SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1711 (22), Wednesday, June 6, 2012
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TITLE: Poll: Russians Against High Protest Fines, Want Dialogue
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A poll by the independent Levada Center shows that 38 percent of Russians are against the protest bill that President Vladimir Putin could sign as early as today, and two thirds think the leader should enter into dialogue with opposition forces.

The bill, which would to increase fines to up to 300,000 rubles ($9,000) for individuals who violate rally rules, cleared the final parliamentary hurdles Wednesday, now needing only the president's signature to become law.

In a country where the average annual income is several hundred dollars less than the maximum fine, the bill has become a controversial topic.

Only 17 percent in the Levada poll approve of the penalties to be enacted in the bill, while 26 percent said fines were a good idea, but those proposed in the bill were too high, Vedomosti reported.

About 70 percent of Russians have heard about the May 6 opposition rally that ended with violence by both demonstrators and police, prompting the creation of the bill. Forty-six percent said riot police reacted too harshly, while 4 percent said police were "too soft."

The poll revealed that 67 percent think Putin should enter into a dialogue with opposition protesters, but 45 percent said they thought the government would try to stamp out opposition protests, up from 32 percent in a January poll.



TITLE: United Russia to Sue Navalny en Masse 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: United Russia is gearing up to make opposition leader Alexei Navalny pay for his "party of crooks and thieves" moniker, which has haunted its members since the blogger coined the phrase.

The ruling party plans to create a website where members can register their dissatisfaction with Navalny's disparaging remarks. The ultimate goal is to sue the corruption campaigner to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, Izvestia reported Saturday.

"I want to help not just one or two colleagues, but all those who are interested. For this reason, I decided that we must create an online platform, where all the necessary documents can be openly accessed," United Russia Deputy Vladimir Burmatov, who conceived of the project, told the state-controlled publication.

The site, which is set to go online June 13, could result in a huge bill for anti-corruption campaigner Navalny. If all United Russia members — of which there are roughly 2 million — join the mass lawsuit, the claims could stretch to 60 billion rubles ($1.8 billion).

This would not be the first time that Navalny has landed in hot water over comments aimed at United Russia members.

Moscow's Lyublinsky District Court on June 5 ordered the opposition icon to pay 30,000 rubles to a deputy from the Kremlin-backed party for comments published in a December edition of Esquire magazine. That time the claims centered on the use of the phrase "crooks and thieves," too.

Navalny's lawyer Vadim Kobzev said at the time that his client would appeal the ruling, as it could set a precedent for similar cases, a judgment that is now proving prescient.


TITLE: Putin Prepared to Play Iran Peacemaker 
AUTHOR: Jennifer Rankin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia will attempt to play mediator between Iran and the West when President Vladimir Putin sits down with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Beijing on Thursday, a top Putin aide said.

The timing of the encounter between the two leaders has not been officially confirmed but is widely expected, and comes as the United Nations Security Council gears up for another round of talks with Tehran later this month aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear-enrichment program.

"The meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will allow Vladimir Putin to feel the heat of the situation surrounding Iran's problem and how the situation is interpreted in Tehran," said Putin aide Yury Ushakov, according to RIA-Novosti.

The Russian-Iranian bilateral meeting comes on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, a two-day gathering of regional powers sandwiched in the middle of Putin's Asia tour.

For Russia the meeting paves the way for high-stakes talks between Iran and the P5+1 group — the five permanent members of the United Nations security council plus Germany — scheduled for mid-June in Moscow. The P5+1 wants to stop nuclear enrichment in Iran, while Tehran is trying to ease UN sanctions.

Since the last round of P5+1 talks in Baghdad in May, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have found traces of enriched uranium at higher levels than previously at the Fordou nuclear site in Iran.

"Russia will use the meeting to make Iran more flexible and more open to cooperation with the IAEA," said Peter Topychkanov, an associate at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

He added that "relations between Iran and Russia are not so good because of Moscow's support for the UN resolutions," a reference to the past declarations that Russia has signed against Iran's nuclear program.

"That is why Putin will use this meeting to clear up the concerns they will have," Topychkanov said.

Russia has been warning Western powers against bombing Iran for months. The consequences of a military strike would be "entirely negative" for many neighboring countries, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, told state-owned Rossia 24 on Wednesday.

Russia, which built Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, supports the Islamic republic's right to a civilian nuclear program, but says that it opposes a nuclear-weapons program.

The meeting with Ahmadinejad will cap a summit on security with leaders from China and four Central Asian countries.

Leaders from the Shanghai group declared their interest in stabilizing Afghanistan when NATO forces leave at the end of 2014, although few details emerged when the first day of the meeting ended Wednesday. A strategy for combating terrorism, separatism and extremism in 2013-15 would be agreed upon by the group, Putin said in an article published in a Chinese newspaper.

Afghanistan, whose President Hamid Karzai attended the meeting, was also likely to get observer status at the Shanghai group in a symbolic gesture.

"The withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan carries serious risks for security and stability in the region," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"It is not clear what the situation will be in Afghanistan after 2014," Topychkanov said. "There is a limited dialogue between NATO, the U.S. and Russia regarding concrete plans beyond 2014."

He was skeptical about whether major plans would emerge from the current Shanghai group meeting on Afghanistan.

"It's hard to expect progress," he said, "all these countries have their own positions."


TITLE: Pussy Riot Icon Artist Fined
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Three months after icon-like posters portraying members of the all-female punk band Pussy Riot appeared on Novosibirsk streets, a local artist has been fined for “desecrating venerated symbols.”

Artyom Loskutov was ordered to pay 1,000 ($30) rubles Friday for two pictures depicting masked Pussy Riot band members as the Virgin Mary that were posted on advertisement stands in the city, Interfax reported.

He was acquitted for a third picture at a hearing Saturday because police didn't find his fingerprints at the scene, Loskutov told Interfax.

Loskutov did not admit guilt at the hearings and said he would appeal Friday's court decisions.

He first revealed that he would face administrative charges in connection to the posters with court documents posted to his blog Thursday.

"Several individuals and organizations, including the Novosibirsk Russian Orthodox Church, did not believe in the miraculous appearance of the icons and demanded that the prosecutor's office and the [regional police center for combating extremism] deny the fact that a miracle happened, as well as find the artist and person who ordered the art," Loskutov wrote.

The artwork, which portrays a woman wearing bright colors and a mask in Pussy Riot's signature style, appeared in several locations around Novosibirsk on the night of March 11.

The posters bear a strong resemblance to an icon of the Blessed Virgin, with Jesus depicted as a girl with pigtails and the letters "SVBD PSRT" in the corner of the picture, which Loskutov said stand for "free Pussy Riot" (svoboda Pussy Riot).

Three of the punk band's members have been in police custody on charges of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" since an impromptu performance in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Human rights groups have denounced the continued detention of the women, who could face up to seven years in prison if charged and convicted.



TITLE: Putin Promises to Stand By Europe
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin on Monday offered European Union leaders help in their fight against a deepening debt crisis, on the same day that the ruble slid to new lows against the euro.
Putin also defended Russia’s democratic system and laughed at a call for him to be sent to prison.
Speaking at a joint news conference with European Council President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in the lavish, baroque Konstantinovsky Palace outside St. Petersburg, Putin acknowledged that a European recession would directly affect Russia’s economy.
“We are ready to cooperate in this process because we are also interested,” he said, adding that he hoped the European Union manages to overcome its deepening currency crisis.
Putin did not elaborate on how Russia would help Europe.
Barroso said that the 27-member bloc would focus on establishing sustainable growth from within and stressed that more integration was necessary to make that happen. He also said cooperation with EU neighbors like Russia was vital.
“We need to do more together. Trade and investment are also important drivers for growth,” he said.
Van Rompuy said the EU would welcome Putin’s plan of integrating former Soviet states into a Eurasian Union — if that organization obeys World Trade Organization standards.
The three presidents spoke after the first Russia-EU summit since Putin’s return to the presidency last month.
Although Putin expressed unhappiness with aspects of Europe’s energy and trade policies and stressed that he would give priority to his Eurasian Union plans, all sides sounded upbeat about the talks, which wound down Monday afternoon.
“It was really productive, and the Russians did not show the obstinacy typical of previous summits,” said a member of the EU delegation, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The European Union and Russia hold two summits per year, alternately on each other’s territory.
Much of Monday’s summit focused on the possibility of starting talks about a wide-ranging bilateral agreement between both sides. The new framework agreement is supposed to replace an agreement dating from the 1990s and has long been stalled by Moscow’s protectionist trade policies.
While the main obstacle disappeared after Russia finally signed up for WTO membership in December, Putin argued that the EU is demanding Moscow abide by obligations that go beyond those made for joining the international trade watchdog.
“We call this WTO plus. We cannot agree on these suggestions yet,” he said.
EU officials pointed out that Moscow’s WTO accession has yet to be ratified by the State Duma and that the Russian side had asked that talks on a framework agreement begin only after the economic effects of WTO membership become clearer.
In a sign that business is increasingly nervous about these effects, a group of businessmen published an open letter to the government last week, in which they asked for additional protection against outside competition. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday called upon the State Duma to ratify the country’s accession.
Putin said that the Kremlin would try to minimize those risks by using instruments “fully in accordance with WTO rules.”
Barroso said that once such an agreement was in place, both sides could work toward Putin’s vision for “a free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”
Barroso also said that the EU’s modernization partnership with Russia envisages not just economic but political reforms and demanded that the Kremlin press on with improving democratic institutions and the rule of law.
But Putin faced the toughest question from a reporter who read out from a flyer, in which the Other Russia opposition movement headed by dissident writer Eduard Limonov called the president a tyrant who deserves to be in prison.
“Putin behind bars, Barroso to the pillory” read the flyer, which activists handed to journalists outside their St. Petersburg hotel. It criticized Barroso for shaking hands with Putin because “dealing with this man is shameful.”
A bemused Putin quipped that he would go to prison “only in good company” and that he viewed such calls with sympathy.
“The question is just, why they do it in such an unusual way. We have other means to state your position,” he said, adding that the barriers to form political parties were recently lowered.
He caused laughter by saying that the call for Barroso to be pilloried, a medieval form of public humiliation, must be connected to the EU’s Third Energy Package.
“I must tell all interested sides that we have expressed our worries about this document and hope that we can solve these problems during the negotiations,” he said.
Brussels and Moscow have sparred over the EU’s energy market regulations, which are intended as a liberalization but are seen by the Kremlin as hampering conditions for its energy corporations.
Putin also reiterated his position that it was wrong to call jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky a political prisoner and that this was also found by the European Court of Human Rights.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Maxim Klyuvgant quickly attacked Putin’s argument, noting to Interfax that the Strasbourg-based court only found that the businessman’s arrest in 2003 had been without political interference.
The president also put visa policy high on the agenda by claiming that existing travel requirements are an “obstacle for promoting human contacts and the economy” and that a true partnership is only possible after scrapping visas.
The issue has become a constant battleground between both sides in recent years, with Moscow claiming that visas could be scrapped anytime, while European officials point out that Russia lacks the infrastructure to ensure migration safety.
Both sides agreed at the last summit in December to fulfill a more than 40-item common steps program that seeks to address these issues, and Moscow said it wants to carry this out by 2013.

TITLE: Disabled Children Seek Social Rights
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Disabled children have been excluded from society for a long time, and one of the main causes of this situation lies in the closed nature of Russia’s social system and the undefined legal status of mothers of disabled children. These were the conclusions reached and discussed by representatives from non-governmental organizations and social foundations, along with members of City Hall’s Committee for Social Policy, at a press conference in St. Petersburg on May 31.
“There is a so-called doctrine that disabled children should be removed from society,” said Yulia Belousova, president of the Courage to Live non-profit alliance, a group of charity organizations that works with disabled children.
The state system is primarily centered around live-in care homes, says Svetlana Guseva, head of Mothers of the World, an association in St. Petersburg of mothers with disabled children. These women call themselves “mother-nurses” as they are forced to take full-time care of their children in order to avoid sending them to an institution for disabled children. They have asked the government to recognize their status and what they do by making “mother-nurses” an officially accepted term.
“Russian laws do not support mothers with disabled children,” said Guseva. 
“If a mother is the only one who takes care of her disabled child, she has to choose either to put her child into an institution and work, or keep and care for the child at home and receive only 1,200 rubles ($35) a month in financial aid. 
“We have no laws that help to make it possible for mothers to keep such children in the family. The whole system depends on families with disabled children having both the mother and father present. In such a family situation, the mother inevitably stops working to take full-time care of the child and the father has to take all of the financial responsibilities upon himself. Fathers in such families often leave, or even worse — commit suicide or murder.”
Due to the absence of nurses and social workers in schools, mothers are often encouraged to send their disabled children to live-in care institutions. 
“The institution system originated more than 100 years ago. Most countries used to hide their disabled children. Now Russia is deliberately putting off reforming this social sphere. But society has changed,” said Guseva, whose child has cerebral palsy. “Now society is ready to accept my son.”
In this respect, the issue of inclusive education, in which disabled children are included in ordinary school classes, is one of the most burning topics. Experts agree that studying together may be helpful not only for disabled children, but also for regular schoolchildren without serious medical problems, as it will help develop a tolerant attitude in society starting at a young age. 
A draft bill on education is now the only official document that might allow disabled children to study in state secondary schools. 
“When the law is passed, not every disabled child will be covered by it,” said Guseva. “The secondary school system is very rigorous; integration in schools is based on intellectual criteria. Moreover, for children in wheelchairs there will be further problems, because ordinary schools don’t have the facilities needed to accommodate the chairs,” she added.
The Accessible Environment federal program sets the goal of providing disabled people with equal access to services and other aspects such as transport, information and communication facilities by 2015.
Galina Kolosova, deputy chairman of City Hall’s Committee for Social Policy, said that the committee had made an effort to raise the amount received by stay-at-home mothers of disabled children from 1,200 rubles ($36) to minimum wage by sending a proposal to the Pension Capital Fund, which set the current stipend. 
“At the moment we have only received a reply saying that our proposal will be taken into account when future changes are made in the federal law,” she said.
“In St. Petersburg we have been able to increase the monthly payment amount families with disabled children aged seven to 18 receive from 2,900 rubles ($86) to some 4,000 rubles ($120),” said Kolosova. 
“For children up to seven years old it remains about 4,000 rubles. We have also introduced a payment of 10,000 rubles ($300) per month for children considered to be the most disabled (level 3) by the Individual Rehabilitation Program.” 
Marina Shishkina, a deputy for the Just Russia party, said that the social sphere — in particular the issue of disabled children — is an area in which the government should not try to save money. 
“Rational approaches can only be worked out by a group of people who are not indifferent to the matter — a group that should not be made up of deputies with party affiliation, but by members of professional committees,” she said.

TITLE: City Policeman Rescues Boy, Father From Burning Vehicle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A St. Petersburg traffic policeman who rescued a man and his two-year-old son last month from a car that caught fire has been awarded a medal, Interfax reported.
Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev awarded the medal “For Heroism in Service” to police captain Dmitry Poltorypavlenko for risking his own life to save others.
Poltorypavlenko was on his way to St. Petersburg from outside the city in his car when he saw a Daewoo passenger vehicle crash into a bus stop and catch fire.
The policeman was the only person to approach the car that was about to explode. He first pulled a child out of the backseat and then helped his father.
The man involved in the accident then said there was a female passenger also inside the car. Poltorypavlenko tried to save the woman, but was unsuccessful.

TITLE: Two Opposition Rallies Planned for Russia Day
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: City Hall has authorized two anti-Putin rallies in the center of St. Petersburg to coincide with the March of Millions opposition rally in Moscow and the Russia Day national holiday on Tuesday.
A rally called “Russia Day Without Putin” will be held on Konyushennaya Ploshchad at 4 p.m. Its organizers include Yabloko, Parnas, The Other Russia, St. Petersburg’s Observers, Solidarity, the National Democrats and ROT Front, The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev said Tuesday.
Dmitriyev said the protest — part of anti-Putin protests due to be held across Russia — will be specifically directed against the new bill on assemblies that would make fines for alleged violations hundreds of times bigger, and would introduce correctional labor as a punishment.
“We Petersburgers must demonstrate that we’re not scared of these laws, these fines, this correctional labor, and won’t stop taking to the streets,” he said.
“If the law’s authors were expecting street protests to disappear, they are profoundly mistaken.”
The organizers will also protest a new local bill on gubernatorial elections that would require candidates to be nominated by a registered political party and then supported by at least 10 percent of municipal deputies in order to be eligible.
“We’ll have elections between [current Governor Georgy] Poltavchenko and, say, [United Russia deputy Vitaly] Milonov,” he said. “Our demand remains the same — gubernatorial elections within the next 12 months without any ‘filters,’ be they presidential or municipal ones.”
Dmitriyev said the organizers — who include the main spectrum of non-parliamentary opposition — will not take part in a march announced by another opposition group on the same day.
Organizer Olga Kurnosova of the Citizens’ Committee said the other march will start near Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Ligovsky Prospekt at 3 p.m. and end on Konyshennaya Ploshchad. She said the organizers include the Citizens’ Committee and a group of individuals.
Last week’s Strategy 31, a rally for the defense of the right to freedom of assembly, was held on Thursday “in the form of a walk,” without applying to City Hall for authorization, which has been refused since the nonpartisan campaign started in January 2010. Although protesters did not shout slogans and brought no banners, detentions that resembled preventive arrests were made by the police.
One of the first detained was Vladimir Melnichuk, known for his tattoo “Putin Is a Thief” on his right forearm. No reason was given for the detention.
The Other Russia opposition party’s Sergei Chepiga was arrested as he left Gostiny Dvor store.
All in all about 10 people were detained during the event, according to Kurnosova, who said she was charged with violating the rules on holding assemblies and failure to follow a police officer’s orders.

TITLE: Mr. Trololo Eduard Khil Dies
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Eduard Khil was a beloved Soviet crooner who won sudden international stardom two years ago when a 1976 video of him singing “trololo” instead of the song’s censored words became a global Internet hit.
Khil, best known as Mr. Trololo, died Monday at age 77.
He had been hospitalized in St. Petersburg since a stroke in early April that left him with severe brain damage. The stroke was the cause of his death, said Tatyana Mamedova of Petersburg-Kontsert, which organized Khil’s concerts.
Khil was a top Soviet performer during the 1960s and the 1970s, but his star faded in the 1980s as musical tastes changed and the Soviet Union opened up to the West.
In 2010, a video of him performing “I Am Glad, ‘Cause I’m Finally Returning Home” in 1976 was uploaded onto YouTube and quickly got more than 2 million hits.
The music was written by well-known Soviet composer Arkady Ostrovsky, but the original lyrics were about a cowboy riding across a prairie while his sweetheart knitted stockings for him, a sentimental view of America that didn’t sit well with Soviet censors during the Cold War.
Khil said in an interview that he was told to change the words if he wanted to perform the song, so he sang a vocalized version that came out sounding like “trololo.” It was an original approach that did not seem to attract much attention at the time or inspire others to follow his example.
The crooner recalled that it was his grandson who first told him about his new international fame: “Grandad, your song has become a hit again, I saw it on the Internet!”
Mikhail Sadchikov, a St. Petersburg journalist and musical critic who knew Khil personally, said the singer reacted to his sudden fame with irony.
“From his grandson he learned that T-shirts and mugs with his image had become available in the West, and he joked that he never earned a kopeck from them,” Sadchikov said Monday. “He was also very optimistic, positive and ironic at the same time.”
He will be buried at the Smolenkskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg. The time of the service has not been set.

TITLE: Whistleblower Teacher Inspires Help Group
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s parliamentary Committee for Culture, Science and Education has decided to organize a support movement for teachers as a result of the court case brought against a St. Petersburg teacher for disclosing information concerning falsifications during the State Duma elections held on Dec. 4.
“Our new movement will be called ‘Citizen Teacher,’ and it will be an institution teachers will be able to appeal to for political, moral and legal help to resist the pressures they experience during elections,” A Just Russia deputy Marina Shishkina was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Last week a St. Petersburg court found Tatyana Ivanova guilty of slander against Regional Board of Education head Natalya Nazarova and ordered the teacher to pay Nazarova 30,000 rubles ($910) compensation.
Ivanova made public information about falsifications that took place during the Duma elections, and said that Nazarova forced teachers to stuff ballot boxes with false ballots in favor of the United Russia party.

TITLE: Human Rights Council Slams Trial of the 12
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The second secret witness provided by the prosecution for the Trial of Twelve provoked questions concerning his identity and evidence at the Vyborgsky District Court on Friday. 
A group of The Other Russia opposition party activists are on trial for allegedly continuing the activities of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which was banned as extremist by a Moscow City Court in 2007.
The witness, introduced as Anatoly Sokolov by Prosecutor Nadezhda Filimonova, claimed he was an NBP activist. Like the undercover police agent presented as Mikhail Sazonov during the May 29 session, he spoke hidden from the defendants in a separate room using an electronic device that altered his voice.
As with Sazonov, Judge Sergei Yakovlev dismissed the main defendant Andrei Dmitriyev’s request for evidence that the person under interrogation was actually Sokolov and not another person. When Sokolov was asked whether he acted under a different name as an NBP activist, this question was also dismissed as referring to the witness’ identity and as such compromising his safety. 
Yakovlev also allowed Sokolov not to answer Dmitriyev’s question about whether the witness cooperates with the police on a freelance basis. After a brief argument, however, Sokolov replied that he was a “one-time witness.”
Sokolov refused to answer whether or not he recognized any of the names of the officers from the counter-extremism Center E, the agency that launched the criminal case against the activists. He confirmed the charges that the group was acting as the NBP when he joined in May 2009, motivated by his “disagreement with some of our government policies.” 
The defendants argue that they acted as activists of The Other Russia coalition, and then as activists of The Other Russia party when its local branch was launched in 2010.
However, Sokolov appeared confused when asked about details such as dates. He said he was present at The Other Russia’s opening conference but failed to say specifically where or when it took place. 
“It was in a hotel near some square,” he said about the event, which took place at the Angleterre Hotel near St. Isaac’s Square in downtown St. Petersburg in October 2010.
During the session, he was no longer sure that he had joined the group “in May 2009,” as he testified during the investigation, and said that it may have been in 2008. 
He failed to say how long he had attended the group’s meetings for, answering most questions asked by the defense with “I don’t remember,” “I find it difficult to reply” or “I don’t want to answer this question.”
Unlike Sazonov, Sokolov said that banned NBP paraphernalia was not used during Strategy 31 rallies. He said the activists discussed “resisting the authorities” at their meetings, but not “attacking anybody,” and did not voice any “calls for violence.”
“Nothing particularly illegal was said or planned at the meetings,” he said.
Sokolov said he became a police informant after being approached during a protest by officers, who invited him to “watch video materials, look at photographs and give comments.” He said he agreed because his attitude toward the group had by that time grown “negative.”
According to Dmitriyev’s lawyer, Gleb Lavrentyev, secret witnesses are usually used for organized crime-related cases, but they are made secret during the investigation, rather than during the trial, he said. 
“There’s no new information that he is now in some sort of danger, everything is based on his unsubstantiated claims that he is concerned about his security,” Lavrentyev said. “Why wasn’t he before?”
Despite the flawed testimony provided by prosecution witnesses, Lavrentyev said he was not hopeful about the trial’s outcome.
“The outlook is not good because the trial is being held in the Russian Federation, in a Russian court, where the percentage of acquittals in cases heard without a jury is very small,” Lavrentyev said.
“The only thing is that many witnesses have contradicted themselves in their evidence and failed to remember things, which is an advantage. But I wouldn’t raise anybody’s hopes, because judges’ objectives include resolving contradictions that emerge in a courtroom in favor of the prosecution. 
“I’m not ruling out that the sentence will be based on the evidence [the witnesses] gave during the investigation, but it’s clear that this evidence didn’t come from them. [The judge having to choose which evidence to believe] is technically what should happen, but in reality it is a mockery [of justice].”
The St. Petersburg Human Rights Council has criticized the legal proceedings against the activists as being “beyond the scope of common sense.”
“With every next hearing, the trial increasingly resembles Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and strengthens our conviction that no real proof is needed for the criminal prosecution of the regime’s political opponents — it is made up,” it said in a statement Tuesday.

TITLE: U.S.’s Clinton Visits Clashing Caucasus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Tuesday that five of its soldiers were killed in clashes with Armenian troops alongside the border separating the two countries, deepening tensions between the two former Soviet nations.
The ministry said in a statement that exchanges of gunfire have been reported over the last two days at numerous points along Azerbaijan’s western border. Armenia had said earlier that three of its soldiers died in the clashes.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have for two decades been at odds over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory, which lies within Azerbaijan, but was taken over by Armenia during a six-year war that killed about 30,000 people and displaced 1 million.
The incidents come just as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has embarked on a tour of the South Caucasus in the hope of mediating progress in territorial disputes in the region.
Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said one clash took place near the village of Ashagy Askipara early Tuesday morning, after their soldiers were attacked by Armenian commandos. Four Azeri troops were killed in the fighting, officials said. Another soldier died in a separate incident, the ministry said.
Armenia on Monday said three of its soldiers were killed and another six were wounded in villages nearby.
Clinton decried the “senseless deaths of young soldiers and innocent civilians” as part of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict — just hours after Monday’s border clash.
“I am very concerned about the danger of escalation of tensions and the senseless deaths of young soldiers and innocent civilians,” Clinton told reporters after a dinner with Armenia’s president and foreign minister. “The use of force will not resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” she said, urging the sides to refrain from violence.
Warning that Azeri-Armenian tensions could escalate into a broader conflict with terrible consequences, Clinton said the U.S. would continue to press with France, Russia and others on mediation efforts.
Violations of the cease-fire have been frequent, and diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict have failed. The U.S. hopes that at the least Armenia and Azerbaijan can agree to a set of basic principles that might lead to peace. These include the return of territories and uprooted people to their homes, and an eventual vote on the area’s future.
Washington also wants to normalize relations between Armenia and Turkey, whose enmity reflects the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the Ottoman Empire-era killing of some 1.5 million Armenians.
The Obama administration has tried hard to help Armenia improve its economy, not least as a nod to the influential Armenian-American community, which is particularly strong in the Los Angeles area. Clinton, making her second trip to the region as secretary of state, helped Armenia and Turkey reach an agreement in 2009 that would have opened up their borders and normalized relations.
But the deal stalled back as Turkey’s parliament refused to ratify it.
“The ball remains in Turkey’s court,” Clinton lamented.
Armenia’s problems are compounded by its geography. Cut off from trade with its booming neighbor Azerbaijan on one side and Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey on the other, it must conduct all its international commerce through Georgia and Russia to the north. It is heavily dependent on Moscow for fuel.
In Georgia on Tuesday Clinton participated in a strategic dialogue with Georgian officials at the Black Sea resort of Batumi.
Central to the talks were the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They declared independence after Russia routed Georgia in a five-day war in 2008. Russian forces protect them.
Clinton reiterated U.S. opposition to Russia’s “occupation” of the provinces.
In Azerbaijan, America’s top diplomat plans to continue efforts toward a breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, while addressing democracy and media freedom shortcomings. But she’ll also underline oil-rich Azerbaijan’s close cooperation with the U.S. on counterterrorism and its booming economy, which has expanded fourfold since 2004, attending an energy industry gathering in the capital of Baku to promote American companies and future investments.
She will likely speak to officials as well about Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, Iran.
Azerbaijan has arrested dozens of people it claims were hired by the Islamic republic to carry out attacks against the U.S. and Israeli embassies, as well as Western-linked groups and companies.

TITLE: Putin, Hu Meet On Rising Partnership
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING, China — The leaders of Russia and China met Tuesday to foster an evolving partnership that has counterbalanced U.S. influence and shielded Syria from international moves to halt its crackdown on a 15-month uprising.
President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on his first visit to his country’s vast neighbor since resuming the Russian presidency earlier this month. He later sat down for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao that are expected to touch on the crisis in Syria as well as on Iran, bilateral trade and energy cooperation, and will join a regional summit later in the week.
Russia and China have repeatedly defied calls by the international community to confront Syria’s regime over violence, saying they will not back steps that could lead to foreign intervention. Russia has long been a close ally of President Bashar Assad’s regime, while Beijing opposes setting precedents that could potentially be applied to its troubled western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.
China and Russia vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions, which raised the threat of possible sanctions against Syria and have ruled out any Libya-style military action to protect civilians in Syria. The two also voted against a resolution Friday that condemned last month’s massacre of more than 100 civilians in the cluster of villages known as Houla and called for an independent investigation.
The U.S. has pushed Russia to join international efforts for a political transition in Syria that would see Assad driven from power.
Putin, meanwhile, has sought to use Russia’s burgeoning ties with Beijing as a counterweight to U.S. global predominance, and the sides have found common cause in rejecting Western calls for more open politics and respect for civil liberties.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters Tuesday that China and Russia both “oppose external intervention in the Syrian situation and oppose regime change by force.”
Both countries also oppose further sanctions against Iran over its suspected drive to develop nuclear weapons.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Putin and Hu will be among leaders attending the annual summit of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping of Russia, China and four Central Asian states seeking to boost regional integration and curb Western influence. The countries are also preparing for the U.S. departure from Afghanistan.
Liu said the summit leaders will issue a declaration on guidelines for cracking down on terrorism and building a region of “lasting peace and common prosperity.” He did not give details.

TITLE: Yulia Tymoshenko Improving Under Difficult Treatment
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN — Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s chronic back ailment has improved somewhat, but she is far from cured and the conditions at the hospital in her homeland are making treatment very difficult, German doctors said Tuesday.
Officials in Berlin have tried to persuade Ukraine to allow Tymoshenko to travel to Germany for treatment. But Karl Max Einhaeupl, the head of Berlin’s Charite Hospital, said he sees “no tendency in Ukraine to allow her to leave” for treatment.
“The medical condition has improved — she is more mobile, she is moving around at least a few hours a day,” Einhaeupl said. “The pain is a little bit less than at the beginning of the treatment, but it’s not gone at all.”
Tymoshenko’s deep distrust of Ukrainian officials and government-appointed doctors hasn’t helped and was fed, for example, by an incident in which her medical records were shown on television, he said.
Her treatment at the hospital is “under constant surveillance, by video cameras and by guards,” he added.
The German doctors insisted on the cameras being taped over during visits, but Tymoshenko fears that there may be more, hidden cameras.
“I think I can say that ... Mrs. Tymoshenko has great trust in the doctors from Germany, but we are never alone with her — there is always someone there,” at least a second patient in the same room, Einhaeupl said.
“It is proving to be very difficult and, in the end, it is impossible to predict whether, under these conditions, we can really bring about a cure,” he said.
Einhaeupl said Tymoshenko has raised the possibility of being transferred to Kiev from Kharkiv, which the German doctors would welcome, as it would make it easier for them to travel to treat her. Putting Tymoshenko under house arrest also would make matters easier, he added.
“She is afraid people will harm her,” Einhaeupl said. “That’s why she refuses every injection or everything invasive.”

TITLE: High Hopes for Russian National Team at Euro 2012 Championship
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sixteen national soccer teams and thousands of fans will descend on Ukraine and Poland’s biggest cities this week for the start of the Euro 2012 soccer championship Friday. 
The largest European celebration of the sport occurs every four years, drawing in soccer purists and laymen alike across the continent in a three-week-long sporting bonanza marked by color, passion, and cultural diversity.
 The Russian national team, ranked 11th best in the world, goes into the tournament with high hopes after a 3-0 win against Italy in their last warm up game to the tournament. Their campaign kicks off on the opening day at 10:45 p.m. Moscow time against the Czech Republic, which ranks 26th. Other group opponents are 14th ranked Greece, and co-hosts Poland, ranked 65th. 
Recent comments by a number of soccer experts and opposing managers have marked the Russian team as the favorite to win their group. The players, however, will do well to fear complacency, as a shock defeat against Slovenia ended Russia’s hopes of participation in the 2010 World Cup.
It was that defeat that prompted the sacking of Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, who led Russia to a lauded bronze medal at the previous tournament in 2008. Hiddink was replaced by his compatriot, Dick Advocaat. Though Advocaat has already announced his resignation from the team, he has set his eyes on the ultimate prize, stating in a recent televised interview that the team’s goal is to win the tournament.
Known as “The Little General” for his tactical nous and authoritative man-management, the Dutchman previously spent three years in the Russian Premier League in charge of FC Zenit St. Petersburg, leading them to a League trophy, Super Cup, and UEFA Cup victory.
Petersburgers will have plenty to cheer for in the coming weeks, with up to seven starting squad players coming from the city’s club, dominating the mid-field and attacking positions. This year’s Russian Premier League winners will hope to replicate their success on the international stage, and their interplay will be the crucial factor in determining Russia’s performance.  
Thousands of Russian fans are expected to cheer them on in nearby Poland, hoping that they live up to the hype, while doing their best to forget the disaster of 2010.

TITLE: Magnitsky Bill to Get Vote June 7
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. lawmakers plan to vote on the “Magnitsky List” legislation this week, raising the specter of a harsh response from the Kremlin.
The bill, introduced by a group of influential U.S. senators, would blacklist Russian officials linked to the 2009 jail death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other officials implicated in human rights violations.
 Russia has accused the United States of meddling in its internal affairs with the legislation.
“If the new anti-Russian Magnitsky bill is passed, it would require a response from us,” presidential aide Yury Ushakov said last week, adding that Moscow hoped it would not happen, RIA-Novosti reported.
The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs will put the bill up for a vote June 7, according to a committee schedule published over the weekend.
Magnitsky was arrested shortly after he accused tax and police officials of embezzling $230 million. An independent inquiry by the Kremlin’s human rights council found that he died after being beaten by prison guards. One prison doctor has been charged with negligence, but no one has been convicted in the death.
The U.S. State Department, hoping to avoid the congressional action amid efforts by President Barack Obama to “reset” relations, banned several dozen Russian officials implicated in the death last summer, which sparked a tit-for-tat response from the Russian side, which said it also banned several U.S. officials.

TITLE: Prokhorov Announces New Political Party
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has created his own political party, but the former presidential candidate’s efforts to distance himself from the protest movement mean he will remain loyal to the Kremlin, analysts said.
Prokhorov, 47, who kept a low profile after reaping more than 6 million votes in the presidential election in March, unveiled his new Civil Platform Party at a news conference Monday.
The party will participate mostly in regional elections in cities bigger than 500,000 people, Prokhorov said.
He was flanked by sister Irina Prokhorova, RBC television general director Alexander Lyubimov and Federation Council Senator Alexander Pochinok, a former tax and labor minister.
“The only aim of this party is to hold a license, to allow leaders of civil society to take part in elections, since this political system is not the one where we want to work,” he said.
A flamboyant politician and owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, Prokhorov came in third in the presidential election. He was seen as a decent alternative to other, more seasoned politicians.
Civil Platform will include members of Prokhorov’s presidential campaign team as well as former members of the liberal Right Cause party, which he briefly chaired in 2011. The new party will be limited to 500 members, Prokhorov said.
Five hundred is the minimum needed to create a political party under liberalizing legislation passed in response to mass public protests in December.
Prokhorov will be chairman of the party but not an official member, he said Monday.
President Vladimir Putin likewise, while chairman of United Russia, did not become a party member. That move later helped him distance himself from the increasingly unpopular party.
Despite dabbling in opposition politics, Prokhorov has avoided criticizing Putin. He did attend an anti-Kremlin protest but did not speak publicly at the event.
Prokhorov said Monday that his party would be an “evolutionary path” for national politics.
“We are against revolutions,” he said, adding that he would not attend an opposition march June 12, Russia Day. The opposition lacks a definitive strategy “to influence the authorities,” he said.
Prokhorov has funded opposition figures, among them longtime friend Boris Nemtsov, a source within the movement told The St. Petersburg Times. Prokhorov also supported an opposition candidate in Krasnoyarsk, where his $13 billion business is registered.
Analysts described Prokhorov as a “manageable politician” who would use the party to keep his head in politics.
“Prokhorov has political capital and doesn’t want to lose it, so he’s going to imitate some political activity,” said Pavel Salin, an analyst at the Center for Current Politics, a think tank.
Prokhorov has sent mixed signals about his future as a politician. An opposition-minded State Duma deputy who met him recently said Prokhorov wanted to shed politics in favor of his business and personal life.
Prokhorov will avoid conflicts with the Kremlin, which recently put some of his allies in top governmental positions, Salin said.

TITLE: Russian Language Receives Initial Approval in Ukraine
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s parliament has given tentative approval to a hotly contested bill that would allow the use of the Russian language alongside Ukrainian in some regions.
Defying vehement protests by the opposition, pro-government lawmakers passed the bill in the first of two readings Monday. The previous discussion of the bill late last month caused a violent fight between lawmakers that left one parliament member hospitalized with a head injury.
Under the bill, Ukrainian would remain the only official language in the country, but Russian could be used in courts, hospitals and other institutions in Russian-speaking regions.
Members of the pro-Western opposition argue that the bill would stifle the development of the Ukrainian tongue as millions of Russian speakers would have no incentive to learn and use it.

TITLE: RT Tops Lists in U.S. Cities
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — RT, the Kremlin-backed English-language TV channel formerly known as Russia Today, cranked up its U.S. viewership to become the most-watched foreign news channel in five key U.S. markets in 2011, a media analysis report said.
Viewership in New York alone nearly tripled, while the channel also made significant advances in Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the report by media analysis company Nielsen said, RIA-Novosti reported Tuesday.
“The growth of our audiences in major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington, proves that we have become firmly established as an international channel that gives an alternative to the American mainstream,” RT editor Margarita Simonyan said, Itar-Tass reported.
“More and more people in the U.S. need new viewpoints and new approaches to presenting information, which they get from our broadcasts,” she said.
Currently, 85 million people in the U.S. have access to the channel, according to Itar-Tass. The channel got a boost in 2011 as it began to be carried by cable networks in San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia, also joining the lineup for satellite provider Dish Network. RT says it reaches over 430 million people globally in at least 100 countries.
The report said RT beat out EU’s Euronews, France 24, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, the Middle East’s Al Jazeera English, Japan’s NHK World and China’s CCTV News in the five cities targeted in the analysis. In New York, RT’s weekly audience was nine times that of NHK World, and in Chicago, daily viewership was three times higher than Al Jazeera’s.
The report also said RT’s typical viewers were men between the ages of 35 and 49 who have college degrees. Twenty percent of viewers have master’s or doctorate degrees, and most viewers are business owners, entrepreneurs, managers, or government officials, the report said.

TITLE: Industrial Park to Help Finns Set Up Businesses
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finnish company Industry Park East Management and the government of the Leningrad Oblast’s Vsevolozhsk district signed a lease agreement on 20.5 hectares of land to be used for the company’s Industrial Park Morozova at the Finnish Business Forum last week.
The park, which will be located in the village of Morozova, 35 kilometers from St. Petersburg, is designed to house small and medium-sized Finnish companies that work in metal processing and other types of production.
In addition to their manufacturing capacities and infrastructure development, the companies will provide clients with services ranging from helping people open businesses in Russia to providing support for projects that have already been launched.
Industry Park East Management will invest about 15 million euros ($18.8 million) in the park, whose first stage is scheduled to be completed in 2014 and the second in 2015.
Martti Huttunen, president of Industry Park East Management, said the new facility would help bring more Finnish companies to Russia because the park would become “a convenient, profitable and safe basis for entry into the Russian market.” 
“In fact, it’s not that easy to open a foreign business or production line in Russia, especially for small and medium-sized businesses,” Huttunen said.
“When foreign companies, in particular small and medium-sized ones, come to Russia, they often just do not know how to deal with local legislation, administration, infrastructure and other things,” Huttunen said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times. “Therefore they need someone to take them by the hand and help them. That’s a service our company will provide, along with many other ones,” he added.
“Newcomers often don’t know where to buy property, what today’s lease rates are, what those rates will be tomorrow, what resources to use — Finnish or local ones — what the real background of the person they hire is, how to modify their infrastructure and how much it costs, etc,” Huttunen said.
“Another complicated part of the process is the administrative barriers, which can make the process of opening a business long and complicated,” he said. “Businessmen often need to collect a lot of documents, wait up to three months to get them signed, then get together another batch of documents and wait another three months for signatures. In addition, laws sometimes change and tax services do not always work as they should. Since we have experience in all of these spheres, we can help to make the process of opening a business here go more smoothly,” he said. 
Park East’s services will cover four major areas. The first offers help with preliminary planning, including researching opportunities and investment needs of a company planning to enter the Russian market. The research will be carried out in the company’s head office in Finland and in the country where the new business is to be launched.
The second area will ensure that the production facilities meet European standards. The technical maintenance and cleaning of equipment and machinery will be performed to European ecological standards.
The third service will help small and medium-sized Finnish businesses launch their projects on the Russian market on time and without problems with aspects such as setting up a business, getting all of the necessary licenses, finding personnel and technical support.
In the fourth stage, Park East will help new companies make business contacts with people such as successful professionals in their field and company representatives interested in the client’s production and services.
Huttunen said the park’s planned location is convenient as it is on the highway to Finland and Moscow.

TITLE: Stubb Praises Business Climate
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finland’s Minister of European and Foreign Trade, Alexander Stubb, called for more Finns to do business in Russia at the Finnish Business Forum that took place in St. Petersburg last week.
“I want to tell Finnish businessmen that it is profitable to do business in Russia and that it’s worth coming here,” Stubb said.
“Russian-Finnish business relations have a bright future,” he said, adding that the Russia-Finland trade volume totals 16 billion euros ($20 billion).
“In fact, Russia is our biggest trade partner in the world,” Stubb said.
More than 500,000 Finnish companies work in Russia in sectors including retail (such as Stockmann and Prisma), food (Valio and Fazer), construction, energy (Fortum) and others, he said.
Stubb said Russia’s upcoming entry into the WTO, as well as the potential introduction of a free trade zone and visa-free regime between Russia and the EU would contribute to the strengthening of business relations between Russia and Finland.
“Russia’s membership in the WTO is the best news. It will become a big stimulus for trade relations between Russia and the EU. It will also contribute to the modernization of the Russian economy,” Stubb said.  
Russia’s joining the WTO will be good for Finland too as “it will help to limit the number of trade barriers,” he said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
Stubb said that for Finland it would result in lower customs duties in spheres such as forestry.
“It is obvious that the lower customs duties are, the better it is for business,” Stubb said at the forum.
The minister said a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU would be a very positive achievement as well.
“My philosophy is that the fewer borders we have, the better it is for Russia, Finland and the EU,” he said.
“My personal aim is to enjoy the visa-free regime between Russia and the EU by the 2018 FIFA World Cup to be held in Russia,” he added.
Stubb said the major problems Finnish business currently faces in Russian include bureaucratic and administrative barriers connected with customs, work permits, taxes and corruption.
“Finland is in second place in the world in terms of being corruption-free. Therefore we can’t get tangled up in such matters, even though lately there has been less of it in Russia,” Stubb told The St. Petersburg Times.
The trade minister said that when Finnish businessmen face the inevitable corruption found in Russia, they often choose to “drop the business.”
Meanwhile, Alexander Prokhorenko, chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg, said that while Finnish businessmen often complain about “administrative barriers” in Russia, they do not propose any solutions about how to solve the problem.
“It’s not enough to just say that it is a problem, it also requires suggestions about what exactly should be improved and how,” Prokhorenko said at last week’s forum.
Prokhorenko also recognized that Finland was the major European promoter of reducing visa requirements between Russia and the EU, but said that in practice limiting these requirements is not as ideal as it sounds.
Prokhorenko said that when the St. Petersburg authorities introduced a three-day visa-free entrance for foreign tourists arriving in the city on ferries that travel between St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Stockholm and Helsinki, their European partners introduced a rule requiring Russian passengers on these ferries to have their visas checked in every foreign city along the route, making travel more inconvenient.
Despite the travel complications, representatives of both Russian and Finnish companies said that business collaboration between the two countries was quite successful.
Mirja Tiri, chief executive of the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce, said Finland was the biggest foreign investor in Russia, with investment totaling 10 billion euros ($12.4 billion). Finnish companies also employ 50,000 people in Russia.
Kari Kautinen, vice president of Finland’s Fortum Power and Heat, said Russia was “as important a region for the company as Scandinavia.” Currently the Russian division of Fortum includes eight electric power stations that are powered mainly by gas.
Felix Karmazinov, general director of St. Petersburg’s state water supply company Vodokanal said that Vodokanal and Finland have been working together for 25 years. 
In the late 1980s, when the water supply infrastructure in what was then Leningrad was poor and 3.5 million cubic meters of the city’s wastewater was dumped into the Gulf of Finland every year, Finland offered to help with training and solve the problem. Today Vodokanal’s sewage treatment facilities treat 94 percent of all the city’s wastewater. The figure is estimated to reach 96 percent next year, Karmazinov said.
“All of this is a result of our collaboration with Finland, and now the city meets all the requirements of the Helsinki Commission,” Karmazinov said.
Representatives of Finland’s Nokian Tyres said the company had become the biggest producer of tires in Russia, with investment reaching up to 800 million euros ($993 million). The company is currently preparing to open a second plant in Russia.
Martti Huttunen, president of Industry Park East Management, said that the Industrial Park Morozova that the company plans to build in the St. Petersburg suburb of Vsevolozhsk during the next couple of years will help bring more Finnish companies to Russia, saying it would provide “a convenient, profitable and safe basis for entry into the Russian market.”

TITLE: Railway Plans ‘Land Bridge’ Between China and Europe
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new wide-gauge railway line to Vienna could be a key part of Russian plans to build a Eurasian “land bridge” between China and Europe.
The multibillion-dollar scheme, which would take more than a decade to complete if it gets off the drawing board, would be the most westerly extension of the “Russian” 1,520-gauge railway lines.
Russian Railways officials have enlisted European Union support for their designs to incorporate the Trans-Siberian Railroad into a corridor for freight between the Far East and Europe.
A European Commission delegation headed by Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas gave its backing to the strategy at Russian Railways’ annual conference in Sochi last week.
The proposal, dubbed the Eurasian Land Bridge, is intended to provide a rail-based alternative to traditional sea and airfreight routes between far eastern producers and European markets.  
Moving cargo by rail costs more and entails a sacrifice of volume in comparison with sea transportation.
But Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin said he believed the route would be able to compete on speed.
“They are building ships that can carry 10,000 containers at a time. We can never compete with that,” Yakunin told reporters in Sochi on Friday. “But while we can never increase capacity like that, they can never reduce journey times.”
He said that the option of sending goods by rail would appeal to producers keen to get their goods to market in as little as 14 days, compared with the 40-day sea journey.
He also expressed skepticism about the sustainability of the sea option because deliveries of so many containers at a time would place great strain on the European transportation system.
Some links already exist, including a freight service between the Chinese city of Chongqing and Antwerp in the Netherlands.
But Kallas said in a speech to the conference that there is still a long way to go before the route is commercially viable.
“On tariffs, for example, several countries on the Europe-Asia route, including Russia, apply discriminatory fees to international rail freight that leaves, enters or transits the country. We expect these fees to be phased out as part of Russia’s WTO accession,” he said in a speech to delegates.
Yakunin called on Europe to “cut the red tape that still exists between countries,” while Russia ought to concentrate on becoming a reliable transit route, he said.
Kallas said he expects rail freight between Europe and its Eastern neighbors to grow 30 percent between 2007 and 2020.
Another hindrance is the inconvenient transition between the 1,520-millimeter gauge lines used in the former Soviet Union and the narrow 1,485-millimeter “standard” gauge used in Europe and China.
One solution being pushed by Russian Railways is extending the 1,520-gauge line all the way to a new depot near Vienna, giving direct access to trans-European rail and road networks as well as the Danube River system.
The project, which has yet to attract funding or persuade the governments involved to formally sign up, will take at least 13 years to complete.
“Trains are unlikely to start running before 2025,” said Anton Ryshkov, deputy chief of Russian Railways’ department for economic conjunction and strategic development.
A feasibility study drawn up in 2011 lists three possible financing schemes: Public-private partnerships, credit from major lenders and investment banks, and state funding, Ryshkov said.
However, the plan has drawn flak from Poland, where it has been compared to the Nord Stream gas pipeline as an effort to bypass or isolate the Central European country.
Poland says that its own 1,520-gauge line, built in the 1970s to supply iron ore from Ukraine to a steel mill near Katowice, would require only an upgrade and a depot.
It argues that those improvements could be done at a fraction of the cost of building the new railway to Vienna and would give similar access to Central Europe’s rail and road networks.
In another development at the conference, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which have been united in a customs union since 2010, reached an agreement on the creation of a new logistics company.
Yakunin told reporters that Kazakhstan and Belarus would pay for their stake in the common firm with “funds or assets,” Interfax reported.
Russian Railways plans to borrow 60 billion to 80 billion rubles ($1.9 billion to $2.5 billion) a year over the next three years, partly through issuing eurobonds, in a bid to fund major investment projects.

TITLE: Peskov Believes BP Oil Company Move Not Bad Sign for Foreign Investors
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin doesn’t believe that BP’s possible departure from its Russian joint venture would be a bad signal for other foreign investors, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Monday.
“Wise foreign investors will look at how much BP has made by entering into a joint venture,” said the spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.
On Friday BP announced that it was considering an offer for its 50 percent stake in TNK-BP, its joint venture with four Soviet-born billionaires, amid another legal duel. The British company has reaped $19 billion in dividends from the venture since its establishment in 2003.
BP is likely contemplating a change in its TNK-BP strategy in order to search for other opportunities in Russia, said Elena Herold, a senior manager at PFC Energy, a global consulting firm specializing in the oil and gas industry.
“I do not believe that BP wants to leave Russia for good, even if it sells its half in TNK-BP,” she said by e-mail.
Friday’s announcement could lead to a tie-up with Rosneft similar to the one that fell through last year because of the Soviet-born billionaires, Herold said.
“It seems likely that a swap of shares between BP and Rosneft will take place as was discussed in the Arctic JV deal a year ago,” she said.
The previous agreement with Rosneft would have given BP access to explore and develop Russia’s offshore Arctic fields.
“Eventually, I believe, Rosneft will team up with BP in TNK-BP management, acquiring a controlling stake,” Herold said. “This deal will set the stage for BP to resume growth in Russia and for Rosneft to continue international expansion.”
BP hasn’t informed the partners about who was offering to make the purchase of the stake that ranks as the largest foreign investment in the country’s oil industry and cautioned that the deal might not go through. Peskov declined to talk about any potential buyers, but said Putin knew about the situation in TNK-BP.
It could be state company Rosneftegaz, where Putin’s confidant Igor Sechin is going to be a board director, that will acquire TNK-BP shares held by BP, Herold said.
Rosneftegaz could also choose to buy shares from the billionaires, who hold their half through a company named AAR, she said. That purchase may come in addition to the deal with BP, she said.
In recent months, Rosneft made deals with America’s ExxonMobil, Italy’s Eni and Norway’s Statoil.The government chose Sechin to run the company.

TITLE: Telecoms Minister Has Youth, Experience
AUTHOR: By Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Having served as the chief telecommunications policy expert in Tatarstan and now heading Russia’s Communications and Press Ministry, Nikolai Nikiforov has covered a lot of ground in his 29 years.
That isn’t his time in the industry: He turns 30 later this month. Nikiforov is the youngest minister in the Cabinet created by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in mid-May, and by all accounts he is the youngest-ever appointee to a post-Soviet Cabinet.
Though significantly younger than his predecessor, 46-year-old Igor Shchyogolev, Nikiforov has already spent more time in the Internet industry and telecom regulation than Shchyogolev had by the end of his term.
Nikiforov begins his federal role after two years as information and communications minister of Tatarstan, one of the most economically developed regions of the country.
In a Vedomosti interview published in May, Nikiforov said 62 percent of Tatarstan households have a computer with Internet access, and that figure is 78 percent in the capital, Kazan. This compares with a nationwide figure of 36 percent.
Born in Kazan, Nikiforov became deputy director of a local news and advertising website company called Kazan Portal before he was 20. He graduated from Kazan State University with an economics degree in 2004, and in 2004-05 he worked as deputy general director for the company Modern Internet Technologies.
Also in 2005, he became an adviser to Tatarstan’s prime minister. Nikiforov was the general director of Tatarstan’s Information Technology Center from 2006 to April 2010, when he was named the republic’s information minister, a post that also made him a deputy prime minister of Tatarstan at age 27.
Nikiforov’s appointment in May to the top government telecoms post came as a surprise, after months of speculation that the job would go to former MegaFon general director Sergei Soldatenkov or former Microsoft chief and current VTB vice president Olga Dergunova.
“Regional operators are waiting for the [ministry] to establish fair competition,” said a senior manager with one of Russia’s mobile operators, who wasn’t authorized to speak about government agencies.
When asked which areas of IT and telecom are most in need of a policy revamp, Anatoly Karachinsky, the founder and president of IT giant IBS Group, replied “all of them.”
“There was no [IT or telecom] strategy in the country, and nothing was done” under previous ministers, Karachinsky told The St. Petersburg Times.
In his minister role, Nikiforov has already set a 2014 deadline for number portability, though the policy of forcing mobile operators to let customers keep their cellular telephone numbers when changing operators had been proposed by Medvedev in April.
Nikiforov is uniquely qualified to oversee the task, which probably will be the first major policy change on his watch: According to Vedomosti, he oversaw a pilot project for number portability of fixed lines in Tatarstan.

TITLE: Alien Barents Crabs Suffering From Russian Reality
AUTHOR: By Anya Zalota
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Soviet botanist Ivan Machurin’s immortal phrase “We cannot wait for favors from nature. To take them from it — that is our task” could be the all-encompassing slogan by which Russia’s resource-driven economy now lives.
Even though the early 20th-century scientist was primarily referring to creating plant hybrids, his philosophy underpinned many of the Soviet Union’s ambitious experiments with nature — from reversing river flows to the Kamchatka crabs that were transplanted to the Barents Sea in the 1960s in an effort to increase the productivity of the northern sea.
Half a century later, the spiny giants are the region’s most lucrative catch — but this experiment with biodiversity has had a string of economic, environmental and social effects on the fishing communities of the Barents Sea.

<b>No Accidental Tourist</b>
With a life span of up to 30 years and growing up to 2 meters across, the Kamchatka crab — also called the red king crab — is a hardy native of the North Pacific, taking its name from the peninsula where Russians first encountered it.
Between 1961 and 1969, scientists seeking to boost the commercial productivity of Russia’s Arctic Sea released 13,000 of the creatures and 1.6 million larvae into Kolafjord in the east Barents Sea — thousands of miles from their Pacific home.
The results of the experiment were at first disappointing. Although Norwegian fishermen soon began to find Kamchatka crabs in their nets with increasing regularity — the crabs appear to have marched toward Norway against the warm Gulf Stream current soon after being introduced — at first their presence in Soviet waters was negligible.
But the crustaceans were only biding their time. Many introduced species multiply only very slowly until reaching a “critical mass” when the population explodes. The Kamchatka crabs in the Barents were no exception.
The red king crab is now found across about 100,000 square kilometers of the Russian part of the Barents Sea, and the total population is estimated at about 9.25 million individuals, of which 1.48 million are thought to be of commercial value.

<b>Red Gold</b>
Commercial fishing of the Barents crabs began in Russia at the end of 2004, and by 2008 it had become the most economically significant species in the region, with 1 kilogram of crab meat retailing for about $100 — almost double the price of red caviar, yielding almost 5 billion rubles ($161 million) of annual turnover to local fishing companies.
Anecdotal evidence says most of the catch is exported, although the Federal Fisheries Agency was unable to confirm the numbers.
Fishing of the crab in Russia is controlled by government quotas that vary from year to year, based on population surveys by the Murmansk-based Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography, or PNIRO — created specifically for research of Barents Sea fish life — and the Federal Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, or VNIRO. Currently quotas vary from 5,500 to 6,000 tons per year.
But as with any lucrative commodity, deciding who gets to harvest these quotas is fraught with controversy.
When commercial fishing began, rights to harvest the crab were auctioned to fishing companies in the area.
Licenses came in two main categories: inshore harvesting within 12 nautical miles (about 22 kilometers) of the coast, which were mainly granted to small, local companies; and rights to harvest the crabs further from shore, which were sold to major corporations, such as The North West Fishing Consortium, which has four companies crab fishing in the Barents.
But in 2011 the federal government introduced a ban on harvesting the crab within 12 nautical miles of the shore — effectively rescinding the rights bought by smaller fishermen in 2005.
The official reason for the ban is conservation to protect breeding populations, based on research by PNIRO that found most of the crabs in the inshore zone are reproducing females and youngsters.
But some suspect ulterior motives.
“There are several reasons why this ban may exist: development of red king crab fishing in territorial waters is not in the interest of holders of main quotas, and once again, where there is poaching there is corruption,” said Vassily Spiridonov, senior researcher at the Laboratory of Coastal Ecosystems of the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Some researchers have questioned PNIRO’s findings, arguing that many male crabs are also found close to the shoreline and that young crabs are also found beyond the exclusion zone.
They also argue that fishermen can easily avoid catching females and youngsters by changing the design of the cages to allow them to escape.
“[The locals don’t] understand the reasoning behind the ban on harvesting females and [their eggs],” said Mikhail Pereladov, head of coastal research at the VNIRO institute. “The caviar is delicious; there are plenty of female and young crabs. Norway allows them to be caught, and here we can’t even raise the issue,” he said.
“Our people are suffering,” said Anatoly Yevenko, general director of the Association of Coastal Fishing Industrialists and Farms of Murman, a trade association the fishermen have formed to defend their interests.
“This legal chaos is crushing them. The good intentions of our government are paving these companies’ path to hell,” he said. Yevenko, whose association represents 32 companies operating in the region, said that many of the businesses that won tenders for inshore quotas but are now prohibited from fishing are facing bankruptcy.
“These licenses were bought by companies that spent a lot of money on them. Now it turns out they cannot harvest Kamchatka crabs close to the shore,” Yevenko said.
He added that the ban was briefly lifted last year after fishermen protested the issue, but that it was soon reinstated.
This year “the crab-harvesting companies approached me, and I wrote a letter [in March] to [then] President Dmitry Medvedev requesting that this issue be resolved,” Yevenko said. He received a reply in late April that was essentially negative, reiterating the scientific case for banning inshore fishing and that legislation forbids companies with near-shore permits from fulfilling their quotas beyond the 12 nautical mile limit.
Yevenko said the fishermen he represents are unsure of what their next move should be.
A spokeswoman for The North West Fishing Consortium denied the ban is in the consortium’s financial interest because its companies hold about 70 percent of all inshore quotas, but said that they accept the research which states that the ban is necessary for the protection of the crab population.
She declined to say what proportion of the consortium’s crab business is made up of inshore quotas versus quotas beyond the 12-mile exclusion zone.

<b>Poaching</b>
Meanwhile, illicit crab fishing is booming.
Nobody knows the true scale of illegal poaching in the area, said Pereladov, of the VNIRO institute.
“But there are rumors that in the Motovsky Gulf alone, more than 100 light-tonnage ships are harvesting crabs,” Pereladov said, adding that much of the Barents Sea is officially off limits to any sea traffic because it is a border area.
“In our country it seems that everybody is OK with [illegal harvesting], as long as the poachers are paying off the appropriate agencies,” Spiridonov of the Shirshov Institute said.
Pereladov estimates that crab obtained illegally is sold on the Russian market at half or even a third of its official price.
Although inexpensive, poached crab is an incredibly destructive commodity.
“Local people want to be able to harvest crabs, openly. To have enough time to choose crabs of the highest quality, and to use all of the crab,” Pereladov said.
“But when a poacher is at sea, every minute counts. After a crab is on deck they break off its primary leg (which is the most expensive part) and the rest is thrown overboard — up to 80 percent of the meat is wasted,” he added.
The result is ironic. Russian legislation, which protects the Kamchatka crab population and strives to limit exploitation of stocks, may ultimately be doing more harm than good.
Meanwhile, Russian researchers are pointing to Norway, where they believe lax regulation gives Norwegian fishermen a competitive edge.
“Norway looks at the crabs as a tool, the harvesting of which can enable them to resolve social problems in the region and create new jobs,” Pereladov said.
“But in Russia, they are regarded as a milking cow for major corporations for whom it is convenient to maintain high prices,” he added.
The Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs has granted about 500 vessels commercial quotas to harvest crabs in coastal waters in the eastern part of Finnmark, the region that borders Russia, where Norway wants to maintain a regulated, predictable fishery.
But elsewhere, crab fishing is unregulated, largely because it regards the crustaceans as “an introduced stock that could have an impact on the marine ecosystem” and wants to keep the population at a minimum outside the regulated area.

<b>Giants on the March</b>
But both Russian and Norwegian scientists say information about the alien species’ impact on the Barents Sea ecosystem is actually quite limited.
With their 1.8-meter leg span and hulking, alien-looking carapace, the crabs are a gift to headline writers, and reports about an army of voracious invaders advancing 50 kilometers a year down the Norwegian coast and as far north as Spitzbergen have painted them in a somewhat terrifying light.
But both Russian and Norwegian scientists say this alarmist picture is misleading. In reality, information on the crabs’ ecological impact is far from complete.
Spiridonov points out that any predator, like the red king crab, that occupies a position near the top of the food chain, can have an impact on an ecosystem. But, he says, they were hardly the first predators on the scene.
Predatory benthic, or bottom-dwelling, fish have long preyed on the same organisms as the crabs — and periodic population explosions can ravage those bottom-dwelling communities.
“The population of bottom-dwelling fish sometimes skyrockets, and in those years organisms that they feed on suffer great losses. These are the same organisms that the crabs feed on, so the benthic ecosystem is not stable but depends on fluctuations in predator populations,” he said.
He added that the fluctuations in bottom-feeding fish populations are “at least a degree” greater than any effect on the ecosystem the crabs can have.
But that conclusion concerns the Barents Sea as a whole, over a span of many years. On a more immediate level the crabs can have a significant impact, especially in areas where limited migration leads to a high concentration of the creatures in a relatively small area, such as fjords.
“In such cases, of course, with their preference for certain benthic organisms, such as mollusks and echinoderms [a division of marine animals including starfish and sea urchins], crabs can decrease these organisms’ population,” Spiridonov said.
“But the … dynamics of such processes and their potential impact on the coastal economy — all of this requires fundamental and regular research; and not just for crabs as such, but for gaining an overall understanding of what is going on in coastal areas in our current time of change,” he added.

<b>Fringe Benefit</b>
The crab invasion has had one unexpected environmental benefit: It could deter more destructive forms of fishing in the Barents Sea.
With their long legs and sharp claws, red king crabs often get entangled in the bottom-trawling nets of fishermen looking for other species, ruining nets and eating the fish they are trapped with.
“Fishermen are obviously losing out, but the environment is most probably benefiting,” Spiridonov said. “At the end of the day fishing using nets is falling, and fishermen are switching to catching crab.”

TITLE: Lessons for Investors From TNK-BP
AUTHOR: By Chris Weafer
TEXT: If ever there were a country for which the adage “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” aptly applies, it is Russia. Time and time again, global investors and business leaders are left thinking that Russia is a dangerous place to invest in and is on the brink of yet another crisis. To be sure, the country certainly has had its fair share of crises, but the economic and investment volatility are, in reality, no worse than in other developing economies. Yet the highly depressed valuations on the stock market today would have you believe that Russia is some sort of a hybrid, blending a Las Vegas roulette wheel with an economic profile to make even Greece look attractive.
The reality is that the economy is still on track to deliver 4 percent economic growth this year, inflation is unlikely to be far off 5 percent, and retail sales and real wage growth will be in the high single digits. Even with the current oil price slide, the country’s fiscal and budget position will not be far off target.
Although Russia is in relatively good shape compared to most of the world, the recent drops in the stock market are reminiscent of 2008, when the country ran headlong into a debt crisis and recession. In reality, Russia is a long way from repeating the 2008 scenario, but investors have been spooked by the ruble sliding more than 13 percent against the U.S. dollar last month and flashing red warning lights. The reason for the ruble’s weakness is actually quite a sensible move on the part of the Central Bank as it allows for improved competitiveness in the economy to balance the falling oil price. But in the absence of a clear message to the market, the impression is again one of a building crisis.
Another and much clearer example of where reality is buried by negative perception is in the current controversy involving BP and its Russian partners AAR. Both parties hold a 50 percent stake in TNK-BP, the country’s third-biggest oil producer with daily output of about 1.5 million barrels. The two business partners are now heading for divorce. That, in itself, is not a great surprise, as the partners have publicly squabbled several times since consummating their relationship in 2003. Both sides have benefited handsomely from the nine-year relationship, yet the impression now widely disseminated in the foreign media is that the partnership has been a disaster for BP and that the deal should serve as a warning for all others that Russia is a dangerous place for investment and should be avoided.
As is usually the case when it comes to perceptions about Russia’s investment risk, the reality is quite different. BP’s return from its investment in TNK ranks it as one of the best deals in recent history. BP paid $7 billion for its 50 percent stake in TNK in 2003. Since then, it has received $19 billion in dividends and, according to reports, is in line to receive $25 billion or $30 billion for its 50 percent stake should it sell it in the near future. That comes out to a profit of about $40 billion, or a nearly 600 percent investment return over nine years. Even though a lot of that profit was generated by the huge rise in oil prices, there are not many investments anywhere in the world that would have produced this huge return in the same timeframe.
Nonetheless, there are certainly plenty of lessons from this deal worth noting for investors looking at opportunities in Russia, as well as for those in government tasked with improving the perception of Russia as a business and investment location. The BP-AAR deal was done toward the end of President Vladimir Putin’s first term. At the time, revised rules for investing in strategic industries had not yet been determined and, to a large extent, the 50-50 deal with a foreign investor helped shape the terms of the strategic industries law that now sets limits and clear rules for any similar investment. Deals structured under the new law should avoid any similar problems in the future.
Another important lesson, of course, is that you can make a great deal of money investing in Russia. But as in any developing economy, foreign investors often have to be flexible to adapt to those developing circumstances. The oil industry provides many examples of this. Typically, international oil majors gain a strong position in the early stages of an economy’s development but then have to adapt. For example, they might have to change their equity position as the government exerts more control over strategic industries. Although Russia’s oil industry has been around for many decades, the political and economic development of the country has really only been moving forward since the early part of the last decade. That’s not to say that large-scale disputes like that with TNK-BP should be viewed as commonplace or be ignored by investors; they simply should be viewed in the proper context. The mantra for investing in developing economies has not changed for over 100 years: Do your homework, observe your corporate standards and adapt to local and changing conditions.
It is now obvious to everyone that Russia’s economy needs a new long-term growth driver, and that has to come from expansion outside of extractive industries. For that to happen effectively, the country needs to attract a bigger volume of both domestic and foreign investment capital and a greater involvement of foreign businesses, either as joint-venture partners or as competitors to domestic companies. That is how those domestic businesses will start to become more competitive and grow. But not if the directors of those foreign companies are reading headlines about huge investment risk instead of huge profits. Getting the message right and getting the facts straight is as much a challenge for the new government as improving the infrastructure and creating the right fiscal environment.
As for the TNK-BP divorce proceedings, it could have clearly been handled better. But few divorces are ever pleasant. The most important aspect of any divorce is to execute the dissolution without causing too much psychological damage to the children — in this case, the minority investors of TNK-BP.

<i>Chris Weafer is chief strategist at Troika Dialog.</i>

TITLE: regional dimensions: Expect Fewer Bland Apparatchiks
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: A new law on gubernatorial elections came into effect on June 1, but there will be only a few gubernatorial elections during the next two years because the Kremlin hurriedly replaced roughly one-fourth of all the governors beforehand. That leaves only four regions where governors will be elected this fall, and seven more next year. But just as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was unable to control perestroika, the Kremlin is likely to fail in managing gubernatorial elections to the extent it has planned.
It has become clear from a number of recent mayoral elections that the Kremlin is finding it increasingly difficult to manage the democratic process at the regional level. From now on, even in the unlikely scenario that United Russia candidates sweep elections nationwide, the winners will no longer be bland party apparatchiks but increasingly independent politicians.
Since the Kremlin did not make gubernatorial appointments before June 1 in Amur, Belgorod, Bryansk and Novgorod, there will be elections in these four regions in October. These regions were left alone most likely because the Kremlin considers them to be of little importance or the expected winners lack enough influence to threaten the status quo.
Perhaps United Russia will run incumbents in the first two gubernatorial races, including veteran politician Yevgeny Savchenko, who has held office since 1993. The Kremlin might choose to run new candidates in the remaining two elections.
Although the federal law on gubernatorial elections took effect on Friday, the regions are busy fashioning their own versions of the law. According to the model proposed by the Central Elections Commission, the law only allows for parties to put forward candidates, not for individuals to run independently.
The federal law calls for a municipal filter ranging from 5 percent to 10 percent of all municipal deputies, and most regions have opted for the maximum allowable. The Belgorod and Voronezh regions have set their barriers at 5 percent, Kursk at 6 percent, Leningrad and Lipetsk at 7 percent, Khabarovsk at 8 percent and the Moscow, St. Petersburg, Orlov, Sverdlovsk, Tambov and Tyumen regions, along with the districts of Chukotka, Yamal-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiisk, have set their barrier at 10 percent. In other words, candidates will have to collect signatures from 200 to 300 deputies and heads of municipalities from at least three-fourths of the territory of their respective regions.
Aside from the obvious purpose of weeding out candidates unwanted by the regional elites, the municipal filter has a positive side. Candidates must go through a process similar to primaries in which they are evaluated by municipal deputies. More important, even candidates from United Russia will have to explain their platforms to municipal leaders, and even those who have little chance of registering will be able to express their views. This is a small, but important, step forward for the country’s development of its political institutions.
Another bit of good news is the appointment of senior United Russia official Oleg Morozov, who has a great deal of experience at the regional level, as head of domestic policy in the presidential administration. Of course, individual appointments by themselves do not fundamentally alter the political landscape, but they are a sign that the process of change has begun.

<i>Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.</i>

TITLE: Back to white
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 200 bands donated tracks to the “White Album” in the first 12 days since the project to support Russia’s protest movement — whose symbol is a white ribbon — was announced in Moscow on May 21. 
Center’s frontman Vasily Shumov, music journalist Artemy Troitsky and ex-Zvuki Mu musician Alexander Lipnitsky have invited musicians who support the demands of the Moscow anti-fraud rallies and Russian Occupy movement to take part in the album, which will also call for the immediate release of political prisoners, including the imprisoned members of female punk band Pussy Riot.
“White Album” is also a reference to The Beatles’ eponymous 1968 album, which contained the songs “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Revolution,” the project’s initiators said.
“This album is our (musicians’) protest,” the album’s producer Shumov said via Skype from Moscow on Sunday.
“There was the writers’ walk in Moscow, and then the painters’ walk, who supported the protest movement. When the idea for musicians to do something came up, we thought a bit and decided to do an album, rather than a musicians’ walk. 
“Because it’s a civic project, we didn’t set any conditions for what style of music we would accept, what song themes we would accept — we accept everybody who supports it. That’s why the album ranges stylistically from instrumental music and jazz to very intricate electronica, and everything in between: Ballads, folk, metal, punk, rock and roll, things like that.”
Shumov said he came up with the idea for the “White Album” after a conversation with Troitsky, whom he met by chance in the small public garden near Barrikadnaya metro station in Moscow on May 16, where the opposition camp was based after it was driven out by the police from its original site near the monument to Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbayev on Chistiye Prudy. An hour earlier, Troitsky had discussed the idea of musicians’ input into the protest movement with Lipnitsky.
The bands were not asked specifically to send protest songs, but several songs that Shumov uploaded last week to give a taste of the album include the Perm-based art group Syava’s “Pussy Riot,” in defense of the young women who have been in prison since April 3 for performing the song “Holy Mother of God, Drive Putin Away” in a Moscow cathedral and “Avtozak” (a police truck in which detainees are put at rallies) by Moscow-based art group Nevry.
“Avtozak is the most fashionable kind of transportation in Moscow,” goes the song, referring to hundreds of arrests in the capital in May.
“I haven’t yet summarized the content of the songs, they are very diverse, I just gave some examples,” Shumov said. 
“For instance, [Moscow lighthearted retro rock and roll band] Bravo donated a song in its usual style called ‘Jazz in Orbit,’ but they support our ‘White Album.’”
Bravo’s participation came as a surprise for Shumov, he admitted, as well as that of Alexei Romanov, a musician from the veteran band Voskreseniye. Other surprise volunteers include the Soviet band Ariel fronted by Valery Yarushin and the 1980s band Krematory. Mashina Vremeni’s Alexander Kutikov sent a song called “New Pilgrim.”
More predictably, Yury Shevchuk, known for his civil stance, and his band DDT have sent “Freedom Song” from the band’s most recent album “Inache” (Otherwise). The album so far also includes rappers Noize MC and Vasya Oblomov and rock bands Gleb Samoiloff & The Matrixx and Louna from Moscow, as well as St. Petersburg musicians Seva Gakkel and Vasily K.
The principle of the “White Album” is one track per artist. Shumov himself is present on two: Center’s track “Poodle Dance” — slamming pro-Kremlin musicians — and a solo number, “We Are Pathetic Banderlog for Them,” referring to Putin’s derisory description of the protesters in December.
The collection is due to be released for free download ahead of the second March of Millions, due in Moscow on June 12 to coincide with the Russia Day national holiday. The first March of Millions, which drew tens of thousands, resulted in hundreds of arrests on May 6.
“Because the schedule of working days is altered this weekend [because of the public holiday] and to allow people to download it at least two days ahead [of the March of Millions], we’ll have a press conference in Moscow this coming Friday where we’ll announce where the album is available for download.” 
By Sunday evening, 212 bands and artists had sent in tracks, comprising a total length of 13 hours and 13 minutes. 
“I was surprised by the large scale of involvement, I really was,” Shumov said.
“When I took the job of producer, when I thought up the concept of ‘White Album,’ I didn’t think it would be so large. I am doing it as part of the ‘Soderzhaniye’ (Substance) series, the latest component of which was also a civic campaign in support of Artemy Troitsky, who was facing six lawsuits a year ago. We collected maybe 20 tracks, even though we had much more time — about three months — in which to compile the album. 
“We announced ‘White Album’ on May 21, and how many contributions could you expect to get in just two weeks? But all of a sudden it was 50 tracks, then 70, then more than 100… That’s what I did not expect, such large-scale involvement. 
“[Contributions] have come from all over the country, plus Kazakhstan, Ukraine, even from Cambodia — it was sent by some Russian guy who lives in Cambodia now. Geographically, the scope is very broad: Tyumen, Siberia, the Far East, every corner of Russia. I was surprised that there was such a large wave of support.”
According to Shumov, some artists have explained why they are taking part in the album, while a number of songs specifically offer support for Pussy Riot.
He sees the arrests of Pussy Riot’s alleged members as ongoing repressions against dissenters.
“We call it the Lukashenko-ization of the country (after Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko),” Shumov said.
“The authorities are trying to hold onto power by any means, and repression is the only thing they’re capable of. Cops and lackeys are what they are built on, nobody else. Repression comes from the police and from the lackeys in the Duma who pass draconian laws. It’s shameful.
“They have started to file criminal cases against bloggers now — all this has already happened in Belarus. There’s nothing new about it, but you can’t turn back the clock. Singer-songwriter Timur Shaov sent us a song that has the line: ‘the universe is expanding without a permit from the authorities.’ The march of history has nothing to do with what the authorities want or don’t want.”
Shumov said he was also surprised by the high quality of the submissions. 
“Our idea was to include every musician who supports the protest movement, even if they’re aspiring or amateur musicians, and I was surprised that the quality is really decent,” he said.
“Until this project I didn’t know that the general standard of recording in Russia is quite high. I say that as a sound producer.”
He said he only did some minimal mastering to adjust volume levels in certain cases.
According to Shumov, all kinds of protest are effective in fighting illegitimate power.
“I think the authorities are morbidly afraid of any street protests — because the authorities are illegitimate; both the State Duma and the President are illegitimate,” he said.
“When people take to the street, there’s a real danger of it resulting in something bigger, and the authorities will  have no choice other than to schedule new state duma and presidential elections. Putin is totally illegitimate, a usurper, while United Russia stole votes, so we have neither a legitimate parliament nor a legitimate president. This can’t last for long. Such a country is unviable.”
According to Shumov, tracks can be submitted until June 12. At the end of the protest rally, a launch concert for “White Album” — featuring some of the bands who took part in the album — is scheduled to take place.
Shumov will perform in St. Petersburg alongside local bands Televizor and NOM at Avrora Concert Hall on June 21.
He said the concert would essentially consist of an acoustic set he performed in duo with a guitarist at the Occupy Abai opposition camp in Moscow last month.
While the early pressings of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ contained a serial number on the cover, the cover of the Russian “White Album” will bear the number of a WebMoney account. 
“The album will be available for free download, but people will be asked to donate any sum they like to make it possible to release “White Album” on disc — many people are asking me if it will be released on disc — and also to enable us to support opposition events, including music ones, financially,” Shumov said.

<i>“White Album” will be available on the Internet on Friday, June 8. 
See www.soderzhanie.com and 
www.vasilyshumov.com for updates.</i>

TITLE: THE DISH: Pecorino
AUTHOR: By Emily Beeby
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Not up to the Italian Job</b>
Pecorino makes a very favorable first impression: Small evergreen bushes, delicate purple flowers in window boxes and a wrought iron bench on the sidewalk outside the establishment are not only attractive, but hint at the Italian theme of the restaurant. 
The interior, despite not having the cozy, authentic d&#233;cor the exterior suggests, is classy and elegant in beige and white downstairs. The upstairs is a little more rustic, with a piano — which sadly is not used — in one corner, although there are musical events several nights a week at which the manager sings. 
Although not a big restaurant, the atmosphere is one of cool, relaxed sophistication, with a clientele to match. There were only four other tables dining, and one of them was a reservation for a party; the spread laid out in advance for the group was rather impressive and worth remembering if planning an event.
The menu offers a comprehensive representation of classic Italian cuisine, with prices ranging from 120 rubles ($3.70) for sun-dried tomatoes, up to 700 rubles ($21.55) for jumbo shrimp. There is also a lengthy wine list of primarily Italian, Spanish and French wines; a small glass of house wine (which was, reassuringly, Italian) costs 150 rubles ($4.60). Both the red and the white were very drinkable, but the flavor of the white was somewhat diminished by the fact that it was served at room temperature. There are, alternatively, a selection of fresh juices and a very refreshing Italian lemonade (180 rubles, $5.50).
The starters — and indeed all of the courses — were brought out promptly (perhaps the waitresses had a little too much time on their hands, as we were also asked four times whether we were ready to order). The roast beef with red wine sauce (350 rubles, $10.80) was almost as finely cut as a Carpaccio, but the beef was of an excellent quality; however, it was slightly let down by the sauce, which seemed to lack its key ingredient as the red wine was barely discernible. A portion of Parma ham (380 rubles, $11.70) was enormous, but served as it was on a bed of finely sliced melon and garnished with pear, olives and basil, it was only too easy to devour with relish. 
The linguini with basil and pecorino (320 rubles, $9.85) was not quite so satisfying. It looked suspiciously like it had been microwaved, with a dull glaze over the surface, and there was a significant lack of pecorino in both appearance and taste despite reassurance from the waitress that it was there. The most redeeming feature of the dish was the linguini, which was cooked perfectly al dente, in true Italian fashion. Conversely, the jumbo shrimp were delightful, and served with a homemade tartar sauce. Here the only issue was that the shrimp were delivered still in their shells, but disappointingly — and, inevitably, messily — no finger bowl was provided. This is a dish that is exactly what it claims to be and does not come with a garnish or a side dish, and it may be advisable to order one separately. 
Dessert was a simple Italian affair — panna cotta (250 rubles, $7.70) and the ambiguously named “Colosseum cake” (290 rubles, $8.90). Again, both dishes had virtues as well as flaws. The panna cotta was wonderfully flavored with citrus and vanilla, but regrettably had not set, and therefore flowed out over the plate when cut. The Colosseum cake turned out to be somewhere between a cheesecake and panna cotta, and was enjoyable. Both dishes were decorated with strawberry syrup, mint, and segments of mandarin, which created the same agreeable but unremarkable presentation of the previous courses.
Pecorino is a restaurant that is, in all appearances, excellent. However, it quickly becomes apparent that in actual fact the execution of the food is not the high quality that the stylish interiors, alluring menu and charming staff lead customers to believe. After it transpired that the price of the jumbo shrimp on the menu had been a “misprint,” and that they were more expensive than advertised, it seems that perhaps the missing pecorino on the linguini was an inadvertent metaphor for the restaurant itself: Missing that special something.

TITLE: Russian invasion
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian art will take center stage at the upcoming Edinburgh International Festival, which is to take place from Aug. 9 through Sept. 2. More than one million spectators are expected to visit the festival, whose main focus this year is theater.
The Russian element in the program is by no means small, with the Mariinsky Theater Ballet Company giving four performances of Alexei Ratmansky’s playful and witty take on Sergei Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” (Aug. 30 and 31, Sept. 1). Talented pianist Daniil Trifonov will make his debut at the festival on Aug. 24, while another pianist, Nikolai Lugansky, who is already established on the international performing scene, will give a concert on Aug. 17.
Mariinsky Theater Artistic Director Valery Gergiev also brings the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he is the principal conductor, to a breathtaking four-concert residency juxtaposing works by Brahms and Szymanowski (Aug. 16, 17, 18 and 19).
On Aug. 24, 25 and 26, the Chekhov International Theater Festival pays a visit to Edinburgh, with Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory and School of Dramatic Art Theater Production performing the world premiere of Krymov’s provocative interpretation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
One of the most intriguing items on the bill — the European premiere of the ballet  “Tatyana,” choreographed by renowned Brazilian ballet master Deborah Colker and performed by her company — was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s classic work, “Eugene Onegin.” In the ballet, which is set to an eclectic mixture of music ranging from Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky to Terry Riley, the story is told through Tatyana’s eyes. The company promises “ an intense emotional rollercoaster of the famous tale.” 
“Tatyana” will be performed on Aug. 11, 12, 13 and 14.
On Aug. 14, Vladimir Jurowski will lead the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the exclusively Russian program of Denisov, Myaskovsky, Shchedrin and Rachmaninov. The concert also features three Russian opera soloists — Tatyana Monogarova (soprano), Sergei Skorokhodov (tenor) and Vladimir Chernov (baritone).
In addition, the National Museum of Scotland will host an exhibit devoted to Russia’s most renowned empress. Titled “Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress,” the show, which runs from July through Oct. 21, marks the 250th anniversary of the coup d’&#233;tat that brought Catherine the Great to the Russian throne.
More than 400 pieces of art — including a portrait of the empress’ coronation — will travel to Scotland from the State Hermitage Museum. The coronation piece has been fully restored especially for the exhibit and has not been on public display since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. 
In September 2011, Gergiev, whose acquaintance with Jonathan Mills, the festival’s artistic director, dates back to 2000, accepted the position of the festival’s honorary president. 
According to Mills, Gergiev’s title is far more than an artistic accolade. 
“It is also a great personal accolade that is awarded to someone who beautifully connects life and art,” he said.
Mills’ boundless respect for Gergiev and his work is mutual.
“I admire the structure and the atmosphere of the Edinburgh festival, I love the way that this event kind of engulfs the entire city, and everything that is going on in town appears to be in some way connected to the festival,” Gergiev said. “I would not want to thoughtlessly copy or imitate this event in any way so that the Stars of the White Nights festival resembled it. St. Petersburg is a very different city, it is far more complex, and besides, the genres that our event covers are limited to the classical arts.” 
The Mariinsky has been a regular at the world’s largest artistic event since 2008, when the company brought Karol Szymanowski’s opera “Krol Roger,” as well as concert versions of Sergei Prokofiev’s opera “Semyon Kotko,” Sergei Rachmaninov’s opera “Aleko” and Rodion Shchedrin’s opera “The Enchanted Wanderer” to Edinburgh.
“I will be inviting them over and over again,” the manager said.
A composer himself, Mills devotes special attention to contemporary music and is especially interested in the works of living composers — something that makes the manager very close to Gergiev, whose recent presentations to St. Petersburg audiences have included, in addition to several Schedrin operas, Thomas Ades’ “Powder Her Face” and a series of symphonic pieces and concertos by Henri Dutilleux.
Mills, formerly head of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, first crossed paths with Gergiev in 2000 when Mills visited St. Petersburg. Mills then invited Gergiev to visit Melbourne and he and his troupe followed shortly after.
While in Australia, Mills and Gergiev discussed possible titles at an open-air nature reserve, where kangaroos were jumping around. This is where the impressive artistic partnership began to bloom.
Mills sees festivals as journeys that inspire artists and audiences who have an interest in their place in the world and their role as human beings. His vision is largely shared by Gergiev.
“This year we have decided to incorporate the New Horizons festival of contemporary classical music in the program of the Stars of the White Nights festival because we feel that expanding cultural horizons is our company’s mission,” Gergiev said. 
“As the Edinburgh festival shows, the more effort you put into bringing artistic diversity to people, the better the creative climate it forges at home.

TITLE: the word’s worth: Off to a good start
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ôèíèø: finish line, finish, unbelievable (slang)

Once upon a time, Russians borrowed the words ñòàðò (start) and ôèíèø (finish) from sports matches. Then, in their infinite collective linguistic wisdom, they turned them into verbs — ñòàðòîâàòü (to start) and ôèíèøèðîâàòü (to finish), as well as adjectives — ñòàðòîâûé (starting) and ôèíèøíûé (finishing). Along the way, these words came to be used in a few other, nonsport contexts.
Easy-peasy. Oh, except for a slight problem for English speakers. Ñòàðò and ôèíèø can’t always be translated as start and finish, and they are usually not synonyms for íà÷àëî (start) and êîíåö (end).
Let’s start (íà÷í¸ì) with ñòàðò and related words. Ñòàðò refers to the starting line in any kind of race, the moment a race begins or the moment a flying object launches off the starting pad (ñòàðòîâàÿ ïëîùàäêà). At a sports competition, someone shouts Íà ñòàðò! (On your mark!) or uses ñòàðòîâûé ïèñòîëåò (starter/starting pistol) or ñòàðòîâûé ñèãíàë (starting signal).
Ñòàðòîâàòü is used to describe an athlete’s or other competitor’s actions off the block (called ñòàðòîâàÿ êîëîäêà for athletics and ñòàðòîâàÿ òóìáî÷êà for swimming). As someone slangily said of an athlete: Îí ñòàðòîâàë íåâàæíåöêè (He got off to a pretty lousy start). It can also be used to describe the first sporting events of a season:  âîñêðåñåíüå ñòàðòóþò äâå ïîëóôèíàëüíûå ñåðèè ÷åìïèîíàòà Ðîññèè ïî õîêêåþ (On Sunday two semifinals for the Russian championship in hockey will get under way). Or it can be used to describe the beginning of any activity that is competitive — like politics:  ïÿòíèöó ñòàðòîâàëà ïðåçèäåíòñêàÿ ïðåäâûáîðíàÿ êàìïàíèÿ (On Friday the presidential election campaign kicked off).
Lately, the launch meaning of ñòàðòîâàòü is sometimes used metaphorically:  Ïåòåðáóðãå ñòàðòîâàëà íîâàÿ òóðèñòè÷åñêàÿ ïðîãðàììà “Áåëûå äíè” (A new tourist program called “White Days” was launched in St. Petersburg.)
Ñòàðòîâûé (starting, startup) is used in financial and economic texts, probably as a new borrowing from English: Êàê æå íàéòè ñòàðòîâûé êàïèòàë? (How on earth can you find startup capital?)
And then there’s this idiosyncratic use of the adjective ñòàðòîâûé as a kind of all-inclusive neuter: À ñìîæåøü ëè òû äàòü ñòàðòîâîå ñâîåìó ðåá¸íêó: âûðàñòèòü, âûêîðìèòü, âûó÷èòü åãî? (Can you give your child a good start in life: raise, feed, and educate him?)
At the end of the race is ôèíèø — the last moments of a competition or the finish line. Áóäåì íàäåÿòüñÿ, ÷òî ìû äîéä¸ì äî ôèíèøà (We’re hoping that we’ll make it to the finish line). Ôèíèø and the related verb and adjective are used a lot in politics: ßáëîêî è ßâëèíñêèé âñåãäà ïëîõî ôèíèøèðóþò (The Yabloko party and Yavlinsky always finish in the back of the field).
Ôèíèø can also be used to describe the endpoint of some action that has been long and arduous — a piece of work, apartment remodeling or a marathon spring-cleaning session. When you’re almost done, you can say: Ðàáîòà ïðèáëèæàåòñÿ ê ôèíèøó (We’re heading into the final stretch).
When that marathon work session has irreparably damaged relations with your significant other, co-worker or contractor, you might say: Âñ¸! Ýòî ôèíèø â íàøèõ îòíîøåíèÿõ! (That’s it! Our relationship is finished!)
In slang, ôèíèø can also mean something extraordinary, either good or bad. When you discover your contractor has absconded to the south of France with your money before finishing the work, you can say: Ýòî — ôèíèø! (That tops it!)
Íà÷í¸ì ñíà÷àëà, ÷òî ëè? (Are you saying I have to start all over again?)

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

TITLE: Reliving the ‘match of death’
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ukraine will co-host the continent’s biggest football tournament, the European Championships, in a few days time, just as a new Russian film has stirred up controversy.
Actor Sergei Bezrukov recently played legendary bard Vladimir Vysotsky, but in “Match” he plays a goalkeeper who faced up against Nazi officers over the course of 90 minutes and won.
“Let’s show these super-humans!” Bezrukov’s character Nikolai Ranevich says before the start of the game.
The plot of the film, released last month, is based on the legendary story of Ukrainian football players who took part in the “Match of Death” during World War II.
The game has gone down in Ukrainian lore as a battle between Ukrainian pride and Nazi savagery. Ordered to lose the game for fear of death, the team refuses, wins the game and then all the members lose their lives.
What is known for certain is that there was in fact a match between a team of Luftwaffe Air Force pilots and the Kiev team Start in August 1942. The Ukrainian side did win and some of the players were later arrested; a number of them were later executed.
The character Ranevich is based on the character of Dynamo Kiev goalkeeper Nikolay Trusevich who was later executed in a Nazi camp in Ukraine.
Taking on the football game set in Nazi-occupied Kiev has reopened old wounds and become a subject of controversy between Russia and Ukraine.
In Ukraine, the depiction of locals collaborating with the Nazi occupiers has been called anti-Ukrainian. Kiev residents are shown greeting German troops with the traditional gift of bread and salt.
Ukrainian film officials released the film only for those 18 years and older and after a long delay.
Russian critics have not been overly kind either.
“It looks like a beautiful story, but an invented one,” said Alexei Lebedev, sports editor for Moskovsky Komsomolets, “They should have made it for children.”
The story of the game was also used as a very loose base for the film “Escape to Victory” starring Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Sylvester Stallone, as well as a host of football players including Pele. That film had Allied prisoners of war and as the title suggests, those players actually escaped.
The term “match of death” was first used by Soviet novelist and avid football fan Lev Kassil in an article for Izvestia newspaper in 1943. 
The story was later used to make the film “The Third Time” in 1964, which only added to the myth of the event.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the match has been dissected numerous times, with many historians now saying that the match did take place but the football players were shot later for reasons unconnected to the match.
These findings were backed by German prosecutors in 2005 when an inquiry was opened into the death of the Ukrainian football players and found no connections to the match.

TITLE: in the spotlight: Ksenia the Decembrist
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, media personality and reality-show-host-turned-opposition-activist Ksenia Sobchak very publicly lost her job hosting the MUZ-TV music awards, the competitor to MTV Russia on the local music scene. She made the announcement when the posters were all over town featuring her photo, and a television ad was already rolling.
“They’ve removed me from MUZ-TV. I asked why: ‘You know very well. We didn’t want to, but we got a phone call.’ This is rubbish,” she wrote on Twitter.
She also said that she had been deinvited as a host for the Tefi TV awards, where she was due to hand out a prize.
It is pretty clear that Sobchak knocked noses out of joint with her speaking at mass opposition rallies and with her impromptu use of a previous prize ceremony to grill actress Chulpan Khamatova about why she agreed to do a cheesy campaign video for President Vladimir Putin. Not to mention her later detention and symbolic 1,000 ruble ($30) fine for a public order offence at a protest.
Sobchak joked on Twitter that MUZ-TV probably feared she was going to surprise much-tattoed rapper Timati with a question about why he went to the presidential inauguration. (He also recorded a Putin campaign video.)
Losing the music-prize gig must be a real financial blow for Sobchak, as MUZ-TV is one of the year’s biggest music events. It is held in Olimpiisky stadium, and the performances then get repeated to death on the channel.
In a selfless act of solidarity, metrosexual presenter Andrei Malakhov in turn snubbed the ceremony, saying he was going to visit a children’s home instead. That will grate with MUZ-TV, since he is pretty A-list, and at that late stage (the event was June 1), the only person they could find to replace him was a little-known television host named Vyacheslav Manucharov.
“Isn’t it cool not to be wrong about people? I always went against the opinion of many other people, saying that Andrei Malakhov is a real person. He refused to host the show out of solidarity,” Sobchak wrote.
Malakhov even interviewed Sobchak for his Starhit magazine, headlining the article “Ksenia the Decembrist” after the tsarist-era plotters against the regime.
I liked one of his questions: “So much is going on: Cannes, Eurovision, your friend Ulyana Sergeyenko has opened a boutique in Almaty, ... and you are going to demos?”
Sadly, she denied the hotly rumored romance with activist Ilya Yashin, saying that he is just a “good friend.”
But there was good news for Sobchak, too, as she got offered the job of chief editor at SNC magazine, formerly known as Sex and the City. Apparently it had to change its name because of copyright.
It used to be an enjoyable, slightly racier read than its glossy rivals. Once, it did a rating of Russia’s most attractive politicians, entirely fairly picked by the staff. Putin trailed, while liberal Boris Nemtsov took first place.
And before you get too sad for Ksenia, it’s worth remembering that she is still busy. Her Dom-2 reality show is still running, even if she rarely appears, and she also presents “Russia’s Top Model,” not to mention her interview show on Dozhd TV, “Sobchak Live,” and her political talk show, “GosDep 2,” which now airs on Snob.ru after it was dropped by Russian MTV.

TITLE: Euro 2012 to Test Ukraine’s Racist Reputation
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Victor Chikelu, a Nigerian medical student, was punched and told to go back to Africa by a drunk in the Kiev subway two years ago. But he, like other Africans who have suffered racist abuse in Ukraine’s capital, has a message for football fans: Don’t boycott Euro 2012.
“I don’t think this should prevent the fans from coming down,” said Chikelu. “People just need to take precautions and everything should be fine.”
He points to no fatal attacks in the last two or three years as a sign that the situation is perhaps improving. Still, he says he plans to leave the country as soon as he graduates next year.
A tall and muscular man, Chikelu says the memory of the attack haunts him whenever he’s out in public.
“I have gotten used to this feeling ... If I notice anything, I am always ready to run,” he said, sitting by Kiev’s main avenue, which within days will turn into a fan zone with big screens, packed with people from all over Europe as the football tournament, co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland, kicks off.
With less than a week to go until the tournament, Ukraine has been rocked by accusations of rampant racism. A British documentary showed thugs in one the Euro 2012 host cities violently beating dark-skinned supporters of the same team during a domestic league match. And former England footballer Sol Campbell warned fans to stay at home or risk coming back in a coffin.
Ukrainian officials were outraged by the comments, saying the country has many sins but that racism isn’t one of them. They are vowing that foreign fans will be safe and will have fun.
Experts and ethnic community leaders paint a different picture. They say several dozen ethnically motivated attacks take place here each year and that authorities are reluctant to investigate and punish the perpetrators and protect the victims. Dark-skinned students feel uncomfortable in public places, avoid public transport and prefer to hang out in groups.
“If we talk about physical attacks and cases of hate crimes, it’s definitely a problem in big cities,” said Iryna Fedorovich, an activist with the Kiev-based advocacy group No Borders. “If we talk about xenophobia, it’s everywhere.”
But while racism exists in Ukraine, it’s not so rampant that foreign visitors should be scared of coming, community leaders say. In fact, they believe that hosting a major international event will attract attention to the problem and promote diversity.
“Racism is a problem in Ukraine, but I don’t think [Campbell] was right to say that you will return in a coffin,” said Charles Asante-Eboa, President of the African Center in Ukraine, which unites tens of thousands of Africans working and studying here.
“They [fans] will come, they will be happy and they will go away with a lot of memories and nostalgia for the welcome they will receive in Ukraine,” Asante-Eboa said. “I am sure Ukraine will meet them with open arms.”
The accusations of racism — and Campbell’s comment in particular — have caused outrage and disbelief here. Authorities say Ukraine is being slandered by people who have never been to the country.
“I am sure nothing is going to happen — we all need to calm down and return back to reality,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Voloshyn.
Ukrainian authorities are so confident of a peaceful tournament that police officers won’t mix with fans during the games and will be discreetly positioned a few minutes away from the action.
“We will have a normal, safe atmosphere for foreign citizens,” said Oleh Motveitsov, an Interior Ministry official charged with security measures during the Euros. “Ukraine will be hospitable.”
“The only piece of advice I have for foreign fans is not to get into trouble, not to get drunk and not to get involved with people they don’t know to avoid problems,” Motveitsov said. “Better to stay together as a group than going alone in dark back alleys.”
Chikelu painted a grim picture of being an African in this former Soviet nation. Like many other African students, he chose Ukraine’s top medical school for his education because it costs him a relatively cheap $5,000 per year. But he said his female colleagues stay in their dormitories after dark — and that men tend to drive in cars or take taxis to avoid racist confrontations.
Another Nigerian student, Olaolu Sunkalmi Femi, appeared in court this week to face attempted murder charges after he fought back against an attack by five Ukrainians in what he says was a racist crime. He fended off his assailants with a broken bottle, fearing for his life, and some of them suffered light cuts, his defense team says. If convicted he faces a minimum 10-15 years, and up to life.
“We hope that the court will do justice, but the very fact that he’s accused and in jail is lamentable,” said Maksym Butkevych, a human rights activist with No Borders.
Most observers here agree that boycotting Euro 2012 would be a bad idea. Chikelu said many of his Ukrainian friends are unaware of racism being a problem and that being exposed to people from different cultures and backgrounds will boost tolerance.
“Their coming is an instrumental way to solve the problem,” he said. “Staying away doesn’t help it.”
Euro 2012 “will give an opportunity to Ukrainians to see that people of different colors live in other countries and that will help promote diversity in Ukraine,” said Asante-Eboa, the African community leader.
Activists say the Euros should also prompt Ukrainian authorities to investigate and prevent racist attacks and promote tolerance when the championship is over.
“I would be more happy if they can guarantee that this country is racism-free after the Euro period,” said Fedorovich, the anti-racism activist.