SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1698 (9), Wednesday, March 7, 2012
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TITLE: Human Rights Court Won't Review Yukos Case
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The European Court of Human Rights will not reconsider its September decision in a case brought by defunct oil company Yukos against the Russian state, Moskovskie Novosti reported Monday.
In September 2011 the court ruled that Yukos did not have sufficiently weighty evidence to prove that their bankruptcy was politically motivated.

Yukos intended to appeal the decision, but an unnamed source in the Strasbourg-based court told Moskovskie Novosti that it will not be reviewed.

Ex-billionaire owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 on charges of fraud and tax evasion and was sentenced to eight years in prison. His jail term was extended in December 2010, when he was convicted on new charges. He will not be eligible to be released until 2016.

The court has not yet made an official statement about the review.

TITLE: Kudrin Reaffirms He Won't Work in New Government
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Former Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said he has no intention to work in the new administration of Vladimir Putin, using Twitter to reaffirm his earlier stated position, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.

"On Sep. 24 I announced my decision that I would not work in the new government," Kudrin wrote in his micro blog late Saturday night.

Kudrin left his position as minister after United Russia's congress in September at which President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he would not run for reelection, but instead switch jobs with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Kudrin said that he would not work with the government under these conditions because of existing disagreements on economic policy.

After his departure, Kudrin said he was ready to participate in the creation of a new right-wing party. He stated that he agrees with the opposition opposing the results of the Duma elections and expressed willingness to support the project of organizing a dialogue between society and government.

Presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich ironically compared the prospect of Kudrin returning to the government with the possibility of his participation in the football championship of Europe. "And I'm not going to play the UEFA Cup," Dvorkovich said on Twitter after retweeting the news that former finance minister does not see himself in the Cabinet.


TITLE: Russian Bourses Rise To Meet the World
AUTHOR: by Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Moscow’s bourses jumped in early trading Sunday morning as they caught up with the gains made on international markets during the holiday period.

The apparent success of debt restructuring in Greece and positive industrial data from the United States boosted European- and Asian-traded equities Thursday and Friday while Russians took a break for International Women’s Day celebrations.

The MICEX Index broke through the 1,600 mark and closed up 2.13 percent at 1,606.33 Sunday, its biggest rise in two weeks. The dollar-

denominated RTS Index finished at 1,721.27, up 2.63 percent. After rapid gains on opening, a weak news flow meant stocks remained almost flat for the rest of the day before climbing slightly ahead at the 18:45 bell.

Global stocks rose Thursday and Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.66 percent and London’s FTSE 100 rose 1.65 percent.

“Greece exchanged its [old] debt for new, which allowed global investors to end the week in an optimistic mood,” analysts at Nomos Bank wrote in a note Sunday. “Good labor data from the United States [also] encouraged market players.”

Urals crude, the benchmark for Russian oils, closed up slightly Friday to $123.74 a barrel.

Gains on Wednesday and Sunday mean that the indexes have almost pared last week’s fall in the wake of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s election win. The MICEX Index dropped 3.9 percent Tuesday after the forcible dispersal of protesters near the Kremlin and worrying economic data from China, coming off a seventh-month high recorded the day before.          

Both Sunday’s bounce and last week’s losses were primarily linked to external factors, said Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist at Otkritie Capital. But he added that the low turnout at an opposition rally Saturday was “another reason for investors to be more positive about the ability of Russia to sustain political stability.”

“The situation is getting back to normal,” Tikhomirov said, referring to recent political events. “In terms of investor sentiment that’s definitely better because investors are very cautious when … there are mass demonstrations taking place.”

Market leaders for the MICEX Index on Sunday included oil pipeline monopolist Transneft that gained 6.2 percent and Surgutneftegaz that rose 4.8 percent. Gazprom was up 1.8 percent, VTB by 1.8 percent and Russia’s biggest lender, Sberbank, by 1.9 percent.  

Analysts at InvestCafe said in a note Sunday that the presidential election had “introduced clarity” and that demonstrations had not had a significant impact on trading. “Therefore investors can be calm,” they wrote.

The ruble also gained. In currency trading on MICEX the dollar lost 17 kopeks and closed at 29.52 rubles. The euro also lost 17 kopeks, ending the day at 38.82 rubles.

InvestCafe said the high oil price and growth on global stock exchanges could simulate interest in riskier assets this week. They identified the ongoing debt restructuring in Greece as the factor that would weigh most on markets.

TITLE: Putin's Third Term to Focus on Physical and Spiritual Development
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In Vladimir Putin's third term as president he will focus on the physical and spiritual development of the country, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday.

"The first term was a reanimation of the country, the second term was the rehabilitation of the country, and now begins the physical and spiritual development of the country — its economy and all areas," Peskov said in comments aired on state-controlled Channel One, Interfax reported.

Peskov continued his focus on the president's willingness to get down to business: "This updated Putin does not come, sit down and ask 'Well what do we do now?' He knows well where he will go, what he will do, how he will do it, when, and with whom."

TITLE: Pussy Riot 'Icons' Appear in Novosibirsk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Icon-like signs have appeared in the city of Novosibirsk portraying a masked figure from the all-female punk band Pussy Riot, which has gained notoriety after two of its members were jailed last week for participating in an unsanctioned performance at Christ the Savior Cathedral.
The images were placed in sidewalk billboards and picture a figure in a purple mask and red cloak, garments reminiscent of the bright clothes that are one of the band's trademarks. At the top of the signs are the letters "SVBD PSRT," apparently a shortened version of the message "Free Pussy Riot."

Photographs of the signs were posted on the website of magazine Kissmybabushka.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were arrested last week after Pussy Riot's five-minute performance Feb. 21. A Moscow court ordered the two women to remain in custody until April 24 while they await trial on charges of hooliganism.

At an opposition rally on Saturday many demonstrators held signs calling for the release of the jailed band members. Representatives of the Orthodox Church have said they believe the two women, both of whom have young children, should be let go.

TITLE: Protesters Face Second Night in Police Custody
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hundreds were detained in downtown St. Petersburg on Monday as the authorities clamped down on protests against violations during Vladimir Putin’s presidential election campaign and the March 4 voting. Most of those detained looked likely to spend another night in custody as this paper went to press.
Coupled with more than 200 arrests at an authorized protest in Moscow the same night, some observers say the crackdown shows that the Kremlin has chosen to stop any pretence of liberalism now that its campaign to return Putin to the presidency has been successful.
City Hall did not respond to applications to authorize post-election rallies on St. Isaac’s Square, where the city’s Election Committee is located, despite a law that requires the authorities to contact the applicant within three days if they have any objections. 
“I received one call proposing to move the rally to Ploshchad Sakharova, which I turned down, but I haven’t received any written answer,” said Tatyana Dorutina, chairwoman of the For Honest Elections committee and one of the applicants.
As people started to come to the square on Monday evening, they found that the police had blocked the site in front of the Mariinsky Palace, which houses both the Legislative Assembly and the city Election Committee. Yellow fences blocked off the site and the police claimed that film shooting was underway. On the other side of the fence, a retro vehicle with a driver, two cameramen and two other people stood on the otherwise empty site.
Several Legislative Assembly deputies, including Yabloko’s Maxim Reznik and Vyacheslav Notyag and the Communist Party’s Irina Komolova, attempted to turn the gathering into a meeting with deputies, which does not require permission from the authorities.
“Russia has been sentenced to six years in prison; our task is to get it released on parole,” said Reznik, addressing people near to the entrance to the Mariinsky Palace. 
The first wave of mass arrests started after Andrei Dmitriyev of The Other Russia party, whose leader Eduard Limonov failed to get registered as a presidential candidate, tore up a ballot and threw the pieces in the air over people’s heads.
As activists chanted “Your elections are a farce” and “Russia without Putin,” riot-gear clad OMON police broke into the crowd and started arresting people. Throughout the evening, Reznik was reportedly arrested four times, but was released each time because of his immunity as a deputy.
Communist party deputy Komolova was however taken to a police precinct, where she was held for three hours.
OMON police repeatedly surrounded large groups of people and took them one by one to police buses, including women and elderly people. Crowds moved around St. Isaac’s Square between the Mariinsky Palace and Astoria Hotel. 
Later in the evening the police surrounded the people standing by the gardens in front of the Astoria in a similar manner, but later retreated when it emerged that the police had run out of buses.
Some arrests were conducted in a brutal manner, with officers dragging people along the asphalt, kicking and beating them.
According to The Other Russia, more than 480 people of an estimated 4,000 protesters were arrested. 
Although most of those detained were standing still, without shouting slogans or resisting arrest, they were later charged with both violating the rules on holding public rallies and with failure to obey police orders. The latter offense is punishable with a 15-day prison sentence.
City police precincts were overcrowded with the detained, according to reports, so some were taken as far away as Kronshtadt, a small island town located 36 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg. On Tuesday, the police said that 280 people had been detained — only about half the figure given by The Other Russia.
People stayed in the vicinity of the square for more than three hours, with sporadic protests emerging at different parts of the area.
Preliminary results given by the city Elections Committee on Tuesday gave Putin 58.77 percent. Dorutina, who observed voting as the chair of the League of Women Voters, estimated his real result in St. Petersburg at between 30 and 40 percent.
Dorutina described Sunday’s voting as a “special op,” citing fake polling stations that turned in figures of more than 90 percent for Putin, observers with fake IDs, lengthy breaks in the work of web cameras at polling stations and the heads of election commissions leaving their stations with official protocols of the vote, among other violations.
“The authorities create angry citizens without thinking,” Dorutina said Tuesday.
“They are young people who became election observers in the hope of changing the situation, and instead they got a kick in the teeth. Yesterday they got a second kick.”
Reznik described Monday’s arrests and police brutality as “unmotivated.” 
“It was outrageous, people were seized for nothing, in my view,” Reznik said by phone Monday.
“The reaction was like that because the law-enforcement — or rather repressive — bodies, have been given the task of cleaning up the entire field. It was said that the ‘elections were as honest as they could get.’ 
“People disagree with that, and the authorities disagree with people disagreeing with them. It could have been done differently, they could have allowed people to hold a peaceful meeting with deputies. But they didn’t.”
The opposition said Tuesday that protests on St. Isaac’s Square would continue on Tuesday and Wednesday.

TITLE: Putin Loses 17 Percent of Vote in City
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the winner of Sunday’s national presidential elections, officially gathered 58.77 percent of votes in his hometown of St. Petersburg — 5 percent less than his overall rating of 63.6 percent, the Central Election Committee said this week.
In comparison to the 2004 presidential election — the last one in which he stood for president — Putin lost almost 17 percent of votes in his native city. Back then, he had the support of 75.12 percent of local voters.
The non-commercial association Golos that provides independent election monitoring said that according to its data, gathered by text messages from voters, Putin got 50.44 percent in St. Peterburg, and 50.23 across the country. A minimum of 50 percent of the vote is required to avoid a runoff.
In contrast, Russia’s third richest man, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov received significantly more votes in St. Petersburg than his national average: 15.52 percent in the city versus 7.98 percent across the country. 
According to Golos, Prokhorov got 20.45 percent of votes in the city.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who came in second in the elections, also garnered fewer votes in the city than nationwide — 13.06 percent compared to 17.18 percent. Golos gave him 15 percent of the vote.
Fellow St. Petersburg native, A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov, got 6.61 percent here against 3.85 percent at a national level.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, got 4.65 percent in St. Petersburg compared to 6.22 percent across the country.
Voter turnout in St. Petersburg was 62.27 percent, the city’s Elections Committee said.
Putin’s leading position was evident from looking into the new transparent ballot boxes at polling stations Sunday.The majority of ballots visible showed a tick in front of Putin’s name.
Voter Dmitry Belov, 37, a company director, said he voted for Putin because he “could at least see real positive things he has done for the country.”
“All the other candidates just give populist promises,” Belov said.
The support in St. Petersburg for Prokhorov was also in evidence from the answers of other voters.
Sergei Nikolayev, 33, an engineer, said he didn’t hesitate to vote for Prokhorov.
“I voted for Prokhorov because I wanted to have at least one president who had his own yacht before he became president,” he said. “What I mean is that I hope a person as wealthy as Prokhorov would not be trying to line his pocket even further at the nation’s expense. I think such a successful businessman would know what to do to make his country economically prosperous”. 
Others expressed their dissatisfaction with all of the candidates by spoiling their ballots.
Yelena Gavrilova, 36, a manager, said she spoiled her ballot because she “didn’t want to vote for any of the candidates.”
“I couldn’t vote for Putin because, though he has done some good things for the country, I’m tired of all the same people ruling the country. They should change. At the same time, I have become disappointed by all the other candidates, who behave like clowns,” Gavrilova said.
Sergei Shelin, a St. Petersburg-based political analyst, said the fact that Putin received fewer votes in the city than in the country — like in Moscow — indicated that residents of the two capitals “had been caught up by the recent wave of politicization to a higher extent” than the rest of Russia.
“The fact that Putin gained significantly fewer votes in his home town compared to 2004 may mean that his image of a native St. Petersburg president does not work here anymore,” said Shelin. “People simply see him as a candidate, regardless of where he comes from.” 
Shelin put Prokhorov’s success in St. Petersburg — as well as in Moscow, where according to Golos data he gathered 22 percent — as being down to the fact that “Prokhorov was the only alternative candidate with a new face and some new ideas.”
“As for Zyuganov, he has never been too popular in St. Petersburg,” he said.
The city police are investigating about 70 calls about alleged violations at the elections, RIA Novosti news agency said Monday. Observers complained that votes were counted out of view of the cameras, while Prokhorov said that 50 of his observers had been prevented from doing their jobs at a number of polling stations in the city.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Policeman Detained</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police have detained Oleg Prokhorenkov, deputy head of the police department at which a 15-year-old boy was beaten to death earlier this year.
Prokhorenkov was detained last week in connection with the teenager’s death, Interfax reported, citing the city’s Investigation Committee.
The Investigation Committee alleges that on the night of Jan. 22, Prokhorenkov grabbed the teenager by his clothing and pushed him toward a table, causing the teenager to hit his head on the table and fall to the floor. Prokhorenkov then punched him repeatedly in the head and body, the committee says.
Denis Ivanov, a police officer from the same department who was detained earlier in the case, also hit the teenager with a broom and punched him in the head and body, the committee said. 
The teenager died in an ambulance from head and brain injuries.
Nikita Leontyev was detained on Jan. 22 by police, reportedly as he tried to flee the scene of a robbery.
The scandal was followed by the dismissal of a number of police officers and the city’s chief of police, Mikhail Sukhodolsky.

<b>Taxi of Death</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A taxi driver who murdered and robbed his clients in St. Petersburg was sentenced to life in prison last week, Interfax reported.
Agaron Galstyan, 39, was found guilty of murder, causing grievous bodily harm and robbery, the Investigation Committee said.
Between April 2005 and March 2008, Galstyan worked as a private taxi driver and specifically targeted people who were drunk, according to the investigation. He would then offer them coffee laced with a tranquilizer.
After his victims consumed the drink, most lost consciousness. Galstyan would then drive them to deserted places, steal their belongings, drag the people out of his car and leave them outside. In this way, he killed seven people, robbed 26 and stole nine people’s documents.

<b>High-Speed Art</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An exhibit featuring work by Vyacheslav Mikhailov, a Russian artist known for painting pictures in just a few minutes, opened at the State Russian Museum last week.
The exhibit comprises more than 30 paintings of the north of Russia and more than 100 graphics.
The artist works on his pictures for just a few minutes in order to capture his initial emotions and impressions and uses non-traditional materials such as roofing felt, textiles, paint, cement and sand.

TITLE: Yeliseyevsky Store Reopens on Nevsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The historic Yeliseyevsky store, one of St. Petersburg’s oldest food stores, will reopen after undergoing years of renovation work on March 8.
The reconstruction work has restored the original fa&#231;ade of the historical building on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. On the first floor, workers have restored 33 meters of counters behind which goods are sold by weight and built 12 new counters where exclusive food products will be sold, the store’s press service announced.
The top floor of the distinctive Style Moderne building is due to house an upscale restaurant, while another restaurant and bar will open in the former cellar of the store.
The story of the Yeliseyev brothers’ trading house began in 1813 when Pyotr Yeliseyev came to St. Petersburg, bringing with him a portable stall and a sack of oranges, and began selling them.
Construction of the building took place from 1901 to 1903 and the store was opened in time for the 90th anniversary of the trade dynasty.  
In Soviet times, when many food items were scarce and rationing was commonplace, the Yeliseyevsky store was famous for offering a wider range of rare delicacies. 
The main room of the store is a large shopping hall decorated with mirrors, stucco molding, bronze wall lamps with crystal decorations, and marble and redwood paneling.
In 2013 it will celebrate its 110th anniversary.

TITLE: Big Workload and Money Send Sick Russians to Work
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fifty percent of employees in Russia go to work when they are sick, according to research by HeadHunter recruitment website.
HeadHunter also discovered that the main medicines used by Russian employees are “folk remedies” such as garlic and lemons. Pharmaceutical medicine is less popular.
The research indicated that 53 percent of employees go into the workplace when they are sick. The main factor motivating people to go to work during illness is a heavy workload (52 percent) and an unwillingness to visit medical centers and doctors (42 percent).
At least eight percent of respondents confessed that their employers forced them to work when they were sick.
Nearly all respondents (97 percent) said that their colleagues come to work with colds. About 60 percent of people are afraid of catching infections from them. However, only 29 percent of people are critical of people who continue to work when ill with colds and viruses, while 52 percent consider it understandable, the survey showed.
To avoid catching viruses at work, 45 percent try to protect themselves with garlic, lemon and other home remedies, while 43 percent use anti-viral or immune-boosting medicine. Eleven percent have anti-flu vaccinations, while 5 percent wear surgical masks. About a quarter do not use any protective means when their colleagues get sick.
Visitors to HeadHunter’s website wrote comments there suggesting that there could be other reasons that lead people to go to work when sick.
“It’s all because of employee hyper-responsibility... If we look into employment contracts, two thirds of employees will see that the salary stipulated by their contract does not match their actual earnings, while paid sick-leave is calculated using the much lower official salary... In a situation like this, people would even come to work from the morgue,” wrote one commentator who gave her name as Anna.
Another person who left comments under the name of Andrei said it was “very unprofitable to be sick in [my] job since a person could lose quite a substantial amount of money in the space of a week.”

TITLE: City to Become More Bicycle Friendly
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Ivanov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: City Hall plans to launch a pilot scheme of park and ride facilities for cyclists by the middle of this year, it was announced at a press conference last week.
Alexei Bakirei, head of the city’s Transport and Transit Policy Committee, said that two to four facilities would be set up in the second quarter of 2012, allowing cyclists to ride to the nearest metro or railway station from home, park their bicycles in a secure place, and then continue on into the city center. The new facilities will be created at existing guarded park and ride facilities for motor vehicles.
The city government will also press on with a program to set up cycle lanes and paths. Funding has been secured for the completion of a route on the western part of Krestovsky Island later this year, and cycle lanes on Prospekt Lunacharskogo and Ulitsa Rustaveli may be extended to Piskarevsky Prospekt. However, they will remain unconnected to other cycle lanes in the Frunzensky, Kolpinsky and Pushkinsky districts, leaving their contribution to solving the city’s transport issues in doubt. Out of a total of 115 cycle paths planned under a city government program approved in 2008, only two were built, Bakirei said.
The committee is working on formulating transport strategy for St. Petersburg through 2025, which will also cover efforts to develop cycling infrastructure in the city. The plan is to be based on input from cyclists in St. Petersburg, some of whom filled out questionnaires, and on the international experience of bike-friendly cities like Helsinki and Copenhagen, Bakirei said.
Ilya Gurevich, honorary chairman of the Velopiter bike club, said at the same press conference that there is “certain enthusiasm” regarding City Hall’s plans. Cycling in St. Petersburg has grown in popularity significantly during the last 10 years, and people riding to work are no longer considered the anomaly they once were. 
If adequate cycling infrastructure to ensure safety and security appears, the number of cyclists will increase even further, Gurevich said. A grid of radial routes connecting residential districts with the city center should be a priority, as that’s where most of the fatal traffic accidents involving cyclists take place, he added.
Involving the general public in developing transport strategy may be a bad idea, as people are likely to be unwilling to switch from cars to bicycles, Zhenya Sofronov, founder of the i-bike-spb.ru project that aims to make the city a more cycle-friendly place, told The St. Petersburg Times by email. The fact that the city’s bicycle transport plan is being developed by the Car Transport Research and Development Institute may also negatively influence the outcome. There has to be political will to make traveling by bicycle quicker and more convenient than by car, Sofronov added.
Some 1.5 million Petersburgers own bicycles, including Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, and cyclists comprise about 10 per cent of traffic in the city, according to a press release issued by the committee earlier last month. According to a poll cited by the committee, the majority of cyclists in St. Petersburg are men aged between 21 and 40 years old (29.8 percent), or women between 31 and 50 (25.1 percent).
Currently, there are very few cycle lanes in the city, and accidents involving cyclists are a frequent occurrence. A 75-year-old cyclist was killed in the early morning of Feb. 28 in a traffic accident on the St. Petersburg to Ruchi highway in Lomonosovsky district, 47news.ru web site reported.

TITLE: Poll Shows Russians Prefer Their Men Older and Women Younger
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Men remain attractive longer than women as they reach their peak significantly later in life, a poll conducted by Superjob.ru’s research center reported.
Russian women set the most attractive age for men at between 36 and 40 years old, while men said women were at their most attractive between 26 and 30.
21 percent of men said women are at their most beautiful and sexy when they are between 21 and 25 years old, 29 percent said it is when they’re between 26 and 30 years old, and 21 percent believed women’s peak to be when they are between 31 and 35 years old. Only 11 percent of Russian men consider women between 36 and 40 to still be attractive.
According to the survey, men, on the other hand, become attractive only after they are 26 years old. Seventeen percent of those polled said that men are most attractive between 26 and 30 years old, 23 percent preferred men between 31 and 35 years old and the same percentage favored those between 36 and 40 years old. Another 17 percent said they liked men between 41 and 45.
Men said they considered women between 26 and 30 to be the most beautiful, charming and sexy because “this is the age when women’s sexuality, appearance, morals and career opportunities are at their peak and they are the best age for having children.”
Sociologists determined that women aged between 21 and 25 were most attractive to men of the same age. Men older than 25 preferred women between 31 and 35 years old.
The poll also showed that men find women between 36 and 40 years old to be more attractive than young women between 16 and 20, winning nine and four percent of the vote, respectively.
Three percent of men consider women to be most attractive between 41 and 45 years old, while the same percentage of women said men were most attractive between the ages of 21 and 25.

TITLE: SKA Fighting to Defeat CSKA in Play-Off Series
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg SKA avoided disaster by edging CSKA Moscow out 2-1 in overtime in Moscow on Sunday. They now lead their Kontinental Hockey League conference semi-final play-off series 3-1. 
SKA has dominated at home with 4-1 and 7-1 performances at the Ice Palace last Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, but fell to the rival Red Army team 3-2 in overtime in game 3 in Moscow on Saturday. Game 5 was due to be played Tuesday night at the city’s Ice Palace. 
The Petersburg team has three more chances to eliminate CSKA Moscow and join Dinamo Moscow and Avangard Omsk, which swept their play-off series 4-0 against Dinamo Minsk and Amur Khabarovsk, respectively. 
In the Eastern Conference, regular season champion Traktor Chelyabinsk lead their series with three wins and one loss after downing Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk 6-3, Barsy Astana defeated Metallurg Magnitogorsk 4-1, taking a 3-1 lead in their series, and Ak Bars Kazan shut out Salavat Yulaev Ufa 3-0 and also lead their series 3-1. 
The remaining Western Conference series are both tied at two games apiece after Tarasov Division Champions Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod defeated Dinamo Riga 4-1 and Severstal Cherepovets blanked the Moscow region’s Atlant 4-0.

TITLE: Finns Seek Russian Partners
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Minister of European Affairs and Foreign Trade, has invited Russian business representatives to take part in a Finnish Business Forum in St. Petersburg on May 30, 2012. 
The purpose of the forum is to bring together businessmen and top managers from both countries.
“Finnish interest in Russia is very high these days,” Stubb said.
“Many Finnish companies have been successful in Russia with the help of Russian partners and employees. There are currently about 400 Finnish companies operating in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast that are looking for investment opportunities and Russian partners,” he said.
The program of the forum, which is to take place at the Sokos Hotel Palace Bridge, will include presentations from various sectors on Finnish expertise and innovation projects. The forum will present businesses with the opportunity to exchange contact information and discuss possible further collaboration opportunities between Russian and Finnish companies.
Among the participants will be Stubb himself, Illo Kokkila, head of construction at SRV; Felix Karamzinov, general director of Vodokanal; Kuisma Niemela, president of SOK retail that owns Prisma and Sokos Hotels; Kim Gran, president of Nokian Tyres; and Martti Huttunen, president of Industry Park East Management.
The event is being organized by the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce along with partners including Nokian Tyres, Fazer, Prisma, Stockmann and YIT.

TITLE: Forum Strives to Save Baltic
AUTHOR: By Jessica King
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The plight of the Baltic Sea, in particular the Gulf of Finland on which St. Petersburg stands, was in the spotlight last week at an environmental forum held in the city.
A group of environmental experts, NGOs and volunteer organizations came together Thursday at the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg to present their ideas on how to protect the Baltic Sea, in particular the Gulf of Finland, and how people can individually and collectively support the cause and take responsibility for their own environmental choices.
There are a host of major problems damaging the Baltic Sea’s natural ecosystem. Eutrophication, oil spills, overfishing and climate change are all contributing to the slow but dramatic degradation of the water, its inhabitants and the surrounding coastal areas.
More than 85 million people in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and other countries live within the drainage area of the Baltic Sea. This causes high levels of pollution, from littering to the more serious concern of large amounts of nutrients, heavy metals and toxic substances being deposited into the water.
The water is brackish — it has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater — thus making it a unique habitat for a number of different species. But heavy pollution is endangering many of these species, particularly the ringed seal, which is close to receiving a “threatened” status under the Endangered Species Act.
Commercially valuable fish species such as cod, herring, smelt and pike are also under threat due to overfishing and dams, which block many of their migration routes, experts say. Figures show catches of smelt have fallen considerably since the 1990s.
One of the main issues discussed by Thursday’s panel, however, was nutrient leakage from agricultural waste.
Untreated waste such as nitrates, phosphates, fertilizers and sewage seeps into the sea, causing the widespread blooming of plankton and decreasing the level of oxygen in the water.
 Andre Olzer from AgroBio Tech company discussed possible solutions, arguing that large companies should not simply be fined for incorrect waste disposal. “That is not a solution,” he said.
Using biogas technology, his company has developed a way to recycle and reuse waste that generates income and causes minimal surplus.
According to Olzer, the system is “highly effective” and is currently used in Belgium, but is not yet in use in Russia, as people “do not want to pay” for the service.
Political programs have been implemented in order to reduce the nutrient load deposited in the sea. They aim to cut the figure by 30 percent by 2015, however, research conducted by Luonto-Liitto, an Internet-based volunteer project, suggests that this does not go far enough and in reality, with the measures currently in place, it is not an achievable target. 
“We know there is not enough knowledge and that this objective will not be reached under the current government measures,” said a Luonto-Liitto representative at the meeting.
Friends of the Baltic, one of the main organizers of Thursday’s event, emphasizes the need to educate young people about the Baltic Sea’s environmental problems. The group has created a program whereby volunteers carry out workshops in schools and through interactive exercises, they teach children how to be environmentally minded.
The emphasis is on each person making small changes, such as turning off lights and appliances when not in use, avoiding excess packaging and using public transport or bicycles instead of cars, thus reducing nitrogen emissions.
“We all wish to live in green cities or in the countryside, breathe clean air, drink clean water and pass our time on the clean shores of the Baltic Sea,” said Olga Senova, chair of the Friends of the Baltic council. 
Since 2008, Friends of the Baltic has also been training teachers in St. Petersburg to give their own workshops and since 2009, more than 2,000 children have been involved in Baltic Sea projects, as well as taking part in exchange trips to Finland.

TITLE: Experts Say Clocks Out of Sync
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Participants of a roundtable discussion held in the State Duma recommend revoking the country’s permanent summertime status, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The participants of the roundtable, which was organized by the Health Committee to examine the effects of the country staying on summertime from October last year, concluded that the time system used in Russia is two hours out of sync with astronomic time and does not correspond to people’s natural biorhythms.
In their report, experts cited figures that showed the country’s failure to change the clocks in October led to a  1- to 2-percent decrease in GDP. 
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced last year that Russia would no longer change the clocks twice a year as it had done for the past few decades, but would instead remain on permanent summertime.

TITLE: Ombudsman Criticizes City’s Anti-Gay Bill
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin added his voice to growing domestic and international uproar by denouncing United Russia’s anti-gay bill — which passed in a third and final reading in the Legislative Assembly in St. Petersburg last week — as violating human rights in his 2011 annual report published Monday.
The bill, which Lukin described as “strange,” will outlaw “promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism” to minors if signed into law by Governor Georgy Poltavchenko.
“The very term ‘promoting’ is uncertain from a legal viewpoint, hence either cannot be applied, or can be applied arbitrarily, or, to put it simply, creates the grounds for arbitrariness toward adult citizens,” Lukin wrote.
He added that publicizing the subject of sexual relations among children is already punishable under the Russian criminal code.
On Feb. 29, the Legislative Assembly passed the bill in a third reading, with 26 deputies voting for it. 
Five out of the six Yabloko deputies voted against the law. 
The party’s co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky, who officially abstained in the voting, denounced the bill in a statement the following day.
Yavlinsky said United Russia deputies are “pursuing a policy of dividing society,” instead of dealing with the city’s real problems.
The bill was proposed by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov in November. 
If signed into law, it will introduce fines for offenders of 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.

TITLE: Election Webcams Reveal a Slice of Russian Life
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The costly web cameras put in place in Russia’s polling stations to combat fraud served a dual purpose over the weekend, giving viewers an unusual glimpse of the lives of people all over the country — from small Chechen villages to Tyumen nightlife and beyond.
Anyone with an Internet connection could rove the land, spying on a range of buildings that work as polling stations during elections — from schools to sanatoriums and even private homes.
With the cameras going online Saturday, viewers could see what went on before the ballot boxes began to be used.
In Tyumen, a party at a polling station quickly went viral as the 60th birthday party of a man called Nikolai was caught on camera, complete with slow “sexy” dancing and vodka-drinking toasts to Nikolai’s young age.
Others showed schools still in use. One had young boys fighting and rolling on the floor, according to news reports.
That was just the aperitif as Sunday saw more than 2.5 million people register to view the web feeds, Itar-Tass reported. At its peak, there were 400,000 viewers on the site at once.
The most popular ones were those in places that put on a show for the election with dancing and national costumes, said Igor Shchyogolev, the press and communications minister, Itar-Tass reported.
Stations in Sochi and Chechnya proved popular and video of a voter — who bore a striking resemblance to Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov — dancing the traditional Chechen dance, the lezginka, quickly went viral with people wondering if it was actually the head of the republic. It wasn’t.
One of the most widely discussed polling stations was a private house in the village of Meseda in Chechnya, where one of the elections commission officials, a woman in her 50s, could be seen with her husband and baby, with a blue sheet hung up to hide the voting “booth.” The baby proved especially popular among viewers and users of Twitter.
Another polling station was crammed into a shop, just to the right of a display of piles of oranges. Another showed a young couple making out before voting began, and another revealed the legs of a sleeping man sticking out from a voting-booth curtain the night before the polls opened.
Many Russian media outlets made lists of their favorite polling stations.
One Altai newspaper that made a list, added sadly: “In the Altai republic, no such charming situations could be found.” It also noted that in most cases, there was nothing to see. It did add, though, that in Kyzl-Szek a man could be seen watching television.
Others just had fun with the videos.
“There is a new game: stand in front of the camera at a polling station and ask to be photographed via Webvybory.ru,” Roman Zadorozhny wrote on Twitter.
In a video posted on YouTube, a man is shown walking toward the curtained-off area, stopping and then starting to dance. He then dances in to vote behind the curtain, despite a policewoman coming up to him. A bit later he dances out, places his vote in the ballot box and leaves.
Somebody else posted a video of themselves on YouTube as they watch a polling station on the Webvybory site. A woman can be seen on the phone via the webcam, and they scream directions on how to look at the camera. The video is called “My mom at the polling station.”

TITLE: Medvedev Calls for Yukos Case Review
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — With his final days in office counting down, President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday ordered a review into the conviction of the country’s most famous prisoner, former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose jailing has long been considered politically motivated.
Medvedev instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office to “analyze the legality” of the case along with that of Khodorkovsky’s business partner Platon Lebedev and 30 others, the Kremlin announced on its website.
Many of the names put up for review were included on a list brought to Medvedev by opposition leaders at a meeting on Feb. 20.
In a separate order, Medvedev asked Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov to provide legal reasons for denying the registration of the liberal political party Parnas, which was founded by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and political figures Vladimir Ryzhkov and Boris Nemtsov.
The party was barred from registering last June over contradictions in its charter. Party officials, however, had argued that the denial was politically motivated.
Political observers said the moves represented Medvedev’s last effort to leave some sort of legacy before he relinquishes the presidency to Vladimir Putin on May 7, but it was unclear whether it would result in any real change.
“It is an attempt to beat out the clock. Medvedev wants to leave his mark on history, but to give an order for a review does not mean these decisions will be overturned,” said Mark Feigin, a political analyst and member of the Solidarity political movement.
But as Medvedev has only two months left in office, legal experts say the fate of Khodorkovsky and other prisoners on the list will likely rest in Putin’s hands. Khodorkovsky’s legal team greeted the news cautiously.
“Medvedev’s order might be a positive sign, but only if there is a decision by Putin that Khodorkovsky has been in prison long enough and they are ready to find a way to free him,” lawyer Yury Schmidt told Russian News Service Radio.
Earlier, Medvedev and Putin had made contradictory statements about Khodorkovsky. Medvedev suggested that the case could be re-examined while Putin — who has long been believed to view Khodorkovsky as a bitter enemy — called Russia’s former richest man a “thief” who “should remain in prison.”
Pavel Salin, an expert with the Kremlin-connected think tank Center for Current Politics, said that while Medvedev’s announcement may have come as part of an agreement with Putin, it is unlikely that the president-elect intends to free Khodorkovsky before his term expires in 2017.
“There will be a different approach to other cases, but Khodorkovsky is one that will not be reconsidered,” Salin predicted.
He added that concessions might be made to release several low-profile prisoners and register the Parnas party.
“But the registration will be meaningless because of pending legislation that will allow it anyway,” Salin said.
He was referring to Medvedev’s proposed bill to ease the requirements for party registration. The bill would only require a party to have 500 members nationwide instead of 40,000, as is required now.
The legislation has passed a first reading in the State Duma, but it is unclear whether it will be adopted before Medvedev will leave office.
Prosecutor General Yury Chaika’s spokeswoman told Interfax on Monday that her boss had taken charge of handling the presidential order personally.
Some opposition activists noted that some of the 40 names from the list originally presented to Medvedev were not included in the list of those being reconsidered.
Among them was Taisia Osipova, the wife of an opposition activist, who was sentenced to 10 years on drug charges in 2011. Her conviction was recently overturned, but the case was ordered for retrial.
The list, however, included several North Caucasus natives imprisoned for terrorism-related charges and a far-right nationalist. Their inclusion on the list has caused a division among members of the opposition, a source told The St. Petersburg Times.
Among those on the list is Timur Ishmuratov, who was accused of taking part in a terrorist attack on a gas pipeline in Tatarstan. Ishmuratov was arrested by NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2003 and released to Russian authorities the following year. He was ultimately freed but rearrested in the pipeline plot in 2005. Ishmuratov’s lawyers claim that he was tortured to force him to confess to the crime.

TITLE: Foreigners See Vote as Flawed
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — International observers criticized Sunday’s presidential election as seriously flawed Monday but avoided statements about the vote’s legitimacy.
“Conditions for the campaign were clearly skewed in favor of one candidate,” Dutch lawmaker Tiny Kox told reporters, adding that national media coverage had given a clear advantage to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The Central Elections Commission rejected the criticism.
“That’s an inadequate evaluation of the situation,” commission member Tatyana Voronova told Interfax.
Earlier, commission chairman Vladimir Churov said no other country had fairer elections than Russia, and he suggested that foreign observers were increasingly spying.
Putin won the election by a wide margin over four competitors, securing 63.6 percent of the vote, according to latest data from the Central Elections Commission.
The second-place finisher was Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who got 17.9 percent.
Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov came in third with 7.8 percent, while Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky got 6.2 percent. Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov finished last with 3.85 percent.
The observers, led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said they noted procedural irregularities, including cases of group, proxy and multiple voting, according to an official report published on the organization’s website. 
Former Croatian Foreign Minister Tonino Picula, who headed the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly delegation, said the election was problematic from the start.
“The point of elections is that their outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia,” Picula said. “There was no real competition, and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.”
The observers also criticized the vote count, saying it had been bad or very bad in a third of 98 observed counts and that ballot-stuffing had occurred.
“Crucial figures related to the count could not always be established with confidence in their accuracy,” the report stated.
Andrea Rigoni, an Italian lawmaker who was a member of the Council of Europe’s observer mission, said he failed to observe the vote count in a Moscow ballot station because the local elections commission took five hours to check signatures and ballots.
“After 1 a.m. I asked to leave because I had to hand in my observer report,” Rigoni told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview.
But pressed by reporters, OSCE mission chief Heidi Tagliavini refused to label the election as not free or unfair.
“Free and fair is a political statement,” she said at a joint news conference of OSCE and Council of Europe observers.
The Swiss diplomat added that she deliberately chose not to make any statements about the election’s democratic standards.
Kox, who headed the delegation of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, explained that the observers were obliged to remain impartial.
“We are not here to take sides,” he said.
The Dutchman also rebutted Churov’s allegations that the foreigners were masquerading as observers to get access to military secrets.
He said the observers had come by invitation because Russia is a member of both the OSCE and the Council of Europe.
“We are no aliens,” Kox said.
Churov said earlier that day that international observers were turning to gathering political and military information.
“There is an irresistible wish to enter closed nuclear centers, rocket centers and so on,” he told reporters, Interfax reported.
Churov, who has consistently denied accusations of overseeing widespread election fraud and resisted calls to resign, argued that webcams and transparent ballot boxes made Russia’s process fairer than the voting anywhere else in the world. He even offered help to the United States.
“We are working on observation systems for the elections in America,” Churov told Itar-Tass, adding that this would ensure the legitimacy of this November’s U.S. presidential election.
Speaking on NTV on Thursday, he said Western countries that do not introduce these measures “will face lingering doubts about their elections.”
After massive fraud allegations following the State Duma elections in December, the government installed some 200,000 webcams in the country’s more than 90,000 polling stations.
Tagliavini said that was a positive step but not enough to dispel widespread mistrust in the election’s conduct.
The OSCE and the Council of Europe sent 262 observers, including 40 long-term monitors deployed in the regions.
The organizations wanted to send significantly more staff. The OSCE alone originally demanded more than 500, but the elections commission and the Foreign Ministry refused to allow more.
The observers’ findings were shared by the European Union, whose foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said in a statement that Russia should address the shortcomings in the election.
Many Western leaders refrained from congratulating Putin on his victory Monday.
Ashton said only that “the EU takes note of the preliminary results of the presidential elections and the clear victory of Vladimir Putin.”
The only exception was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who congratulated Putin by telephone, spokesman Steffen Seibert told The St. Petersburg Times via Twitter.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement late Monday that “congratulates the Russian people on the completion” of the presidential election.
The statement adds that Washington looks forward to working with the president-elect after the results are certified and he is sworn in. It does not mention Putin by name, though.
Also included in the statement is a call for Russia to look into the fraud allegations.
“We urge the Russian government to conduct an independent, credible investigation of all reported electoral violations,” the statement said.
By Monday evening, only leaders of former Soviet states and a handful of Asian countries, including Japan and China, had offered their congratulations to Putin himself, according to the government website.
The Russian blogosphere was full of comments from people who scoffed at the tears on Putin’s cheek as he declared victory to thousands of supporters on Manezh Square.
A frequent American critic of Putin also joined in the ribbing.
“Dear Vlad, Surprise! Surprise! You won. The Russian people are crying too!” Republican Senator John McCain tweeted.
Putin dismissed speculation that he cried, blaming the weather instead.
They were “real [tears] because of the wind,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and member of the European Parliament, called Putin’s win “the nail in the coffin of Russian democracy.”
“The sad truth is that the Kremlin continues to deny Russian citizens the constitutionally guaranteed right for free and fair elections,” Verhofstadt said in a statement on his liberal political group’s website.
Churov proclaimed Putin’s victory Monday even before 100 percent of the votes had been counted.
Moscow was the only region where Putin got less than 50 percent. He garnered 46.9 percent of the vote in the capital.
Prokhorov, who is not an experienced politician and had never run a campaign before, received considerable support in large cities.
In Moscow, the heart of opposition protests, he got 20.4 percent. Other areas of strong support were St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
Prokhorov picked up about 15.4 percent of the St. Petersburg vote, and he polled at 18.7 percent in Yekaterinburg, the Urals city that has staged pro-Putin rallies for workers in the region.
As was the case in past elections, the North Caucasus proved to be Putin’s biggest stronghold. But local results topping 90 percent fueled doubts about the vote’s fairness.
Chechnya reported results of 99.7 percent for Putin and also the highest turnout at 99.6 percent. Neighboring Dagestan gave Putin 92.8 percent, Ingushetia and Karachayevo-Cherkessia both 91.3 percent.
Opposition activists maintain that results would be significantly different without falsification.
Golos, the independent watchdog, said Putin got at least 50.7 percent, more than 14 points less than the official result, but still enough for a first-round win.
However, the group Citizen Observer said Putin should not have won in the first round.

TITLE: Cops Must Help Drunks
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police often turn a blind eye to public intoxication. But under the new rules, they have been instructed to pay more attention.
The rules, published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta last week, require police to ensure the safety and health of people intoxicated in public, including driving them to the hospital if necessary.
The rules clarify current regulations, under which police are required to apprehend intoxicated people — defined as those having lost the ability to orient oneself or walk — and either take them into custody or call an ambulance.
They also appear to fix a hole in the country’s social safety net created when Russia’s last drunk tanks were closed in October as part of police reform.
Depending on a person’s state of intoxication and evidence of lawbreaking, police will now be required to administer first aid, call an ambulance and guard the person against robbers and aggressors until medics arrive.
“Officers no longer have the right to ‘not notice’ intoxicated citizens,” reads an text in the state newspaper.
Experts praised the measure in vague terms as a logical division of labor between police and medics.
But they said it isn’t clear how cops, who often ignore drunks, even in the freezing cold, would be compelled to change their ways.
“The cops often rob intoxicated people,” said Sergei Matevosyan, director of the Novaya Zhizn center in St. Petersburg, which treats alcohol and drug addiction.
Matevosyan said he favors a system of forced treatment for addicts.
“They’re a danger to society,” he said.
Sergei Polyatykin of the NAN Fund, which fights substance abuse, said the new rule correctly separates police and medical work.
“Police should deal with people who break the law,” he said.
Though cops are obliged to help, they “don’t notice” drunks, Polyatykin said.

TITLE: FBI Looking at Murdoch in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. investigators have opened a Russian front in the wide-ranging investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire.
The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp., reported Monday that FBI agents investigating corruption at the New York-based media giant were looking into the possibility that managers at Moscow-based News Outdoor, which specializes in outdoor advertising, paid bribes to local officials to approve the placement of billboards.
News Corp. owned News Outdoor until July 2011, when it sold its 79 percent stake to a consortium of investors including VTB Capital, CTC television station founder Peter Gerwe and Alfa Capital Partners. The deal was reported to have been worth about $360 million.
The WSJ described the investigation into News Corp.’s Russian business as part of an FBI effort to establish whether wrongdoing in Britain was repeated in any of the company’s other overseas units.
Repeated telephone calls to News Outdoor went unanswered Monday. A request to the legal attach&#233; at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for confirmation about the inquiry was not answered.
In a written statement, News Outdoor told the WSJ that it would not have been affected by any culture of corruption in its parent company because News Corp. was only an investor with no involvement in the day-to-day running of the company.
The sale ended its frequently troubled foray into the Russian media market — one which eventually drove Rupert Murdoch to publicly remark in 2008 that “the more I read about investment in Russia, the less I like the feel of it.”
News Outdoor Russia was founded in 1999 and grew into the largest outdoor advertising company in the country. In 2007 the company was valued at $1 billion. But in the same year, the company became mired in a struggle with then-Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s administration.
City Hall accused the company of failing to honor a deal under which it received preferential rents on land belonging to the Moscow Association of Chemical Organizations in exchange for placing free advertisements for the chemists.
A court threw out a claim by the city advertising committee for 382.7 million rubles ($13 million) in damages.
In 2008, News Outdoor’s offices were raided by prosecutors looking for evidence of corruption by Alexander Menchuka, an official on the city committee.
The next year saw trouble with tax authorities for News Outdoor, which was accused of improper use of tax breaks in 2005 and 2006.
It lost the case in October 2010, and the Federal Tax Service froze the firm’s accounts and ordered banks serving the company to divert any income to the tax service to cover a 1.34 billion-ruble tax bill.
In 2010, three executives at the company were among advertising chiefs who sent a letter to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin complaining about city advertising committee chief Vladimir Makarov and described the sector as “fertile ground for corruption.”
Makarov told Gazeta.ru on Monday that he was unaware of the FBI’s investigation and insisted that there was no reason to suspect the committee of “corruption or legal violations.”

TITLE: Navalny and Others Detained at Moscow Protests
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle and Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The opposition showed its resilience on Monday night, drawing thousands to a Pushkin Square rally in the freezing cold to protest Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s landslide victory in the weekend presidential election.
The rally, addressed by opposition leaders and presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, was peaceful. But a crowd of 400 to 500 people, including journalists, refused to leave afterward, and a wall of OMON riot police officers swooped down on them, roughly herding them into the nearby metro.
Police detained about 250 people during the rallies, including anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov. All detained demonstrators have been released, police said, Interfax reported. 
Police also held Other Russia opposition leader Eduard Limonov and about 50 of his supporters at an unsanctioned rally on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad.
On another downtown square, Manezh, tens of thousands of pro-Putin supporters rallied with banners with a portrait of a stony-faced Putin, while some wore ominous-looking red armbands reading, “Are you ready to kill?” Asked what the slogan meant, one young man said it referred to what would happen to Putin’s opponents if they didn’t stop their protests. He did not elaborate.
The atmosphere on Pushkin Square was smaller and less cheerful than at past mass opposition rallies, which started in early December to demand free and fair elections. The motley crowd spanned the political spectrum, from Communists to ultranationalists, as well as a group of self-described anarchists, who at one point chanted, “Revolution, revolution!”
“We’ll keep gathering until Putin leaves,” said Arkady, 60, a pensioner.
The remarks by Arkady, who like many people on the square were reluctant to give their last names, seemed at odds with government predictions that the protest movement would peter out.
“In a proper democracy, the losers should reluctantly or readily accept the obvious, and the results of this election are obvious,” said Sergei Ivanov, head of the presidential administration, Interfax reported.
Opposition leaders declared Sunday’s vote illegitimate over what they called widespread irregularities. “There were violations at every polling station!” one of them, Yevgenia Chirikova, told the crowd.
Allegations of widespread fraud during the Dec. 4 State Duma elections gave birth to the protest movement, which has since grown into a call for democratic reform.
Navalny is increasingly seen as the leader of the movement, and several protesters said they would have voted for him in Sunday’s election.
Navalny punctuated his brief address to the crowd with the rallying cry, “We have the power!” But the crowd didn’t unite in chorus as Navalny might have hoped.
After standing outside in the freezing cold in uncomfortably cramped quarters, many had already headed for the exits.
Several participants interviewed by The St. Petersburg Times said they had voted for billionaire Prokhorov.
“There was no alternative,” said Konstantin, 47, a businessman.
Prokhorov spoke briefly from the stage, thanking supporters and calling on participants to join his political party, which he has promised to launch this month.
“Welcome, free people of Russia!” he said to a strong chorus of cheers and clapping.
It was unclear, even among protesters, how far they were willing to go to achieve their demands.
Talk of tent cities earlier this week proved unfounded for now, but several participants didn’t exclude that possibility when the weather got warmer.
On Sunday, Vladimir Ovchinsky, a former senior Interior Ministry official, warned on Rossia state television that Monday’s rally and any future ones would not be peaceful.
That prediction also proved incorrect, although protesters conceded that radicals in the opposition movement might eventually resort to violence.
The protesters maintained, however, that the government would bear responsible for any bloodshed.
“Power changes hands either through elections or through revolution,” said Sergei, 30, a manager, adding that at this point it was the government’s choice.
Valery, 38, a builder, said he didn’t know what was next for the opposition but that he would continue to protest on behalf of his wife and four children.
“If there’s violence, we’ll have civil war. But if Putin doesn’t leave peacefully, we’ll also have civil war,” he said.
Anton Glatov, a 40-year-old artist, attended the rally in a cage. “I’m freer in here than out there,” he said. “It’s all a matter of perspective.” He added that violent clashes were unlikely.
About 12,000 Interior Ministry troops were in Moscow providing security, including 6,300 who were brought in from surrounding regions, Interfax said.
A total of 6,000 regional OMON riot police officers — about a quarter of all OMON in Russia — will be in Moscow through March 9 to assist local riot police, Novaya Gazeta reported Friday.
The rally on Pushkin Square was one of several that took place on Monday.
About a kilometer from Pushkin Square, more than 50,000 people gathered at a Young Guard-organized rally on Manezh Square to support Putin, police said. A reporter saw that the square was packed and police were turning people away, saying there was no room.
People at the rally spoke highly of Putin. “The only man whom I can believe and respect is Putin,” said Roman, 65, a retired driver who was bused in from Tambov by rally organizers.
Others said they were bused in from Ryazan and other cities near the capital.
“I support Putin because I remember how it was under the Communists when I was small, but now my son can have anything that he wants,” said Irina, 30, from Moscow.
She added, though, that she holds two jobs to make ends meet. She said the people who back the opposition didn’t work.
After the rally, demonstrators listened to a free concert by the Ukrainian pop duo Potap and Nastya.
The square filled up quickly as young people who were not associated with the rally but attracted by the music pleaded with police officers guarding the perimeter to be let in to listen.
Meanwhile, police detained at least 50 Other Russia opposition activists, including the group’s leader Eduard Limonov, as they tried to stage an unsanctioned rally near the Central Elections Commission headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, Interfax reported.
A police officer declared, “Respected citizens, your event is not sanctioned,” and then began grabbing people, said a St. Petersburg Times reporter at the scene. There were at least 100 people on the square, but at least a third were journalists, many of them with cameras. Every time police went to detain someone, a frenzy of media would immediately appear around them.
Earlier Limonov wrote on his blog that the rally was to “defend the opposition’s honor” after opposition leaders contributed to Putin’s overwhelming election victory.
“Putin’s presidential campaign didn’t have a theme before December. Then it appeared: The revolt of the pro-Western elite against the Russian people and their chief, Putin,” he wrote.
Scattered pro-Putin and opposition rallies were held around the country. In St. Petersburg, police detained 280 opposition activists at a unsanctioned gathering of several thousand people on St. Isaac’s Square (see story, page 2).
Some politicians said the rallies must end.
“The sooner the rallies stop, the better. There’s work to be done,” said Sergei Mironov, who placed last in the presidential election, Interfax reported. “I believe Vladimir Putin’s victory in the first round was completely objective,” he said.

<i>Staff writers Alexandra Odynova and Ken Martinez contributed to this report.</i>

TITLE: Duma Needs More Women
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin expressed dissatisfaction with the low percentage of female parliamentarians, saying it’s “not right.”
Naryshkin, a deputy from the ruling United Russia party, noted what he called a negative contrast between the prevalence of women in civil service and the low percentage of female Duma deputies.
“Of every 10 people who work in government civil service, seven are women,” while only 14 percent of parliamentarians are women, Naryshkin said at a meeting of female Duma deputies, according to comments posted on the official United Russia site. 
“That’s not right,” he said.

TITLE: Leaders Not Swapping Residences
AUTHOR: By Olga Solovyova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Under Russian law, the future president and prime minister should swap their official residences after the March 4 presidential election.
“But we have no assignments for it at this moment,” Office for Presidential Affairs spokesman Viktor Khrekov told The St. Petersburg Times. “I don’t think anything will change.”
Officially, Dmitry Medvedev has four residences: the Kremlin in Moscow, Gorki-9 located 15 kilometers outside Moscow, Bocharov Ruchei in Sochi and Dolgiye Borody in the Novgorod region near Valdai.
Vladimir Putin has two official residences: Novo-Ogaryovo on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse and Riviera in Sochi.
Gorki-9 was used as the government dacha of former President Boris Yeltsin before he moved to a residence in Barvikha. Gorki-9 was not used again until Dmitry Medvedev became president, RIA-Novosti said.
Under Russian law, former presidents have a variety of privileges, one of which is the use of a government dacha until their death.
On leaving the presidency in 2008, Vladimir Putin chose his one-time official residence Novo-Ogaryovo as his government dacha. So he would be able to live in Novo-Ogaryovo even if he hadn’t become prime minister.
Functionally, all the residences are equal. They are wired with the latest communications technology for work and equipped for convenient living. “I think that there will not be any moving required,” said Vladimir Kozhin, head of the Office for Presidential Affairs, Interfax reported.
The elaborate nonofficial residence is Konstantinov Palace, otherwise known as National Congress Palace, near St. Petersburg, which has 140 hectares of grounds.
For hunting, Russian leaders use the Zavidovo retreat in the Tver region and Mein Dorf Castle — the Office for Presidential Affairs’ residence near Barvikha, according to RIA-Novosti.
The Mein Dorf residence can also be used by private persons for various special events such as weddings.
Other government residences are less popular. They include Sosny in Krasnoyarsk, Volzhsky Utyos in the Samara region, Angarskiye Khutora near Irkutsk, the Tantal residence in the Saratov region, Maly Istok in Yekaterinburg and others.
One residence — Shuiskaya Chupa in the republic of Karelia — was sold at an auction to the Severgroup company in April 2011. The deal was worth 291 million rubles ($10 million), RBK reported. The total area of the complex was 50 hectares.
The mysterious and opulent “Putin’s Palace” is located in the Krasnodar region near the city of Gelendzhik. An investment contract showed the Office for Presidential Affairs and a company called Lirus with ties to the government as parties in the construction of the 740,000-square-meter resort complex. Lirus was to invest 400 million rubles in the project and was to own 70 percent of the developed area, with the rest going to the Office for Presidential Affairs. However, the site was sold to billionaire Alexander Ponomarenko for an undisclosed sum.

TITLE: Markets Still at Risk
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A muted market reaction to the news of Vladimir Putin’s crushing electoral victory over the weekend prompted some members of the investment community to suggest Monday that questions over the regime’s legitimacy would persist.
The MICEX Index rose 1.10 percent by its close to 1,625.74 following Putin’s election to another six years as president with 64 percent of the vote. The dollar-denominated RTS closed up 1.47 percent at 1752.17.
Amid allegations by election observers of widespread fraud, economists and investors said that a fair election delivering a firm foundation for Putin’s third presidential term might not have been achieved.
“A key desire for the markets was for the legitimacy of the current regime to be confirmed [by the election],” Russia strategist for Citibank Kingsmill Bond told The St. Petersburg Times. With accusations flying between the authorities and the opposition, Bond saw no reason for dramatic gains on Russian bourses. “You won’t necessarily get a huge market bounce,” he said.
U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said investors will have cause to be doubtful about the extent to which Sunday’s election had conferred a new legitimacy on Putin’s government. “Accordingly,” the bank wrote in a note Monday, “we think investors could be cautious this week ahead of the reaction of the opposition to the result.”
Parliamentary elections on Dec. 4 prompted a series of demonstrations across Russia that spooked investors and contributed to capital outflows of $37.4 billion in the fourth quarter.
“We need to see what the opposition is going to do, and we need to see what the leadership’s response to the opposition will be,” Peter Westin, chief equity strategist at Aton brokerage, told The St. Petersburg Times. “I wouldn’t lower political risk yet, that’s for sure.”
More protests have taken place this week, following the estimated 100,000 people who turned out Sunday to mark Putin’s victory. 
“In light of the fallout from the State Duma elections in December, the markets are to be anxiously digesting the scale and mood of this gathering,” state-controlled investment bank VTB Capital wrote in a note.
“The key issue is whether the protests will fizzle out over the next week or so,” said Citibank’s Bond. “But our assumption is that they will continue because they are a reflection of a wider discontent within a broad section of society called the middle class.”
The anti-Putin vote was concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg where the only new face in the presidential contest, Mikhail Prokhorov, beat communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, leaving the veteran candidate in third place.
Eric Kraus, an independent fund manager in Moscow, said Putin’s strong showing should convince investors that the likelihood of a violent revolution in Russia was almost nonexistent. “But in the near term it could get messy and that could temporarily worsen the perception of risk,” he added.
Alfa Bank drew investors’ attention Monday to the fact that Moscow was the only region in the country where support for Putin dipped below 50 percent, the figure at which — had it been achieved nationwide — would have forced a second round of voting.
ING Bank’s Russia chief economist Dmitry Polevoi said the Moscow result should remind “the ruling camp [that it] should not ignore the voices of Moscow’s middle class and opposition.”
But some denied that Sunday’s result had any significant impact on Monday’s trading in Moscow and argued that Putin’s victory was so well predicted it had already been factored into the market.
Many commentators, however, said Monday that Putin’s overall success at the ballot box increases the chances for stability and Russia’s attractiveness for investors.
“Political risk will now lessen because investors no longer need to worry about the unpredictability of political change,” Yelena Shaftan, a director with Jupiter Asset Management told The St. Petersburg Times.
While Russian stock exchanges showed small gains over the course of Monday, they contrasted with global markets, which were marginally down.
Westin said the comparison was slightly positive for Russia. “It’s a weak thumbs up from the investment community,” he said.

TITLE: Putin: Privatizations to Be Fair, Somehow
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has promised that privatizations of state assets will be carried out more properly than those in the 1990s, with the companies’ stakes to be sold “at a real price.”
But having vowed to review the results of “unfair” privatizations in the 1990s as part of measures to increase trust in business, Putin has confessed that he doesn’t know yet how to do it.
“Frankly speaking, I don’t have a recipe yet. We can consider this problem, but I don’t know whether we’ll be able to create such a mechanism, with which society would agree,” Putin told a group of chief editors of foreign media.
Putin said last month that it’s time to “draw the curtain” on the issue of earlier privatizations, saying one possible option to solve the problem was charging businessmen participating in the sale of state assets a one-time levy — an idea that he said belonged to Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky.
Russia’s privatizations in the 1990s were conducted through so-called loan-for-shares auctions, with state assets widely believed to have been sold at a low price to oligarchs with close ties to the government.
Putin vowed at Thursday’s meeting that during the privatization program the government will push for selling state assets based on their real price.
“We don’t want to sell state property for nothing, so we’ll of course coordinate our steps in the privatizations with real global conditions for the assets we offer for sale,” he said, according to a transcript on the government website.
The government has said it plans to raise about 1 trillion rubles ($34 billion) from the sale of state assets by 2015.
Meanwhile, business expects Putin to tighten control over state-run companies as part of the move to make Russia one of the most attractive countries for investment, Kirill Dmitriyev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said Friday.
Putin is largely expected to improve transparency and increase the efficiency of state companies based on his pledge to bring the country “100 steps forward” to 20th place in the ranking of the countries with the best investment climate, Dmitriyev said in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
Putin told the journalists that the situation in Russia had changed for the better compared with the 1990s, since the fight against corruption and economic crimes had borne fruit.
But he acknowledged that problems remain, saying the government would welcome any public initiative to fight corruption.
However, the prime minister cast aspersions on opposition leader Alexei Navalny, known for his campaign against corruption among government officials.
“I’ve heard the name… As far as I know, the person you mention used to be an adviser for one of the governors and there were some problems,” he told the foreign journalists in reference to Navalny, who was an adviser to Kirov Governor Nikita Belykh in 2009.
Among other issues discussed at the meeting was international economic cooperation, with Russia aiming to strengthen ties with Britain.
Putin described economic cooperation between the two countries as “very bad,” but said Russia had started talks with Britain, which could join the Nord Stream project, a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea that Russia launched last year.

TITLE: Beware of the Post-Election Bubble
AUTHOR: By Dieter Wermuth
TEXT: As Russians voted for a new president on Sunday, their country was back in fashion with foreign investors.
The ruble has gained 12.2 percent against the dollar-euro basket since this fall and is not far from its post-2008 crisis high. The rebound of stock prices since the beginning of the year has been an impressive 13.7 percent in ruble terms for the MICEX, and an even more impressive 25.4 percent in dollar terms for the RTS.
Given that the balance-of-trade surplus is running at 12 percent of this winter’s gross domestic product, the strength of the exchange rate looks plausible and will probably continue provided there is no new crash of the oil price and imports do not go through the roof once again. To be sure, neither of these two risks can be ruled out and must therefore be watched closely.
The stock market, valued at a price-to-earnings ratio of 5.9 on the basis of last year’s earnings and at a price-to-book ratio of 1.03, is fundamentally on firmer ground than the exchange rate. But, of course, the stock market is hostage to oil prices.
At the same time, however, the country’s fixed income markets remain neglected. The ruble-denominated government OFZ November 2021 bond, for example, yields nearly 8 percent and has thus a rather high real return, particularly considering the fact that consumer price inflation had been just 4.2 percent year over year in January. Equally, the dollar-denominated April 2020 government eurobond with a yield of 3.98 percent is about 250 basis points higher than that of a comparable U.S. Treasury note.
Nonetheless, Russia has a bad reputation among investors, despite the government’s budget surplus and minuscule debt levels. On the whole, this bad reputation is undeserved.
The real estate market has probably bottomed out, but there are wide regional disparities. Moscow is where all the wealth and the population growth is concentrated, while the regions continue to struggle. Meanwhile, the Central Bank hesitates to cut interest rates because it doubts that inflation can remain so low. Judging by the strength of the ruble and falling import prices, the inflation outlook is actually quite good. To buy real estate as a hedge against inflation does not make sense in such an environment.
Economic growth is certainly fairly moderate. Real GDP had expanded by 4.3 percent in both 2010 and 2011, and it is generally expected to increase by another 4 percent this year. Before the 2008-09 crisis, growth rates had averaged about 7 percent. This suggests that capacity utilization remains low. A 4 percent growth rate will therefore not cause any serious frictions or imbalances, nor will it lead to an acceleration of inflation. Investors appreciate this new stability. It is much better than wild swings around a steeper trend and may help to explain why the ruble and the stock markets are so strong.
While foreigners have a love affair with Russia, Russians themselves are net capital exporters to the tune of almost $10 billion a month. Technically speaking, in the absence of Central Bank interventions in foreign exchange markets, those $10 billion are the flip side of the current account surplus. Since the Central Bank’s foreign reserves have been more or less unchanged at around $500 billion for several months now, the private sector, by definition, must be accumulating foreign assets.
Why is this? One reason is that exporters, in the wake of the recent oil price boom, may feel overwhelmed by the sudden increase of their revenues and have no plans on how to spend these windfall gains. They’d rather park them abroad for a while.
The other reason is more worrying. It could be that the capital exports reflect Russia’s uneven income distribution. The country’s wealthy may be afraid of a popular backlash — Putin has raised this theme several times recently — and have thus decided to stash away part of their funds in safe places.
The main risk is that high oil prices are not sustainable because it may cause a global recession, which in turn will bring it down, perhaps violently. Apart from this, at an annual growth rate of real GDP of about 2.25 percent since last autumn, the world economy is not exactly booming. Rather than being determined by economic fundamentals, the oil price is mostly a political price these days.
Since the risk of a war between Iran and Israel is overrated, the oil price itself is not well supported. In all likelihood, we are looking at a new bubble. Investors must be aware that they will face an entirely new game once it pops, and they would be wise to remember the age-old axiom: Bubbles always pop.

<i>Dieter Wermuth is a partner at Wermuth Asset Management.</i>

TITLE: regional dimensions: Why Putin Will Face More Protests
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s victory in Sunday’s election means he will return to the Kremlin once again, albeit in far less triumphant fashion than he had imagined in September.
The other four candidates mounted surprisingly passive campaigns. Not only did they take pains to avoid criticizing Putin, but they were careful to maintain a low profile by making few campaign trips and showing little initiative. Liberal Democratic Party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky earned fewer votes than ever in a lackluster campaign where it seemed as if he went out of his way to lose votes.
Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov also failed to impress. He garnered fewer votes and suffered the largest decline in relation to his party’s showing in the December State Duma elections than all four other candidates.
Although Mikhail Prokhorov visited five regions — as compared to Putin’s 18 — he focused his efforts on the Internet. The Kremlin guessed correctly that Prokhorov’s participation would give a degree of novelty and added legitimacy to the presidential election.
Apparently, the methods used to rig elections have changed. The ballot box-stuffing and “carousel” voting, in which groups of people are bused to several polling places to cast multiple votes, have become less effective than before, while the use of administrative resources increased in size.
This was most obvious in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the Kremlin solved the extremely difficult task of raising the number of votes for Putin to match his stronger showing in the regions while minimizing the vote-rigging so as to avoid scandals and protests. This was accomplished by busing in a large number of pro-Putin voters from several regions along with a large number of police and Interior Troops.
Sunday’s election also apparently broke a record for the use of absentee ballots. And the wholesale use of “carousels” should logically result in the Central Elections Commission declaring a significantly higher voter turnout than for the Duma elections in December.
If we are witnessing a new side to Putin, it is only in the sense that he worked harder to win this election than he did in previous votes. It would seem that this election marked not so much the start of a new political era as the end of the current one. Putin, Mironov and Zhirinovsky appear to be approaching the end of their political careers. In all likelihood, none of them will take part in the next presidential election — which might be held earlier than 2018.
The Duma and presidential elections are over, but the process of change they have sparked will continue for years. The impetus for that change stems from mass protests over blatant electoral fraud.
What will happen next?
Much depends on how the authorities respond to future political protests and whether they, in response, institute meaningful reforms. There is no reason to believe, as many in the Kremlin do, that the protests and the problems associated with them will end now that the election is over.
The Kremlin has yet to adequately respond to the protesters’ demands. This probably means that the protests will increase in size and intensity. What’s more, Russians face hikes in their utility bills coupled with cuts to social spending and pensions, despite election promises to the contrary. This alone could be enough to prompt people to take to the streets demanding change.

<i>Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.</i>

TITLE: Eternal theme
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Bad Influence call themselves a funeral band: They first reformed to perform at a memorial concert for Eduard Nesterenko, their former guitarist and founder of the band Petlya Nesterova, held at Griboyedov bunker club in December 2008, 40 days after Nesterenko’s death. 
Since then they have been asked to perform at memorial concerts for Svinya, the nickname of Andrei Panov, the godfather of Leningrad punk rock who died 1998, and Alex Ogoltely (Alexander Strogachyov), who led the punk band Narodnoye Opolcheniye until his death in 2005.
Bad Influence (Durnoye Vliyaniye in Russian) formed in 1988 under the influence of British post-punk bands such as Bauhaus and Joy Division, at the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika and the Soviet rock explosion.
Nesterenko, who started out with the local new wave band Kofe, was a friend and played guitar with Bad Influence in 1989. 
 “In 1991 we split; it’s actually amazing — we have friends who were born in 1992. You ask her, ‘When were you born?’ and she says, ‘in 1992.’ ‘Cool, we hadn’t been playing for a year by then,’” says drummer and cofounder Igor Mosin.
“Igor called me [after Nesterenko’s death] and said let’s perform,” says vocalist Alexander Skvortsov, who returned to St. Petersburg in 2007 after spending years based in Halifax, the U.K. where he moved in 1995.
“I had the idea of forming a group called Zadvorki with Edik Nesterenko, but because Edik died, I formed it with my friend Max,” Skvortsov says.
Bad Influence’s recorded legacy — which includes two D.I.Y. tape albums and a demo — kept the memory of Bad Influence alive, and Mosin kept receiving requests to reform for a number of goth and anniversary events.
“It occurred to us to get together a couple of times earlier, but every time we found reasons not to,” says Mosin.
“We’d all been to the funeral and I remember the feeling. Garik Vorobyev placed a record on the grave — Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ — and we thought, we must do something for Edik, and the only thing we could do for him was to play.”
For the concert, Mosin, Skvortsov and the band’s co-founding bassist Dmitry Petrov cooperated with Multfilmy’s guitarist Yevgeny Lazarenko and — after two rehearsals — performed at the memorial. 
With guitarist Andrei “Andy” Kordyukov replacing Lazarenko, the band then performed at a pair of events, but this weekend will see the reformed Bad Influence’s first full-fledged concert. 
Kordyukov gained underground fame as a member of the 1980s band Mladshiye Bratya, and has performed with a number of bands since then, including 17 Pilotov v Ogne and Never Trust a Hippie.
Despite years spent in the U.K., Skvortsov, who said he worked for five years as a math teacher in a British school, says he can’t express himself in lyrics in English as well as he can in Russian.
“I can’t write poetry in English, I don’t feel it, I can’t say if it’s good or bad, even if I read English poetry like Byron,” Skvortsov says.
“I think what I wrote in English was nothing special. But when I write in Russian I can express myself, and I can understand whether it is exactly what I wanted to say or whether it is bullshit. That’s why I had to return. Also, I missed it here, the winter, New Year...”
While Skvortsov was into Bauhaus, which he sees as an avant-garde rather than a goth-rock band, Mosin was into industrial and experimental music, citing Cassiber, Einstrurzende Neubauten and David Tibet as his favorites.
“I also liked pop music like The Smiths,” Mosin says.
Mosin and Skvortsov said the Leningrad music scene, with its small, minimalist bands, was unique in the Soviet Union and differed from Moscow, where they went for bands featuring members wearing striped sailor shirts and playing saxophone. 
According to Mosin, local bands such as Jugendstil and Tequilajazzz emerged as successors of the direction that Bad Influence and other local bands set in the late 1980s.
“You can always recognize a St. Petersburg band; it’s more distinct music, not blurred,” Skvortsov says.
“More angular, not round. Not like Moscow bands that are more round and have fewer angles.”
Although currently, Bad Influence is only performing its old repertoire, the band is getting ready to add some new songs. “If there’s no new work, it stops being interesting after a while,” Skvortsov says.
According to Mosin, the new Bad Influence has drawn a diverse audience. “There were people older than 30 and there were 17-year-olds at our last concert,” he says.
“And they know our songs — people in the front rows know our lyrics! The lyrics remained relevant; they’re metaphorical and intense. The time was very compressed when Sasha [Skvortsov] wrote them, his impulse was very strong.
“He wrote them at night, we discussed them, argued over some things we didn’t like and redid them. We deal with eternity; the main theme is death, you can’t avoid it. It’s gothic.”
According to Skvortsov, Bad Influence is sacred for its members.
“It has something to do with our young years,” Skvortsov says. 
“As I grew up, I became more cynical, but Bad Influence is like a Disney film to me; it appeals to this part of my soul that is not stained. It’s sincere; it was sincere with everybody, it was not a pose, and we want to continue to do it in a sincere way.”
Bad Influence has plans to perform more concerts and record a single before summer, but the band’s future depends on the members’ inner feeling.
“If we feel it’s getting false, we’ll stop,” Skvortsov. “It’s instantly clear when you look at yourself in a mirror.”

<i>Bad Influence will perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday at Dada, 47 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. M. Sennaya Ploshchad / Sadovaya.</i>

TITLE: Snow Show at Igora
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Those who missed the chance to bid farewell to winter at the city’s Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) celebrations shouldn’t despair: There will be another chance this weekend, when Igora Park hosts the Quiksilver New Star snowboarding show.
With a prize fund of about $15,000, Quiksilver claims it is the biggest snowboarding event in Eastern Europe. The entertainment program includes a snowmobile show in which a 200-kilogram machine performs back-flips — not something that can be seen every day. 
But the highlight of the program is, of course, a snowboarding show by both Russian and international champions. Twenty-two-year-old Sergei Lapushkin is one of them. Now a member of the Russian Olympic team, like many Russians, he wanted to be a cosmonaut as a child. 
“In fact, I didn’t dream a lot at that time,” Lapushkin told The St. Petersburg Times. “I ran around the yard like all other kids, fastened wooden boxes to bicycles, collected bottles to return them and buy chocolates [with the money made from returning them], and did different sports, like karate, football and basketball. There was no certainty in my life back then,” he said. 
Having made it to the finals of the snowboarding world cup stage in Canada, Lapushkin admits that doing complicated tricks requires total fearlessness. 
“It is really scary to do a double rotation, which is essentially a double flip, but with three turns in the main flip,” he said. “A good ramp, soft landing and a clear idea of what you are going to do helps you manage. A trampoline also helps because a trained vestibular system is essential.”
The popularity of snowboarding has rocketed in recent years, transforming it into not just a sport, but one that presupposes a certain way of life with its own traditions, jargon and music. The headliners of this year’s New Star music show are a band from Brooklyn, New York called Trouble Andrew. Band leader Trevor Andrew is a former snowboarder who participated in the Olympics in 1998 and 2002, but had to quit snowboarding because of a knee injury, following which he dedicated himself to music. Andrew defines the band’s music style as crunk rock, a new music trend inspired by skateboarding and snowboard cultures.
The Russian snowboarding industry and culture are quite young, but according to Lapushkin, are developing in the right direction. “It is [developing] and I am very happy about that,” he said. “Commercial structures are beginning to develop parks in Russia.” 
In Lapushkin’s native Novosibirsk, there are now two parks, where once there was none. 
Lapushkin’s main disciplines are big air (jumping from a large ramp and doing tricks in the air), and slopestyle, performing different types of tricks on a ramp. Both disciplines have been included in the Sochi Olympics program. 
“There is certainly a chance [of winning Olympic medals],” Lapushkin told The St. Petersburg Times. After a successful performance at the world cup, Lapushkin and fellow snowboarder Alexei Sobolev are hoping to win medals in Sochi in 2014. 
For those ready to make their first steps in snowboarding, lessons by the eminent female Russian snowboarders Alyona Alyokhina and Zhenya Goldman will be organized in the park’s Roxy zone.  

<i>Quiksilver New Star takes place on March 10 from 2 p.m. at Igora Ski Park, located at the 54th kilometer of Priozerskoye Shosse. www.quicksilvernewstar.com</i>

TITLE: A stroll down memory lane
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pioneer uniforms, candy wrappers, board games and other remnants of Soviet childhood are on show at a new exhibit titled “Lukomorye. The World of Soviet Childhood,” which is guaranteed to evoke a feeling of nostalgia among those who grew up under Communism. 
In the Soviet Union, childhood was characterized by a limited choice of regular little joys, making the things that children did have all the more precious, the exhibit’s organizers said.
Adults visiting the show, which opened at the city’s Printing Museum last week, listed Soviet dolls, metal toy soldiers and other collectables such as pocket calendars with holographic pictures from Soviet cartoons as their favorite items and the most reminiscent of the past.
Wrappers and collectable inserts from Donald, Turbo and Love Is bubblegum, which were rare and treasured products in the U.S.S.R. — even in the 1980s, when America and Europe already had more varieties than they could chew — are another source of nostalgia on show.
“One can only imagine what Soviet kids thought of to make the chewing gum they occasionally got to last longer: They dipped gum that had already been chewed into sugar, stuck it on the back of the bed to chew again the next morning, and even made their own chewing gum from tree resin,” said Stanislava Smagina, the organizer of the exhibition said. “Some even tried boiling erasers, thinking that that was how bubblegum was made.” 
In order to make the exhibit interactive, organizers are on hand to help visitors remember or learn some of the most popular Soviet outdoor games, such as klassiki (hopscotch) and  rezinochka, Chinese jump rope, in which girls jump in increasingly complicated patterns in and around stretched elastic.
When Svetlana Gutorova, 40, head of a taxi dispatcher service, came to the exhibit with her 13-year-old daughter and saw a rezinochka game set up, she said she couldn’t remember what steps they used to do with the elastic when she was young. 
“What struck me was that my legs instantly remembered it instead,” Gutorova said, while her daughter Polina said that she didn’t play the game with her friends.
Gutorova said that modern childhoods differ greatly from hers.
“Today’s kids grow up very fast,” she said. “They don’t have that naivety that we had. Tomorrow my daughter is going to her friend’s birthday party and she wants to give her a curling iron — a thing that we’d never have thought about in our childhood. Instead, the happiest moment I remember was when my uncle brought me a box of ice-cream bars,” she said.
Visitors to the museum are also invited to bury their own sekretiki or underground caches in a sandbox, a popular activity among children in the Soviet Union. Children would create their own cache by taking a piece of foil and wrapping something beautiful like a small flower, beads or a little drawing in it, before covering it with a piece of broken glass from a bottle and burying it, to show it later to only their most trusted friends.
Visitors can also collect pieces of geometric puzzles that were popular in Soviet times, see a ration card that allowed St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) residents to buy goods in local stores when supplies were scarce during the first post-Soviet years of the 1990s, and explore the world of Soviet children’s magazines and books, as well as national fairytale characters such as Buratino (the Russian Pinocchio) and the witch Baba Yaga.
A number of covers from boxes of Soviet chocolates on display were unfamiliar to the majority of adult visitors, who said they had not seen them before.
Smagina explained that boxed chocolates were a rare delicacy among regular Soviet families, and that people often saved them to give to doctors or teachers as a sign of gratitude. As the chocolates were usually kept for a long time after being purchased while the family waited for a suitable occasion to give the chocolates away, the candies inside would harden and lose their taste.
“As a teacher’s daughter, I can vouch for that,” Smagina said with a smile.
Anastasia Bil, a 22-year-old student, said that although her childhood was not so long ago, seeing the things that represented childhood was like entering a fairytale world. Bil said that although children’s treats were certainly still limited when she was young in the turbulent ’90s, it was still “the happiest time, like any normal childhood.”
“It was also a bit sad to see that our childhood went by so quickly and that we already live in a different world,” she said. “Here you realize again how happy and carefree we were as children, when our parents were responsible for everything.”
Bil’s husband Nikolai, a 28-year-old engineer, said he considered his childhood to be a more natural one, full of real life and face-to-face communication, in comparison with the artificial world created by the Internet in which today’s children often live.
Smagina, a historian and psychologist by profession, said the exhibition was primarily created to allow adult visitors to take a tour of their own childhood and rediscover the contented, blithe feeling that surrounded them. 
“Foreigners who visit the exhibit will not only get an idea about Soviet childhoods, but can also see something familiar from their own childhood, since many things are similar all over the world — for example, collecting candy wrappers and stamps,” she said.
The exhibition will run through March 31 and will later become part of the Trickster Museum of Laughter, which is currently under development, Smagina said.

<i>“Lukomorye. The World of Soviet Childhood” is on display through March 31 at the Printing Museum, 
32 Nab. Reki Moiki. Tel. 312 0977. 
M. Admiralteiskaya.</i>

TITLE: Cooking up a storm
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gastronomy takes center stage at a new project just launched in the city to showcase the cream of the crop of international cuisine to St. Petersburg. Titled Chef’s Discovery, the project features six tours to the city by some of the world’s most dynamic chefs from locations ranging from South Africa to Seychelles during the course of this year.
The project began on March 1 a little closer to home, with Moscow chef Dmitry Zotov presenting a seven-course gastronomic set at the panoramic restaurant Luce, located at the top of Grand Palace shopping center. At the age of 28, Zotov is the chef of four Moscow dining establishments: Zolotoi, Entrecote, Beefbar Junior and Olivetta. His signature style, which is described as new Russian cuisine with an innovative bend, has won acclaim for bold experiments with textures and flavors. Zotov delights in incorporating elements of gastronomic theater into the presentation of his sets.
Alchemy was the word that came to mind while the chef was making a vodka and lychee cocktail in a vast, shiny pot. A thick cloud of steam half covered the chef as he stirred the ingredients, mixed with liquid nitrogen. The resulting cocktail was served as an aperitif in the form of a sorbet.
One of the highlights of the meal was king crab cannelloni served in a sea-buckthorn wrapping with tarragon mousse, while the black cod, which tasted as though it had been cooked on charcoal owing to the ingenious use of Lapsang Souchong tea leaves, was artfully peppered with “ashes” — made of eggplant skin — and sweet balsamic sauce.
The driving force behind the Chef’s Discovery project is Alena Melnikova, an advertising and marketing specialist whose roles include brand ambassador for Acqua Panna and San Pellegrino mineral water brands in the city. The two brands are at the heart of the San Pellegrino Cooking Cup, an annual gastronomic regatta that is held in Venice.
The gourmet regatta brings together aspiring chefs under 30 years of age from all over the world. While the crew is battling the elements, the gastronomic crew on board is working hard to create top of the range dishes with which to present the sailors and impress the culinary jury, which features A-list international chefs. The creative spirit of the contest inspired Melnikova to think of a local event that would celebrate gastronomic diversity. 
Moscow’s Zotov won the fourth place at the 2011 regatta — Russia’s best achievement so far at the competition.
“When I first voiced the idea to the management in Italy, they were thrilled; they reacted with ‘wow, at last something is going to be happening in this part of the world,’” Melnikova said. “It is an open secret that St. Petersburg boasts only a couple of restaurants that can safely be counted as gastronomic — miX in W hotel and Grand Cru, and that is about it. Ultimately, the aim is to inspire more gastronomic venues to pop up.”
The project’s declared mission could be a tough task for a conservative city like St. Petersburg, where it is not uncommon for the more deep-pocketed diners to show up at a restaurant and demand traditional dishes such as chicken Kiev. Such diners may be prepared to pay a generous sum to compensate for the departure from the menu, but the problem is, critics complain, that with such attitudes reigning, and guests treating skilled chefs as some sort of serf, it is hard to nurture respect for chefs and, effectively, the art of gastronomy.
“It is hard to promote gastronomy when a lot of people go to restaurants to mingle, socialize and enjoy the view rather than for the sake of the actual meal,” Melnikova said. “But we have got to change that.”
Zotov said it is becoming easier to interest Russian diners in tastier menus. “It used to be — even five years ago — that you would create a set, and everyone would just ignore it; now guests are beginning to react slowly but surely. When I offer a set, I know that at least a handful of guests per week will be sure to express an interest.”
The next discovery will take place on April 9 and feature a gastronomic set by Jean-Paul Nurris from the Seychelles islands, with Langust restaurant serving as the host venue.

TITLE: Let the good times roll
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If the sell-out crowd at the St. Petersburg State Jazz Philharmonic on Saturday is anything to go by, American idiomatic music is alive and well and about to take Russia by storm. Part of an ambitious series of musical events curated by the American Folklife Center of the U.S. Library of Congress and now touring Russia, the American Traditional Music Festival kicked off with a blast of bayou warmth Saturday at a rousing concert by two sets of musicians from southwestern Louisiana.  
The first of Saturday’s performances was by Christine Balfa and Balfour Toujours, a five-piece band that plays Cajun waltzes and two-steps, and who are part of a family tradition stretching back generations. The group provided a perfect introduction to the history and continued relevance of this extraordinary music, some 200 years after it first appeared in the lowlands of Louisiana. 
The second half of the evening was dedicated to Cajun music’s younger sibling, zydeco, with a performance by accordionist and singer Jeffery Broussard who was accompanied by Ed Poullard on fiddle. The pair were backed up by members of Balfour Toujours for their Russian debut. 
As far as exotic amalgams go, Cajun and Creole music from the Louisiana bayous probably wins hands down. Its hybrid blend of cultural elements is based on the music of western France, brought to what is now Nova Scotia by early settlers. As it traveled south, it met and incorporated singing styles learned from the Native Americans, syncopation and percussion from Africans, reels and square dances from the Anglo-Americans, Spanish folk tunes and guitar music, and accordion music traditions from Jewish-German merchants. 
Zydeco music, a foot stomping blend that added blues and the rhythms of Haitian music to the Cajun mix, first appeared in the late 1860s. Its sound is characterized by the accordion and washboard, or frottoir, from the French meaning to rub. Broussard is an influential musician at the forefront of the “nouveau zydeco” movement, which incorporates the soulful sounds of R&B into contemporary zydeco music and dance. 
The music of southwest Louisiana primarily serves a social function and is usually played as a soundtrack to gatherings of families and friends, rather than to attentive spectators in theater seats. Saturday’s event was unusual for the musicians in that the audience were arrayed around tables facing the stage instead of being engaged in a bit of carousing. That is until Broussard’s boundless energy, swinging rhythms and infectious smile got the crowd to their feet and had them dancing in the aisles. 
Toward the end of the evening, the group’s washboard, which is worn like a large metal bib and played with a pair of spoons, was passed to dancers in the audience who were invited to join the musicians. This same song brought members of both groups onstage together for a long jam throughout which the players traded off instruments, showcasing both their fearless musicianship and embodying the easygoing spirit of the evening. The two groups will end their tour of Russia with a performance at Moscow’s DOM Cultural Center on March 9.
Upcoming appearances at the American Traditional Music Festival include concerts by R. Carlos Nakai, considered to be the premier performer of the Native American flute, cowboy yodeler Wylie Gustafson, rodeo poet Paul Zarzyski and old-school a cappella group the Brotherhood Singers. Organized by local arts initiative CEC Artslink and part of the U.S. Consulate’s American Seasons in Russia, all performances will take place at the Jazz Philharmonic in St. Petersburg. Appearances in Arkhangelsk, Nizhny Tagil and other cities round out the tour program, allowing people from all across the country to get a taste of an eclectic and uniquely American selection of traditional music.

<i>The American Traditional Music Festival runs through April 22 at the Jazz Philharmonic in St. Petersburg and various venues throughout Russia. 
For more information, 
visit www.cecartslink.org.</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: Prokhorov takes on Sobchak
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, it girl and media personality Ksenia Sobchak reopened her talk show on politics after it was shelved by MTV Russia. The show, now called “GosDep 2,” or “State Department 2,” came out on the Snob.ru website, which belongs to former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov.
She later returned the favor by grilling Prokhorov on what he thinks of gay men and why he has an entourage of useless friends.
MTV Russia pulled Sobchak’s original “GosDep” show after just one lively episode, which invited opposition figures such as Sergei Udaltsov and Yevgenia Chirikova as well as pro-Kremlin activists. Sobchak said the ban came after she invited Alexei Navalny for a later show, although MTV claimed that its viewers simply were not interested in politics.
Prokhorov stepped in, offering to air the talk show on his Snob.ru website.
The new show looked similar, with guests ranged along white sofas. Sobchak wore a T-shirt with the slogan “I work in the State Department for food,” coordinated with breeches and riding boots.
Navalny came on as a guest for the episode called “144 hours till the elections.” Unfortunately, out of the bland MTV context the talk show lost a lot of its shock value. It was heavy on men in dark suits and only verbal scuffles. Navalny and liberal politician Boris Nemtsov both impatiently told opponents to “shut up!” in the heat of debate. Nemtsov got the biggest cheer for stating the obvious: “You can’t call any elections legitimate if people know in advance who will win.”
Sobchak also invited Prokhorov onto her show on Dozhd online television, called “Sobchak Live,” where she interviewed the candidates one by one. Prokhorov looked awkward as usual, perched on a low chair with his jeans riding up, and certainly didn’t give the impression that they are best of friends.
Sobchak tried to draw him out on his personal life and his bachelor state. “What do you think about gay men?” she hinted. Prokhorov said he laughed off rumors he is gay, before breaking into a fit of coughing. He said some of his friends are gay and that “I’m a free person, I hang out with people who I find pleasant” — actually a brave position.
She tried to narrow down Prokhorov’s romantic interests, asking if there were any women “in the Russian Federation” whom he likes and who have a chance of becoming his “first lady.”
“Undoubtedly there are some in the Russian Federation,” he answered sphinx-like. This week, the Levada polling center placed him fourth in a survey on Russian sex symbols, below pop star Filipp Kirkorov, Vladimir Putin and stripper Tarzan, a pretty odd list.
Sobchak said she had been to his parties in Courchevel and suggested that he is surrounded by a noisy crowd of hangers-on, something he denied, insisting that they are “bright, talented guys.”
“I’ve seen your friends. You are the most clever and thoughtful among them,” she said. “I’m not sure that’s a great compliment.”
Among Prokhorov’s friends are television host Anton Krasovsky, oligarch Oleg Baibakov and former GQ editor Nikolai Uskov, who now heads Prokhorov’s media group, Sobchak said. Prokhorov himself called North Caucasus envoy Alexander Khloponin his best friend.
In the only revealing anecdote, Prokhorov described how his mother once tried to force him to eat some lumpy cottage cheese by not letting him leave the table until he had finished.
“The first day I sat for 12 hours,” he said, showing a steely will for a child. The next day he managed five more hours, before his parents backed down. That was the only time he got punished, he said.

TITLE: XII / Dvenadtsat
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Rattey
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>The art of translation</b>
If you’re looking for a warm welcome, you might want to look somewhere else. While Dvenadtsat prides itself in being an upscale swanky venue, catering to those who can afford it, the staff could use a bit more training when it comes to hospitality and service. 
The poor parking attendant, snowsuited up and subject to the brutal minus 20-degree weather, seemed to be the only one prepared for guests. Inside the restaurant was a different story. The hostess stand was abandoned, and the barman came off as quite confused as to what to do with guests, and scampered away — presumably to find someone who did. While most staff encountered as we wandered further into the restaurant offered a polite “hello” or “good evening,” these greetings were useless when it came to figuring out where to go. Heavy prompting was required to find out where coats should be left (down a flight of stairs in the chilly basement) and where to go afterwards — the first floor? Second? Climbing up yet another flight of stairs and thus completing the pre-dinner stair workout (make sure you don’t show up too hungry or you’re likely to pass out just from hiking to the table), other guests could be found, as well as a table in the empty non-smoking dining room. 
The attempt of the interior at being Italian is a little obvious, with “traditional” Italian pop playing in the background and extravagant frescoes painted on the high ceilings. The walls are covered in dark wooden wine cabinets and display cases, logical as more than half of the magazine-style menu consists of an abundant alcohol selection with bottles of wine ranging from 1,600 to 6,500 rubles ($52 to $215). Deep red velvety curtains drape across the windows that look out onto the street, or if you’re lucky, the Fontanka River. The warm colors of the restaurant make the atmosphere feel quite warm, while in fact it is rather cold. The combination of tiled floors and wintry air seeping in through the panes if sitting by the window encourage popping a cork in hopes of warming up, or simply eating lots of food.
Mozzarella con bacon — a ball of cheese wrapped in bacon, heated in the oven and served on a bed of radicchio drizzled in a honey dressing (430 rubles, $14.45) — started off the meal. The sweetness of the honey helped to balance out the saltiness of the bacon, while the garnish of halved cherry tomatoes did the same for the bitterness of the radicchio. The dish could have done with a couple more tomatoes and perhaps a little longer in the oven, however, as the center of the cheese was still cold. 
The other starter was a large mixed salad for 330 rubles ($11), which was a nice mix of fancy lettuces not to be found in any supermarket, plus tomatoes and cucumber, to be dressed with oil and vinegar to taste by diners themselves.
Soon after the appetizers were finished, Pizza Davide, baked in a brick oven and topped with tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, mozzarella, spicy salami and “pepperoni” (480 rubles, $16) was brought out. The crust was thin and satisfyingly crispy and the pizza good overall, yet much spicier than expected. It was littered with hot red peppers, which proved even too much for the spice aficionado in our party. When it was politely suggested to the waitress, who had until then been quite helpful and professional, that perhaps there should be a mention of this fiery surprise in the dish’s description, she swiftly trampled over rule number one of the service industry by trying to prove the guests wrong. Using the menu as a prop, she pointed to the description showing that the word “pepperoni” was clearly written, explaining that in Italian this means hot peppers. But what then is the point of having a “translation” in English and in Russian if you don’t bother to translate all of the words?
The other entr&#233;e, fettuccini with salmon and spring onions in cream (520 rubles, $17.50), was nothing to write home about. The noodles were perhaps al-dente, or perhaps just undercooked. The sauce lacked flavor and was scarce and quite runny, mostly dripping to the bottom of the plate. The fish was cooked well and still moist, but all in all, left plenty to be desired. 
If ordering alcohol and meat, a meal at Dvenadtsat could easily cost 4,000 rubles ($135) as meat dishes go for an average of 850 rubles ($28.50). While the interior is pleasant enough, for that kind of money, the restaurant could afford to push its service and food up to match its high prices.

TITLE: Book Teaches Women There Is Life After Cancer
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Breast cancer is not a death sentence; it is curable, and women who overcome it can and should enjoy life as before.
This is the message of a new book by the Russian writer Larisa Zalesova titled “Live As Before” about a woman who survives breast cancer. The book has become a hymn to life and a celebration of the courage of breast cancer patients.
Zalesova said she decided to write a book about the topic not only because she had had personal experience of the illness, but because when she realized that there were virtually no fiction books about the problem in Russian, she was really eager to share her advice for overcoming the illness and continuing to enjoy life.
“In this book, women can find out how to deal with the problem and bring joy back into their lives,” Zalesova said at a presentation of the book in St. Petersburg last month.
Zalesova said 10 percent of women in the world suffer from breast cancer.
“When women get such a diagnosis, it’s really difficult for them to live with the news. Even 10 years ago, women with this health problem preferred not to speak about it. Instead they would fall into depression,” Zalesova said.
“But it is possible to overcome this illness. With my book, I want to tell those women to ‘live as before,’ to inspire them to live,” she said.
Zalesova said that the crucial things that help people at such a time are “friends, family, laughter and creative activities.”
The author said that there have been situations in which women find out they have cancer and are betrayed by those closest to them — such as husbands who leave them, or acquaintances or colleagues who don’t know how to react and behave in their presence.
“Real friends would never betray a person in such a situation and would find the right words to say and things to do, as well as providing help,” she said.
Zalesova said that women diagnosed with breast cancer should “not get scared, but instead form a plan of action about where to get treatment and help, and calm down.”
“Women should not be silent about their illness, but instead let their family know about it, and also then find a group that works with such patients and provides them with psychological help,” Zalesova said.
“And of course, there is no need to rush out and make a will. The most important thing is to believe that it’s possible to solve the problem, as modern medicine helps more than 70 percent of women to overcome the illness,” she said.
Zalesova advises women to examine themselves regularly to improve the chances of catching the illness in its early stages when it is easiest to treat.
“Live As Before” is named after the eponymous Belgian volunteer organization that helps women with breast cancer.
“The volunteers go to hospitals that treat women with breast cancer and help give them the will and inspiration to live,” Zalesova said at the book’s presentation.
“Unfortunately, there are few such organizations in Russia. Therefore I hope my book will encourage the appearance of such organizations in this country,” she said.
The book tells the story of Elaine, who has a loving husband, a 10-year-old daughter, an exciting life and an interesting profession, before a routine medical check-up suddenly causes her world to fall apart. 
The 43-year-old heroine suddenly finds herself facing a mastectomy, chemotherapy and fifty-fifty chance of survival.
From this point on, the story takes the reader through Elaine’s dramatic fight to recover, combined with her struggle to continue leading a normal family life and to retain her sanity and her job.
Elaine is at the center of the novel and serves as a link between different events. She is depicted in different lights among her family, her friends, and most of all, by herself, facing an uncertain future. 
Elaine’s story includes her diaries, background information on the places she visits during her struggle, and conversations with her friends and strangers — some of whom are in a similar situation. It also includes her writings about art and music and a children’s story she created for her daughter.
Zalesova said that although the book is not autobiographical, it is based on her experience and knowledge.
The writer said she decided to write the book when she was in hospital. She began writing the book in English, but later switched to Russian.
Zalesova, who also writes under the pen name Lara Doctorow, is a journalist and critic who has been published in newspapers and magazines in Russia, Belgium and the U.S., including The St. Petersburg Times. She divides her time between her native St. Petersburg and Brussels.

<i>“Live As Before” by Larisa Zalesova is published by Zvezda Publishing House in St. Petersburg.</i>