SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1702 (13), Wednesday, April 4, 2012
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TITLE: Shoigu Says Capital Should Be Moved to Siberia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Newly minted Moscow region governor-in-waiting Sergei Shoigu suggested in a radio interview Friday that the capital of Russia be moved from Moscow to Siberia.
Answering a question during an interview with the Russian News Service about the possibility of the federal government moving to the Moscow region, Shoigu said: "I think the capital needs to be moved farther away, to Siberia."
Radio host Sergei Dorenko quipped back that Moscow would empty out if such an unlikely step were taken. "Rats will run around the streets," Dorenko said.
President Dmitry Medvedev proposed last year moving government agency buildings outside the Moscow Ring Road, which roughly serves as the current city limits.
Shoigu, who has served as Emergency Situations Minister since 1994, is a native of the Republic of Tyva, located on the border with Mongolia. He was nominated to be Moscow region governor this week by Medvedev and voted into the office by the region's legislature on Thursday.
Shoigu has devised a plan to create a state-run Far East development corporation and was slated to head the entity, Vedomosti reported last week. Speculation has it that First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov may take that job.
TITLE: Italian Diplomat Beaten Up, Robbed in St. Petersburg
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An Italian diplomat was beaten up and robbed of 20,000 rubles ($680) in central St. Petersburg on Wednesday, a police source told Interfax.
Giorgio Mattioli, director of the Italian Institute of Culture, part of the Italian foreign mission, was attacked by multiple assailants near Griboyedov Kanal, a few blocks southwest of the Hermitage Museum. The robbers stole 20,000 rubles in cash, documents, car keys, Mattioli's diplomatic passport and a watch.
Mattioli sustained head trauma and was sent to the hospital, RIA-Novosti reported.
This was the second attack on a foreign diplomat in St. Petersburg this week. On Saturday evening, Belgian diplomat Guillaume Albert Nestor Gislam Shokye was robbed of a coat, documents, his mobile phone and a watch on central thoroughfare Nevsky Prospekt, Moi Raion reported.
In 2005 in St. Petersburg, British Ambassador Tony Brenton had his wallet stolen and his wife sustained minor injuries in an attack by five young people aged 15 to 16.
TITLE: 'Gay is Normal' Signs Get Demonstrators Arrested in St. Petersburg
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two gay rights demonstrators were detained by police in St. Petersburg on Thursday in what could be the first case resulting from the recently passed city law banning so-called gay propaganda.
Alexei Kiselyov and Kirill Nepomnyashy were arrested outside the Palace of Youth Creativity holding signs bearing the words, "Gay is normal," police told Interfax. Police said the pair was conducting so-called one-man pickets — which do not require City Hall approval — meaning that they were not standing together or yelling slogans.
Under a St. Petersburg law that took effect last month, anyone found guilty of promoting homosexuality among minors is to be fined from 5,000 to 500,000 rubles. The law has been condemned by domestic and international human rights advocates and gay activists, and by Western governments.
A hearing scheduled for Friday will decide whether Kiselyov and Nepomnyashy will be fined for their actions.
Gay rights leader Nikolai Alekseyev said the pair's signs were simply stating scientifically accepted fact.
"There was of course no propaganda in the activists' actions. They were only trying to tell society common scientific truths about the fact that homosexuality is not an illness but a natural and normal sexual orientation," Alekseyev told GayRussia.ru.
TITLE: Journalist From Opposition Paper Brutally Beaten
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina was brutally beaten near her home on the outskirts of Moscow just after midnight early Thursday, the journalist said on Facebook.
Milashina says she and a female friend were attacked by two men who took her money and the friend's laptop. She says the attackers beat her brutally all over her body, including her face and head, knocking out teeth.
Milashina, who was also attacked in Beslan in 2006, is editor of Novaya Gazeta's special reports section and has published materials about disappearances and torture in the North Caucasus, as well as violations by law enforcement and security agencies.
The newspaper's deputy editor Nugzar Mikeladze told RIA-Novosti he wasn't aware of a connection between the attack and Milashina's work.
"According to my information, there were no traces of a professional," he said.
The attackers were scared away by three girls passing by. Milashina called the police, who she said summoned her back to the scene of the attack after arriving there only an hour later. She said the officers were questioning one of the witnesses and ignored her without opening the door. Milashina went home without giving her report.
A police source told RIA-Novosti that law enforcement received an emergency call from a woman who identified herself as Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina, but she was gone when police arrived and her phone was turned off. They said police had a record of the complaint and that it would be addressed.
Novaya Gazeta is known for highly critical coverage of the authorities. Several of the paper's journalist have been killed in past years, including Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed atrocities against civilians by Chechnya's Moscow-backed authorities. International media watchdogs rank Russia among the world's most dangerous countries for reporters, and most attacks on journalists have remained unsolved, including Politkovskaya's 2006 slaying.
TITLE: Gasoline Prices Could Jump 18%
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The price for gasoline could jump seven to 18 percent in the near future or fuel shortages could arise, Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov warned, Vedomosti reported Thursday.
Russia needs "unambiguous price adjustments" on oil products that he said are far below international market prices. If prices remain unchanged, it will flush the domestic market, and increased seasonal demand in April and May could leave Russia facing a shortage.
In 2011 oil companies resisted pressure by officials to suppress prices during election season, but now companies are beginning to raise prices and are waiting for the reaction by authorities, Russian Fuel Union president Yevgeny Arkusha told Vedomosti.
Last year Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke about the need for low prices, and in late January Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said gas prices would be frozen until March in accordance with an agreement made with oil producers.
"The consumer has to feel reduction in fuel prices in their pockets, and it should be visible at the pump," Putin said.
Prices experienced a net decrease in December and in the first two months of 2012, dropping 0.3 percent, compared to a 0.6 percent rise in November, Rosstat data showed.
Wholesale prices underwent record growth in the first week of March as the election season was winding up, rising by up to 4.9 percent, oil market analysis company Kortes said.
The rise in wholesale prices has just begun to be felt at the pump. Lukoil spokesman Dmitry Dolgov said that last week on average the price of gasoline at their gas stations was up by 25 kopecks per liter.
TITLE: Workers Stumble Upon Treasure Stash in Mansion
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Construction workers in St. Petersburg hit it big last week, stumbling upon an impressive collection of treasure believed to be the property of one of Russia’s most famous noble dynasties, the Naryshkins.
The treasure, hidden in a small secret room in an old mansion, comprised more than 1,000 precious items including Russian and European silver dinner sets, jewelry and military awards, the Intarsia construction company press service said. It was the company’s workers who found the treasure while restoring the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion on Ulitsa Chaikovskogo in the city center.
Silver travel sets, mirrors and brushes in silver frames, French knives with pearl and porcelain handles and other porcelain objects were among the pieces found.
All of the objects were wrapped carefully in newspapers dated from March, June and September of 1917 — the eve of the Bolshevik revolution that took place in October. All of the pieces were in excellent condition as they had been wrapped in cloths soaked in vinegar, whose scent still remained, in order to better preserve the collection, the press service reported.
The treasure tale touches on two of Russia’s most renowned and romantic figures: Peter the Great and Alexander Pushkin.
Almost all of the large dinner set objects bear the crest of the Naryshkins, a noble Russian dynasty to which the mother of Tsar Peter the Great belonged.
In the 1750s, two separate buildings stood where the present-day mansion is located. One of the buildings belonged to Abram Gannibal, the African grandfather of poet Alexander Pushkin. In 1832 the two buildings were joined into one, with Duke Vasily Naryshkin buying the house in 1875.
In the revolution-scarred year of 1917, the owners of the mansion left Russia. The valuables left in the building were moved to the State Hermitage Museum in 1920, with some pictures being given to the State Russian Museum, Fontanka reported.
It is still too early, however, to tell if the findings were definitely the property of the Naryshkin family, as documents belonging to army officer Sergei Somov were also found with the collection. The documents included Somov’s 1908 student card from the imperial college and a certificate of the White Eagle Order in his name from 1915, RIA Novosti reported.
After the Bolshevik revolution, Somov emigrated to France. He died in 1976 and was buried in Paris.
Experts from the city’s Committee for the State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments or KGIOP are currently taking an inventory and examining the objects. After this process, the collection will be placed in one of the city’s museums. However, when the restoration of the mansion is completed, Intarsia is prepared to place the collection in the Trubetskoi mansion for public viewing, the press service reported.
After a short investigation, local police, who were informed of the discovery more than 24 hours after it was made, found out that the workers had attempted to hide some of the treasure from the authorities. They smuggled out at least three gilded trays with the Naryashkin crest on them in sacks with garbage from their reconstruction work. They then placed the sacks with the garbage. Police also found a box containing 72 spoons and forks hidden in another area. They are conducting a further investigation of the mansion in order to ensure nothing else has been stashed away, Fontanka reported.
By Russian law, the construction workers who discovered the treasure are entitled to half of it. According to the law, the treasure should be divided into equal parts between the owner of the property on which it was found on and the person or people who found it. However, if the objects discovered are identified as having cultural or historical value, they will be given to the state and the owner and those who found them will have to split half of the cost of what the treasure is worth.
Ivan Artsishevsky, chairman of the House of Romanov, said the discovery of the treasure could cause self-proclaimed Naryshkin descendants to step forward, demanding the treasure be returned to them.
“In my experience of working with the Romanovs, I can say that ‘secret’ descendants from the Emperor’s dynasty regularly appeal to me with all kinds of claims and demands. In this case many such ‘relatives’ may appear,” Artsishevsky was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Artsishevsky said all of the precious objects found should be donated to a museum, adding that he was sure that no real Naryshkin descendents would come forward in hopes of claiming the treasure.
“All this should be given to a museum. All of these objects actually belong not to the Naryshkins, but to all Russian people. I doubt any of the duke’s descendants would believe otherwise,” he said.
Experts say that during the past 200 years, more than 55 treasure troves have been unexpectedly discovered in St. Petersburg properties. Most treasures included coins and various other pieces.
One such stash was found in the city’s historical department store, Gostiny Dvor, in 1985. There, more than 114 kilograms of gold bars were discovered in an area that had once served as a jewelry store.
In 1981, children playing in a courtyard on Pereulok Baskov found a piece of furniture they wanted to use to build a den. Inside the piece of furniture, however, one of the boys found a package containing 94 gold coins from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Fontanka reported.
Intarsia has been restoring buildings for 20 years, and unexpectedly finding old things in historic buildings is not a rare phenomenon. While restoring the arch of the city’s General Staff Building, company workers found 5,000 cigarette holders. A fresco, panel paintings and other antiques have also been uncovered in other places, the company’s press service said.
After the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion has been restored it will serve both cultural and business functions. On the first floor a restaurant will be opened where, during Soviet times, a cafeteria was located. Rooms to be used for cultural events such as exhibitions, conferences, seminars and excursions will be on the second floor.
TITLE: Woman Protests Sentence With Hunger
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A Yabloko Democratic Party member went on dry hunger strike Monday after being sentenced to 10 days in prison for taking part in a Strategy 31 demo on Saturday.
Maria Kozhevatova, who was holding an anti-Putin poster, was detained at the unauthorized demo in defense of freedom of assembly. Strategy 31 demos have been held regularly in St. Petersburg since January 2010.
Magistrate Judge Alexei Kuznetsov of Judicial District 21 sentenced her to 10 days in prison for failure to obey a police officer’s lawful orders and fined her 900 rubles ($30) for violating the rules on holding public assemblies Monday.
Kuznetsov had previously sentenced Strategy 31 protesters to terms from one to 15 days in custody on the same charges, but some of his sentences were overruled by courts of appeal as contradicting both Russian law and Russia’s international human rights obligations.
Female protesters had previously been arrested, held at police precincts and fined, but had never been sentenced to terms in custody on such charges.
Anna Dudnikova, an activist with the preservationist group Okhtinskaya Duga who was a defense witness for Kozhevatova, described her arrest and sentence as “absolutely unlawful.”
“Why she got those 10 days in prison cannot be explained logically,” Dudnikova said.
“Kozhevatova held a classic one-person demo (which does not require any previous authorization under Russian law) — without shouting, chanting or saying anything at all.
“She stood alone with a placard. A policeman approached her and asked, ‘A one-person demo?’ ‘Yes, a one-person demo.’ They took down her name and address, without objecting to anything she was doing and went away. Then, after some time, other policemen in helmets grabbed her under the arms without any explanation and dragged her onto a bus. It’s a crystal clear situation.”
According to Dudnikova, the police later wrote in their reports that Kozhevatova was shouting slogans and refused to obey police orders several times.
“This is completely untrue,” she said.
Later that same day, Kuznetsov also sentenced Yury Melnichuk, a member of the Party of People’s Liberty (Parnas), to 10 days in prison.
Dudnikova, who was also a witness for Melnichuk, described the sentence as “ridiculous.”
“The hearing on charges of participating in an unsanctioned rally was postponed until a video recording of the event has been supplied, but he was sentenced to 10 days for failing to obey orders to stop participating in the rally,” she said.
“This means that it has not yet been proved that he participated in an unsanctioned rally, but he has already been sentenced for refusing to stop participating. I have no idea how this can be explained from a legal standpoint.”
“In reality, there was no rally at all, it was rather a series of attempts to hold a one-person demo that was immediately shut down.”
About 20 people were arrested at the demo. Olga Kurnosova, the local chair of the United Civil Front (OGF), was sentenced to one day in custody, but was released soon after as she had spent time at a police precinct before being sentenced.
TITLE: Dinamo Moscow Defeats SKA in Conference Finals
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mikhail Anisin scored a hat-trick as Dinamo Moscow cruised to a 6-1 win and a four-game sweep of SKA St. Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League Western Conference finals at Luzhniki stadium in Moscow on Tuesday night.
Dinamo scored early in first period and tallied two short-handed goals in the only game of the series that they dominated. The other three games in the series were closely contested matches in which Dinamo found a way to edge the Petersburg team.
SKA appeared to be on the way to cruising to an easy victory in game one at the Ice Palace last Wednesday, but ultimately squandered a three goal lead and Dinamo fought hard to tie the game and force overtime after SKA racked up some serious penalty time in the second half of the game. SKA’s Tony Martensson scored an apparent game winner, but the referees ruled he knocked the puck in with his knee and overturned the goal. Mere seconds later Dinamo’s Denis Mosalyov stunned everyone with a hat-trick goal that sealed the improbable 6-5 win.
Fans felt a similar punch to the gut in game two last Friday, after Dinamo’s Marek Kvapil scored with 2:17 left in regulation giving the visitors a 2-1 lead. Maxim Rybin’s equalizer at 54:40 looked to give SKA the momentum it needed to even the series, but the conference finals went to Moscow with Dinamo leading the series 2-0.
A determined SKA fought hard in game three on Sunday in Moscow, outshooting the blue and white team 15-3 in the first period, but Dinamo goaltender Alexander Yeryomenko kept the Petersburgers at bay. Penalties got the better of SKA in the third period, and former SKA player Konstantin Gorovikov sealed Dinamo’s win with a power play goal.
Dinamo advances to face the winner of Eastern Conference finals, which Avangard Omsk leads 2-1 over Traktor Chelyabinsk.
TITLE: Bosses and Students Top Most Likely to Laugh List
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Laughter can sometimes seem to be a rare phenomenon in Russia. Most of those who can be caught laughing are students and bosses, while pensioners and people with low incomes crack a smile much less often.
These are the conclusions reached by sociologists from Moscow’s Levada Center after analyzing research conducted the day before April Fools’ Day.
Students, despite often demanding academic schedules, were identified as the population group most likely to laugh, with 78 percent of them typically being in a good mood. Their high spirits were followed by those of bosses, whose full pockets certainly give them something to smile about. Sixty-six percent of them were usually in a good mood. Housewives and highly educated individuals were next on the list, with 46 and 43 percent, respectively. However, less than half of them said they were in a good mood most of the time.
Those who tend to be relatively happy are those with a high consumer status (50 percent) and, interestingly enough, supporters of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the firebrand leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party. At least 54 percent of his supporters confessed to laughing often.
According to the survey, those least inclined to laugh are pensioners (30 percent), people over 55 years old (26 percent), those who did not complete high school (23 percent) and people who often barely have enough money even for food (47 percent).
Meanwhile, 37 percent of Russians do not get offended by jokes made by their family, friends and colleagues, and 35 percent are offended by them very rarely. Only six percent said they might be offended by those who tell jokes, and 17 percent said they sometimes get offended.
Seventy-six percent of Russians admitted to at least sometimes making fun of their colleagues, while 21 percent of them do it regularly. More men (81 percent) than women (69 percent) are inclined to do so, HeadHunter recruitment website reported.
The most popular office jokes involve telling a colleague that the boss wants to see them in his or her office, and telling a colleague to perform a task that the boss has supposedly assigned. Some people confessed to playing jokes using office equipment (10 percent) or petty tricks involving the victim’s personal belongings (10 percent).
TITLE: Fashion Takes City by Storm
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Acclaimed U.S. fashion designer Thom Browne, who was named Designer of the Year 2008 by GQ Magazine and the Most Influential Designer of Men’s Fashion by Global Fashion Awards in 2010 is the headliner of the upcoming Avrora Fashion Week that kicks off on April 9 at the Manezh Central Exhibition hall.
Browne has made an international reputation for his flawlessly cut men’s tailoring. His collections win rave reviews far beyond New York.
“The Paris men’s shows couldn’t have found a better ending than Thom Browne’s Punks and Jocks, an exhilarating, visually exciting parade of chic renegades,” reads a review in Hint Fashion Magazine from January this year.
“To a solemn soundtrack of Prokofiev, models zipped through the grand gallery of the Musée de la Mineralogie wearing studded, scalpel-cut jackets and multi-zippered kilts. Spikes were a recurring adornment on shoulders, sleeves, face masks (a trend), and elbow and knee patches.”
Innovation is at the heart of the fifth edition of the AFW. The event is vigorously pushing geographical borders and stylistic boundaries. For the first time in the event’s short but dramatic history, its program will feature presentations of more than 40 collections of fashion maestros from Europe, America and Asia.
Avrora Fashion Week will feature a mixture of fashion shows by Russia’s leading designers in the caliber of Leonid Alexeev and Larissa Pogoretskaya as well as up-and-coming fashion talent represented by the aspiring local fashion brands some2some, Cat’s Production, Za-Za and Shlitsa brand from Moscow.
Midnight on April 11 will see a mysterious event at the Manezh Exhibition Hall. Tatyana Parfyonova, one of Russia’s premier fashion designers, whose creations celebrate femininity, tenderness and ultra-romanticism, will present her new collection. Titled The Twelfth Night, the collection makes an obvious reverence to Shakespeare’s eponymous comedy. Expect metaphorical solutions, a dramatic setting, mystery and an avalanche of theatricality.
The organizers of Avrora Fashion Week see the event, which was launched in May 2010, as eventually becoming a platform for fashion designers wishing to make contacts with retailers, a promotion of Russian fashion among potential customers and, ultimately, as an attempt to revive the long-defunct local textile industry — one of the first victims of the failed economic reforms of the perestroika years.
The rapid development of AFW has already won the event a place within the top three largest and most important fashion weeks in Eastern Europe, organizers said.
St. Petersburg and Russia have their own fashion labels and there is no shortage of talented designers, but there is almost no domestic textile industry to support them. Russian fashion is made using foreign fabrics, foreign buttons, and foreign zippers, with the exception of some linen items and fur coats.
In other words, the city has a wealth of designer talent but lacks the industry to support those designers. In order for local stores to stock up with Russian fashion items, the country’s designers need to be able to manufacture locally and establish secure relations with local retailers.
The Avrora Fashion Week will run through April 14.
Running almost concurrently with AFW is St. Petersburg’s veteran fashion event, Defile on the Neva. Running from April 5 through April 8, Defile on the Neva will open with a gala fashion show offering a retrospective look at the event’s history. This spring’s program showcases pieces by a number of the country’s fashion icons such as Polina Raudson, Irina Tantsurina, Katya Anderzhanova, Tatyana Gordienko, Stas Lopatkin and Natalya Soldatova. Most of the shows will take place at the Weavers Exhibition Space (Tkachi) located at 60 Obvodny canal embankment.
Defile’s long-time ally, Tatyana Kotegova, one of the grande dames of Russian fashion, will also present her collection as part of the event.
Since its foundation in 2000, Defile on the Neva has been an invitation-only affair. The easiest way to get a ticket used to be by shopping at the Defile boutique, where one could shop for any item seen on the event’s catwalk. The boutique has since closed down, and now, regular customers of the leading local designers that typically present shows at the event have the best chance of getting a ticket through their local stores.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: City to Get Euro Card
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The European Cities Marketing Association (ECM) and St. Petersburg City Hall signed an agreement last week giving the city the opportunity to join the list of cities where a universal ECM City Card will be used.
Before this year, St. Petersburg was represented at the ECM with its own city tourism and information bureau. This year the city will expand its presence on the global tourism market by taking part in the City Card program, Interfax reported.
The City Card offers tourists discounts and privileges on city sightseeing tours, at museums, theaters, shops, restaurants and other tourism-related venues. A card valid for two days costs 1,950 rubles ($67), and a seven-day card costs 3,950 rubles ($135). Three-day and five-day cards are also available.
Missing Meat Truck
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A truck carrying tons of chicken legs and beef disappeared together with its driver en route from St. Petersburg to the town of Naberezhnye Chelny in the republic of Tatarstan last week, Interfax reported.
The missing cargo is worth more than 2.5 million rubles ($85,000).
Schengen for Soccer
MOSCOW (SPT) — Poland will give Russian citizens a Schengen visa upon receipt of proof that they have tickets to the 2012 European Cup, Interfax reported, citing the Polish Embassy in Moscow.
The Schengen visa allows holders to travel between 25 member countries of the Schengen area on a single visa.
Arshavin Gets Fruity
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg’s star soccer player Andrei Arshavin, who was involved in a minor car accident last week, was pleasantly surprised when a tram driver who witnessed the accident gave him a grapefruit, Arshavin wrote on his website, Interfax reported.
The car in which Arshavin was traveling as a passenger was rear-ended by another vehicle.
Arshavin said that nobody was injured as a result of the accident.
TITLE: Market Fire Kills 17 Foreign Workers
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A blaze Tuesday at a Moscow market killed 17 migrant workers who were unable to escape from the metal shed where they were sleeping, the city fire department said.
All were citizens of former Soviet nations in Central Asia, spokesman Sergei Vlasov said.
Several million migrants from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have come to Moscow in search of work. Many have found jobs in construction or at the city’s sprawling markets, which sell everything from clothes to construction materials.
Vlasov said the fire that broke out at the Kachalovsky market at 5 a.m. Tuesday tore through an insulated metal shed where the workers slept on bunk beds. The roof collapsed during the blaze, which burned for more than two hours, he said.
Investigators were still determining the cause of the fire, but said they suspected it may have started with electric heaters. A light snow had fallen overnight.
Sergei Gorbunov, the fire department chief in Moscow’s southeast district, told Russian television that workers were unable to exit through the one door connecting their living quarters with an adjacent storage hangar. He did not say why.
Television footage showed that the windows of the blue metal shed were barred and firefighters had pulled away strips of metal sheeting from one wall.
Russia has a poor fire safety record. About 12,000 people died last year in fires across the country.
TITLE: Parents Charged In Missing Child Case
AUTHOR: By Ezekiel Pfeifer and Max de Haldenvang
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The father of a toddler in Bryansk has admitted to killing the child and staging her abduction, investigators said.
The announcement brings a tragic conclusion to a case that commanded national attention and drew thousands of volunteers to help in the search.
Alexander Kulagin, 31, told investigators that he seriously injured nine-month-old Anna Shkaptsova on March 2 when he threw her out of her stroller after beating her mother, Svetlana Shkaptsova, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Friday.
Kulagin then refused to let Shkaptsova, his 19-year-old live-in girlfriend, take the child for medical attention, leaving her to die the following day, the statement read.
The next day, Kulagin burned the body, then allegedly hatched a bizarre plan with Shkaptsova to fake a kidnapping.
On March 11, Shkaptsova left an empty stroller outside a pet store in Bryansk. Kulagin, dressed in a wig and women’s clothing, snatched the buggy and dumped it outside a nearby apartment building. Shkaptsova then reported to police that her child had been taken.
This triggered a wide-scale search. More than 700 officers and 1,300 volunteers joined in a daily hunt for clues, garnering national media attention, Gazeta.ru reported.
But investigators said they never ruled Shkaptsova out as a suspect because she had acted too calmly for a mother who had lost her child.
“For 2 1/2 weeks, investigators have looked at different scenarios, but everything pointed to the fact that the kidnapping was staged by the parents,” the investigator’s statement read.
What really raised suspicions was when Shkaptsova abruptly left town for two days with her legal husband, whom she had told police she was estranged from, and ignored all phone calls, Gazeta.ru reported.
A police source told Interfax that Kulagin was also immediately suspected and put under police surveillance because he has a history of violent, drunken behavior.
“Practically from the very start, there was no doubt that Kulagin was involved in the disappearance,” the source said. “The investigators knew that the suspect regularly overused alcohol, entering states of uncontrolled drunken aggression.”
“Seeing statements in the media that the loss was not being connected with him, Kulagin calmed down and began to let his guard down,” the source added.
Kulagin’s ex-wife, Svetlana Kulagina, told Izvestia that she was not surprised by his alleged role in the child’s death because he had been abusive during their marriage, even threatening to set her on fire.
“I lived for nine years with him, and I have nothing good to say about him,” she said. “He is a terrible person, especially when he’s drunk.”
Police say Shkaptsova admitted to her part in the crime and was arrested.
Kulagin was arrested early Friday and admitted to killing Anna and burning her remains, Interfax reported. Kulagin later brought investigators to the burial place.
If convicted, they face maximum punishment of life in prison.
The case sparked public fury at all levels. The Liberal Democratic Party demanded a repeal of Russia’s moratorium on the death penalty for grave crimes, including murders of children and drug trafficking, Interfax reported.
A senior representative of the Russian Orthodox Church said Friday that the media share part of the fault for the Bryansk tragedy.
“The mass media have been reporting about horrible crimes as something common lately,” Vsevolod Chaplin said, Interfax reported. “What happened in Bryansk is by all appearances a result of people’s mistaken understanding of such dreadful things as something normal.”
TITLE: Citizens Elect Underdog as Yaroslavl Mayor
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yaroslavl has pumped new life into the opposition movement, as the establishment candidate for mayor was trounced in a runoff election this weekend.
Yevgeny Urlashov, a former municipal deputy in the historic city of 600,000, defeated tycoon Yakov Yakushev, owner of a paint company, in Sunday’s voting.
As the candidate of the ruling United Russia party, Yakushev had received strong support from the local administration, yet Urlashov, 45, overcame a huge disparity in resources to pull the upset.
“It might be unexpected for those who are not living in Yaroslavl,” Urlashov told Izvestia on Monday. “For those who know the city’s problems, this was an expected victory.”
Independent elections watchdog Golos sent 60 observers to Yaroslavl. It declared the runoff within the framework of the law and said only minor violations were reported.
According to unofficial results, Urlashov received 70 percent of the vote, three times more than Yakushev.
Election officials said turnout was 45 percent. That compares with 63 percent turnout in the first round held in March.
But the earlier turnout was aided by the fact that Russians were simultaneously voting in a presidential election.
Olga Nikolayevna, a teacher who voted for Urlashov, said she was “gladdened by the outcome.”
“Not only was it a protest against United Russia, but it was also a protest against the authorities who are trying to impose their opinion on us,” she said.
She was echoed by Mikhail Maleyev, a local official of the A Just Russia opposition party.
“People in Yaroslavl didn’t want to be pawns in someone’s game,” he said.
Golos representatives said observers were able to work freely, and they noted the cooperation of police officers in preventing attempts to bribe voters.
Local elections commission head Andrei Buryanovaty told reporters Monday that his commission reported a serious violation at one of the polling stations: 19 ballots initially disappeared.
All but four of them were later found in one of the ballot boxes.
The results at that station were not declared invalid, since the irregularity didn’t influence the outcome, Buryanovaty said.
United Russia officials reacted swiftly to news of Urlashov’s victory. Senior party heavyweight Sergei Neverov said Monday that United Russia is planning to “analyze” the outcome.
Neverov compared the situation in Yaroslavl to the 2006 mayoral election in Samara won by A Just Russia’s Viktor Tarkhov.
Tarkhov became unpopular because of his inability to solve the city’s problems.
“After a while, people do understand what it means to vote for an unprepared candidate,” Neverov said, RIA-Novosti reported Monday.
But supporters of Urlashov, a lawyer by profession, said his experience in construction and municipal governance would help him run the city, which is suffering from aging infrastructure.
Urlashov has already said that even if invited, he would not join United Russia.
Many elected city leaders in similar situations have learned that rejecting United Russia means loss of financial support from Moscow.
Urlashov left the party in September over a series of disagreements with the party line.
“I left the party voluntarily because I don’t like its policies,” Urlashov told Izvestia.
Asked whether he would invite members of opposition parties, he said he would look at their “business qualifications” before offering them a job.
Urlashov is expected to bring his own team to handle the city’s administration. That would likely spell the end for Yakushev, who was appointed deputy mayor in March.
At a news conference Monday, Urlashov promised an audit of the mayor’s office. And he invited Deputy Governor Oleg Vinogradov to join his administration.
Urlashov also needs to establish a constructive relationship with Governor Sergei Vakhrukov, who had thrown his support behind Yakushev.
Vakhrukov said Monday that he would be ready to cooperate with Urlashov.
“I think he would be smart enough not to destroy everything but to move forward,” Maleyev said of Urlashov.
Sources close to the regional administration told The St. Petersburg Times that Urlashov will try to find support on the federal level to secure his position.
Since 2009, the city has hosted the World Policy Forum, an annual event chaired by the Russian president.
TITLE: Company Plans to Sell Joseph Stalin Notebooks to Children
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A company that produces children’s notebooks with pictures of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on the cover has refused to withdraw them despite harsh criticism from members of the Public Chamber, RIA-Novosti reported Monday.
“Why would we withdraw such a successful product?” said Artyom Bilan, art director of publishing company Alt.
The notebooks are to be sold by Alt as part of its Great Names series, which features figures like historical war heroes Mikhail Kutuzov and Georgy Zhukov.
Public Chamber member Sergei Volkov compared the notebooks with Stalin’s image to swastikas.
“I have not seen these notebooks, but if it’s true, it is some kind of barbarity, because however you relate to this individual, no one can deny the fact that Stalin killed a lot of people. If on school notebooks there is a picture of this man, then, in my opinion, this is akin to Hitler’s swastika,” Volkov said.
Television host and Public Chamber member Nikolai Svanidze called the notebooks a “moral and ethical depravity” and said information inside the cover about Stalin’s repressions does not play a mitigating role.
Bilan addressed the negative reactions to the notebook, arguing that the officials’ opinions don’t reflect those of the country.
“The Public Chamber is not a legislative body of the Russian Federation, and it expresses the personal opinion of its representatives. And their opinion, I think, is in complete contrast with the majority of Russian citizens, who several years ago recognized Stalin as one of the outstanding figures of Russian history on the TV show “’Name of Russia,’” he said.
During Stalin’s rule from the late 1920s until his death in 1953, millions are estimated to have perished from famine during agricultural collectivization and forced labor in Gulag camps in isolated regions with harsh conditions.
TITLE: Plane Crashes in Siberia Killing 31— 12 Survive
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A French-made plane operated by UTair crashed minutes after takeoff in Siberia on Monday morning, killing 31 people aboard but miraculously leaving 12 survivors, officials said.
The turbo-prop ATR-72 took off from Tyumen’s Roshchino Airport around 5:33 a.m. Moscow time, headed for Surgut, but was forced into “an emergency landing 1.5 kilometers from the airport,” the airline said in a statement.
The plane broke into three pieces as it slammed into a snowy field and burst into flames. On board were 39 passengers and four crew members, all Russian citizens. The 12 survivors were rushed by helicopter to nearby hospitals with serious injuries.
“One survivor stood up on his own and waited until he was given medical help and only then felt worse,” police chief Sergei Kiselyov told RIA-Novosti.
Another passenger, Lyudmila Volkova, 57, was in deep shock and couldn’t remember immediately her name when asked by rescue workers, the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry reported.
One would-be passenger, Dmitry Grigoryev, narrowly missed the flight, telling Channel One that he decided against continuing on his journey as he was too exhausted from a prior trip.
Photos posted by officials from the crash scene near the village of Gorkovka — some five kilometers from Tyumen — featured half-burned debris lying on an empty snow-covered field surrounded by trees.
The plane’s two flight recorders were recovered and taken for further investigation. While the cause of the crash was not immediately clear, investigators said they were looking at technical malfunction or human error as possible culprits. Engine failure was later ruled out by investigators. Both pilots were killed in the crash.
A possible cause may have been inadequate use of de-icing agents, officials said. “The treatment of the plane with de-icing agents was not done at the necessary level,” Rosaviatsia head Alexander Neradko told RIA-Novosti.
President Dmitry Medvedev changed his schedule Monday, postponing a scheduled meeting with leaders of unregistered opposition parties to discuss political reform, and instead met with Health and Social Development Ministry head Tatyana Golikova.
He ordered her to spare no effort in treating the injured and consoling relatives of the victims.
Officials said the plane was carrying several officials from Surgutneftegaz, Russia’s major oil and gas producer, including company board member Nikolai Medvedev. He did not survive.
The jet was insured by Surgutneftegaz’s insurance company, which is now obliged to pay 2 million rubles ($68,000) to the relatives of each passenger killed.
The pilots involved were both in their 20s. Captain Sergei Antsin would have turned 28 on Tuesday, and the second pilot, Nikita Chekhlov, was 24.
Neither was able to report an emergency before the crash.
Russia ranked as the most dangerous country in the world in which to fly in 2011, with nine crashes claiming 140 lives. That topped even the Democratic Republic of Congo for aircraft-related fatalities.
The catastrophe Monday was the first involving a twin-engine ATR-72 in Russia. Most recent aviation incidents involved older Soviet-made jets. The crash was also the most deadly crash since September’s Yak-42 tragedy in Yaroslavl, which wiped out the entire Lokomotiv hockey team.
The ATR-72 aircraft had been in service since 1992. It first belonged to Taiwan’s Transasia Airways, until 1999, when it was bought by Finnair. From 2003 until 2008, the aircraft was part of Estonia’s Aero Airlines fleet, before finally ending up with UTair.
The French-made plane had 74 passenger seats and engines made in Canada. It was registered in Bermuda, according to the International Aviation Committee.
More than 400 ATR-72s have been produced in the past two decades. UTair is the only Russian airline using the model and listed 14 such aircraft in its fleet before the crash.
Since it began production in 1988, 14 ATR-72s have crashed around the globe. The worst incident involved American Eagle Flight 4184 in 1994 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, when the plane went into an uncontrolled roll while in a holding pattern due to ice on its wings. All 68 people on board were killed.
The accident prompted American Airlines, which owns American Eagle, to stop using ATRs in its northern hubs and instead moved them to its southern and Caribbean hubs where ice formation is not common, according to the Aviation Safety Network website.
Experts say ice cannot be ruled out in the Tyumen accident.
Tyumen regional authorities announced a three-day period of mourning from Wednesday through Friday.
TITLE: U.S. Suspects McFaul’s Accounts Being Hacked
AUTHOR: By Ezekiel Pfeifer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Obama administration has complained to Russia about the harassment of its outspoken ambassador, who has confronted television news crews and taken to social media to raise suspicions that his cell phone and e-mail were being hacked.
“There’s been a number of incidents since his arrival there that have caused us to have some concerns about his security and safety,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday. “So as we would in following normal protocol, we’ve raised that with the government of Russia.”
Toner said the concerns would be raised again in light of events Thursday involving Ambassador Michael McFaul, which prompted the State Department to leap to McFaul’s defense for his use of Twitter as a communications tool.
McFaul had suggested in a message on the site that his e-mail was being hacked and his phone tapped.
At a Thursday briefing, Toner played down McFaul’s message, saying it was a rhetorical question, not an accusation.
He also defended McFaul’s and other U.S. ambassadors’ use of Twitter for communicating with local citizens.
“These are ways for chiefs of mission to raise issues for discussion. They’re directed at a broad number of followers to air these issues out, if you will. It’s an informal way to communicate,” Toner said, according to a transcript of the briefing.
Last week, McFaul suggested that his personal schedule was being leaked to the media, after journalists from a pro-Kremlin TV channel showed up at an unannounced meeting he attended with a human rights activist in Moscow.
“Everywhere I go NTV is there. Wonder who gives them my calendar? They wouldn’t tell me,” he wrote on Twitter. “Press has right to film me anywhere. But do they have a right to read my e-mail and listen to my phone?”
McFaul returned to Twitter on Friday morning for an exchange in English in which he answered questions about the impromptu interview with NTV, which the channel aired Thursday. The U.S. ambassador said he had been nervous during the interview and misspoke “in bad Russian” when he had apparently called Russia “wild.”
“Just watched NTV,” McFaul wrote. “Did not mean to say ‘wild country.’ Meant to say NTV actions ‘wild.’ I greatly respect Russia.”
In response to a question about why he was nervous when speaking with NTV journalists, McFaul said there were also people in military dress present.
“Were not just journalists there. Were men in military uniform. People with posters. All strange for me. Learning,” he wrote.
Then he engaged in a back and forth about the situation with Twitter user @prostitutkamila.
The State Department had no comment on McFaul’s choice of Twitter conversation partners.
Shortly after taking up his post, Channel One aired a program describing McFaul as a “specialist in the promotion of democracy” who came to Russia to organize “a revolution.”
TITLE: An Outraged Public Reacts to Police Torture Cases
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s top investigative agency filed new charges last week against police officers accused of torturing detainees amid growing public outrage over police brutality.
The Investigative Committee said it had charged four officers in the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk in the torture death of a detainee. It also leveled new accusations against a police officer in the Volga River city of Kazan who is already in custody on charges of torturing a man to death.
Victims and human rights activists say Russian police routinely use torture to extract false confessions from those they have arbitrarily rounded up. They say police reforms undertaken by President Dmitry Medvedev have failed to stop or even contain police crimes and achieved little beyond changing the force’s name.
Kazan resident Sergei Nazarov died last month of injuries suffered when police officers allegedly sodomized him with a champagne bottle. His case has caused outrage across Russia and drawn calls for an urgent overhaul of a force long accused of corruption and brutality.
The four officers charged in Novokuznetsk were accused of causing a detainee’s death by asphyxiation by putting a gas mask on him and cutting off the access to air — a torture technique popular among Russian police, according to rights groups.
Police regulations still require officers to report a certain quota of solved crimes, a practice that encourages police to make arbitrary arrests and extract false confessions to make their numbers. Police from across Russia also learned cruel interrogation practices during tours of duty in Chechnya and other restive provinces in Russia’s Caucasus, contributing to the culture of brutality.
In the Kazan case, officers rounded up the 52-year-old Nazarov on charges of stealing a cellphone. He died at a local hospital two days later of a ruptured rectum.
His death sparked street protests in Kazan that attracted nationwide attention and led to a federal probe. The investigators arrested five police officers accused of torturing Nazarov, and the entire precinct was disbanded.
Local residents then began lining up to tell federal investigators their stories of torture by police officers.
The Investigative Committee said last Thursday that Almaz Vasilov, one of the suspected torturers of Nazarov, has been charged in a separate case when he and other officers tried to force a 20-year-old man to confess in a crime by beating him and then pulling down his pants and trying to sodomize him with a pencil. The committee said the victim managed to avoid the torture by running out into a corridor.
Many others couldn’t run away, according to Russian media, which reported the stories of several other victims. In one case, a 22-year-old computer programmer said officers from the same precinct tried to force him to confess to a theft and then sodomized him, first with a pencil, then with a champagne bottle.
“Where is the bottle? You must always have a bottle!” Oskar Krylov recalled a police chief yelling to his subordinates, according to the Gazeta.ru news website.
The Investigative Committee said it had detained that officer and his colleague on charges of torturing Krylov.
The scandal over police torture in Kazan followed other cases of police brutality, some publicized and others previously hushed up or unreported. They include:
— A local journalist in the Siberian city of Tomsk died of injuries in 2010 after a police officer sodomized him with a broomstick.
— A teenager in St. Petersburg was beaten to death in police custody in January.
— In another case in the same region of Siberia as Novokuznetsk, two officers were accused of torturing a detainee to death in a garage and then throwing his body out on a road.
Activists have urged the Kremlin to change regulations that encourage police brutality, oust Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, conduct a thorough cleansing of the police force and set up a separate independent body that would investigate police crimes.
Alexei Navalny, a popular anti-corruption blogger and a key organizer of massive opposition protests in Moscow, said the government should dismiss all Kazan policemen and recruit new ones as a model of how to conduct a future nationwide reform of the police.
“It can’t get any worse,” he wrote on his blog. “And they need to throw Nurgaliyev out. How long can it go on for?”
TITLE: Tymoshenko to Be Treated Out of Jail
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Jailed former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko will be allowed to leave prison to be treated for a back condition at a Ukrainian hospital, prosecutors said Monday as the government appeared to bow to Western pressure.
The 51-year-old opposition leader is serving a seven-year sentence after being convicted in October of abusing her office while negotiating a natural gas supply contract with Russia in 2009.
The case has strained Ukraine’s ties with the West, which condemned it as politically motivated. Tymoshenko has accused President Viktor Yanukovych, her longtime rival, of jailing her to bar her from politics.
German doctors who examined her last month concluded that she suffers from intense pain and needs urgent treatment in a specialized clinic. Tymoshenko’s family said she suffers from a herniated disc.
The Health Ministry said Tymoshenko will be treated at the Central Clinical Hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where she is imprisoned.
The statement came days after the German government offered to treat Tymoshenko in Germany and said it was in talks with Ukrainian authorities on making that possible. The European Court of Human Rights asked the Ukrainian government last month to ensure Tymoshenko gets specialized medical treatment outside prison.
Tymoshenko’s lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, reacted with skepticism, insisting that the clinic should be determined by the German doctors who diagnosed her and prescribed her treatment. He said that Tymoshenko will agree to be treated at a Ukrainian clinic only if that treatment is approved by the German doctors and is conducted by independent Ukrainian doctors.
“How can you trust a system that for half a year has been saying that she is healthy?” Vlasenko said. “What kind of clinic will they choose? It makes no sense.”
But a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, said Berlin is “conducting talks with Ukraine’s government with the aim of making medical treatment for Ms. Tymoshenko in Germany possible.”
He said that during the talks, Ukraine “agreed to create the necessary legal basis for that.”
Berlin’s Charite hospital, where two of the doctors who examined Tymoshenko work, responded to reports that she may be moved to a Ukrainian hospital by saying it could not offer an assessment of the care that might be offered because it doesn’t have information on conditions at the facility.
“The Charite stands by its offer to continue treating the patient,” the hospital said in a brief statement.
Tymoshenko was convicted of abusing her powers during natural gas import negotiations with Russia in 2009. A contract she negotiated significantly increased the price Ukraine pays for Russian gas.
Tymoshenko says that agreeing to Russian terms was the only way to stop a gas war that had caused supply disruptions in Ukraine and across Europe after Russia cut gas flows to Ukraine and European consumers.
She charges that Yanukovych ordered her imprisonment to bar her from parliamentary elections this fall. Tymoshenko narrowly lost the presidential race to Yanukovych in 2010.
TITLE: 18-Year-Old Ukrainian Dies After Being Raped, Burned
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — An 18-year-old Ukranian woman died last week, two weeks after her grisly rape set off protests across the country against corruption and favoritism toward the wealthy.
Prosecutors said Oksana Makar was raped by three young men on March 9 in the southern city of Mykolaiv. The men then tried to cover up their crime by strangling her, dumping her naked body at an abandoned construction site and setting her on fire.
Makar miraculously survived and battled for her life for more than two weeks. She suffered burns over more than half of her body and severe damage to her lungs, and her right arm was amputated to stop the gangrene.
Health officials in the eastern city of Donetsk, where she was being treated, said she died Thursday after succumbing to her injuries.
Makar’s mother, Tatyana Surovitska, was in shock and declined to speak to The Associated Press.
The crime outraged Ukrainians with its cruelty. It also galvanized a society frustrated with official corruption after police released two of the suspects who had powerful connections in the region. Their release led to nationwide protests, which prompted the authorities to re-arrest the two suspects.
Interior Ministry Volodymyr Polishchuk said on March 29 that after Makar’s death all three suspects were charged with murder in addition to rape.
TITLE: Red Square ‘Closed for Repairs,’ Blocking Opposition Flashmob
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A flashmob planned on Red Square by an opposition group was blocked Sunday as police closed Red Square for repairs, Gazeta.ru reported.
The event, called “White Square,” urged participants to “make Red Square white” by walking around wearing white ribbons, a reference to the color that has been used as a symbol for the opposition movement.
Twitter users spread news of the closure using the hashtag “belaya ploshchad,” or “white square” Sunday.
“Red Square is closed ‘for repairs’ all day. The cowardly authorities are afraid of us. But ‘white square’ will happen. Come to the Kilometer Zero!,” one participant tweeted, calling for participants to regroup just outside Red Square.
Twitter users later reported that authorities were also moving to close Manezh Square, where the Kilometer Zero monument is located.
The White Square flashmob was supposed to take part under the For Honest Elections campaign. An official Facebook group for the event said “89 percent of you voted to make Red Square white for one day (April 1). And since this is April Fools’ Day, let’s keep make a fool of the Moscow police. Come take a walk in the historical center of Moscow with friends at any time April 1.”
More than 3,700 people confirmed participation in the event.
In March, Solidarity activist Olga Shorina told Interfax 33 people, mostly members of Solidary, had been detained for wearing white ribbons near Red Square.
TITLE: 675 Fishermen Rescued From Drifting Ice
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s emergency services rescued 675 fishermen on Sunday from an ice floe that was drifting out to sea in the far east of the country.
None of the rescued ice fishermen required medical treatment, the emergency services on Sakhalin Island said. About half of the 675 fishermen were picked up by helicopters and the others by boat.
The emergency services said it received a report at midday Sunday that an ice floe was drifting into the Sea of Okhotsk with hundreds of fishermen on it. More than six hours later, all had been rescued.
Ice fishermen routinely get stranded on ice floes in Russia, especially in the spring as the temperatures rise. Sunday’s operation was unusual only in the high number that had to be rescued.
One of the rescued fishermen, Vladimir Vasilenko, said they should have known better than to go out on such a day.
“Of course the wind was blowing from the shore. We should have thought that something could happen, but people were going and we went as well,” he said in a televised interview. “We also heard on the radio that it was the last chance for fishermen, and so we went fishing.”
TITLE: Air Crash Calls Minister’s Future Under Question
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — “Minister of Catastrophe!” screams the Internet petition established within hours of Monday morning’s tragedy in Tyumen.
There follows a list of dozens of deadly disasters suffered by aircraft, trains and ships over the eight-year period since Igor Levitin became transportation minister in 2004.
Levitin is not an aviator but a railway man. He spent large chunks of a military career that spanned the 1970s and 1980s in railway units. After leaving military service in 1994, he went into business, and also served on the Irkutsk regional Duma, before being called in to reform the Transportation Ministry in 2004.
The eight years since have been boom years for a man in the business of moving things and people. Multibillion-dollar road, rail and airport building projects are planned to link the country’s far-flung regions together, the car market is well on its way to becoming the largest in Europe, and airline passenger turnover has grown on average 9.8 percent a year since 2000 — a remarkably high rate.
But it has also been an era of tragedy. Russia has suffered 749 fatalities in civil aviation since 2004, according to Air-safety.net. More people died in aviation accidents in Russia in 2011 than in any other country in the world.
Disasters on the waterways — like the sinking of the Bulgaria cruise ship on the Volga in 2011 and the 2009 bombing of the Nevsky Express between Moscow and St. Petersburg — mean the numbers killed on Russia’s planes, trains and waterways are nearer 1,000. And that’s not counting the 28,000 people killed in 2011 alone on Russia’s roads.
For Andrei Rozhkov, an aviation analyst at Metropol, safety — especially aviation safety — is Levitin’s greatest failure.
“We’ve seen some good progress on things like rail access to Russian ports. But with air safety there are very bad results,” he said. “Of course you can’t call him an effective minister.”
“The main thing that needs doing is enforcement of the rules. Russian aviation law is strict enough, but there have been instances of corruption around smaller airlines that mean they have not necessarily met safety norms,” he said.
The environmental group fighting the controversial Moscow-St. Petersburg highway route through the Khimki forest began gathering signatures for his dismissal more than a year ago, blaming him for forcing the road through and claiming he was set to benefit personally from the $8 billion project via a complex system of offshore companies.
The renewed petition launched Sunday by the same group, which had gathered 5,873 signatures as of 6:54 p.m. Monday evening, may ultimately be no more successful.
“Simply, the influential group he is a part of still protects him from the ire of both the public and other figures in government,” said Alexei Mukhin, a Kremlin-watcher at Moscow’s Center for Political Information. “And the authorities are inclined to ignore public opinion as long as they think they can, anyway.”
Another reason for his longevity is President-elect Vladimir Putin’s prioritizing of loyalty over efficiency — as well as Levitin’s canny ability to get on with all sides in Russia’s notoriously faction-based political scene.
“He is not a very public figure, and as such, he is considered capable of maintaining relations with different clans,” said Nikolai Petrov, a Kremlin-watcher at the Moscow Carnegie Center. That is evidenced by his regular appearance in lists of potential candidates to replace troublesome regional governors.
The consensus, however, seems to be that his time could be running out. “I’d say the idea that he is not a very efficient minister and could leave the government is pretty much right,” Petrov said.
The consensus seems to be that he is the most likely candidate for retirement in the expected Cabinet reshuffle following Putin’s inauguration as president in May, but where he would go is not clear.
Levitin was mentioned as a potential successor to former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, and more recently his name was linked to the Moscow region governorship (a job that ended up going to Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu).
Levitin’s rumored links to contractors working on infrastructure projects introduces another web of interests with a hand in his career prospects, Petrov warned.
Another option would be a position at a state corporation, where he could continue his career as a civil servant-cum-businessman.
Rozhkov put his money on “someone close to Putin” with the energy to more vigorously enforce aviation rules. “In everything else, the ministry seems to be doing a reasonable job.”
Levitin was in Baku on Monday, meeting the Azerbaijani president for the Transportation Ministry. Repeated calls to the ministry went unanswered Monday.
His deputy Valery Okulov and Alexander Neradko, the head of the Federal Air Transportation Agency, Rosaviatsia, the ministry subdivision responsible for airline regulation, were dispatched to the crash site in Tyumen.
TITLE: Goldman Sachs Views Overheating as Big Risk
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The major risks for Russia in the near future are likely to come from an overheated economy, not falling oil prices, as accelerating consumption and lagging output might fuel inflation, Goldman Sachs warned Friday, March 30.
The drop in unemployment together with the rise in people’s incomes are boosting consumption, while output has yet to catch up to meet growing demand, the company said in a presentation.
The trend is unlikely to change in the near future, said Clemens Grafe, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist for Russia and CIS.
“The risk in Russia now is overheating, as consumption will accelerate further rather than slowing down to a sustainable path,” he told a news conference in the company’s Moscow office.
The major reason is the increase in budget spending, which has triggered growth in real wages, Goldman Sachs said.
According to the presentation, the government’s fiscal policy was rather tight from the middle of 2010 through the third quarter of last year.
“However, in recent months, spending has sharply increased. With consumption already growing above trend this poses risks,” the document said.
Budget spending peaked in the months ahead of the State Duma and presidential elections, with social spending alone rising 20 percent in January compared with the same period a year earlier.
Grafe warned that growing budget spending could put pressure on the Central Bank in the future, as keeping annual inflation at about 5 percent to 6 percent — the rate forecasted by the Economic Development Ministry — might be a hard task for the government.
Inflation stood at 6.1 percent in 2011 — a low for the last 20 years.
Goldman Sachs expects inflation to reach 6.2 percent this year, before slowing down to 6 percent in 2013.
Meanwhile, a possible slide in oil prices is unlikely to be a matter of concern in the near future.
Average crude prices are likely to remain at about $120 a barrel this year, supported by the tightening balance between demand and supply, before soaring to $130 a barrel in 2013, Grafe said.
Goldman Sachs predicted that Russia’s economic growth would slow down this year to 3.9 percent from 4.3 percent in 2011 due to the export contraction, as demand is weakening globally.
The size of investment in Russia’s economy has increased by about 7 percent over the last 12 months, but this is “too little to sustain growth in excess of 4 percent in the long run,” the company said.
TITLE: Rosinter Signed as First McD’s Franchise
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Shares in restaurant group Rosinter surged on the back of unconfirmed reports that it has won the first-ever franchise to run McDonald’s restaurants in Russia.
The RBK daily newspaper reported Friday that Rosinter, which runs some of the country’s best-known eateries, had landed a deal to open McDonald’s outlets at airports and railway stations in Moscow and St. Petersburg — making it the U.S. fast-food giant’s first local franchise partner.
Rosinter’s shares were up 26 percent in the course of Friday — the most in more than seven weeks — before ending the day at 202 rubles ($6.89), a 19 percent increase over Thursday’s close.
A Rosinter spokeswoman reached by telephone on Friday said, “It is too early for us to comment.” Calls to McDonald’s went unanswered Friday.
About 80 percent of McDonald’s worldwide business is based on a franchise model, while all of its 314 Russian restaurants, located in 85 cities, are run directly by the corporation’s local subsidiary McDonald’s Russia.
The new deal, which runs until April 2032, allows Rosinter to open restaurants at Moscow’s Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports and all nine of the capital’s major rail terminals, according to the paper, citing a copy of the agreement. It will also have rights to run restaurants in St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport and at five rail terminals there, including the Moskovsky and Finlyandsky stations.
McDonald’s may have made the decision to move to franchising in response to rapid expansion by competitors like Burger King and Wendy’s, who use the franchise model.
Earlier it was reported that the fast-food chain was planning to introduce its franchising model as it pushed into the Siberian cities of Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Barnaul.
That news followed an appeal from Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at the beginning of March for McDonald’s to open branches in Vladivostok.
Shuvalov, who oversees economic development in the Far East, warned that if the fast-food giant moved forward too slowly, other players could enter and dominate the market. He said he had already sent representatives to McDonald’s Russia’s head office and that he would use “every available means to convince McDonald’s to open a restaurant in Vladivostok.”
McDonald’s Russia vice president Viktor Eidemiller said at the time that the company plans to develop its logistics in western Siberia before expanding eastward. The easternmost McDonald’s in Russia as of now is in Tyumen.
Rosinter Group already holds franchises for Costa Coffee and T.G.I. Friday’s. It also operates several of its own chains, including Il Patio Pizza, Planet Sushi and 123 Cafe. It has 382 restaurants in 44 cities in 10 countries and grossed more than 10 billion rubles ($342 million) in 2011, according to its website.
Russian-Venezuelan businessman Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanayevsky-Blanco, the founder, chief executive and chairman of the board of Rosinter, has recently expanded the company’s sphere of interest into organic farming, investing $20 million in an indoor municipal market that opened in the Moscow suburb of Mitishchi in November.
TITLE: World Cup to Bring Nearly 1 Million Jobs, $18Bln
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The 2018 football World Cup will bring Russia nearly 1 million jobs, boost GDP by 527 billion rubles ($18 billion) and attract an additional 95 billion rubles to tax coffers, Vedomosti reported Tuesday.
The figures from the Russia 2018 World Cup organizing committee are similar to those in a new report by Ernst & Young detailing expectations for Brazil, set to host the cup in 2014.
The report projects that Brazil will take in $78 billion in investment from 2010 to 2014, with a direct boost to the economy of $35.2 billion and additional income from taxes.
But the benefit for Russia is hard to predict, and the construction of new infrastructure will play a large role in the outcome, Ernst & Young partner Olga Arkhangelskaya told Vedomosti.
“Building and reconstruction of airports and highways can yield serious effects. This is important to attracting business,” she said.
Russia will need to spend 25 percent more on building stadiums and roads than Brazil — $10 billion before building the planned high-speed rail systems.
TITLE: Criminalizing Homosexuality
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: Russian authorities have begun targeting their wrath at homosexuals.
A bill has been introduced to the State Duma that would ban information advocating homosexuality that is aimed at minors. The initiative was introduced by lawmakers from Novosibirsk, while similar or harsher laws have already been adopted in a number of regions. St. Petersburg was the most recent city to pass such a law.
The federal legislation is expected to pass by an overwhelming majority, perhaps even unanimously. Few politicians in Russia would dare to oppose such an initiative, reflecting the general intolerance of homosexuality in society. According to polls conducted by the Levada Center over the past decade, about one-third of Russians consider homosexuality to be an illness or the result of psychological trauma. Another third see it as a bad habit and manifestation of sexual promiscuity.
The federal bill in its current form is actually not as restrictive as it might have been given the prevailing anti-gay attitudes in society. The only punishment it requires is a fine, although it is formidable at more than $10,000. The bill does not stipulate criminal charges against violators, although many Duma deputies probably would have supported such a provision.
The introduction of legislation aimed at homosexuality was expected. The ruling elite has been searching for a long time for initiatives that would please public opinion and show that Russia is undergoing “a spiritual and moral revival,” co-opting several ideas from Russian nationalists in the process.
The authorities’ fight against the “perversion and promiscuity” of homosexuality also carries a distinct anti-Western undertone. There is an implicit assumption that homosexuality is something harmful and alien that was brought to Russia by Western liberals. Kremlin spin doctors, who have turned the very idea of Western liberalism into a negative concept symbolizing the betrayal of Russia’s national interests, now also associate the term with “pernicious homosexuality.”
According to their theory, the idea of holding gay pride parades and promoting other elements of gay culture was foisted onto Russia by Western liberals. They are trying to export alien, immoral values and undermine the moral foundations of the Russian state.
The private sexuality of Soviet citizens was subject to government control if it was considered “nontraditional.” But this practice goes back further than the Soviet period. In tsarist Russia, homosexuals were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia.
When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they decriminalized homosexuality, and in the early 1920s they permitted abortions. In this regard, the Bolsheviks were probably following the example of their idols at the time — French Jacobins who ended the criminal prosecution of gays during the French Revolution, as well as German Social Democrats who idolized feminists Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg as being homegrown champions of the rights of sexual minorities.
Josef Stalin imposed criminal liability for homosexuality in 1934, with sentences ranging from two to eight years. He also prohibited abortion in 1936, and this law lasted until 1947. In a strange twist, much of Stalin’s homophobic propaganda was linked to anti-fascist sentiment. Soviet propagandists exploited the homosexual tendencies among Nazi leaders such as Ernst Rohm. But German leader Adolf Hitler himself later justified punishing Rohm as part of his fight against homosexuality both within his ranks and in countries that Nazi troops occupied.
Soviet authorities convicted about 1,000 people each year on charges of homosexuality. It was common for homosexuality charges to be brought against prominent cultural figures when they were outspoken critics of the political system. Perhaps the most striking example of this was when Georgian painter and filmmaker Sergei Paradzhanov was sentenced to five years of hard labor.
The anti-gay law was removed from the Criminal Code in 1993, while medical diagnosis categorizing homosexuality as a mental disorder was abolished only six years later, in 1999.
Although it would be difficult for today’s rulers to reinstate such severe anti-gay practices now, it seems that they are using the current legislation to position themselves as defenders of traditional “Russian spirituality and morality.” If nothing else, the fight against homosexuals deflects attention away from the real enemy of Russia that the authorities have no interest in fighting — corruption.
Georgy Bovt is a political analyst.
TITLE: regional dimensions: Gubernatorial Election Genie Out of the Bottle
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Even the most truncated of President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent political reforms have begun to falter. Legislation loosening the procedure for registering political parties was the only one of three bills presented to the State Duma that has passed so far. Meanwhile, two bills on the direct election of governors have stalled between the first and second readings, while the Federation Council has proposed amendments to the bills that would effectively emasculate this legislation.
It is obvious that the Kremlin has decided to slow the pace of reform now that the presidential election is over and the protests have quieted down. This is especially important with regard to gubernatorial elections because the Kremlin wants to remove the weakest and most unpopular regional leaders and ensure its control over the regions prior to the start of elections scheduled for this fall.
The fact that the Kremlin is still appointing new governors even after a bill calling for direct gubernatorial elections has been sent to the Duma suggests that it still does not understand that direct elections are not a concession to the opposition but a prerequisite for the survival of the political system.
The contrast between the Kremlin’s words and deeds was most apparent in the Primorye region, where a new governor was installed on the eve of the March presidential election. Governor Sergei Darkin was replaced by Vladimir Miklushevsky, an outsider who was sent to the region from Moscow a year earlier to head a university. It is hard to imagine that an educator from Moscow will be able to exercise tight control over a region that is so heavily criminalized. It is even more unlikely that he would win in free elections if they were held now.
The authorities have promised to pass a law on gubernatorial elections by May while at the same time saying they might significantly delay implementation of the law until corresponding regional laws can be prepared. But it seems that the delay will be difficult to put into practice, just like the infamous “presidential filter.”
Perm Governor Oleg Chirkunov is the only regional leader so far to announce that he would resign if the law on gubernatorial elections is passed. He also issued orders to prepare the regional version of the law as quickly as possible. The first gubernatorial elections — slated for the Novgorod and Perm regions — could set off a domino effect. Once the citizens of these regions elect their governors, the people of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Samara and other regions will demand the right to do the same.
In addition, the process of reinstating the direct election of mayors in cities where they had been eliminated has already begun. In particular, the election in Yaroslavl on Sunday showed that politically active Russians consider elections held anywhere in the country as their own elections.
The political elites in many regions have already started preparations for elections and nothing can stop them — not the rulers’ desire to delay elections as long as possible, nor the long terms that incumbent governors were appointed to serve.
In the end, the reinstatement of direct gubernatorial elections will be a more rapid process than their elimination was in the 2000s.
Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
TITLE: Songs of freedom
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pussy Riot unexpectedly occupied the spotlight at the Tallinn Music Week, as Estonian president Hendrik Toomas Ilves, who addressed the Baltics’ largest music industry forum at the Estonian capital’s Nordic Hotel Forum on Friday, spoke in support of the musicians. Alleged members of the Moscow feminist punk band were imprisoned last month after performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in a church.
The statement in defense of the women came at the end of a speech given by Ilves devoted to the link between rock and roll and freedom.
Speaking to the delegates, Ilves showed extensive knowledge of rock music, citing Neil Young, the Sex Pistols and PJ Harvey, and referring to MC5 and Jello Biafra as well as to the Czech underground art-rock band Plastic People of the Universe, whose members were put in prison on charges of “an organized disturbance of the peace” after an unsanctioned rock festival in 1976.
“There’s a band right now in Moscow who staged a protest against the prime minister,” Ilves said.
“Four women, they are called Pussy Riot, and as a result of doing this protest, set in a church, they were arrested. They’re being held without bail for two months and they’re being charged with seven years in prison. Very young women in their 20s, they have young children. So you see, rock and roll — with all these clichés about being subversive — well, it is subversive, but in some places this subversion is taken seriously. And just to show you what can get you seven years in a Russian jail, I’ll put [a video of the protest] on. Keep in mind it’s not all fun.”
As Pussy Riot’s performance video of “Holy Madonna, Drive Putin Away” in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral was shown on the screen, Ilves sat down in the front row, between defiant Moscow music journalist and promoter Artemy Troitsky and Estonian culture minister — once an underground rock concert promoter — Rein Lang.
The subject of Pussy Riot and freedom in Russia was picked up by Troitsky, who was interviewed in front of the delegates by Tapio Korjus of the Finnish independent record label Rockadillo Records.
During a conversation covering his diverse music activities and the history of Russian rock music, Troitsky, who started out as a music writer and underground promoter under the Soviets in the 1970s, played Peter Gabriel’s video address to protesters in Russia. The British musician made the video in the wake of protests against electoral fraud and ahead of the March 4 presidential elections. Troitsky also announced a concert in defense of Pussy Riot to be held in Tallinn on Sunday.
Tallinn Music Week is the biggest music industry event in the Baltics and a large-scale indoor festival with performances by dozens acts from Estonia and abroad taking place in many different venues across the city. This year, it drew more than 400 music professionals as delegates, while the music program featured 183 acts from 13 countries.
The Estonian program opened with a performance by the talented young Estonian singer Iiris, who presented her debut album “The Magic Gift Box” with a full-fledged, full-band concert at Rock Cafe, a large two-hall music venue just outside the center.
Russia was represented by indie rock band Motorama, whose concert at Rock Stars bar was a success with the event’s delegates and concert-going public. Alongside Motorama, who come from Rostov and sing in English, Russia was represented by electronic music artist Dza, who performed at Kultuurikatel (“culture boiler”) — a huge venue in a defunct power plant near the sea.
With Helsinki just two hours away from Tallinn by ferry, Finnish music acts had a high profile in the event’s program, which was prepared in cooperation with the Music Export Finland and the Music & Media music industry event in Tampere, Finland. The Finnish program included a live event at Rock Stars organized by the Helsinki-based label Stupido Records’, which ended with its head Joose Berglund spinning discs until the small hours.
Helen Sildna, the Tallinn Music Week’s director, founded the event to promote Estonian music and creative industries and export in 2009 after visiting similar music industry festivals like Eurosonic in Holland and Music & Media in Finland.
“It was pretty clear that a festival like this would really help the Estonian music scene,” Sildna said in Tallinn on Sunday.
“I have always believed that there is enormous talent here in Estonia, but it was obvious that the weakness of the music scene is just weak links to the international music market and the entrepreneurial structure, so there are no managers, labels or agents. It seemed to be a great way of getting in contact with international partners and raising the prestige and quality of Estonian music.”
According to Sildna, it was a fortuitous coincidence that the project was launched in the year when preparations for the year of Tallinn as European Capital of Culture were already underway, which helped to fund Tallinn Music Week at the beginning.
“The great thing — and this is what we also heard from international delegates and the press — was that they were impressed by the variety and the uniqueness of Estonian music,” Sildna said.
“I mean the whole music scene in a way was a well kept secret for years, so all the artists have always basically done it from their own inner motivation; they have never been forced to think ‘What sells?’ or ‘What is the market?’
“In that sense, everybody is just doing kind of uncompromising art that they feel they should be doing, and this has created quite a unique scene, so there’s a lot going on in the folk scene, in the contemporary classic scene, and a lot of exciting stuff in indie, electronic and kind of leftfield music as well. I don’t think anybody expects a proper pop format artist from a small country like Estonia, and I think everybody comes here in search of something unique and original.
“If you think about the case of Bjork, for example, from a tiny country like Iceland — they have something unique that can become really big if the team is right, if the timing is right, if the band gets the right contacts, I think it can really work well.”
There were plenty of talented and diverse Estonian artists — from modern classical to indie and folk — at Tallinn Music Week this year.
The band Väljasoit Rohelisse, which performed at the restored old Soviet film theater Kino Soprus, received a lot of critical success during Tallinn Music Week, drawing comparisons to acts from the Velvet Underground to Joy Division to The Cramps. The band’s music is described as “one-chord psychedelia with swamp blues, surf and Krautrock tinges and Estonian echoes.”
From the town of Viljandi comes the “fire-folk” band Svjata Vatra, fronted by singer Ruslan Trochynskyi who moved from Ukraine in 2005 and formed the band with Estonian musicians. The band, whose name means “sacred fire” in Ukrainian, is famous for using naked flames in its shows and for its rendition of the Ukrainian folk song “Kalina-Malina,” which has become a massive hit in Estonia. At a concert at Tallinn’s Teater NO99, fans sang along with the band.
Experimental improvised music band Kreatiivmootor, which performed at Von Krahl — a theater and bar in Tallinn’s Old Town — will be seen in St. Petersburg soon, as it has been scheduled to perform at the SKIF International Festival in May.
“By mixing all the styles, we want to give out the message that music is a universal thing and it’s great to be open about it,” Sildna said.
In addition to the Night Venue program, this year’s festival included the City Stage program — a series of free performances held in unusual places across the city, from shopping malls to the offices of Skype, a technology created in Estonia, which is proud to be on the cutting edge of programming and is almost entirely covered by free Wi-Fi Internet.
Orelipoiss, a one-man band created by classically trained singer and poet Jaan Pehk, was one of the acts performing from a bed in a Nordic Hotel Forum suite with the audience listening to them from the other room of the suite. Those unable to cram in could enjoy an Internet video broadcast from anywhere else.
According to Sildna, one of the motivations behind the City Stage program was to make music available to broader audiences, including people under 18 who are not allowed to go to nightclubs, and older people who simply do not like going to nightclubs.
On Sunday, President Ilves attended a concert in support of Pussy Riot — featuring Estonian punk legend Peeter Volkonski and Propeller — organized by Estonian parliamentary deputy Juku-Kalle Raid, who drew on his experience of being a punk concert promoter in the past.
Inside the packed Von Krahl theater and bar, Raid read aloud an open letter to the Russian government and state duma from nine Estonian MPs who protested the use of the courts to achieve political goals and demanded the release of the arrested women.
“These women were arrested on hooliganism charges, but it is clear to all that they protested against the elections, against Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and against the lack of freedom of speech in Russia,” they wrote.
“We stand in solidarity with those people, the citizens of Russia, who are aware of the situation in Russia and see the arrested punk musicians as prisoners of conscience, who are being persecuted for expressing their views.”
TITLE: A divine calling
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Identity crisis as faced by the newly elected Pope is at the heart of a new Italian film now showing at Dom Kino.
Nanni Moretti’s film “Habemus Papam” (“We Have a Pope!”), which had its world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival, celebrates reflection and poignant humor in a cinematic fable about a man elected to a job burdened with responsibilities that he simply cannot face. Habemus Papam is the first film in a series of screenings of art-house films organized by the A-One film distribution agency.
The film’s Latin title is a reference to the election of a new Pope. The Italian director, who won the Palme d’Or in 2001 for “The Son’s Room,” begins his film with a parody of a television report about preparations for the election. The audience follows a reporter who observes a seemingly endless line of cardinals on their way to the Vatican chamber where the vote will take place. The reporter makes countless attempts to get the procession’s participants to talk to him, but in vain. Preoccupied by their thoughts or whispering a prayer, very few of them even register the reporter’s presence.
Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli) is not the most likely candidate for the Catholic Church’s most prestigious job. His name is not even mentioned by the snoopy reporters waiting for the election results outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. Yet one look at him — the most thoughtful, serious and composed face in the auditorium, where most cardinals shift restlessly in their seats, look around furtively and whisper, at times more than audibly, “Oh Lord, please not me!” — Melville immediately stands out as the natural choice.
Melville’s sudden panic attack, loud screaming, inability to face the crowds and his rushing away from the balcony come as a shock to his fellow cardinals. A psychoanalyst (Nanni Moretti) is called in to help, but is unable to establish a rapport with his client as the two are forced to talk in public, with the cardinals forming a circle around them and listening attentively. Before the start of the session, the doctor is carefully instructed on what subjects to avoid. The taboo list includes unfulfilled desires, sexual fantasies, relationships with one’s mother and dreams. The clergy also politely ask him to remember at all times that the concept of the subconscious contradicts the concept of the soul.
Unfortunately, the director does not develop the Pope-doctor storyline much further. As Melville runs away from his duties and hides in a hotel, the therapist continues to interact with the cardinals, complaining to them about his divorce and organizing a volleyball tournament between continental teams of cardinals.
The film’s comical opening suggests a satirical bent throughout — and indeed, the director peppers the film with a string of witty episodes, such as the cardinals killing spare time by playing cards — yet the humorous element slowly evaporates as the plot moves on. By the time the story comes to its end, and Cardinal Melville gets the courage to speak to the crowds — and announce his resignation — you feel almost sad. “Habemus Papam” leaves a tangible note of sensibility, sadness and affection that the audience eventually begins to feel for the frustrated Melville.
In Russia, where resignation caused by a lack of confidence or remorse is something unheard of, the film is likely to be seen as a revelation. Melville’s motives, perfectly understandable in Western Europe, would be declared idiotic by just about any mainstream Russian politician, who would brand the cardinal as a weak leader. Here, the courage to carry on is more respected than the courage to retreat, the temptations of power are hard to resist, and in this respect Moretti’s film could not have found a more starved audience.
Eighty-five-year-old Piccoli creates a most human and humane portrayal of the Pope.
We see a genuinely humble man, who wins viewers over with sublime self-irony that is rarely seen in the clergy and is one of the most exotic qualities to be seen in male characters in Russian films, which tend to cultivate reflection-free masculinity or decadent sarcasm. Piccoli’s grieving and searching eyes and the image of a solid-looking yet emotionally fragile man wandering the streets of Rome seeking inner peace come back to haunt you days after watching the film.
In the disastrous finale, as the Pope publicly admits that he does not have the strength to guide believers as he feels that he himself is in need of guidance, you find yourself sympathizing immensely with the main character. At the same time, some members of the audience may envy him. Indeed, very few of us can say at the end of our lives, with the same sort of warm and sincere smile, and without bragging or being on the defensive, that we have done a lot of good for people, and that this is what we wanted to be doing. Does retreating make you a loser, win you sympathy or earn you respect? This question has more than one answer, and the director would apparently like audiences to come up with their own.
TITLE: TALK OF THE TOWN
TEXT: This year, the city has proved that spring really is the time of rebirth. First the Yeliseyevsky store reopened on Nevsky Prospekt in all its former glory — and even with a little extra. The store now has a giant pineapple at its center and two dubious mechanical puppets representing the Brothers Yeliseyev, though situated as they are up on the store’s interior balcony, they actually bear an uncanny resemblance to Statler and Waldorf — the two grumpy old men from The Muppet Show.
In keeping with the Art Nouveau revival trend, the Grand Hotel Europe unveiled its newly refurbished Lobby Bar to the public last month. Originally designed by Fyodor Lidval, the bar is a listed architectural monument and many of its features are state heritage objects. The bar has now been painstakingly restored by Viktoria Struzman, the architect responsible for the hotel’s restoration from 1989 to 1991. The spectacular stained-glass windows have been renovated, and the smoking room now features stunning deep scarlet damask wallpaper, matched by red gilded furniture. The combination is reminiscent of a 19th-century gentlemen’s club in London, though the curvy design of the wooden paneling and the tiled fireplaces are a reminder that the bar is indisputably a child of the Belle Epoque.
The main room has a lighter feel due to its white walls and the colossal 10-meter marble bar itself, which is now illuminated by neon lighting. The bar’s tradition of live jazz music in the evening has also been revived.
Finally, the winter demise of the bar The Other Side, popular with expats and Russians alike, has been followed by the opening of a branch of the Barslona tapas bar chain in its place. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the die-hard crowd of students, Scandinavians and barflies that once went to The Other Side with more regularity and zealousness than some pastors attend church, have returned to the mothership. With plans for sangria festivals and a summer terrace, it looks set to be no less popular than its predecessor.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Poor-speaking Romney gets bad translation
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Âðàã íîìåð îäèí: No. 1 enemy
I am, in general, a big fan of the democratic process. Give the candidates their say, vote ‘em in, or vote ‘em out.
But during the electoral season — which in the United States is pretty much nonstop these days — I start waffling on the “give them their say” part of the process. Sometimes I wish they’d shut up.
That goes double when they babble on camera, circle around a topic, leave clauses dangling and use nonstandard vocabulary. Because when you filter their comments through translation, headlines and some editorial cherry-picking, a stupid comment becomes a ìåæäóíàðîäíûé èíöèäåíò íîìåð îäèí (No. 1 international incident).
According to the Russian media, Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, called Russia âðàã íîìåð îäèí ÑØÀ (the No. 1 enemy of the U.S.), or ãåîïîëèòè÷åñêèé âðàã ÑØÀ íîìåð îäèí (the geopolitical enemy No. 1 of the U.S.). What Mitt Romney said many times and in many ways was that Russia is “the geopolitical foe.”
So is âðàã a good translation of foe? Sort of. Maybe. I dunno.
Foe is a weird word. It’s old-fashioned — Who goes there? Friend or foe? — and can be used both to refer to a military enemy and to an opponent or impediment, like in the phrase “taxes are the foe of economic development.”
In Russian, enemies come in many shapes and sizes. There are general enemies: ïðîòèâíàÿ ñòîðîíà (the opposing side); íåäðóã and íåïðèÿòåëü (enemy, literally “not a friend”). There are armed enemies: àãðåññîð (aggressor); âîåííûé ïðîòèâíèê (military opponent). There are ideological enemies: èíàêîìûñëÿùèé (dissenter); äèññèäåíò (dissident). And spiritual enemies: ÷¸ðò (devil); íå÷èñòûé äóõ (unclean spirit); äåìîí (demon). And people who are up to no good: çëîóìûøëåííèê (malefactor); íåäîáðîæåëàòåëü (ill-wisher); îáèä÷èê (offender); ïðåñëåäîâàòåëü (pursuer); ïðèòåñíèòåëü (oppressor); ãîíèòåëü (persecutor); and çëîïûõàòåëü (mudslinger). And really bad enemies: íåíàâèñòíèê (hater, bitter enemy); çàêëÿòûé âðàã (sworn enemy); and êðîâíèê (blood enemy). There are also competitors (ñîïåðíèêè), who might be vying for someone’s hand, someone’s company or someone’s geopolitical backyard.
Of all these options, I’d probably say that in style and meaning, íåäðóã is closest to foe. True, íåäðóã íîìåð îäèí sounds odd in Russia, but then “No. 1 geopolitical foe” sounds pretty weird in English, too.
Another issue with the translations of Romney’s meandering comment was whether he said Russia was worse than Iran and North Korea or not. Most Russian press reports asserted that he did: “Ñåãîäíÿ èìåííî Ðîññèÿ, à íå Èðàí è ÊÍÄÐ, ÿâëÿåòñÿ ãåîïîëèòè÷åñêèì âðàãîì äëÿ ÑØÀ.” (Today it is Russia and not Iran or North Korea that is the geopolitical enemy of the U.S.) In fact, Romney said, “… of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran, and nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough …” but then after a spate of confused pseudo-clarification, he circled back to “Russia is the geopolitical foe” — albeit this time without the “No. 1.” Well, Mitt, if you can’t speak clearly, you deserve the translation you get.
I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with President Dmitry Medvedev, who recommended that candidates should “âêëþ÷àòü äîâîäû ðàññóäêà, ãîëîâó èñïîëüçîâàòü” (use their powers of reason and their heads) and suggested that they could “ïîñìàòðèâàòü íà ÷àñû — à ñåé÷àñ 2012 ãîä, à íå ñåðåäèíà 70-õ ãîäîâ” (look at the clock — it’s 2012, not the mid-1970s).
I just wish he’d said that to the Russian presidential candidates, too.
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Resurrecting the Easter of the past
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As Orthodox Easter grows nearer, an exhibit that opens Friday at the Peter and Paul Fortress aims to educate visitors on the checkered history of Easter celebrations in St. Petersburg from the 19th through the 21st centuries.
About 500 items, including graphics, cards, photos, billboards, books and applied art will tell visitors about Easter church services, traditional Easter gifts, meals, folk festivals held during the holiday, anti-religious Soviet propaganda and modern Easter celebrations.
Easter, one of the main Christian holidays, celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead three days after his crucifixion. Orthodox Easter, which falls on April 15 this year, after the seven-week-long period of Lent, is celebrated on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Catholic Easter this year falls on April 8.
In 19th and early 20th-century St. Petersburg, Holy Week (the last week before Easter) traditionally began with the arrival of pussy willow markets where people could also buy other goods in preparation for the celebration such as Easter gifts, cards, toys, decorations, fabric and paper flowers. The exhibit at the Peter and Paul Fortress will feature pictures and engravings of traditional St. Petersburg pussy willow markets near Gostiny Dvor and on Sennaya Ploshchad.
During the last days of Lent, believers traditionally buy items for their Easter celebration and meal including painted eggs, kulich (a sweet Easter bread) and paskha (a cottage cheese dessert). Labels from Easter sets from the 1910s explaining how to make kulich and paskha and color eggs will also be on display.
Easter celebrations begin on the Saturday night with a late-night Easter church service. Pictures at the exhibit capture moments such as the Procession of the Cross and the blessing of the Easter bread and eggs. Priests’ ceremonial Easter robes dating back to the early 19th century can also be seen.
On Easter Sunday, Orthodox believers visit relatives and friends. During these visits they give each other gifts, the most popular of which are Easter eggs and cards.
The exhibit boasts a rich collection of Easter cards decorated with holiday symbols such as priests, angels, churches, kulich, painted eggs, pussy willow, rabbits and chicks. There will also be about 120 Easter eggs on display made of porcelain, glass, wood, metal, stone and beads from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The traditional Easter greeting is the khristosovaniye, when people kiss each other three times on the cheeks. As people often had many guests on Easter, the tradition gradually became a formality that turned into the subject of jokes in St. Petersburg newspapers. The exhibition also includes caricatures of Easter visits from the print media from those times.
After Lent was over, public festivals were again allowed in the city. These activities are reflected in engravings and photos of celebrations on the city’s Field of Mars and Alexandrovsky Garden. There are also posters of festival balls and performances from pre-revolutionary times.
A separate section of the exhibit is dedicated to the story of Easter celebrations after 1917. During the first years of Soviet power in St. Petersburg, then called Petrograd, people continued to celebrate Easter, as shown in pictures from the 1920s. In the 1930s, however, Easter and other religious holidays were banned. This is reflected in anti-Easter posters with captions such as, “No Absentees [from work] on Easter Day.”
However, in some churches, Easter services continued to be held. In a photograph taken in 1943, during the Siege of Leningrad, city residents are attending an Easter service at the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral.
The revival of Easter traditions in Russia began in the 1990s, and the exhibition is completed by documentary materials dedicated to celebrations during the post-Soviet period. There is also a modern Easter collection from the city’s Imperial Porcelain Factory including porcelain eggs, vases and Easter dinner services from the 2000s.
Exhibition organizers have prepared an additional interactive program for both adults and children in which they can listen to lectures, go on tours and take part in master classes. The classes include learning how to paint porcelain eggs, making Easter cards and cooking Easter treats with the help of Bushe, a bakery in the city.
The Alexander Blok apartment museum will also showcase an Easter-themed exhibit called “Easter in the Blok Family,” which will open on April 16 and run through May 18.
The family of the eminent Symbolist poet always celebrated Easter, with the poet himself often attending the service at St. Isaac’s Cathedral on Easter night.
The exposition presents books containing Easter poems from poets of the early 20th century. Among the writings are works by Blok, Ivan Bunin, Valery Bryusov and other poets of the time.
The “Easter in St. Petersburg” exhibit runs from April 6 through June 3
in the Nevskaya Kurtina of the Peter and Paul Fortress. M. Gorkovskaya.
Tel. 230 6431. www.spbmuseum.ru
“Easter in the Blok Family” runs from April 16 through May 18 at the Alexander Blok Apartment Museum at 57 Ulitsa Dekabristov. M. Sennaya Ploshchad / Sadovaya. Tel. 713 8616. www.spbmuseum.ru.
TITLE: in the spotlight: Elusive cats and brawling paparazzi
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, President Dmitry Medvedev attended top-level talks with Barack Obama on nuclear security, and the world sat up and took notice when his cat went missing. Or didn’t.
The alarm was sounded Tuesday by the Sobesednik.ru news website, a source not famed for its reliability. But the report had some good details about posters on lampposts and a quote from his breeder saying Dorofei should be past the surging hormones of his youthful runaway phase.
Moscow region police officially denied that they were searching for a cat, but Twitter came alive with discussion. Dorofei became one of the world trends, and someone started a Dorofei Twitter account, in which he said he was scared of being handed over to Putin and had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy.
It was Medvedev who trumped the rumor, writing a Twitter message that knowingly pressed the buttons of all the journalists and bloggers. “About the cat. Sources close to Dorofei have learned that he didn’t go anywhere. Thanks to everybody for worrying.”
He used a slang word for cat, kote, that is used to describe the popular Internet genre of cat-lovers’ adoring photos and videos of their pets.
Long-haired Dorofei has been something of an enigmatic figure up till now, rarely photographed, although a little more often than the Medvedevs’ teenage son Ilya. Medvedev referred to him dismissively on the children’s version of the Kremlin’s website, saying “We have a moggy. A fat one. He’s called Dorofei.”
He is a Nevskaya Maskaradnaya cat, a beautiful Russian breed that is not effusively friendly in my experience. His one moment of fame came in 2008, when reports said he had to be castrated after he came off much the worse in a fight with Mikhail Gorbachev’s cat. Komsomolskaya Pravda joked that he now had “experience of political struggle.”
He has allegedly written a weekly column about the doings at the Kremlin in trashy women’s magazine Tainy Zvyozd, or Secrets of the Stars. But the claws have never really been out. The magazine, which puts Putin on its cover at every opportunity, formerly ran a column with the byline of his Labrador retriever, Connie. We last saw Connie lounging on a sofa and enjoying a good rubdown from Putin as his wife Lyudmila perched awkwardly in the corner in footage shot during the national census in 2010.
Meanwhile, it girl, journalist and now opposition voice Ksenia Sobchak was called for questioning by police after the Life News tabloid reported its journalists were beaten up and their video camera broken in her Tverbul restaurant. She faces legal action from a powerful and strongly pro-Kremlin media outlet.
In a bizarre story that seems to be taken fairly seriously by police, journalists were filming in the restaurant where Sobchak was socializing with Solidarity activist Ilya Yashin, liberal leader Boris Nemtsov and his girlfriend Anastasia Ogneva. Life News claims that its journalists did not come to film Sobchak but that the conversation at her table “attracted their professional attention.” It says the whole group then attacked the journalists and one suffered bruises and had her video camera broken. Police have opened a criminal case over “deliberate destruction of property” — not beating — although no one has yet to be charged.
Sobchak said on Twitter that Life News had submitted “a false report of beating.” She added that paparazzi know the score: If they try to film secretly, “I have the right to expose them and defend myself.” She skipped the questioning because she is in Florida and jokingly wrote on Twitter in prison slang, begging: “Don’t make me take the rap.”
TITLE: THE DISH: Severyanin
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Rattey
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Back to Futurism
Named after Ego-Futurist poet Igor Severyanin, this quaint restaurant off Sennaya Ploshchad opened at the end of last year by local restaurateur Eduard Muradyan provides guests with a trip back in time to the early 20th century.
The simple wooden tables and chairs with green velvet seats are reminiscent of something that could be found under layers of dust in a grandparent’s basement, but nicely complement the overall neutral coloring of the interior.
Freshly cut flowers that look like they came from the side of a country road stand in the center of each table, paired with a plain white candle. Those with a nasty habit of drawing on tables are in luck, as the tabletops are covered in a sheet of paper, not material. The walls are sparsely decorated with framed ink sketches of animals and old photos with a large portrait of the guest of honor, Severyanin himself, hanging on the main wall, watching diners enjoy their meals. The portrait is not the only reminder of the poet. A top hat rests on a wooden coat rack in the corner, giving the impression that the poet is just behind one of the closed doors, or perhaps has just stepped out for a moment.
Guests are greeted with cucumber water, which was refreshing, crisp and quite a surprise as it was a dark winter night inside, rather than a sunny summer day on the veranda. Mushroom-shaped glass lamps with flora and fauna designs stand on every window sill, adding a bit of funk to the otherwise no-frills venue.
The menu, which has a hand-drawn blue and red ink design, is quite guest friendly, with small leafy images indicating low-calorie and vegetarian meals. There is also an insert with menu additions that accommodate those observing lent with meat and dairy-free options. The menu is a combination of European cuisine and Russian classics such as appetizers typically served to snack on with vodka, various soups including borsch and solyanka, beef Stroganoff and more.
Our meal was started with a glass of red Nero D’Avola wine for 250 rubles ($8.50) and berry mors with anise undertones — a pleasant deviation from the typical mixture for 80 rubles ($2.70). After a brief wait, lightly toasted black bread with two types of homemade herbed butter (80 rubles, $2.70) and salted milk mushrooms in oil (340 rubles, $11.60) were brought out. The fleshy fungi had a satisfying crunch to them and were topped with a bit of onion and evenly salted, making them an ideal match for a chilled shot of vodka. The other appetizer of a leaf salad with grapes, Mozzarella and Pecorino cheese (310 rubles, $10.60) was a delectable dish with all of the flavors — the sharp Pecorino, bitter greens, sweet green grapes and mild Mozzarella — combining to make a refreshing and poetically simple dish.
The promising first courses were followed by a lesson in patience. Despite the near-empty restaurant, the kitchen staff seemed to be busy doing something beside cooking food. After a fairly agonizing wait, duck breast served with berry sauce and cooked pear (760 rubles, $25.85) and a top blade steak (750 rubles, $25.50) with sides of fresh grilled vegetables for 120 rubles ($4) and fried potatoes for 90 rubles ($3) were brought out.
The duck was perfectly cooked, trapping all of the juices, and beautifully laid out on the heavy, white dishware with the sweet and sour tones of the fruit bringing out the soft, subtle flavors of the generous portion of fowl.
Despite the fact that part of the menu was dedicated to defining what the restaurant considers to be rare, medium and well done, the steak, ordered medium, was still served quite rare. The cut of meat was flawless and the unseasoned steak was good, although a little bloodier than preferred. A small scoop of cabbage and carrot light mayo salad balanced out the meat. Two sauces — seasoned tomato and creamy mushroom — were served on the side to add a little kick if so desired. The sides were also nothing to scoff at. The healthy portion of grilled tomatoes, zucchini and pepper were well cooked, and needed nothing more than a dusting of fresh ground pepper. The potatoes looked a bit gray and soggy, but what they lacked in appearance they made up for in good flavor, being ideally soft and salted.
TITLE: Television Company Offers Home Security
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg Cable Television company (TCT), which operates under brands including Tvoi Internet, Tvoyo TV and Tvoi Telefon, has broadened its range of services by introducing a completely new product — home security systems.
According to the company’s representatives, Tvoi Umny Dom (Your Intelligent House) — is a home monitoring system that informs the owner about any events taking place in the house or apartment when nobody is home.
The name of the system brings to mind the little-known 1999 film “Smart House,” where everything inside the so-called “house of the future” was automatic and controlled by an attractive female robot. TCT’s solution is much simpler.
“It is the first and only solution introduced by a regular telecom provider and it is complete and comes in a small box,” Yury Ostrovsky, the company’s commercial manager, said during the product’s presentation on March 21.
“It is a set of wireless sensors that are easy to install without the company’s assistance. It is not a premium-class product; it is intended for regular people.”
When gas, smoke, leaks, movement or the opening of windows or doors is detected, sensors automatically send this information to a wirelessly connected gateway, which resembles a Wi-Fi router in appearance. The gateway then sends this information over the Internet to the company’s server, and from there the news is sent to the owner’s mobile phone via text message and to the owner’s personal profile on the company’s website. Company representatives stress that in order for the signal to be transferred, the home does not necessarily have to be using TCT’s Tvoi Internet, but can use any Internet provider.
“We will also shortly be sending relevant emergency telephone numbers to a specific person from that house in these text messages,” said Ostrovsky. “Our team has worked extensively with building management companies and neighborhood associations to get the necessary phone numbers.”
The basic kit, which fits inside a small box, costs 7,999 rubles ($275) and includes a gateway, motion sensor, window and door opening sensor and a small remote control. All other sensors can be purchased separately and cost from 930 rubles ($32) and upward. The system also requires a monthly fee, starting from 300 rubles ($10).
“Eighty-six percent of apartments in St. Petersburg are completely unprotected, meaning that only 14 percent are guarded by companies that specialize in this,” said Ostrovsky. “This is because traditional security services are expensive, complicated, inconvenient and involve many formalities.”
According to the company’s research, the cost of obtaining traditional home security ranges from 14,999 to 20,000 rubles ($512-$683) with a monthly fee of at least 370 rubles ($13).
“We looked at the experience of foreign home monitoring providers and investigated the market in St. Petersburg,” said Ruslan Yevseyev, CEO of TCT. “We came to the conclusion that St. Petersburg residents should know what is going on in their homes when they are out, but that there was no way to do so on the city and national market.”
TCT is also planning on installing video monitoring via the web and IP cameras into the system. This will not be wireless, however, and the control functions will be located in the remote, which will allow the lights in the house to be turned on and off by simply pressing a button on it.
“Residents are ready to have such a service,” said Ostrovsky. “The only place where there are thicker entrance doors than in Russia is South Africa, where the crime situation is much worse.”
The system does, however, have one major drawback: It is entirely reliant on uninterrupted Internet service, without which it is rendered useless.
TITLE: Smarter Cities Anticipate Problems
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg, Moscow and other Russian cities whose aging water pipes, electric cables and notorious traffic jams have already caused problems for their residents may soon see a breakthrough with their infrastructure issues.
A solution may have appeared in the form of a new IBM program for Smarter Cities aimed at quickly and effectively connecting city infrastructure, transportation and safety.
The program sparked considerable interest when it was introduced in Moscow in February, and corporation representatives said they have already begun discussing the possibility of implementing the “magic” system in Russia’s two capitals and other regions.
The company says that the program — called the IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities — is a new solution designed to help cities anticipate problems, respond to crisis and manage resources.
The program covers eventualities such as deploying water maintenance crews to repair pumps before they break, alerting fire crews to broken fire hydrants at an emergency scene, or anticipating traffic congestion and preparing redirection scenarios.
“All cities are made up of a complex system of systems that are all inextricably linked,” said Anne Altman, general manager for the global public sector at IBM.
“The Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities recognizes the behavior of the city as a whole, thus providing more coordinated and timely decision-making based on deep insights into how each city system will react to a given situation,” she said.
“With more than 2,000 smarter cities engagements worldwide, we are now applying best practices and solutions that can be scaled to cities of all sizes around the globe,” Altman added.
As the majority of the world’s population moves to metropolitan areas, key city systems such as water, power and transportation are being strained to the breaking point. For citizens, a smarter city can mean automatically finding the fastest way to get to work, electricity and drinking water that can be counted on, and safer streets, for a start. And today’s increasingly empowered consumer expects their living standards to be met in order to support the urban influx and resulting economic growth of cities.
Gerald Mooney, vice president of the Smarter Cities department at IBM, said most of the world’s cities have problems with aging infrastructure.
“Be it Moscow or Washington D.C. or any other city, they ultimately come to the point when the aging infrastructure starts causing problems and demands huge amounts of money for modernization…therefore we need to improve the system of municipal services today,” Mooney said at the press conference in Moscow.
Mooney said IBM has already successfully implemented its new service in quite a number of cities that helped “to improve the public safety situation in the U.S. city of Richmond, Virginia; predict floods in the Netherlands and solve a number of traffic problems in Stockholm, as well as to speed up passenger flow processes in a number of the world’s airports.”
IBM’s Smarter Cities system is also in use in Rio-de-Janeiro, Brazil, where Rio Operations Center immediately warns the city authorities and emergency services about changes in weather that can cause floods and landslides, which are a big danger for the city, Mooney said.
Through a unified operations center, cities will be able to accurately gather, analyze and act on information about city systems and services, including public safety, transportation, water, buildings and social services, Mooney said.
IBM says that the new program will aide public safety professionals in reducing crime and making smarter, more timely decisions. For example, IBM’s video analysis software, working with the Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities, can instantly detect and respond to physical security threats, IBM said.
Current transportation systems and infrastructures are strained and continue to get worse due to the growing population and increased transportation demands. IBM has proposed using analysis technologies to provide travelers with real-time traffic information for multiple modes of traffic to help them decide the most efficient route for their commute, saving them both time and money.
A lot of a city’s water can be lost due to old, leaky pipes. With the use of near-real-time analysis, IBM’s Smarter Cities can track and report on infrastructure conditions starting from filtration equipment, water pumps and valves to collection pipes, water storage basins and laboratory equipment. According to IBM, this means that potential problems such as a burst water main, a slow leak, a broken pump or a hazardous waste water overflow can be quickly identified and resolved — or even predicted and prevented. Their operation center can also pinpoint the exact location of problem areas.
IDC Government Insights estimates the new Smarter Cities information technology market opportunity at $34 billion in 2011, increasing more than 18 percent per year to $57 billion by 2014.
Andrei Tikhonov, deputy general director for IBM in Russia and CIS countries, said IBM representatives have already discussed a number of Smarter Cities pilot projects in Moscow.
Andrei Galitsky, head of Smarter Cities in Russia and CIS countries, said the company has also begun discussing the possible introduction of the new system in St. Petersburg.
“Like in most big cities, the traffic problem in St. Petersburg is a burning issue, as well as its infrastructure,” Galitsky said. “Therefore Smarter Cities could be a good solution for it,” he said.
TITLE: Mobile Internet Is Fastest Growing Telecom Trend
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia had the highest number of Internet users in Europe by September last year, according to comScore market research company.
The next step following fixed Internet access is for people to be able to get online no matter where they are.
“More and more businessmen need to have constant access to their work e-mail, and more young people are constantly posting on social networks, uploading pictures and video right from the event that they’re at,” said Denis Goleshchikhin, head of the northwest department of Yevroset mobile phone retailer.
“This shows that people need convenient multi-functional gadgets that they can take with them and that have Internet access,” he said.
Mobile Internet has become the latest trend in the development of telecom technology. According to research by Yandex, which operates Russia’s largest search engine, by January this year, more than 22 percent of residents in Russian cities used mobile devices for Internet access. During the last three years, the number of monthly mobile Internet users has almost doubled, while the overall number of Internet users has increased by only 50 percent, according to Yandex.
Although the main service provided by mobile operators is still the “voice function” — making calls — mobile Internet is raking in more and more profit. More than 30 percent of mobile phones support 3G technology, according to Denis Kuskov, head of TelecomDaily, a telecom information and analysis agency. Moreover, mobile Internet is quickly reaching regions where broadband Internet is difficult to set up.
“Mobile Internet technology — 3G — came to Russia much later than it did to Europe, but our operators have been able to avoid some mistakes by learning from those of others. Now we do not lag behind our foreign colleagues,” said Kuskov.
“There are two categories of mobile Internet subscribers: Those who use the Internet on their phones and those who use the Internet with the help of a modem. The former is the larger group, they however pay less and generate less traffic,” he said.
The most widespread gadget with mobile Internet access is the cell phone. Almost half of St. Petersburg residents who use mobile Internet use their phones to do so, according to Yandex research. The same amount (47 percent) use smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), while the remaining 6 percent access the net via their tablet computers. The figures are the same for the whole of Russia.
“In the northwest region in the second half of 2011, the sale of smartphones increased by 10 percent in comparison with the first half of 2011,” said Goleshchikin. “The highest demand is for tablets, with the sale of models costing 15,000 rubles ($510) or more tripling in the second half of 2011,” he said.
It goes without saying that people continue to access the Internet via laptops and netbooks.
“The main group of mobile Internet users is people aged between 18 and 45,” said Kuskov. “Social networks, messenger services, search sites and programs used to pinpoint locations are very popular and consumers actively use mobile Internet. Some people download terabytes from torrents, and some just read news, check e-mails and communicate on social networks,” he said.
New technologies in mobile Internet communication change every five to six years, but this rotation could increase. GSM technology was replaced by 3G, now LTE (Long-Term Evolution) is preparing to be introduced. LTE technology allows the speed of data exchange to increase by ten times.
“For consumers, an increase in the speed of data exchange will provide better quality services that will promote the expansion of paid multimedia services, such as multi-user games, social networks and video-conferences,” said Yulia Nemenova, press officer for MTS mobile service provider in the northwest region. “For operators, LTE is also more profitable,” she added.
LTE is already used in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, the U.S., Austria and Hong Kong. In Russia, MTS, which is one of the country’s biggest mobile operators, plans to launch LTE by the end 2013.
Though standards have changed, this does not mean that previous ones are becoming obsolete.
“GSM, for example, can definitely work for five or seven more years, meaning that the general lifespan of technology will be about 20 years,” said Kuskov.
The development of mobile Internet will lead to the popularization of mobile payment services.
“People will use various services on their devices to pay for their cellular connection, Internet access, cable TV and communal services,” said Goleshchikhin. “Those who prefer to hand over money to real people and salesmen rather than into virtual space will still exist, however.”
“Mobile bankcard payments are just as safe as any other payments made with cards,” said Nemenova. “There are measures to prevent fraud. For example, the consumer always has to confirm the payment by answering a text message.”
“Access to payment forms on cell phones are protected by a special code known only by the consumer,” she added.
In choosing a mobile Internet operator, consumers should take into consideration how often they plan to use the service, in what volume and where.
“Everyone makes their choice according to the cost of service, its quality and coverage area,” said Kuskov. “In terms of data alone, Megafon is the market leader. It has more than 26,000 base stations [that distribute and receive signals] all over Russia. MTS has 23,000 and Beeline more than 13,000,” he said.
TITLE: Teased Student Opens Fire Killing 7 in California
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CALIFORNIA, U.S. — A former student expelled from a small Christian university and upset about being teased over his poor English skills went to the school to find a female administrator, then opened fire when she was not there, killing at least seven people, police said Tuesday.
One L. Goh “then went through the entire building systematically and randomly shooting victims,” Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference. Goh forced a secretary into a classroom and asked people to line up, Jordan said.
“Not everyone was cooperative, and that’s when he began shooting,” he said. The dead included six students and the secretary, he said.
Jordan said Goh appeared to have planned the attack for several weeks.
Those connected to the school, including the founder and several students, said the gunman had studied nursing. He was upset with administrators at the school, and also with several students.
“They disrespected him, laughed at him. They made fun of his lack of English speaking skills. It made him feel isolated compared to the other students,” Jordan said.
The 43-year-old South Korean national had been expelled, possibly for behavioral problems, according to Jordan.
Goh left behind a string of debts and minor traffic citations in his former home state of Virginia and was evicted from one apartment complex. His brother was killed in a car accident last year in Virginia while on active duty in the U.S. Army, according to Stars and Stripes newspaper.
“We’ve learned that this was a very chaotic, calculated and determined gentleman that came there with a very specific intent to kill people, and that’s what his motive was and that’s what he carried out,” Jordan told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Soon after the shooting Monday, heavily armed officers swarmed the tiny college of fewer than 100 students in a large industrial park near the Oakland airport. For a time, police believed the gunman could still be inside. But he wasn’t.
Instead, officers said he apparently drove about three miles from campus before surrendering to officers inside a supermarket.
Police first received a 911 call at 10:33 a.m. reporting a woman on the ground bleeding. As more calls came in from the school, the first arriving officer found a victim suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, he said.
More officers then arrived and formed a perimeter around the school on the belief that the suspect was still inside, he said.
“Potential victims remained inside the building either trapped by a locked door which officers were unable to open,” Jordan said. Others were unable to flee because they were injured, he said.
Jordan said there were about 35 people in or near the building when gunfire broke out. Of the seven fatalities, five died at the scene and another two at the hospital. The wounded victims are in stable condition, and at least one person was released from the hospital. They were from various countries, including Nigeria, Nepal and the Phillipines.
He told Good Morning America on Tuesday the victims ranged in age from 21 to 40.
Howard described Goh as cooperating with authorities although he said he has not been “particularly remorseful.”
Art Richards said he was driving by the university on his way to pick up a friend when he spotted a woman hiding in the bushes. He pulled over, and when he approached her, she said, “I’m shot” and showed him her arm.
“She had a piece of her arm hanging out,” Richards said, noting that she was wounded near the elbow.
As police arrived, Richards said he heard 10 gunshots coming from inside the building. The female victim told him that she saw the gunman shoot one person point-blank in the chest and one in the head.
Tashi Wangchuk, whose wife witnessed the shooting, said he was told by police that the gunman first shot a woman at the front desk, then shot randomly in classrooms.
The gunman “banged on the door several times and started shooting outside and left,” he said. Wangchuk said no one was hurt inside his wife’s classroom, but that the gunman shot out the glass in the door. He said she did not know the man.
Goh fled from the school in a Honda Accord that belonged to one of the victims, Jordan said. The suspect was detained at a Safeway supermarket about three miles from the university, about an hour after the shooting.
Police on Tuesday were still looking for the gun used, which Jordan described as a semiautomatic handgun.
TITLE: Colombia Guerillas Free Captives
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: COLOMBIA — Colombia’s main rebel group freed what it says were its last 10 military and police captives, a goodwill gesture that President Juan Manuel Santos praised but called insufficient to merit a peace dialogue.
The men had spent between 12 and 14 years in jungle prisons, captured when the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was at the height of its military strength.
But Latin America’s oldest, most potent guerrilla band has since been weakened by Colombia’s U.S.-backed military and Monday’s release of six police and four soldiers highlighted its desire for a peaceful solution.
Flown from a secret jungle rendezvous aboard a loaned Brazilian air force helicopter emblazoned with the Red Cross logo, the freed captives waved jubilantly.
Some jumped for joy on the tarmac before reunions with relatives. Nurses helped others walk, while pets accompanied some: A peccary, a monkey and two small birds. A few wore the Colombian flag over their shoulders. Their loved ones were overjoyed.
“I shouted! I jumped up and down!” said Olivia Solarte when she got first word her 41-year-old son, police officer Trujillo had been freed. He’d been held since July 1999.
The group was flown to Bogota where other relatives were waiting along with obligatory hospital stays for medical checks.
The rebel group, known as the FARC, had announced Monday’s liberation on Feb. 26 in tandem with a halt in ransom kidnappings as a revenue source.
Santos called the release “a step in the right direction, a very important step” but cautioned against “pure speculation” that it augured peace talks.
He said he wants proof the FARC, which took up arms in 1964, is truly abandoning ransom kidnapping.
“When the government considers that sufficient conditions and guarantees exist to begin a process that brings an end to the conflict the country will know,” he said.
To begin with, the government wants two other security force members captured by the FARC in 1998 and 1999 to be accounted for. It also wants a reckoning of ransom kidnap victims held by the FARC, along with their freedom.
The citizens’ watchdog group Fundacion Pais Libre maintains a list of at least 400 people the FARC kidnapped or has otherwise held against their will since 1996 who were never freed. It doesn’t expunge a name from its records until the person is released or a body is found.
Two serious government-FARC peace negotiations have failed over the past three decades. And although the rebels have praised Santos’ willingness to address land reform and return stolen property to landless peasants, recent weeks have seen an upsurge in violence in the conflict.
The FARC killed at least 11 soldiers in a mid-March attack in Arauca near the Venezuelan border and the military responded with two precision bombings on rebel camps that killed more than 60 insurgents.
The rebels have in recent years suffered their worst setbacks ever, beginning when Santos was defense minister from 2006-2009 and thanks to billions in U.S. military assistance and training.
Their main source of funding is the cocaine trade and military pressure has made holding kidnap victims increasingly difficult for the FARC.
Monday’s mission was brokered by leftist former Senator Piedad Cordoba, a friend of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who has served as a go-between in the release of 20 FARC hostages since January 2008.
The FARC has only publicly acknowledged holding captives it considered “exchangeable:” Police, soldiers or politicians it held for political leverage, hoping to swap them for imprisoned rebels.
It held scores of such prisoners in the late 1990s when it controlled about half the countryside but gradually released them all, never obtaining the hoped-for exchange.
Some captives were rescued. Franco-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors in 2008 were freed in a bold ruse involving Colombian soldiers posing as members of a phony international humanitarian group. But others, at least 25, died in captivity, many killed by FARC insurgents when rescuers real or imagined neared.
Among those in attendance for Monday’s release was Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan rights activist who won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize.
TITLE: Bin Laden Relatives Sentenced
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court sentenced Osama bin Laden’s three widows and two of his daughters to 45 days in prison on Monday for illegally living in the country, ordering them to be deported when the sentence ends, their lawyer said.
With credit for time served, the women and several of their other children will leave Pakistan later this month, said lawyer Mohammed Amir Khalil. They have been in detention since American commandos killed bin Laden in a large house in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, but they were formally charged with immigration offenses only last month. The Americans left the women and children behind in the house after they flew off with bin Laden’s corpse.
The women may have information about how bin Laden managed to remain undetected for close to 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S., despite being the subject of a massive international manhunt. The youngest, 30-year-old Yemeni wife Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, has told investigators bin Laden lived in five houses while on the run and fathered four children, two of whom were born in Pakistani government hospitals.
Pakistani officials have said they had no idea the al-Qaida chief was in Abbottabad, something many in Washington found hard to believe because his compound was located close to Pakistan’s equivalent of the West Point military academy. The U.S. has not found evidence indicating senior Pakistani officials knew of bin Laden’s whereabouts, but said he must have had some form of “support network.”
Two of the widows are Saudi and one is Yemeni. Khalil said Yemen has consented to the return, but he is still in discussions with Saudi officials. Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in 1994 because of his verbal attacks against the Saudi royal family.
Al-Sada was overjoyed to finally be heading home, said her brother, Zakaria al-Sada, who has been campaigning for her release. Yemen has issued her five children passports so they can return with her, he said.
Al-Sada told investigators she flew to Pakistan in 2000 and traveled to Afghanistan, where she married bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.
After that, the family “scattered,” she said, and she traveled to Karachi in Pakistan. She later met up with bin Laden in Peshawar and then moved to the Swat Valley, where they lived in two houses. They moved one more time before settling in Abbottabad in 2005.
Al-Sada, said to be bin Laden’s favorite wife, was shot and wounded in the leg during the raid.
The compound in Abbottabad was a crowded place, with 28 residents — including the 54-year-old bin Laden, his wives, eight of his children and five of his grandchildren, according to Brig. Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching the bin Laden raid and said he was given access to interrogation transcripts.
The bin Laden children ranged in age from his son Khaled, who was in his 20s and was killed in the raid, to a 3-year-old born during their time in Abbottabad, said Qadir. Bin Laden’s courier, the courier’s brother and their wives and children also lived in the compound.