddenly they decided to use it," Venediktov told Moskovsky Komsomolets.

The complaint had been filed by Alexander Filsher, a Yabloko activist from the southern Tambov region, who argued that Ekho Moskvy's editorial statute violates the law by prohibiting its journalists from joining political parties, Gazeta.ru reported.

Venediktov called Filsher a "straw-man complainer" and said the incident evoked memories of 2001, when Gazprom Media took over the NTV television channel.

"The aim is to keep me and my journalists under pressure and make us more afraid," he said.

Meanwhile, prominent blogger and Ekho Moskvy show host Alexei Plushchev said Wednesday that hackers had taken over his mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as his blog on the station's website.

"The second attempt to hack into my e-mail was successful," he wrote on his homepage.

On Tuesday, Venediktov had disclosed a massive dispute with Gazprom Media and announced that he and his deputy were resigning from Ekho Moskvy's board of directors because the state-controlled media holding, which owns 66 percent of the radio station, demanded a reshuffle.

The nine-member body had been staffed by four Gazprom representatives, three members of Ekho Moskvy's newsroom, which controls the other 34 percent of the station, and two independent members.

Venediktov told Kommersant that he decided to resign after Gazprom Media insisted on increasing its boardroom members to five, thus leaving the station with a minority of four.

Observers have suggested it is no coincidence that the scandal broke at the height of campaigning before the March 4 presidential election and less than a month after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin assailed Ekho Moskvy for "covering him in diarrhea."

Gazprom Media CEO Nikolai Senkevich told Kommersant that the holding decided to press for the boardroom changes now because of "heightened attention toward the station from different sides." He refused to elaborate.

Venediktov has pointed out that Gazprom Media issued its boardroom demands on Dec. 30, weeks before Putin's attack.

Analysts speculated that the affair was initiated by overeager officials.

"Somebody wanted to do Putin a service, but it turns out that they did him great harm," said Alexei Mukhin of the Center for Political Information, a think tank.


TITLE: Russian Billionaire Pays Record $88 Million for New York Apartment
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Monaco-based potash tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlyev has bought the priciest piece of residential real estate in New York City, paying $88 million for a Manhattan penthouse, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Rybolovlyev purchased the apartment from a former head of Citigroup in the name of a trust for his daughter Yekaterina, a 22-year-old college student, the newspaper reported.

The previous record residential sale in New York was the $53 million purchase of a townhouse by a private-equity investor in 2006.

Purchases of high-end real estate by Russian buyers drove record sale prices in London last year.


TITLE: Voting Begins for Remote Residents
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Voting for the presidential election began Friday for residents of remote and hard-to-reach areas of the country.

Members of the election commission will bring mobile ballot boxes to people in 36 of the country's 83 regions, primarily in the Far East, parts of Siberia, the Urals and northern territories, Channel One reported.

A limited number of voting stations in 52 foreign countries will also be opened, with the first votes to be cast in the Bulgarian city of Bobrich, RIA-Novosti reported.

The number of people voting in these far-off regions reached 150,000 for the State Duma elections in December, about 1 percent of the population.

The average budget cost per voter to hold the December vote was 577 rubles, but in more remote locations the cost can be up to 4,000 rubles per person.

These voters include nomadic herders and lighthouse keepers, workers in polar regions, shift workers, members of crews on ships.

Election workers travel long and difficult routes using helicopters and snowmobiles to reach them, spending as much as 18 hours traveling each day.


TITLE: Prokhorov Attempts to Woo City
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov denied persistent speculation about him being a Kremlin project during a pre-election visit by the billionaire to St. Petersburg on Saturday.
“Why would I be a Kremlin project? What do I owe to Putin? I’m just taking my own risk,” Prokhorov, Russia’s third-richest man, said in his distinctive baritone at a meeting with the city’s young people at Yubileiny sports complex.
During a recent visit to Siberia ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for March 4, Prokhorov reportedly said that his main goal in the race would be to ensure a second round of voting by keeping Putin under 50 percent and emerging as the second-place finisher.
Tall, slim and composed, Prokhorov, 46, elicited a fair number of chuckles from the crowd and barely said a critical word about his opponents in next month’s elections.
“I respect all my competitors, just like when I played sports I always respected my rivals,” said Prokhorov at a press conference held the same day. Prokhorov, who played basketball in his youth, now heads Russia’s Biathlon Union and owns the U.S. basketball team the New Jersey Nets. 
The billionaire, who made his money in the nickel, aluminum and gold industries, said the recent street protests in Russia have already put significant pressure on the country’s authorities. He said, however, that “a revolution would be the worst scenario for Russia.” 
Prokhorov, a businessman who owns several enterprises in Russia and whose new plant near St. Petersburg is expected to produce the first 25,000 Yo-mobile hybrid cars by the end of this year, said the economic situation in Russia will not improve until the country relies on its raw materials. 
“The economy will change for the better only after we build new enterprises and new roads and develop innovative technologies,” he said.
Prokhorov also denied accusations that he wanted to introduce a 60-hour working week in Russia.
“What I mean is that the legislation should allow people willing to work extra hours to make extra money by doing so,” he said.
Winning favor among the young men in the audience, Prokhorov said that if he became president he would abolish compulsory military service beginning Jan. 1, 2015, moving over to a fully professional army instead.
Many women in the audience applauded when Prokhorov, who has never been married and is the third richest man in Russia and the 32nd richest man in the world, with a fortune estimated at $18 billion according to the 2011 Forbes listing, said that he remains a bachelor because “he hasn’t met the right woman yet.” 
Prokhorov also talked about his plan to introduce a ban on building harmful production plants near unique natural areas such as Lake Baikal, the biggest freshwater reservoir in the world. 
Speaking about his foreign policy priorities, Prokhorov said he considered the European Union to be “Russia’s major strategic partner.” Russia should have a more active integration process with European countries and join Europe’s economic and political sphere, he said.
“In the near future there will be three major centers in the world. Those centers will be the U.S. together with Latin America, China together with India, and Europe and Russia, therefore Europe and Russia won’t be able to survive without each other,” Prokhorov said.
“We must come together with Europe and in the next seven or eight years Russia should become the leading economy in Europe,” Prokhorov said.
Prokhorov said Russia should also focus on economic relations with the U.S., adding that currently there is almost no economic relationship between the two countries.
While calling China an important partner, Prokhorov said it was also “ a dangerous competitor” and that Russia needed to keep strict control over the high population of Chinese people immigrating to Russia’s Far East.
Prokhorov also said he would prefer to close the border with Central Asia and introduce a visa regime with countries in that region in order to prevent drug trafficking and illegal migration.
“I’m not against legal migration. We do need a workforce here. However, people who come to the country to work should know Russian and respect Russian traditions and culture,” he said, to loud applause from the audience.
Prokhorov said that during his career he has always acted in accordance with the law, even when he privatized the state enterprise Norilsk Nickel in the early 1990s.
“The laws at that time were not perfect, of course, but I didn’t violate them,” he said.
As young people left the meeting with Prokhorov, they seemed to be still undecided as to whether or not they would vote for him in the presidential elections.
“Prokhorov says the right things but it seems impossible to realize all his plans, especially in the short term [he has estimated],” said Viktor Goncharov, 28, a manager at one of the city’s private production facilities. “And I’m still not sure if he is an independent figure,” he added.
Natalya, 27, a military officer who didn’t want to give her last name, said she liked a number of points on Prokhorov’s program, particularly the ones that involved raising the status of teachers, doctors and military personnel in Russia.
“However, I’m still undecided as to whether I will vote for Prokhorov or [Vladimir] Putin,” she said.
Sergei Shelin, a political analyst based in St. Petersburg, doubted that Prokhorov is a completely independent political figure.
“It is obvious that he began his political activities as a Kremlin project. However, during the recent wave of political protests in Russia he has acquired more independence. But still we must understand that he is a businessman and that in our country no business can be completely independent from the vertical of power,” Shelin said.
Shelin said that although in the current presidential elections Prokhorov, like all other candidates, had basically no chance of winning against Putin, Prokhorov’s personality and ideas could seem attractive to educated people from big cities.
“However, the majority of the population in Russia can’t see him as their president because they can’t believe that a billionaire could understand their needs,” he said. 
Prokhorov first made his name in the financial sector and became one of Russia’s leading industrialists in the precious metals sector in the 1990s. Norilsk Nickel became the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium while under Prokhorov’s direction. He was chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest gold producer, and was president of ONEXIM Group until June 2011, when he resigned from both positions to enter politics.
The businessman announced in December that he would run against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an independent in the 2012 presidential vote.
Prokhorov was born in Moscow and has one older sister, Irina. 
Prokhorov was involved in a scandal in January 2007 at the French Alpine resort of Courchevel, where he was arrested for allegedly providing prostitutes for his guests. He was released without charge and officially cleared in September 2009.

TITLE: City Police Chief Fired Amid Power Struggle
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The head of the St. Petersburg police was sacked following an investigation into the beating death of a 15-year-old boy while in custody, amid an ugly power struggle that came to a head at the annual meeting of police brass with President Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev, who had made police reform one of his signature achievements during his term — which is set to end in May — said efforts to clean up the police would continue after he departs.
“This is not the end of changes, but we have gone through the most essential part,” he said Friday at an annual round table with high-ranking police officials.
But the address was overshadowed by the firing of Mikhail Sukhodolsky — a former deputy interior minister — whose ouster was announced in a statement issued during the meeting, with no reasons given for why he had been sacked.
Riot-gear clad OMON police forcibly evicted Sukhodolsky from his St. Petersburg office, after storming the building as Medvedev delivered his address to officers in Moscow.
Police sources told Kommersant that the firing was made into a highly public display after Sukhodolsky failed to attend the Moscow meeting.
“I was kicked off after 22 years of service,” Sukhodolsky told Moskovsky Komsomolets in an interview published Saturday. “If things like that can be done to a colonel general, it is very sad.”
Sukhdolsky’s department had been under investigation by inspectors from Moscow since January after 24-year-old Denis Ivanov, allegedly under orders from local police precinct head, fatally beat 15-year-old Nikita Leontyev, who was detained on suspicion of robbing a woman.
Sukhodolsky had publicly criticized the probe as “illegitimate,” arguing that it was brought on the eve of the presidential election to distract attention from the failure of reform efforts.
Observers say the boy’s beating had likely been used as a pretext to force out Sukhodolsky, who had publicly clashed with his boss, Interior Ministry head Rashid Nurgaliyev, and had plotted to replace him as ministry head after the presidential election.
United Russia Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein told Novaya Gazeta early last week that “the real aim” of the commission was “to get rid of Sukhodolsky and not to allow his return to Moscow.”
As the investigation in St. Petersburg raged on, police in Moscow conducted searches at branches of the police-run Okhrana service which provides official security protection under contract to businesses and individuals.
The service, which has annual profits of about 1 billion rubles ($33 million), was overseen by Sukhodolsky during his tenure as deputy interior minister.
Yevgeny Vyshenkov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Agency for Investigative Journalism, said that while Nurgaliyev appeared to be using the boy’s death to get rid of a rival, Sukhodolsky’s record in St. Petersburg had been mediocre at best.
“He got used to office work and didn’t know how to work on the ground, and three people he brought with him didn’t make it through the process of re-evaluation,” Vyshenkov said, referring to the re-evaluation of police officers instituted during Medvedev’s reforms.
The reforms Medvedev initiated in 2011 are the most visible achievements of his term and have resulted in cutting 20 percent of the 1.2-million-person police force, boosting salaries and changing the force’s name from militia to police.
Nurgaliyev said Friday that 147 police generals had been fired during the reform, 44,000 officers have voluntarily left the service and 56,000 more were rejected by re-evaluation commissions.
Speaking to top police officials on Friday, Medvedev said he expected officers to work harder after receiving pay raises.
“We are expecting adequate and hard-working labor,” Medvedev said.
But the president has stated that police reform “will be finalized only when the activities of the Interior Ministry correspond with the demands of society.”
According to a poll by the state-owned VTsIOM pollster conducted in October, public trust in the police has jumped 20 percent since 2009, although 61 percent still see them in a negative light. A November poll, conducted by the Public Verdict watchdog, however, found that only 6 percent of citizens were satisfied with the police.
“There are some positive things, but they are not large enough to be covered by such a big label as ‘reform,’” Vyshenkov noted.
Many police officers acknowledge the need for reform, but say the force is clannish and resistant to change from outside.
“The police is such a well-organized structure and has many punitive structures, so we will be able to clean ourselves up,” one Moscow police officer said.

TITLE: University Closes Hostel As Measles Outbreak Spreads
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The number of measles cases in the city had risen to 130 people by Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Ninety-one of those affected are children, Interfax quoted the local branch of Rospotrebnadzor, the consumer goods watchdog, as saying.
St. Petersburg State University issued a statement saying it could not yet confirm reports that one of its students had fallen ill with measles, but said that the entrance to its student hostel on Ulitsa Korablestroitelei had been closed as a precautionary measure, Interfax reported.
The first case of measles registered in the city for the last few years was recorded in Children’s Hospital No.1. A teenager arriving from outside the area has been identified as the original carrier of the disease.
Forty new cases were registered this week.

TITLE: Disputed Gay Bill Gets More Criticism From Abroad
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British actor and author Stephen Fry joined opponents of United Russia’s bill outlawing “promoting homosexuality,” as the Legislative Assembly passed it in a second reading. Last week, Fry condemned the St. Petersburg deputies who voted for the bill as “fantastical monsters.”
“Something must be done to stop these fantastical monsters. Will talking about Tchaikovsky be banned?” he wrote on his Twitter microblog.
Later, Fry addressed the St. Petersburg-based Side By Side LGBT international film festival to express his “love, sympathy and support” for all the LGBT citizens of St. Petersburg and Russia.
“That the land of Tchaikovsky, the great nation that gave us so much immortal and influential art, the novel, drama and free thinking, should allow itself to stoop so low to barbarism and hatred against those who only wish to live and love in dignity like all people, sickens and saddens my heart,” Fry wrote.
“It is homophobia that is unnatural. It is a sign of fear, bullying, scape-goating and self-hatred. It is no different from Nazi racism or any other kind of brutal, ignorant and degraded behavior. The courage of Russia’s LGBT community astounds me. At the risk of broken bones they continue to stand up against hostile brutes. I encircle them with a hug of love, fellow-feeling, sympathy and admiration.”
Activists see the bill proposed by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov in November as an unconstitutional attempt to silence gay people. There is concern that the vague law will be applied to outlaw any manifestation of homosexuality, including in art, film and literature, and that it will effectively ban any gay pride events.
Originally, the bill outlawed promoting male homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism to minors, but failed to define promotion.
At the Feb. 8 session, an explanation note was added to the bill, clarifying the offense as “the purposeful and uncontrolled public distribution of information capable of being detrimental to people’s health, as well as to the moral and spiritual development of minors, including forming distorted ideas about the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional marital relationships.”
The proposed fines for such activities were increased to 5,000 rubles ($167) for individuals, 50,000 rubles ($1,665) for officials and 250,000 to 500,000 rubles ($8,325-$16,650) for businesses.
Although the bill was passed by the Legislative Assembly almost unanimously in its first hearing on Nov. 16, with 37 deputies voting for the law, one against and one abstaining, the deputies of the new Legislative Assembly showed more diversity.
Out of the 49 deputies present, 30 voted for the law, six against and 13 chose not to vote. The bill was supported by 19 out of 20 United Russia deputies, six out of seven Communist Party deputies and 5 out of 12 A Just Russia deputies. One Communist deputy and five out of six Yabloko deputies voted against the law. 
As the deputies passed the bill in a second reading on Feb. 8, a group of gay rights activists and sympathizers staged a small peaceful picket outside the Legislative Assembly. The picket was broken up by the police several minutes after it started.
Six people — including LGBT rights organization Coming Out chair Igor Kochetkov, who stood holding a sign a that read “Hitler started with laws against gays” — were detained. Five of them were charged with violating the 2004 law “On assemblies, meetings, demonstrations, marches and picketing” and failing to follow a police officer’s lawful orders. The latter offense is punishable by up to 15 days in prison. The court hearings have been set for Feb. 28. 
Kochetkov described the charges as “illegal,” adding that while he was reluctant to lower his sign, the other protesters did so as soon as they were ordered to.
On Monday, Milonov met with three LGBT activists at the Legislative Assembly. The deputy brought with him Anatoly Artyukh, the local chair of the orthodox Christian nationalist organization Narodny Sobor (People’s Assembly), and an unidentified man, whom Kochetkov described as having “a criminal appearance.”
“They spoke to us in a very sharp tone, constantly interrupting us and not allowing us to finish; it came to threats of physical violence from the man who came with Artyukh,” Kochetkov said by phone Tuesday.
“Milonov insisted on seeing the relationships between homosexuals as ‘socially non-equivalent’ to relationships between people of different sexes, which sounds to me like a form of fascism. It was a difficult conversation, conducted mostly in raised voices.”
According to Kochetkov, Milonov said that a “hearing” would be held before the bill undergoes a third and final hearing, but did not make it clear whether he meant a public hearing or a deputies’ hearing.
In addition to being the chair of the assembly’s legislation committee, Milonov, who is a member of a parish council of a local Orthodox church, is the Legislative Assembly’s representative for relations with religious associations.
On Tuesday, Artyukh wrote on Narodny Sobor’s web site that Milonov’s bill is “just the first legal step toward the reintroduction of criminal penalties for homosexuality in Russia.” Male homosexuality was outlawed in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1933 and decriminalized under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin in 1993.
When introduced and passed in its first hearing in November, critics alleged that the bill was intended to draw homophobic voters to United Russia ahead of the Dec. 4 State Duma elections.
Since its appearance, the bill has come under fire from U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Department of State, the British Foreign Office, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, as well as international human rights organizations including Amnesty International.
A Russian foreign ministry official dismissed international criticism as an American attempt to “publicly interfere with the lawmaking process in Russia.”
Laws similar to the United Russia bill in St. Petersburg were passed in the Ryazan Oblast in 2006 and in Arkhangelsk in 2011. In November, Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of Russia’s Federation Council, proposed that “promoting homosexuality” be outlawed throughout the entire country.

TITLE: Forum Hopes to Improve City’s Ecology
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Urban beaches could appear in St. Petersburg by 2015 or 2016, local officials said last week. 
“All we need to do is to disinfect sewage at the Central and Northern water supply plants in St. Petersburg, but the problem is that the bodies of water that border St. Petersburg are already polluted by our neighbors in the Leningrad Oblast,” said Felix Karmazinov, CEO of Vodokanal, the city’s municipal water utility.
“Therefore the city government has to keep track of these regions concerning this matter,” he concluded. 
St. Petersburg authorities hope to find solutions to this issue and a host of the city’s other ecological issues such as snow removal and lack of greenery during the 12th “Ecology of a Big City” forum set to open in the city on March 20. At a press conference devoted to the upcoming forum held last week, representatives of City Hall listed the city’s environmental achievements, but conceded much work remains to be done.
 “There are seven specially protected areas in St. Petersburg and five regional natural monuments, and the list of endangered species is about to be completed,” said Sergei Kozyrev, a deputy governor of St. Petersburg, reporting on what has been done by the government in the area of nature conservation. “We are leaders in the quality of sewage treatment, as 95 percent of the city’s sewage is treated, and we have also implemented systems to monitor the air.” 
The city has also cut down on its water consumption. “Today each person uses 160 liters of water a day, when thirty years ago it was twice as much,” said Karmazinov.
“But there are still problems in the sphere of domestic waste matter treatment, as dumps have reached the end of their service life and waste treatment plants are too old,” said Kozyrev. 
St. Petersburg also has fewer green spaces than many other metropolises. “Here there are only 6 square meters of greenery per person, while Helsinki and Vienna have far, far more,” said Kozyrev.
Another problem that may not be faced by most European cities, but is a pressing issue for St. Petersburg, is snow removal, which has become a particularly acute problem during the last couple of years. 
“We have observed the system of snow removal in Finland and concluded that there the problem receives far more attention, said Kozyrev. “In Helsinki they have only seven platforms for collecting snow, one of which releases it into the Baltic Sea, which is highly dangerous. We, on the other hand, are completing the construction of seven of 15 platforms to melt snow this year. We are also going to take into consideration all of the best technologies presented at the [Ecology of a Big City] forum,” he added.
The annual forum presents the latest achievements and technologies in the sphere of nature conservation developed by scientists and manufacturers from 20 countries. Aimed to be a platform for both discussion and deal making, the forum is oriented toward the environmental authorities of regions and cities as well as toward suppliers and producers of equipment and services intended for solving ecological problems. 
The issues to be covered at this year’s forum include the management of industrial and domestic waste, the sanitary cleaning of cities, ecological monitoring and the liquidation of environmental damage. 
During the forum, the Ecomobile center for dangerous waste will be on duty, meaning all residents can dispose of old batteries, energy-saving light bulbs and electric day lamps. 
On the last day of the forum — March 23 — themed excursions to local environmental plants such as waste treatment facilities, water supply plants and air quality control stations will be organized.  

<i>The Ecology of a Big City forum will take place from March 20 to 23 at LenExpo, 103 Bolshoi Prospekt. M. Primorskaya, Vasileostrovskaya. Entrance is free, but requires online registration and receipt of a free ticket from the web site www.ecology.lenexpo.ru.</i>

TITLE: Russian Capitals Make Top 50 Investment List
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Moscow and St. Petersburg were among the world’s top 50 cities for the highest volume of real estate investment last year.
According to 2011 year-end results, Moscow ranked among the top 20 cities with the highest investment activity, while in 2010 it held 25th place, according to a report published by Jones Lang LaSalle real estate consultancy.
St. Petersburg in turn became a “breakthrough of the year” city when its investment volume increased by almost 10 times (see article, page 7). As a result, the city is listed 34th in the ranking, Jones Lang LaSalle’s Year End 2011 Global Capital Flows report said.
St. Petersburg became the “surprise of the last year” when its direct investment volume reached $2.1 billion compared to $221 million in 2010. This meant that the city, which had never been ranked among the top 100, unexpectedly took 34th place, Jones Lang LaSalle said.
The total real estate investment in 2011 in Moscow amounts to $3.6 billion, a 50-percent increase compared to 2010.
London remained the most active city in 2011, with $24.3 billion in investment. New York City climbed to second place with $19.2 billion. Paris, Tokyo and Singapore rounded out the top five.
Shanghai, the powerhouse of the Chinese economy, moved up from 13th to 9th place, trading $7.2 billion in 2011.
Overall $410.6 billion was seen in direct commercial investment in 2011, which indicated a 28-percent increase on 2010, the report said.
“Despite the financial crisis of the past two years, commercial real estate remains a core asset for many investors,” said David Green-Morgan, global capital markets research director at Jones Lang LaSalle.
“2011 finished with a bang and it was the activity in European markets that grabbed the headlines in the final quarter of the year, contrary to most people’s expectations,” Green-Morgan said.

TITLE: Oil and Utility Prices to Rise Post-Elections
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prices will rise after the upcoming presidential elections, with utilities and petrol among the first expenses predicted to increase, economic analysts in St. Petersburg said last week. 
“It’s no secret that the current temporary price freeze in the country is a pre-election decision,” Yury Gatchin, head of the Industry, Economy and Property Commission at the city’s Legislative Assembly, said at a press conference Friday.
Andrei Zaostrovtsev, a professor at the city’s School of Higher Economics, said the price of oil products and municipal services would undoubtedly increase.
The tax on tobacco and alcohol might also increase, Zaostrovtsev said.
On Thursday, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said that oil and energy authorities had agreed on a temporary freeze of prices at the country’s gas stations, ITAR-TASS news agency said.
However, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said the freeze would be followed by another wave of price increases on fuel, most likely happening closer to fall when oil structures decide to compensate for their losses and make a profit in time for the end-of-year results.
Analysts said fuel prices could grow by 4 to 5 percent by the middle of the year, and by up to 15 percent by the end of the year, ITAR-TASS reported.
Zaostrovtsev said that annual price increases for municipal services in Russia are not justified.
“All organizations operating in the utilities sector have been profitable for quite a while,” he said. “Therefore the intervals between regular price increases in this sphere should be longer; prices should rise no more frequently than every two or three years instead of annually.”
Local analysts said that regular price rises are partly a result of the traditionally high level of inflation in Russia, which is normally 1.5 to 2 times higher than in Europe.
The major sources of inflation are petrodollars — or petrorubles. The more money the country gets from selling oil, the more it provokes inflation and an increase in prices, Zaostrovtsev said.
The second major factor causing inflation is growth in budget expenses. 
Lat year’s decision by authorities to significantly increase the salaries of the police and army — totaling about four million people all together — may cause even more inflation in the future, Zaostrovtsev said.
Oleg Kolomiichenko, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, said it was also important to fight monopoly, price fixing and corruption to prevent unfounded price increases on the market.
Kolomiichenko said one of the most blatant examples of recent price fixing was the sudden rise in buckwheat prices in Russia when a number of supermarket chains colluded to keep prices high.
Experts said Russia’s entry into the WTO could play a positive role in breaking monopoly prices on a number of goods and services, such as the insurance business.
At the same time, experts pointed out that higher prices in the city for various goods and services in St. Petersburg than in other parts of the country are in line with a higher average income.

TITLE: Russian Teens Are Prone To Depression
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian teenagers are four times more depressed than those the same age in the West, Interfax reported.
About 20 percent of Russian teenagers suffer from serious depression, according to a UNICEF report.
“The level of depression among teenagers in Russia is 20 percent, while in Western countries it doesn’t exceed five percent,” it said.
UNICEF also registered an increase in psychological and behavioral disorders among children and teenagers, as well as an increase in the mortality rate.
“The mortality rate in this age group is three to five times higher than that in the West. The majority of causes of death are injury and poisoning,” the report said.
UNICEF said the average suicide rate among Russian teenagers and young people is 30 to 31 suicides per 100,000 people per year.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Investment on the Rise</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Investment in the economy of the Leningrad Oblast increased by 11 percent last year. 
Investment in the real economy of the Leningrad Oblast reached 300 billion rubles ($9.9 billion) from last year’s 270 billion rubles ($8.9 billion), the region’s governor, Valery Serdyukov, said Tuesday. 
Serdyukov noted that a number of large investment projects, including two factories and a port, are currently being developed in the region.  

<b>Divisive Issues</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — About half of Russian people (51 percent) consider abortion to be acceptable if a family has a low income, a recent sociological study showed, Interfax reported this week.
At least 42 percent of the population disagreed with this opinion.
Fifty-five percent of people think that euthanasia should be an option for patients with incurable diseases who are in severe pain. Nine percent said they would consider such an option for a wider circle of people while 28 percent said it should not be allowed at all.

<b>Finns Buy Real Estate</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish real estate investor Sato has purchased 43 apartments that are still under construction, as well as space in the complex’s underground parking lot, from Avrora DDC investor. 
The deal cost the company a total of 400 million rubles ($13.3 million). The building is due to be completed by the spring of 2013 and is located on Vasilyevsky Island, at 18 Detskaya Ulitsa.
“Vasilyevsky Island is one of the most promising districts in St. Petersburg... the purchase of the apartments on Vasilyevsky Island is a logical step in expanding Sato’s presence in the city,” said Staffan Tast, general director of Sato Rus.
Currently Sato has investment in St. Petersburg worth about three billion rubles ($100 million).
Sato owns about 23,000 apartments for rent in large cities in Finland and St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Putin’s Newest Plan Offers Perks to Boost Population
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova and Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin unveiled his plan on social policy Monday, focusing on how Russia will boost its dwindling population amid a demographic crisis that threatens to turn the country into “void space.”
Among the measures Putin proposed was improving financial and living conditions to encourage Russians who have moved away to return and providing better support for families with many children.
The program was laid out in an article in the popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and promised to increase social spending on salaries for teachers and doctors. Putin also vowed not to raise the eligibility age for pensions.
The social policy platform represents the fifth article Putin has written in recent weeks in the run-up to the March 4 presidential election.
Titled “Building Justice. Russia’s Social Policy,” the article says that if the demographic decline is not turned around, Russia’s population will shrink to 107 million by 2050, down from 143 million today. But with his new “complex strategy” in place, the population will grow up to 154 million within the same period, Putin wrote.
One of the measures suggested is to provide financial support and better accommodation for families with more than two children. Another is to raise migration back into the country by some 300,000 people per year — attracting “compatriots living abroad” and “qualified foreign expats.”
Putin also said Russian institutions should enroll more foreign students and help them obtain citizenship after graduation.
The proposed demographic solutions were, however, met with some level of derision from experts. Natalya Zubarevich, director of regional programs at the Independent Institute of Social Policy, called the program “laughable” and “pre-election PR.”
“It’s simply unreal,” Zubarevich told The St. Petersburg Times. “There are neither the human resources, nor the tools to fulfill [the promises].”
She said only a huge migration wave can improve the demographic situation, but that there aren’t enough interested expats and Russians living abroad for it.
Putin himself acknowledged that previous resettlement programs didn’t have the desired results. Zubarevich said the earlier resettlement program only brought 30,000 Russians back to the country within four years.
Zubarevich, who is also a professor at Moscow State University, said Russian universities continue to fail to compete with Western ones and cannot attract as many foreign students.

<b>High Financing</b>
Putin argued that relying on oil and gas profits alone to finance Russia’s transformation will not be enough. He said social conditions can only improve “with the development of other economic fields” and that only those in need of government support will receive it.
In the article, Putin said “not less than a third” of his suggested boost in teacher, medical and researcher salaries — which would amount to about 1.5 percent of annual gross domestic product — should come from “the reorganization of ineffective organizations and programs.”
And that is likely how the federal government will fund salary increases this year, said Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist at Otkritie.
Saying GDP was roughly 52 trillion rubles ($1.7 trillion) in 2011, Tikhomirov said an expenditure of 1.5 percent of yearly GDP would amount to 700 billion to 800 billion rubles. That’s on top of the 1.8 percent of GDP already spent on health care, education and cultural initiatives, he said.
“It’s quite costly,” Tikhomirov said.
He predicted that the government will revise its budget after the March 4 presidential election, perhaps as early as April. Though a revised budget might change spending for social programs, the teacher and medical staff pay raises will likely be included.
“I don’t think [Putin] could backtrack on his promise six months later. It would be something people would not forget,” Tikhomirov explained.
Medical staffers and teachers won’t necessarily see a big increase in their paychecks, however. They received pay hikes in recent years, and making their salaries twice the regional average, as Putin proposes, won’t result in a large jump.
Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, predicted that the Cabinet will finance pay increases but generally “will keep a balanced-budget approach.” When it comes to the federal budget, “it’s hard to make an exact forecast for this year, because it’s an election period,” Orlova said.

<b>Social Problems</b>
Meanwhile, a report released Monday by UNICEF and the Independent Institute for Social Policy offers a discouraging assessment of the government’s child policy during the Putin era.
About 30 percent of Russian children live in poverty, the report said, and by most indicators, Russia continues to lag behind the European Union. The country’s child mortality rate is double the EU rate, and infant mortality is 3.5 times higher in Russia.
Besides, the authors of the report said social reforms laid out in 2007, calling for stipends for mothers with more than two children, have only had a small effect on improving the lives of mothers and children outside a very narrow group.
The authors also criticize the government for failing to make families with children a priority group in its 2009 anti-crisis program.

<b>A Television Solution</b>
The social policy article addresses conditions for several social classes, while previous ones focused more on the middle class.
Russia needs to “recreate the working-class aristocracy” that should grow to about 10 million people by 2020, Putin said. He added that workers should get more professional training.
As part of the strategy, the article proposed to develop national digital television channels covering culture, the arts, history and children’s programming. Putin said the programs on national television have become “too commercialized,” however, it would be “incorrect to suppress commercially oriented activity in this area.”
“In the end, people vote with their money,” he wrote. The issue used to be a prerogative of President Dmitry Medvedev, who has promoted digital television during his presidency and suggested in December creating public television.
Several of Putin’s proposals regarded arts and culture, in which he promised more opportunities for young artists.
“It must be acknowledged that in the past decade there has been insufficient attention paid to the development of culture,” Putin said.
Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov, who is facing Putin in the upcoming election, said the article appeared to borrow some ideas from his platform.
“It’s pleasing that my idea, the ideas of A Just Russia, today form the agenda — social reforms … are exactly what I’ve been insisting on,” Mironov said, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Putin Aide Asserts Corruption Was ‘Civilized’
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Corruption in Russia was “normal” and “civilized” during Vladimir Putin’s first stint as president and support for him has grown stronger as a result of recent opposition rallies, the prime minister’s campaign manager has boasted.
Stanislav Govorukhin conceded that “the fight against bribes and kickbacks has not been led as strongly as it should be,” but noted in an interview published Friday in the newspaper Trud that “many laws concerning this were passed before Putin [came to power].”
He also said Putin was “reluctant” to fire officials “who should have been wished goodbye long ago” because of the prime minister’s “human weakness.”
Transparency International ranked Russia in 143rd place out 183 countries for the worst corruption in its 2011 Global Perception Index — a slight improvement from the year before. Russia is now tied with Nigeria, Azerbaijan and Belarus, among other countries, the survey found.
Govorukhin listed a number of achievements during Putin’s time in office, including reining in regional separatism and violence in the North Caucasus, reducing the number of people living below the poverty line from 28 percent to 12 percent, and increasing life expectancy by 3 1/2 years.
He also noted a number of economic improvements, such as Russia now ranking fifth in terms of car sales and third in grain exports, as well as increased housing construction and the development of three major gas pipelines.
Govorukhin praised Putin for managing to “get rid of [about 10,000] foreign consultants, who had flooded the country” and “dictated laws, which did not benefit Russia,” he said.
“Today Russia has a mind of its own,” Govorukhin said.
The recent series of anti-Putin rallies have actually boosted the prime minister’s popularity, Govorukhin argued.
“After them — after this anti-Putin hysteria — provincial people literally throw their chest behind Putin,” Govorukhin said, accusing rally organizers of sowing “enmity between the satiated capital and the modestly living provinces.”
Govorukhin said he was “not glad” about the idea of returning to direct gubernatorial elections, which Putin — who cancelled them during his prior time in office — now supports.
“I saw a similar situation in the 1990s when not a program, or a personality, but money won the elections,” Govorukhin said. “Then the elected governor during his entire term was working out the money that mafia clans spent on his campaign.”
Govorukhin — who is also a well-known film director — predicted that Putin would probably win in the first round of the election.
“After we elect Putin, I will be able to return to work on my film with a clean conscience,” Govorukhin said, referring to his work on the upcoming screen version of Noel Kalef’s novel “Elevator to the Gallows.”
Govorukhin said Putin was “interesting” partly “because of his shortcomings” as a human being, like his noted lack of punctuality.
“He is sometimes late for meetings. And forgets to apologize. This is bad,” Govorukhin said, adding that people generally forgive him because of Putin’s “charm” and sense of humor.

TITLE: Turkmen President Wins 97 Percent
AUTHOR: By Alexander Vershinin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov won a new five-year term by capturing 97 percent of the vote, election officials said Monday, but a Western expert called the vote a democratic sham.
All of Berdymukhamedov’s seven opponents praised his leadership in their campaigns, making the authoritarian leader’s victory in Sunday’s election a mere formality. Berdymukhamedov improved on his 2007 performance, in which he secured his first term in this Central Asian nation with 89 percent of the vote.
Central Election Commission chief Orazmyrat Niyazliyev called the vote democratic and said it contributed to national unity.
But Annette Bohr, an expert on Turkmenistan at the London-based Chatham House institute, said the election presented only the facade of a democratic process.
“It is the typical faux democracy that you see in so many countries,” Bohr said.
Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic of 5 million that borders the Caspian Sea, is the subject of avid interest from the West, Russia and China for its natural gas reserves, which are estimated to be the fourth largest in the world.
Berdymukhamedov, a 54-year-old dentist, came to power after the 2006 death of his eccentric, iron-fisted predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, amid promises of opening up the country’s tightly controlled political system.
The scale of his victory suggests real democratic reforms are still a remote prospect, however.
The only international observation mission overseeing the election was a delegation from the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, which frequently offers positive assessments of votes criticized by more established monitoring bodies.
CIS executive secretary Sergei Lebedev, speaking Monday in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat, said the election complied with democratic norms. He said CIS monitors noted some minor irregularities but said they were unlikely to have any impact on the final result.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had said earlier that conditions were not suitable for a vote-monitoring mission and Turkmenistan did not invite its observers.

<i>Associated Press writer Peter Leonard in Almaty, Kazakhstan, contributed to this report.</i>

TITLE: United Russia To Be Dismantled?
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle and Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia, the country’s dominant political party for more than a decade, might be radically reformed or even dissolved in the coming months, media reports said Friday.
The party has long been a bulwark of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s grip on power. But support for it has been sagging for more than a year, and analysts said the speculation is a sign that the Kremlin is addressing this problem.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected analyst and former United Russia Duma deputy, confirmed that such plans exist.
“Something will have to be done after the presidential election,” he told the St. Petersburg Times.
Putin might dissolve United Russia and create a new power base with a different name, logo and leadership, Bloomberg reported, attributing the information to two people involved in the plans who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
Izvestia cited several sources close to the party as saying its leaders are considering a range of options.
“There will undoubtedly be a rebranding,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a prominent sociologist and party member. “We need to … develop a clear ideology. Also, a leader should appear,” she was quoted as saying.
The newspaper cited a second source as saying a “total rebranding” was in the works.
Party leaders denied the report.
Sergei Neverov, the party’s third in command, told Interfax on Friday that an upcoming party convention will have “no discussion of ‘rebranding,’ much less dissolving the party.” Neverov said party members would merely discuss staff changes.
But Alexander Vorobyov, head of United Russia’s Duma faction, told RIA-Novosti that the party was willing to consider rebranding and other measures to strengthen its position.
“There will be changes and renewals. That is obvious and necessary; life doesn’t stay the same. … Only with this we will retain our leadership,” he wrote Friday on Twitter.
However, in a surprising statement Saturday, Vorobyov announced his resignation from a key party post he had held since 2005.
“Today is my last day as head of [United Russia’s] central executive committee — almost 7 years! We’re giving way to the young,” he tweeted.
United Russia officially won just less than 50 percent of the vote in the Dec. 4 Duma elections, and the opposition says that without vote-rigging the result could have been as low as 35 percent.
Since then, tens of thousands have taken to the streets across the country to demand new elections and political competition.
Most analysts said that given the party’s poor reputation, reform is extremely likely.
“The urgency to reform it is obvious,” said Masha Lipman, an analyst for the Moscow Carnegie Center. “United Russia doesn’t seem to be wanted by anyone, including the tandem. Putin sees it as a burden and a liability,” she said by telephone.
Putin, who heads United Russia without being a member, has been distancing himself from the party for some time. In May, he founded the All-Russia People’s Front, a loose political organization open to nonparty supporters that fielded candidates for the December Duma elections.
The party has not played a significant role in Putin’s campaign for the presidency, and it had no official affiliation with the large Feb. 4 pro-Putin rally in central Moscow.
According to numerous accounts, organizers resorted to busing in paid “supporters” to the rally, while an opposition rally across town attracted tens of thousands.
Markov, the former deputy, said his party has become so discredited that it’s lost the ability to function properly.
“It can no longer act as a force for political mobilization,” he said.
Then-President Putin co-founded United Russia in 2001, and the party gradually took control of all the country’s regional and national legislatures, marginalizing opposition parties and solidifying the Kremlin’s centralized authority, or “power vertical.”
In the 2007 Duma elections, the party won 64 percent of the vote and a constitutional majority, aided by Putin’s popularity and steady economic growth. Those elections also triggered accusations of massive vote-rigging.
During Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, economic slowdown, continued corruption and unfulfilled promises of reform have led the party to be associated with stagnation.
Medvedev, like Putin, is not a party member and has distanced himself from United Russia on numerous occasions, although he headed the party list in the December Duma elections.
Analysts speculated about how and when United Russia would be reformed. Most said nothing would change until after the presidential election.
Under one scenario, United Russia would be split into smaller parties, perhaps along the lines of existing “political clubs,” which are informal ideological groups in the party.
Markov said this was unlikely because it would weaken the party as a parliamentary force.
“The president and the government need to rely on a strong political party in the Duma, especially in times of an economic crisis, and Putin has said this often enough,” he said.
Under another scenario, the party would be replaced by the All-Russia People’s Front.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said this would not be a substantial change because practically all the front’s leaders are members of United Russia.
The seemingly playful creation and disbanding of parties from above has been a tradition in Russian politics since the 1990s, when the ruling party since 1995 was Our Home – Russia.
It was replaced by Unity (Yedinstvo) in 1999, and two years later it was amalgamated with the Fatherland-All Russia party to create United Russia.
The Kremlin has continued to form new parties. 
Despite the rumors around United Russia, not all believed the party would undergo radical reform.
“These discussions about reforming United Russia are a way to boost Putin’s popularity rating ahead of the presidential election,” said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information. “In all likelihood, there will be no significant changes.”

TITLE: Mikhalkov States He Would Vote for Opponent in Debate
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nikita Mikhalkov, director and official backer of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin, admitted during a debate that he would vote for his opponent Irina Prokhorova, sister of billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, if she were on the ballot. 
“If you were running for president instead of your brother, I would vote for you, because from the point of view of depth, intuition and education, for you, it seems, everything has passed to the female side [of the family]” Mikhalkov said, RIA-Novosti reported. 
The two debaters in Monday’s event were acting as representatives of the presidential candidates. Putin said he will not take part in debates personally as they would require him to officially take time off from his job as prime minister. 
Prokhorova dominated much of the debate, noting the lack of cultural development in Russia and chiding the current leadership for their lack of attention to this area. She positioned her brother as the only candidate who places culture and education at the head of his program. 
Mikhalkov criticized Prokhorov for his wealth and lack of family, arguing that Prokhorov would be a bad choice to lead people with whom he has little in common. 
Some have criticized the debates as absurd. “Pre-election debates in Russia are held without the participation of the candidates,” Delovoi Petersburg wrote. 
Blogger Oleg Severyukhin wrote that “the debates of the candidates’ representatives are a parody of presidential elections in Russia.”

TITLE: Nukes on Sub During Fire
AUTHOR: Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A fire at a dry-docked Russian nuclear submarine in December could have sparked a radiation disaster as it was carrying nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and other weapons, despite official statements to the contrary, a Russian news magazine reported Monday.
The respected Kommersant Vlast said the fire aboard the Yekaterinburg could have triggered powerful explosions that would have destroyed the submarine and scattered radioactive material around a large area.
When the fire erupted on Dec. 29, Russia’s Defense Ministry said all weapons had been unloaded before the submarine was moved to a dry-dock for repairs at the Roslyakovo shipyard in the Murmansk region.
The ministry declined immediate comment on the magazine’s claim.
It took hundreds of emergency workers more than 20 hours to extinguish the massive blaze that shot orange flames up to 20 meters into the air. The Defense Ministry said an unspecified number of crew members remained inside the sub during the fire and that seven crewmen were hospitalized after inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from the blaze.
The fire, which authorities later blamed on a breach in safety regulations, erupted at wooden scaffolding around the sub and quickly engulfed the vessel’s rubber-coated outer hull.
With the sub’s hydraulic systems incapacitated, the crew had to manually remove heavy torpedoes from tubes in the bow to prevent them from exploding as temperatures were rising quickly.
The magazine said that an explosion of torpedoes, each carrying 300 kilos of TNT would likely have destroyed the bow and could have triggered a blast of nuclear-tipped missiles in the midsection and the vessel’s two nuclear reactors.
“Russia was a step away from the largest catastrophe since Chernobyl,” Komersant Vlast said, referring to the 1986 explosion at a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine.
The magazine said that weapons are normally removed from subs before repairs, but the navy wanted to save time.

TITLE: Kangaroo Meat May Return to Russia
AUTHOR: By Olga Solovyova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Australia is making a renewed effort this year to lift a 2009 ban on imports of kangaroo meat to Russia.
The Federal Consumer Protection Service, which issued the ban after it uncovered cases of bacterial contamination, said Australia is also asking to allow its meat producers to ship other animal products to the newly formed Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, Bloomberg reported.
According to data supplied by the Australian Embassy, Russia imported 5,300 tons of kangaroo meat in 2008-09 — the last full 12-month period before the ban went into effect — representing 59 percent of total exports.
‘’This was nothing for the Russian meat market, which, for example, imported a total of up to 800,000 tons of beef in 2009,’’ said Sergei Yushin, head of the National Meat Association’s executive committee. Nearly all the kangaroo meat was being supplied to the Far East — the Primorye region — and was used in the meat-processing sector, Yushin said. So, Muscovites were denied the chance to taste kangaroo meat sausages.
Kangaroo meat was essential for the Primorye region meat market, Vladivostok-based importer Igor Dorokhov told The St. Petersburg Times.
“I’ve been in this business since 1998, and until the ban in 2009 was delivering 150 tons to 200 tons per month on average,” Dorokhov said. “I would continue this, if supplies of kangaroo meat were allowed. There is not enough meat production in the Primorye region — just 30,000 head of cattle now — it’s zero,’’ he said.
Unlike beef, kangaroo meat was not limited by import quotas. “Now we are forced to work with St. Petersburg and Moscow companies,” Dorokhov said. Shipments from Australia directly to Vladivostok cost $4,000 per container, but to get them from Moscow or St. Petersburg to Vladivostok will cost $9,000 per container.
Importers say kangaroo meat was cheaper for them than beef. In 2008-09 it cost up to $3.50 per kilogram — 20 cents cheaper then beef.
“It means that you can make sausages cheaper with the use of additives and fillers,’’ he said. 
After the kangaroo meat ban, prices on meat products in Primorye region shot up 20 percent.
But local industry experts have doubts about the meat. “Kangaroos are wild animals, in Australia they are like locusts,” said Yushin of the meat association. “They damage farms and are shot in fields. We don’t know when this meat makes it to meat-packing plants. Our sanitary instructions were not followed on a number of occasions,’’ he said.
Importer Dorokhov disagrees and told The St. Petersburg Times that a lot of independent laboratory research was done and that nothing harmful was found in the meat.
‘’This meat for the restaurant segment is exotic — it cannot be called popular,” said Nadezhda Kushniryuk, head of The Australian Trade House company. “So there was no panic in the restaurant world in August of 2009” when the meat was banned, she said.
But there was interest. Until the ban, the Australia Open restaurant in Moscow offered patrons three different dishes with kangaroo meat, which averaged 700 rubles ($23) in price. ‘’We sold 50 dishes per month and consumed 10 kilograms of kangaroo meat,’’ said Andrei Voropayev, senior chef at Australia Open.
Kangaroo meat is very rich in protein and contains almost no fat. Some meat aficionados say it tastes like wild poultry.
Its uniqueness could be the cause of its popularity in Russia.
“Kangaroo is exotic and therefore desired. Expensive and unusual are what Russian men desire at the table,” said an expat chef working in Moscow. “But, it’s hard to cook well,” she added.

TITLE: Despite Law, Booze Delivered at Night
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — According to the law, it’s impossible to buy alcoholic beverages at night, but there are ways around that. For example, alcohol can be received as a present, rented, or accepted as collateral.
In Novosibirsk, sales of alcoholic beverages are forbidden from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. But a company called Litrovoz can help. Its business model works as follows: a customer gives a loan to a courier who comes to him, and as collateral he receives a bottle that is the property of the courier.
The cost of delivery of the collateral is from 200 rubles to 500 rubles ($7 to $17), depending on which part of the city you are in. The delivery charge is included in the collateral amount if your order is less than 1,000 rubles. If it’s more, delivery is free.
The courier who brought a Vedomosti correspondent a bottle of whiskey at 12:30 a.m. explained it was possible to give back the collateral and get a refund, if the alcoholic beverage was returned by 10:00 a.m. — but he had never heard of anyone actually doing that.
AlkoPresent, a Novosibirsk club that delivers alcohol accessories, promises to make beverage gifts to its customers. When one orders a souvenir with the symbol of the club on it — a magnet for 500 rubles, a laminated map for 1,000 rubles, or a button for 2,000, and so forth — the purchaser gets as a present a free bottle of the spirit of their choice, whose daytime price happens to coincide with the cost of the souvenir.
A check on the Internet shows other Russian cities are not far behind Novosibirsk. In Moscow there is the Alkozazhigalka company, which offers customers the opportunity to buy a cigarette lighter and get points — one point equals 1 ruble — and then select a bottle as a present for accumulated points.
There is also the regional social organization We Have the Right. One can join by paying the membership fee and get a bottle of booze as a present, though this group requires that passport data be provided.
There are other schemes. Agent 0.5, at a customer’s request, will deliver alcohol from bars and restaurants. Alcoholia.net offers alcoholic beverages for rent — the contract is valid until 8 a.m. The Internet site Alkosale.ru offers around-the-clock delivery of alcohol obtained from duty-free stores.
Legal experts explain that such businesses violate the spirit, but not the letter of the law — giving and renting alcoholic beverages does not require a license. “Now in Russia only the buying and selling of alcohol at specific times is prohibited — everything else is allowed,” said lawyer Ivan Kokarev. In order to prosecute those who offer alcohol at night but don’t formally sell it, it’s necessary to legally prohibit not only sales but also any related transaction, he said.
Viktor Zvagelsky, deputy chairman of the Duma committee on economic policy, who participated in setting up the law said it’s not possible to close every loophole — the punishment for violating the law has to be increased.

TITLE: KamAZ Sees Stress With WTO Entry
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KAZAN — Truck maker KamAZ could see a reduction of its market share due to price competition from other manufacturers after Russia joins the World Trade Organization.
“Will our efforts suffice when Russia joins the WTO, when structural business reform should continue further? We have not yet achieved the technological level we need,” said KamAZ general director Sergei Kogogin last week, Interfax reported.
Kogogin, speaking at a joint session of the Tatarstan economy, industry, trade and energy ministries in Kazan, said he believes that WTO membership could bring price competition and a loss of market share. “We need to look for mechanisms associated with reorientation onto other horizons. This will be linked with further spending cuts, optimizing production processes and sharply increasing labor productivity,” he said.
The company’s business plan forecasts revenue of 123.5 billion rubles ($4.1 billion) and truck sales of 48,600 units in 2012 — up from 45,200 last year.
Kogogin is concerned that other factors could create serious restrictions to company development. 
In addition to macroeconomic risks, Kogogin is concerned about domestic threats to his business such as insufficient transport infrastructure development and energy supply issues.

TITLE: Navalny Nominated For Aeroflot Board
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader Alexei Navalny could become a member of the board of Aeroflot after he was nominated to the position by billionaire Alexander Lebedev.
Lebedev’s National Reserve Bank, which owns about 15 percent of the airline, said late Monday that it had nominated three people, including Navalny, to the board of directors.
Navalny’s presence on the board could “improve corporate governance of the company,” the bank said in a statement.
The other candidates include Alexander Kanishchev, a deputy general director of National Reserve Corporation, the holding that includes National Reserve Bank, and Sergei Alexashenko, the director of macroeconomic research at the Higher School of Economics and already a member of the Aeroflot board. It is not clear when shareholders will vote on the nominations.
Navalny confirmed the nomination and said that he was approached by Lebedev for his “professional skills.”
“Lebedev came up with this proposal, and I think that it is connected with my professional activities, corporate governance and investigation of instances of corruption in large companies. I have a clear, understandable program to improve corporate governance in state-owned or state-controlled companies, which applies to Aeroflot,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Aeroflot, Russia’s national flag carrier, is 51.17 percent owned by the state. It is one of a handful of high-profile state-controlled firms that the blogger has not crossed swords with in his career as an activist investor.
Aeroflot currently has one active independent director on its 11-member board, Alexashenko, who has worked “very effectively,” Navalny said. “Nonetheless, they need to increase the number of independent directors and, if the investors approve me, I will work on eliminating corruption.” He said he has no claims of actual corruption against the company.
Aeroflot is currently fighting a suit by a Los Angeles-based tour company that accused the airline’s U.S. managers of demanding kickbacks as a condition for retaining the exclusive right to wholesale of Aeroflot tickets on the U.S. West Coast. Aeroflot denies the claims.
Navalny shot to fame as an activist investor and anti-corruption campaigner who sued a series of state-owned companies for withholding information from minority shareholders.
He runs three Internet projects — RosPil, which investigates corruption, RosYama, which gathers complaints from drivers about bad roads, and RosVybory, an election-monitoring project.

TITLE: Meds Market Warned To Prep for WTO
AUTHOR: By Olga Solovyova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — New regulations are needed on the pharmaceuticals market before Russia enters the World Trade Organization, the head of the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers said Monday.
“The Health and Social Development Ministry needs to develop new regulation in the pharmaceuticals market now. These steps are not being taken, [and] we only have a law on the distribution of medicines, which was adopted without consideration of WTO entry,” Vladimir Shipkov told The St. Petersburg Times.
Russia has problems meeting international quality standards for medicine, Shipkov said.
Vladimir Dorofeyev, a scientific adviser to the group, said the problem stems from the dissolution of the government Pharmacopoeia Committee in 2004.
“You never know who is responsible for medicines’ quality,” Dorofeyev said. “Some of [the committee’s] functions went to the Federal Health and Social Development Inspection Service, but we still have no uniform state quality standards.”
Industry publication The Pharmaletter noted Sunday that new regulations are slowing the development of clinical trials in Russia. 
 “[For the government] the main thing isn’t effectiveness and safety of medicines, only budget savings. This is unacceptable,” Shipkov said. “We’re entering the WTO now, which means equal rights, equal terms and healthy competition among market participants.”

TITLE: Olympic Hotel Prices Reported
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi a three-star hotel room will cost $160 per night and a four-star room $240, organizing committee president Dmitry Chernyshenko said Sunday, RIA-Novosti reported.
He said these are below-market prices but that investors are “meeting [the government] halfway.”
“In principle, these aren’t market prices — we understand that. Investors are meeting halfway; these are contractual obligations,” Chernyshenko said at a meeting of the Sochi coordinating committee with President Medvedev.
Chernyshenko said there will be 41,000 hotel rooms for the winter games, 20,000 of which will be in newly built three- to five-star hotels.

TITLE: Brutal Cold May Kill Grape Crop
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Up to 50 percent of Russia’s grape crop could be lost due to the extreme cold, spokesmen for several wineries told Vedomosti.
First tests on grapevines in Krasnodar’s Taman region are showing a 30 percent loss, said Fanagoria chief agronomist Pavel Kurilo.
Southern Wine Company general director Andrei Kulko sees losses hitting 50 percent, due to minus-20-degree-Celsius weather and strong winds over the last month — the likes of which he has never seen in his 25 years in the business.
Kulko says it’s too early to panic,  and other experts say vines get damaged by a mix of extreme cold and high humidity — which hasn’t happened yet.

TITLE: Kremlin’s Youth Agency Resembles Cosa Nostra
AUTHOR: By Victor Davidoff
TEXT: In the Internet age, the famous aphorism of the 19th-century military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, “War is the continuation of policy by other means,” may no longer be applicable. Today it’s difficult to say whether an Internet war is the continuation of political battles “by other means,” or whether it’s the spark that sets off new political conflicts.
In Russia, the opposition’s struggle for civil rights got a boost after correspondence between the leaders of the Federal Youth Agency was hacked by an anonymous group. This is already being called “Potupchik-gate” after Kristina Potupchik, the agency’s press secretary whose fateful e-mail was made public.
While hacking the e-mail of Russian opposition leaders has almost become routine, this is the first time the ploy was used against the purported hackers. The result was what the journalist Oleg Kashin called on his LiveJournal blog “the most serious political scandal of the last 12 years.”
Potupchik-gate differs in one key respect from the publication of correspondence of opposition leaders organized by pro-Kremlin hackers. When Alexei Navalny’s e-mail was hacked, everyone could read correspondence from his wife, parents and other private individuals whose right to privacy is protected by the law and basic morality. Nothing of this nature was revealed in Potupchik’s e-mails. What they did reveal was a huge cache of sensational information that makes the state agency on youth affairs look like a branch of the Cosa Nostra.
As the well-known blogger Anton Nosik wrote on his LiveJournal blog: “What I saw in the published correspondence indicates fraud, embezzlement of public funds, an unbridled information war unleashed against Russian citizens, felony activities and misuse of the Federal Youth Agency’s budget. This is the money of Russian taxpayers who have the right to know how they were spammed and deceived with that money.”
The e-mails seem to show that the Federal Youth Agency moved huge amounts of money through the leaders of Nashi to organize DDoS attacks on websites unfriendly to the Kremlin, to buy off a number of top 10 bloggers and on other activities that are dubious both morally and legally.
The most innocent activity was the creation of “independent” sites that criticized the opposition. Far less innocent was paying for wildly critical comments about opposition leaders on popular blogs. The amount of money mentioned in the e-mails would turn even a fighter for “freedom of information” like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange green with envy. A blogger going by the name of Wild_che asked for no less than 18 million rubles a year (about $600,000) for his services.
These prices rival those of an ad campaign in top-end magazines. Publicizing the opening of Nashi’s summer camp at Seliger, for example, cost 1.5 million rubles (about $50,000), and the price tag for covering Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to the camp came in at 2.5 million rubles (about $83,000).
Sergei Dik writes on his LiveJournal blog: “While my fellow citizens are selflessly giving 100 rubles, 500 rubles or 1,000 rubles of their salaries to aid seriously ill children, their taxes are being used to hype some stupid clip about Putin on the Internet or used to nullify an article critical of the government on Gazeta.ru. I don’t know what budget line this comes out of, but it’s a clear misuse of funds. And the Prosecutor’s General Office should look into it.”
The alleged correspondence shows their technique for organizing “call-in votes” for television shows like “Poyedinok” (“Duel”), hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, clearing up the mystery of how xenophobic and pro-Soviet guests consistently rack up 90 percent of the “audience” rating against their liberal opponents.
The most sensational part of the correspondence concerns the alleged organization of DDoS attacks on sites that criticize pro-Kremlin movements. After an article in Kommersant painted Nashi’s activities in a negative light, Potupchik suggests “making Kommersant’s life unbearable: Block their work, and break them physically and psychologically.” As a state employee, Potupchik knows this is criminal: “[These are] criminal acts. No one will be able to prove it, but those bastards will realize that it’s better to leave us alone.”
But even in the Internet age, some old truths have not lost their meaning — like learning the lessons of history. For all the power of the propaganda machine in the Soviet Union, it couldn’t prolong the life of the regime by a single day. As journalist Pavel Sheremet wrote on his LiveJournal blog: “When society’s attitude to the authorities reaches a certain point, no amount of propaganda can keep the situation under control. Discrediting the protest leaders doesn’t work anymore. People just don’t believe it.”
And the more society learns about the activities of Potupchik & Co., the more the authorities are discrediting themselves — and this comes at a time when their trust rating is almost hitting rock bottom.

<i>Victor Davidoff is a Moscow-based writer and journalist whose blog is chaadaev56.livejournal.com</i>

TITLE: between the lines: The Public Television Predicament
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: Responding to efforts to formulate a concept of public-service broadcasting in Russia, legendary television personality Anatoly Lysenko quipped: “The authorities tossed the public a bone, and rather than chew on the bone members of the public began gnawing on one another.”
President Dmitry Medvedev proposed creating a public broadcasting service in his address to the Federal Assembly in late December. The idea became part of a set of proposals aimed at introducing greater democracy to the country’s political system. Medvedev called for a concept of public broadcasting to be placed on his desk by March 1.
Two working groups were formed to carry out that request. The first is led by Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council on Human Rights. The second was formed by the Press and Communications Ministry and includes senior members of the ministry, the presidential administration, Channel One television and the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.
No sooner had they set to work than it became clear just how difficult it is to create a public broadcasting service in Russia.
As leading television host and noted thinker Leonid Parfyonov complained at the protest rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Feb. 4, the task of developing a concept for freeing television from state control was given to the presidential administration — that is, to the very same people who first made national television the lapdog of government in the 2000s.
Another leader of public opinion, Patriarch Kirill, was undoubtedly referring to the almost exclusively liberal membership of the Presidential Council on Human Rights when he said public television risks becoming a “mouthpiece for the minority that declares its demands more loudly than anyone else.”
Russia is 20 years late in its efforts to create a public broadcasting system. Even in developed democracies, the digital revolution has thrown traditional broadcasting into a crisis. As a result, no traditional Western model will help us, says Lysenko who is a member of both working groups. He contends that dreaming up such a system from scratch in just two months would be a profanation.
I would add that Medvedev did not provide any vision of the mission for public television. He said only that it should not be dependent on the taxpayer’s money, advertising revenues or big business. And then he directed television professionals to carry out his instructions. That is like telling generals to reform the army.
Does that mean we should give up on the idea of public broadcasting in Russia? Of course not. I think it is extremely important that the question be on the agenda. In our complex society, there is no better exercise in democracy than the practical task of creating a public broadcasting service.
Both parliamentary and radical opposition parties will demonstrate the degree of their maturity by their ability to force the government to fulfill its promise regarding public broadcasting, as well as by their success in contributing to the creation of a nonpoliticized, neutral and objective television venue. But if we hope to see a qualitative result, it will require more than two hurried months of work.

<i>Alexei Pankin is the editor of WAN-IFRA-GIPP Magazine for publishing business professionals.</i>

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As most St. Petersburg rock musicians and artists show no sign of rushing to disclose their attitude to lawlessness and violations in view of the upcoming presidential elections (see article, this page), some people invited criticism by appearing on a list of 499 official endorsers of Putin published last week.
Most of them are established cultural figures, but one of them caused eyebrows to rise on the St. Petersburg artistic and music scene: The formerly underground artist <b>Sergei “Afrika” Bugayev</b>, who was friends with some leading bands of the Leningrad rock revolution in the late 1980s and was even seen on stage with some drumsticks at a Kino concert.
Explaining his inclusion on the list to Moscow art web site Art Chronika, Bugayev adopted a nonsensical style similar to that of the late local avant-garde pianist Sergei Kuryokhin with whom he collaborated three decades ago. He endorsed Putin, who is rumored to be Russia’s richest man, as an anti-bourgeois leader.
“During the past few months, Putin has turned from a local Russian leader into a global symbol of confronting the evil that we see in the form of capitalism,” he said.
“Nobody has noticed this, especially the intelligentsia, which mostly looks at portraits of Che Guevara.”
Outdated post-modernist jokes aside, Bugayev had already been seen trying to please the Kremlin and be part of its projects to distract youth from political dissent.
In 2009, he caused a controversy by visiting pro-Kremlin Nashi movement’s camp on Lake Seliger with a lecture.
Nashi was formed in 2005 by Vladislav Surkov as a means to prevent developments similar to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution – then the Kremlin’s worst nightmare.
Last year, when members of the public protested against the second verdict for imprisoned oligarch and Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Bugayev popped up as one of the 55 people who signed a petition defending judges from the public outcry.
In December, a pro-Putin art group staged an authorized pro-United Russia “performance” in St. Petersburg to counter unauthorized rallies against electoral fraud in favor of Putin’s party. In its announcement, they wrote that their event was supported by Bugayev.
Several opposition activists who came to the event to protest the fraud were beaten and arrested.
Bugayev may say that he supports Putin unselfishly, because of his admiration of Putin and desire to “prevent civil war,” as he put it in the interview.
But from correspondence between Nashi functionaries, whose email boxes were recently hacked and made available on the web by a group of hackers who call themselves Anonymous, it has become clear that many pro-Putin activities were conceived by pro-Kremlin activists and were very well paid for from the budget. 
Doing shameless and immoral things and presenting them as postmodernist gags will not fool anybody. This joke just isn’t funny anymore.

TITLE: Artists back Civic Union
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Musician Mikhail Borzykin believes it will take a long time for St. Petersburg artists and musicians to unite to fight electoral fraud and oppression. Borzykin, who has fronted rock band Televizor since the 1980s, is one of the most high-profile members of the newly formed Civic Creative Union.
The new association was presented at the Regional Press Institute last week, with journalist Leonid Parfyonov coming from Moscow to give his blessing on behalf of the League of Voters that he helped to found.
But Borzykin said Monday that he was planning to take a break to sort things out, as the Civic Creative Union’s gathering on Sunday degraded into near-chaos, with the moderator encouraging people to speak on a number of subjects, mostly dealing with the nature of creativity and similar topics and having nothing to do with protest.
“There’s necessity in having such an association, a civic union that would be above opposition political groups’ differences, but the selection of administrators for such an organization should be more thorough, in order to prevent every meeting from descending into slapstick,” Borzykin said.
“It needs efficient management, such as they have in Moscow. The League of Voters set some simple, earthly objectives for the coming period, such as assistance to voters, consultations about the situation in the country, and observers. I stood for developing just such a basic program, rather than comparing our creative output.”
So far, the idea of bringing new creative forces into protests has not yielded any spectacular results. An outdoor concert called “For Human Dignity” that the Civic Creative Union held at the Nekrasovsky (Prudki) Gardens in temperatures of lower than minus 15 degrees Celsius on Sunday drew a mere 100 people.
Featuring Borzykin as well as singer/guitarists Mikhail Novitsky and Alexander Zaslavsky, members of the bands Kelia and Teoriya, actress Larisa Dmitriyeva and a number of poets, the concert needed more preparation and advertising, Borzykin said.
In his opinion, many newcomers who have joined the protest movement since the Dec. 4 flawed State Duma elections need updating on recent Russian history.
“For some people in the audience, it was boring to listen to banalities that they passed through several years ago,” Borzykin said.
“People should be at the same level, which means that some should be educated via lectures, seminars or personal talks about the past five years of the protest movement: Which problems have already been overcome and which questions have already been answered. There’s an influx of neophytes who are only starting to become aware of themselves as citizens, while many of us have already walked down this road. A gap is appearing that needs to be bridged.”
So far, St. Petersburg artists and musicians have shown reluctance to join the protest movement and have refrained from taking part in the rallies or any political activities. At an anti-electoral fraud rally in St. Petersburg in December, Moscow music critic and journalist Artyom Troitsky called on the city’s cultural figures and musicians such as Akvarium’s Boris Grebenshchikov and Leningrad’s Sergei Shnurov to speak out against the election violations and join the protests. In a recent interview, Troitsky admitted that they have ignored his appeal.
“They’re not just silent, they support the status quo,” Borzykin said. “As always, Grebenshchikov is trying to sit on two chairs and to maneuver between protesters and authorities, as many do. Shnurov does not even try; he likes that he has creative and financial opportunities and doesn’t want any dramatic change. He defends himself.”
As a list of Putin’s official supporters was published last week, it featured many local established cultural figures, from Mariinsky Theater director Valery Gergiev to actress Alisa Freindlikh. Both were among those who recorded videos in support of Putin as part of his pre-election campaign.
Borzykin said that most established artists and musicians are scared of their positions and incomes becoming worse if they protest against the current political regime.
“As I wrote in a song, ‘Their bellies are trembling / Out of fear it will get worse.’  Maybe they’re scared that they will be replaced with maybe younger and more talented people. People who are freer. That sycophancy toward the authorities will stop being a necessary quality for getting into the creative elite. That loyalty will stop being paid materially.”
During Sunday’s meeting, a young member of the punk-rock band Ploshchad Vosstaniya said that his band had received 3 million rubles ($100,000) as sponsorship from the district authorities.
“It’s good that the guy was na&#239;ve and spoke honestly about it,” Borzykin said.
“This money was stolen from the people and given to him out of a thieves’ common fund. He obviously doesn’t realize that. As soon as there’s money to be given away, they all rush there.”
According to Borzykin, it is too late to discuss issues of creativity, like at Sunday’s meeting.
“The time has passed, the situation is too critical in the country to get involved in creative experiments and pose as an artistic elite or creative class,” he said.
“There’s no time for that, there’s a war going on!”
Borzykin believes that many artists and musicians will grow outspoken and express their solidarity with the people when the discontent reaches a massive scale, just as they did in the late 1980s.
“In the 1980s they all sat in their holes until a certain time,” he said.
“Then, all of a sudden, songs appeared such as [Akvarium’s] ‘This Train Is On Fire’ and Kino’s ‘We Are Waiting for Change.’ When it becomes clear that it’s a winning trend, all our cultural figures will jump on the bandwagon. But the sooner it happens, the better.”
Borzykin cited as an example Alisa’s frontman Konstantin Kinchev, who admitted in recent interviews that Putin has led the country to the wrong place.
“During the past 10 years, [Kinchev] promoted Putin manically and even wanted him to stay for a third presidential term [in 2008],” Borzykin said.
“A change is happening. I think most of those who are being silent now are simply waiting to see who will win, and will then come down on their side quickly.”
Despite the difficulties, Borzykin is all for the idea of people uniting in civic associations.
“The more unions are created, the more constructive they are, the more chance there is of us getting out of this situation,” he said.
According to Borzykin, the struggle will not end with the presidential elections due on March 4. 
“We should steel ourselves for a long fight, because it’s most likely that they will push Putin through — they have a lot of other means aside from ballot boxes to get the result they need; we all know them,” he said.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] will ascend to the throne. The question is how his reputation will suffer and how long he’ll reign for — how soon his reputation of being a fraud will end his political career.”

TITLE: Getting political
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British director Graham Vick is closely monitoring the course of the presidential campaign in Russia, trying not to miss television reports about mass public protests in Moscow and other Russian cities that have been gathering dozens of thousands of people who are looking for an alternative to the Putin-Medvedev vertical of power system. 
Vick is due to stage his rendition of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” at the Mariinsky Theater in April or May of this year. The show, which will be the company’s joint production with the Baden-Baden Opera House, will travel to Germany in July.
Singing the title role in the opera will be bass-baritone Yevgeny Nikitin, one of the Mariinsky’s most precious assets.
One would have thought that the era of theater directors fusing contemporary politics into their shows in an effort to give audiences valuable hints and make important statements between the lines had died with the end of the Soviet Union. Vick, however, is even openly resorting to the method once favored by dissident Russian directors in the caliber of Yury Lyubimov, the ex-director of Moscow’s Taganka Theater.
In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Vick said his concept of “Boris Godunov” depends directly on the fluctuations of the Russian political climate in the wake of the March 4 presidential elections.
The plot of the opera revolves around Russia’s first attempt to elect a tsar, and now, more than 400 years since Boris Godunov won the Russian throne, Vick argues that the relationship between the Russian government and its governed has not changed much at all.
“As you remember, the Russian people never held Boris responsible for what he did, and he was a brutal leader,” the director said. “In this context, I am rather curious to see just how far the authorities will allow the protesters to go.”
As the director points out — and in this respect his sentiments are not much different from those voiced by Russian human rights groups — the relationship between the authorities and the public in Russia has for centuries been damaged: Despite the occasional riots, Russian people have been notoriously obedient, patient, fatalistic and apathetic when it comes to their duties as citizens. 
“Russia is not a country where despotic rulers get their comeuppance,” said Vick. “Importantly, the 1917 revolution when the Bolsheviks massacred Nicholas II and his family essentially became a revenge on one of the mildest and softest-hearted rulers in Russian history.”
Indeed, Nicholas II was not the kind of leader whose way of governing the country would raise the immediate thought of an oppressive rule. Nor was Boris Godunov evil personified. Some Russian historians even argue that he was what we would today call “an efficient manager.” Vick, for one, is convinced that the central confrontation that we see in “Boris Godunov” reveals quintessentially Russian specifics, which, however, can serve as a precious lesson for other countries. 
“Boris is a genuinely Russian story but it can be universally applied, which is very important,” Vick said.
So what message is the new “Boris Godunov” as scrutinized by the British mind going to transmit? It is all about how to set oneself free of one’s fears, how to stop being a slave and get rid of inner censorship. However simple or even trivial it may sound, especially to a Western European, in some cultures the effort of bringing up a generation in the spirit of freedom continuously fails and thus stretches over into decades, if not centuries.
Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, stagings of “Boris Godunov” have mushroomed over Western stages, with directors openly making parallels with contemporary Russian political realities. Boris is often presented as either a caricatured character of the likes of a paranoia-driven freak, or a miserable, emotionally deprived loner who does not have a single soul he can trust. Whether Nikitin’s Boris will fall into either category is yet to be seen.
“Quite honestly, I already know a tiny bit more about my future production than I can afford to tell you at this moment,” Vick admitted. “But you know I do not want a discreet man in a gray uniform to show up by my doorstep and, when I open the door, pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘You know, man, you’d be better off staying where you are.’ 
“Russia’s security services have changed their name since Soviet times, but they have not changed their attitude.”

TITLE: the word’s worth: Putting everything in its place
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: To put: about a dozen Russian verbs

Remember how I drove you all nuts with the innate propensity of Russian creatures and inanimate objects to stand, sit or lie? And how relieved you were when I moved on to other topics?
Well, I’m back.
You see, there’s just one little, itty-bitty coda to all of those improbably standing plates and preposterously sitting birds. It’s the verb you use to put those animate or inanimate objects in place.
In English, it’s easy: You just put it there. It doesn’t matter if it’s your grandmother in the hospital or a rose in a vase or a frog in your little brother’s bed.
In Russian, it’s not that easy, which I’m sure will come as a great surprise to non-native speakers.
But it’s not that hard, either. In Russian, the verb you use to put someone or something somewhere depends largely on the position you put someone or something in. If you are putting it into a horizontal position, you use the verb pair êëàñòü/ïîëîæèòü. If you are putting it into a vertical position, you use the verb pair ñòàâèòü/ïîñòàâèòü. This is worth mastering. If you get it wrong — and here I speak from decades of listening to the chortling of native speakers — you sound like a total jerk.
Here’s another way of thinking about it: If something lies (ëåæèò), you use êëàñòü/ïîëîæèòü to put it there. If something stands (ñòîèò), you use ñòàâèòü/ïîñòàâèòü. So: Ìû ïîëîæèëè áàáóøêó â áîëüíèöó (We put my grandmother in the hospital). Ïîëîæè õëåá íà ñòîë (Put the bread on the table). Îíà ðåøèëà ïîëîæèòü äåíüãè â áàíê ïîä áîëüøèå ïðîöåíòû (She decided to put her money in a high-interest bank account).
You also use êëàñòü/ïîëîæèòü when putting food on plates. Ïîëîæèòü òåáå ãðèáû? (Shall I serve you some mushrooms?) Although ñîëü (salt), ñàõàð (sugar), ñïåöèè (spices) don’t lie, all the same: Â ñóï ÿ âñåãäà êëàäó ëàâðîâûé ëèñò (I always put a bay leaf in the soup).
And while we’re on food, the fridge is controversial territory. Some people always say êëàñòü/ïîëîæèòü when putting food in both the fridge (õîëîäèëüíèê) and freezer (ìîðîçèëêà).
Other people seem to distinguish between a bottle standing upright and a bag of potatoes plopped on the shelf. Ïîñòàâü âèíî â õîëîäèëüíèê (Put the wine in the fridge). ß ïîëîæèëà ïåëüìåíè â ìîðîçèëêó (I put the pelmeni in the freezer).
When we go to objects that stand (ñòîèò), we use ñòàâèòü/ïîñòàâèòü: Ïîñòàâü ïîäíîñ íà ñòîë (Put the tray on the table). ß ïîñòàâèëà áóòûëêó íà áóôåò (I put the bottle on the sideboard).
Placing people or animals in a standing position also uses ñòàâèòü/ïîñòàâèòü: Ïàñòóõ ïîñòàâèë ëîøàäåé â êîíþøíþ (The shepherd put the horses in the stable).
For some reason, ñòàâèòü/ïîñòàâèòü is also used to place something for a medicinal effect. Sî you use ñòàâèòü with áàíêè (jars), ãîð÷è÷íèê (mustard plaster), òåðìîìåòð (thermometer) and even ïèÿâêè (leeches), even though they lie — or wiggle.
Once you get the hang of it, these verbs are pretty cool. Think of them as value-added verbs: They tell you not only where something is but how it is positioned. ß ïîñòàâèëà êíèãó íà ïîëêó (I put the book on the shelf), meaning the book is standing upright. ß ïîëîæèëà êíèãó íà òóìáî÷êó (I put the book on the side table), meaning the book is lying flat.
And then there are things that sit, but that’s for another day.

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

TITLE: Strutting-edge
AUTHOR: By Ronan Loughney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian fashion from the dawn of perestroika to the turbulent ’90s is the subject of a new exhibit at Loft Project Etagi.
“Alternative Fashion Before the Arrival of Glamour: 1985-1995,’ which comprises a collection of about 100 photographs, offers insight into the Russian underground scene in its most fecund period through the prism of fashion.
Intimately tied to the social background of the period, the exhibit is intended as a journey from the beginnings of Perestroika to what curator Irina Meglinskaya considers its logical conclusion, in terms of fashion at least: The introduction to Russia in 1995 of glossy magazines — the glamour referred to in the exhibit’s title. 
Visitors can see the changing styles throughout the period, from the original period of uninhibited self-expression that characterized the early days of Perestroika, and how it was incrementally informed by the influence of rock, new wave and punk as they trickled through the Iron Curtain, before the process goes full circle with the re-homogenization of fashion through globalization.
While fashion is often labeled as superficial and self-serving, this exhibition makes clear its importance as a tool for social and ultimately political change in the late Soviet Union, serving to galvanize the avant garde and underground. 
The exhibit does however acknowledge the role played by the state itself in the development of fashion, highlighting Raisa Gorbachev’s contribution as the person who invited designers such as Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint-Laurent to the Soviet Union.
Just as the photographs provide an insight into rebellion against the conformism stipulated by Communism, organizers Irina Meglinskaya and Mikhail Baster hope that the exhibition itself can inspire individualism in opposition to today’s marketing-inundated world, that visitors may bring something from the exhibit into their own lives rather than passively looking in on a forgotten time. 

<i>“Alternative Fashion Before the Arrival of Glamour: 1985-1995” runs through March 8 at Loft Project Etagi, 74 Ligovsky Prospekt. M. Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 458 5005. www.loftprojectetagi.ru.</i>

TITLE: Buddhist bounty
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s only traveling exhibition of Buddhist art has returned to the city in a new and bigger format, nearly 10 years after it was first unveiled in St. Petersburg.
This time around, “Treasures of Buddhism,” which has been to nearly 40 cities and been seen by 65,000 museum-goers since it was last on show in the city, is a key event of the Days of Tibetan Culture in St. Petersburg festival, which run through March 18.
The collection on show includes over 200 items, both ancient and modern, created in the workshops and monasteries of India, Nepal, Tibet and Mongolia, as well as closer to home — in the Russian republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia, where Buddhist culture has been developing for centuries. Visitors to the Books and Graphics Center, where the exhibit is being held, have the chance to study paintings on cloth, or thangka, sculptures and ritual objects. The show is accompanied by music and guided tours.
The project aims on the one hand to celebrate the cultural and historical heritage of Buddhism — both on Russian territory and further afield — and on the other hand to present the phenomenon of modern Buddhism. For these purposes, the exhibit is accompanied wherever it goes by a program of meditation classes, thematic lectures and documentary and feature film screenings, which, in light of the growing popularity in contemporary Russia of spiritual practices that have roots in Buddhism, such as yoga and meditation, look set to be very popular. 
The “Treasures of Buddhism” project also comprises a photography exhibit titled “Stupa, Wish Fulfilling,” depicting images of stupas (Buddhist places of worship) in the Republic of Kalmykia, Tibet, Nepal, India and Europe. The photography exhibit has been organized to support the construction of the Enlightenment Stupa due to be inaugurated this summer in the village of Mork in Russia’s Republic of Mari El.
“Treasures of Buddhism” was first held in St. Petersburg back in 2003 to celebrate the city’s 300th birthday, before setting off on a journey around the country. 
This time around, the exhibit comes just in time to help interested parties prepare for the celebration of the Tibetan New Year with Buddhists on Feb. 22.

<i>“Treasures of Buddhism” runs through March 18 at the Books and Graphics Center, 55 Liteiny Prospekt. Tel. 273 5184, 8 911 290 6618. M. Mayakovskaya.   
www.exhibition.gimalai.org</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: MTV teaches politics
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, MTV Russia switched off the reality shows for an hour to teach the kids about politics with a chat show called “Gosdep,” or “State Department,” presented by blonde it-girl and media personality Ksenia Sobchak.
The show was a brave if slightly uncomfortable attempt to bring politicians and activists out of their traditional habitats. Dressed in braces and a T-shirt with portraits of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Sobchak spent much of the time reminding the speakers: “This is MTV, you are talking to young people.”
Segregated on white sofas were representatives of the Bolotnaya Ploshchad protest movement — woods defender Yevgenia Chirikova, Solidarity’s Ilya Yashin and left-wing radical leader Sergei Udaltsov — as well as parliamentary party representatives including A Just Russia’s Dmitry Gudkov. There was also a sprinkling of Nashi figures and the leader of Young Russia, a similar pro-Kremlin youth movement, Maxim Mishchenko.
In the MTV context, Gudkov came off the best as he has dark-haired good looks and the ability to put across a message directly. But many of the others floundered. Mishchenko embarrassingly decided to pull on white gloves, calling them a symbol of the clean hands of the Kremlin youth. Then he pulled off one and threw it at Yashin’s feet, saying the opposition groups were funded from abroad. It lay there limply, looking even more like a condom than the opposition white ribbons do — according to Putin.
Quick as a flash, Yashin said “your white gloves are so you can steal budget money without leaving fingerprints.”
Chirikova then explained that a) the latest protest was paid for via Yandex, which doesn’t accept payments from abroad and b) traveling abroad is not necessarily the same as being hirelings of Western imperialism. “Where’ve you been?” she asked Mishchenko. “Belarus and Egypt,” he said, revealing his broad cultural grasp. She then cast the glove back at him for being in the pay of Cairo in what she called a joke.
Udaltsov looked a bit thuggish on the show, despite his fluency at rallies. He got into a minor scuffle with Andrei Karaulov, a long-term host of a politics show on the Moscow city channel TV Center, who was fired shortly after ex-Mayor Yury Luzhkov. There was minor pushing and shoving, and Udaltsov called Karaulov a liar and suggested that he might be drunk.
The idea to do a politics show on MTV seems a perfect fit for Sobchak, who has been trying to move beyond her roles of professional it-girl and host of love-building reality show “Dom-2.” Her future at “Dom-2” seemed in doubt this week after one of the creators, Valery Komissarov — a former United Russia deputy — said viewers needed a change, according to the Sobesednik.ru web site.
And this week she has been corresponding on Twitter with new U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul about him going on her show. “State Department” that is, not “Dom-2.”
“Mr McFaul, we’re planning to speak about the ‘American plot’ in our next show. I officially invite you to join the discussion,” Sobchak dispatched via Twitter.
McFaul zipped back: “I too want to engage & learn from your audience. We’ll be in touch to arrange.”
If that wasn’t enough, Sobchak also launched a new show on Dozhd television called Not a Word About the Elections, where she talks to the candidates about everything but the polls. First was Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov who seemed deeply uncomfortable. Pricked by questions about things he had never heard of — like hipsters — he seemed very defensive, but also more human than when he spouts Communist slogans. “I would really like you to talk to me in Russian,” he reprimanded Sobchak, calling himself a “simple normal Russian person who loves the country and knows it well.” He then refused to forgive her when she asked him about the “corpse” lying on Red Square.
The big question now is whether Sobchak, whose father was Putin’s mentor, will get all the candidates on her show.

TITLE: THE DISH: Luce
AUTHOR: By Ciara Bartlam
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Slimline dining</b>
Luce will inevitably arouse high hopes and vast expectations of any visitor. After all, it is a restaurant neatly tucked onto the top floor of the upscale Grand Palace boutique mall and boasting a fabulous panoramic view over the Church on the Spilled Blood, Arts Square, the Russian Museum and the Mikhailovsky Castle. And if those expectations would likely consist of good service, fantastic food, sumptuous surroundings, an extensive wine list and a well-heeled clientele, then four out of five is not bad. 
When shooting up through floor upon floor of haute couture in a glass elevator, and being welcomed with a smile, everything boded well for this restaurant on high. However, after passing through the dimly lit lobby area into the cozy, stylish loft that is Luce, we were confronted with the small matter of the size of our table. Even the most frequent restaurant-goers may not have seen a size zero table and yet, such a thing does exist: A table squeezed into the corner between two sofas with little or no room for maneuver, and demanding a well-planned strategy in order to seat all guests. Only a person with size zero thighs (size 2 at a push) and the helpful aid of stilettos would be able to shoehorn themselves into this crevice with ease. But then, that really is the type of person this restaurant was made for. 
With a waitress clearly used to serving more well-heeled guests, our Timberland work boots — though clean and not shabby — did not go down well. After offering no aid with the table and being no help with the menu (the term arugula caused some confusion among our international party), even a smile was too much to ask — a contemptuous roll of the eyes was apparently all that was warranted. Even in Russia — a country renowned for its slow service and haughty wait staff — it seems a small order to ask for some respect.
Where the service fell short, the food accomplished more, though in its own equally slimline way. To start, the bruschetta (390 rubles, $13) is definitely worth ordering. A selection of tomato, artichoke and spring onion bruschetta drizzled with olive oil and topped off with a delicate dose of balsamic vinegar would be a strong start to any meal, but is an absolute necessity at Luce. After being served lime sorbet to cleanse the palate, expectations for the entrees were high. The rabbit and creamy spinach ravioli (630 rubles, $21) was delectable, and the tenderloin steak (990 rubles, $33) was divine with a dollop of pepper sauce (an extra 180 rubles, $6). In fact, both meals were so moreish that our still empty stomachs were left distinctly disappointed: We just wanted more. 
In addition to the size-zero portions, customers should also be aware that sauces and sides are not included in the price of the meat dishes, and that the amount of any starter you want should be stated when ordering. (When the bill arrived, it emerged that instead of one portion of Brie priced at 160 rubles, or $5, we had in fact been served — and charged for — one each.)
Thankfully, the desserts were lavish in what the main courses lacked: Not only were they scrumptious, they were also well sized (perhaps the chef feels this is the only area in which he can really go for it, on the basis that size-zero waifs simply don’t eat dessert). The cr&#232;me brulee (340 rubles, $11) was light and airy, while the chocolate muffin (360 rubles, $12) — which actually resembled hot chocolate fudge cake — melted in the middle and in the mouth. Both were much more gratifying, and left our stomachs finally satisfied, but still with no inclination to give our supercilious waitress any tip except this: Practically throwing an Americano (160 rubles, $5) at a paying guest will not get you one.
But who could complain with such a view? Watching the sun set over the skyline of St. Petersburg is a rare and glorious thing, especially when it’s ravishing winter with clear blue skies. With a glass of wine from the as-expected extensive list, or a coffee in hand, it is a dreamy end to a meal.
Yet despite the decent food and magical view, why would any self-respecting person subject themselves to such surly service? Never mind steak knives and fish forks, a pair of Manolo Blahniks will help you eat with more ease at Luce.

TITLE: Retail Leads Commercial Real Estate Sector in City
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg was the “breakthrough of the year” on the world’s commercial real estate market last year, as the investment volume here increased almost 10 times and reached $2.1 billion, according to Global Capital Flows research published by Jones Lang LaSalle. As a result, St. Petersburg, which had never been ranked among the top 100 cities in terms of real estate investment volume, entered the list in 34th position. 
The office sector continues to be favored by investors: 46 percent of all commercial real estate transactions in the world last year involved office real estate, according to Global Capital Flows data. In St. Petersburg, however, the office segment accounted for just 6 percent of transactions on the commercial real estate market, according to Colliers International data.
Last year saw growth in rental rates and a decrease in the volume of empty premises on the office real estate market. While demand for large office blocks remains, the number of available options decreased. By the end of the year, the total stock of office premises in high quality class A and B business centers amounted to slightly more than 2.2 million square meters, 210,000 of which were completed in 2011, according to research conducted by Maris, part of the CBRE affiliate network. 
The geographical distribution of office buildings in the city’s districts is uneven. The largest numbers of offices are located in the Tsentralny (Central) (18 percent) and Petrogradsky (14 percent) districts, say experts from Maris. Transactions in class A offices took place mainly in the Central district, where most offices of that category are located, while among tenants of class B office premises, the most popular parts of town are the Moskovsky, Central and Vyborgsky districts.
“The Central and Petrogradsky districts are favored by tenants in terms of the number of requests and volume of transactions,” said Natalya Kireyeva, senior analyst in the consulting and valuation department at Maris. “But high office rental rates and a shortage of vacant space in the center makes potential tenants search for offices in other districts.”

<b>The Dawn of Pulkovo</b>
The Pulkovo area, which was once considered hopelessly unattractive, is now becoming a business district. Two business centers — Jupiter and Airport — were built here in 2011, the Zeppelin business center is due to open this year and one more office building will be constructed by 2014, according to data from Knight Frank St. Petersburg. 
Potential tenants primarily show interest in small premises below 100 square meters at a rate of less than 1,000 rubles ($33) per square meter per month, including 18-percent VAT. The most transactions involve class B offices, according to research conducted by Maris. 
Average rental rates for A-class offices are from 1,350 to 1,600 rubles ($45 to $54) per square meter per month, and 900 to 1,200 rubles ($30 to $40) for B-class, according to the same data.
This year, six new A-class business centers and 12 new B-class ones are due to open, according to Maris. Almost half of these premises are located in the Moskovsky district.
“This volume of new office developments will be enough to meet the requirements of tenants while retaining demand at the level seen at the end of 2011,” said Kireyeva.
“In the event of increased demand from tenants, a deficit of office space could occur and would lead to an increase of rental rates above the inflation rate.”
“The decrease in the volume of vacant premises will be slow, as the new supply volume is large and time is needed for its realization,” said Veronika Lezhneva, head of the research department at Jones Lang LaSalle in St. Petersburg. “The high volume of empty premises keeps rental rates from growing. We expect them to grow by 5 to 7 percent and higher on the most in-demand projects.” 
 Maris analysts predict that demand in 2012 will be oriented toward small offices, from 100 to 200 square meters, in existing business centers. Tenants prefer ready equipped premises, mostly class B, located within walking distance of the metro and with parking and convenient access by car. 

<b>Retail Patterns</b>
The most dynamic sector of the St. Petersburg real estate sector is retail, which accounts for 70 percent of the total investment volume, according to Colliers International research.
“The retail real estate market is more favorable compared to other segments,” said Nikolai Pashkov, general director of Knight Frank St. Petersburg. 
“Both demand and supply are active. Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund’s purchase of Galeria mall could become the biggest transaction on the commercial real estate market of St. Petersburg and even Russia. It proves that in spite of the worries of international investors concerning Russian projects and real estate assets, a quality and attractive investment project can be interesting to large foreign investors.” 
Knight Frank St. Petersburg estimated the value of the deal at $1.1 billion. 
A distinct pattern of shopping areas has gradually formed in the city, including the boutique street Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa, the fashion hub Bolshoi Prospekt on the Petrograd Side, the restaurant street Ulitsa Rubinshteina, shoe-store streets Vladimirsky Prospekt and Zagorodny Prospekt and the jewelry street Mikhailovskya Ulitsa. Sadovaya Ulitsa has historically been popular as a medium and lower price shopping zone. The city’s chief retail corridor remains its main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, although its importance declined significantly with the opening in 2010 of the Galeria and Stockmann Nevsky Center malls. With the opening this year of a luxury shopping complex on Bolshaya Konuyshennaya Ulitsa, the image of the upscale shopping street will be moved from Nevsky Prospekt, analysts say. 
The most attractive parts of Nevsky Prospekt are the sunny, even numbered side and the stretch from the Griboyedov Canal to Ploshchad Vosstaniya, as this is where the greatest number of retail and food outlets are located. The number of stores in the top price segment on Nevsky has decreased since the onset of the economic crisis.
“The biggest demand among street retail tenants is for premises measuring 150 to 200 square meters,” said Kireyeva. “The main demand on Nevsky Prospekt comes firstly from visitors, young people and office workers from the business centers situated in the Central district.
“The rental rates in the high street retail segment remain at the level of European cities. Nevsky Prospekt is comparable with the main shopping streets of Rome, Munich, Madrid and Barcelona in terms of their maximum rental prices,” she added.

<b>Continuing Crisis</b>
Although in most European cities the rental rates have returned to pre-crisis levels, St. Petersburg, where rates fell by almost 50 percent, will reach former figures only by the end of this year, experts believe. By the end of 2011, the rental rates on Nevsky Prospekt varied from 3,000 to 8,000 rubles ($100 to $268) per square meter per month, according to Maris experts.
“The forecast for street retail is stable high demand for retail premises that will lead to steady further growth of rental prices,” said Kireyeva. “On average growth will not exceed 7 to 10 percent per year; the premises in greatest demand may rise in price by up to 20 percent per year,” she said.
Currently, about 25 projects representing 650,000 square meters for rent are planned to be opened between 2012 and 2014, according to Colliers International experts. These are both new projects and revived ones that were frozen as a result of the financial situation. 
One new market trend has been to revise the concept of shopping complexes. Among the city’s districts, residential areas are home to the most shopping centers. The biggest retail hubs are the Primorsky and Vyborzhsky districts in the north and the Moskovsky district in the south. On average, the occupancy rate of shopping centers is 93 to 95 percent, according to an overview by Maris. 
“The lack of growth in turnover and uncertainty of the economic situation is forcing retailers to reconsider their development plans,” said Lezhneva.
“Therefore, in 2012 there will be a limited number of new brands on the market. Accordingly, competition between operators who are already present on the market will increase, and this will push up rental rates. We expect rental rates to increase by 5 to 10 percent during this year.”

<b>Warehouse Deficit</b>
The least active sector of St. Petersburg commercial real estate is the warehouse segment. Last year, only one warehouse terminal was opened. As during the past few years since the onset of the financial crisis, developers did not start building new objects and froze those already under construction, meaning only a bare minimum volume of premises was launched on the market. In the absence of new offers yet faced with high demand, the market saw a lack of available premises in quality warehouse complexes. According to Knight Frank St. Petersburg data, by the end of 2011, only 36,000 square meters were available to rent — that is, 3.8 percent of all warehouse premises. The market also suffers from a shortage of single blocks of 5,000 square meters and more. 
Developers didn’t react rapidly to the market situation, according to analysts, so the launch of most objects planned for 2011 was postponed to 2012. Before the crisis, the volume of quality warehouse projects under construction or planned amounted to about 2 million square meters. At present, that figure is just over 500,000 square meters, according to Maris experts.
“The main market trend is the high occupancy of existing warehouse objects — more than 95 percent,” said Mikhail Tunin, head of the commercial real estate department at Knight Frank St. Petersburg.
“This leads to a deficit of supply, and as a result, to the growth of rental rates for high quality facilities. Another trend is demand for buying warehouse premises,” he added. 
Both the supply deficit on the market and the resulting growth in rental rates have led to another market trend: Renting out warehouse facilities that are still under construction. Tenants do this partly because they are unable to find appropriate premises in existing warehouse complexes, and partly to save money by renting out space before rates are increased further. Currently, tenants pay $100 to $118 per square meter per year for class A and $105 to $110 for class B warehouse space, according to Knight Frank St. Petersburg data. 
“In 2012, vacancies will continue to decline because of the limited number of projects scheduled for launch,” said Lezhneva. “Rental rates will continue to grow by 5 to 10 percent per year. There may be a shortage of space in class A space, as only two warehouse projects of this category are planned to be commissioned, and occupancy in them is already close to 50 percent,” she added. 
In 2011, the most active tenants on the St. Petersburg warehouse market were manufacturing companies and retailers.

TITLE: Lost Version of ‘Eugene Onegin’ on at Princeton
AUTHOR: By John Freedman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A play lost but not quite. A musical score quartered and plundered. Three great names in the Russian arts — Alexander Pushkin, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Tairov — who were to have come together under a single marquee in 1937 but never quite did.
Until now, that is.
Caryl Emerson is a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Princeton University. Together with Simon Morrison, a Princeton Prokofiev scholar, she spent the last week suffering anxiety that only those in theater know.
Would the show come together? Would the show fall apart?
The show, in this case, is “Eugene Onegin” in an adaptation that was originally to have been mounted at Tairov’s Chamber Theater in Moscow for the Pushkin centennial in 1937. That never happened because the play was banned and abandoned. It has now taken form at Princeton, however, where an ambitious project highlights two aspects of the work in two different productions.
On Thursday a so-called “music-and-dance-forward version” was presented by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Rossen Milanov, with choreography by Sydney Schiff. Performed one time only at Princeton’s stately Richardson Auditorium, this concert resurrected all of the music that Prokofiev wrote for “Onegin” 75 years ago.
On Friday the “words-forward version” began a two-week run at the Matthews Acting Studio on the university campus. It plays again in Princeton Fri., Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. Directed by Tim Vasen and acted by Princeton students, this dramatic performance features aspects of Prokofiev’s score as performed in a chamber setting by pianist Anna Tchetchetkine.
Emerson, the project manager and inspiration behind the performances, admits having a strong personal commitment to the project. The play, a radical adaptation of Pushkin’s verse novel, was created by the writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, whose reputation Emerson has been instrumental in rehabilitating over the last decade.
Once entirely forgotten in Russia and utterly unknown outside it, Krzhizhanovsky has received considerable attention since his stories, novellas and dramas were unearthed beginning in the late 1980s. Emerson has championed the emergence of what critic Robert Chandler in the Financial Times called “one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century.”
The Princeton “Onegin” is not a traditional reconstruction of an old theater piece, Emerson declares, as it was never cast in 1937. The pieces were created — Prokofiev wrote the music and Krzhizhanovsky submitted his adaptation — but they never came together as a whole.
In the case of Prokofiev’s music, this was, perhaps, not a major loss. As Emerson puts it, Prokofiev “never lost a good tune,” and he recycled much of the music into other compositions. The themes following the character of Tatyana in “Onegin,” for example, were later given a new home in the Natasha Rostova segments of the composer’s opera “War and Peace.”
But Krzhizhanovsky’s adaptation was not the kind of work that could be reused, and it was consigned to the dust heap of history. Until now it has never been published or performed in any language.
Emerson wonders aloud what reactions might have been if “Onegin” had been performed at Tairov’s Theater.
“Pushkin purists didn’t like the adaptation,” she declares, because of the many changes Krzhizhanovsky made. This included beginning with Chapter Two, rearranging other segments and, as Emerson describes it, “forcing” characters to speak their own words, rather than having a narrator report them.
The scholar suspects problems were inherent from the beginning.
Prokofiev’s music was probably “too lush and public” for the kind of play Krzhizhanovsky created, Emerson opines and then, clearly without expecting an answer, she asks how one could put Prokofiev’s “grand, glorious” music together with Krzhizhanovsky’s “small, private, phantasmagorical” text.
Prokofiev admirers will surely be interested to hear how the composer entered into a creative dialogue with Pyotr Tchaikovsky, whose “Eugene Onegin” opera is revered as one of the greats. Prokofiev quotes Tchaikovsky almost note-for-note in parts of the scene where Tatyana writes a love letter to Onegin. But elsewhere, Emerson asserts, Prokofiev took the music places Tchaikovsky never could have gone.
Prokofiev’s music to Tatyana’s dream is done in a “scary way,” Emerson noted. Tchaikovsky was “too much a romanticist to do that in its proper Gothic spirit.”
Both the musical and dramatic performances of “Eugene Onegin” that I attended played to full houses. Whether or not that means new life has been breathed into a lost work remains to be seen. It is, after all, a long way from a university stage to a professional theater.
One thing is certain, though: a play not performed in 1937 has seen the light of day in 2012.