SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1725 (36), Wednesday, September 5, 2012
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TITLE: Easyjet Seeks to Fly From Moscow, St. Petersburg to London
AUTHOR: Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Travel between London and Moscow might soon get cheaper if easyJet wins the contest to become Britain's second operator for flights on this route.

Europe's second-largest budget airline is promising to introduce lower rates than the current operator British Airways, company spokeswoman Catherine Lynn said Tuesday.

EasyJet has applied to Britain's Civil Aviation Authority with a request to operate flights to Moscow, and has discussed options with managers at the city's three international airports, company spokeswoman Celine Prenez said.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are also in the running to win rights to the remaining flights from London to Moscow.

"We've proved over the years that when we enter a new market we open it up, bringing in competition and lower fares and enabling more people to travel on the route," Lynn said. "The fares on the Moscow route are currently excessively high and we believe that the award of traffic rights to BA or Virgin would be a continuation of the status quo."

British Airways' lowest one-way fare between London and Moscow in September is 3,560 rubles ($110), but it will rise in the coming months.Aeroflotand Transaero also fly to London, with Transaero's one-way flights starting from $382.

EasyJet has not yet set a potential price for the Moscow-London flights. However, the airline's one-way flights for similar distances start at $96.

In addition to Moscow, easyJet plans to operate flights from St. Petersburg to Britain and Switzerland as early as summer 2013, RBC Daily reported. Reports have also indicated that the airline is looking to add Edinburgh, Manchester and three Russian cities to its connections list, although Prenez could not confirm these plans.

The Civil Aviation Authority will meet on Oct. 1-2 to decide which of the three applicants will get rights to become the second operator on the route, according to David Kendrick, an official at the authority.

The slot for a second operator opened up when British Airways bought its competitor, BMI, in the spring. Both companies had operating rights for the London-Moscow route, but the European Commission ruled that the joint company should surrender 14 of the 56 slots from Heathrow Airport that previously belonged to BMI, RBC Daily reported.

The winner will be selected based on which airline provides the greatest benefit to consumers, Kendrick said. This criterion doesn't necessarily give an advantage to low-cost airlines, he added, because other factors, such as the airline's baggage services and effective use of airports within the United Kingdom, are also considered.


TITLE: Judge Rejects Defense Motions in Trial of Twelve
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The judge rejected the defense’s motion to exclude video surveillance tapes as inadmissible evidence Tuesday in St. Petersburg’s notorious Trial of 12, in which 12 activists of the opposition party The Other Russia face prison terms for alleged extremist activities. 
The prosecution says the tapes — presented on 27 DVD disks — were secretly made by counter-extremism Center E police between July 1, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010 in an apartment where the local branch of the party held its weekly meetings.
Although repeatedly denied registration with the state, The Other Russia has not been banned and acts legally.
The prosecution sees the tapes — which were watched in the Vyborgsky District Court from June through August (excluding July, when the judge was on holiday) — as one of the key pieces of evidence that activists had in fact re-launched the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) in 2009.
The activists, who had belonged to the NBP, which was active from 1994 until 2007 when it was banned as extremist by the Moscow City Court after a series of peaceful anti-Kremlin protests, were heard on the tapes discussing political and social issues and opposition activities. No calls for violence or anything that could be qualified as extremist were heard.
In the prosecution’s view, occasional references to the banned NBP, accounts of meetings with author Eduard Limonov, who founded both the NBP and The Other Russia, announcements urging activists to pay membership fees and a highly blurred image of a flag prove that the group on the tapes was in fact acting as the NBP.
The defense denounced the tapes from the start as inadmissible evidence, having been obtained as the result of a police provocation. The defense argues that the apartment on Lesnoi Prospekt was rented by Center E and offered to the activists for meetings via a police informer. 
Judge Sergei Yakovlev ruled to allow the prosecutor to present the tapes.
Later, the defense wanted them excluded on the grounds that the dates in the file information in many video files differed from those listed in the criminal case, making it unclear if they were made within the six months allowed by the court for video surveillance.
A police technical specialist testified that the dates in video file information may differ from the actual dates because of the video equipment’s settings or technical errors, and the real date could only be established if the equipment was examined soon after the recording was made.
The prosecution refused to say what kind of equipment was used on the grounds of secrecy. 
Secrecy was also the grounds on which Judge Sergei Yakovlev declined Tuesday defense lawyer Anastasia Yekimovskaya’s motion to see Center E’s materials relating to the surveillance, arguing that they could throw light on actual circumstances of when the videos were made.
“The case is flawed, and when we try to examine the evidence, we run into a wall of secrecy,” lawyer Ivan Bulgakov said.
In an earlier hearing on Aug. 21, Polina Likhachyova, the investigator who had written descriptions of what was shown and heard in the tapes, was interrogated by the defense. 
When asked how Likhachyova could identify the flag on the black-and-white video as the banned red flag of the NBP, she admitted she did not know what the NBP flag looked like. 
Likhachyova said she had watched the tapes with Center E officer Ivan Melnikov, who identified the people on the video and explained what exactly was shown on the tapes to her. 
Melnikov, who was interrogated on Aug. 28, also found it difficult to describe the banned flag. “Whatever flag you have, it’s an NBP flag!” he said, addressing the defendants. 
 “The whole case is sheer police provocation and secrets,” defense lawyer Olga Tseitlina said outside the court Tuesday.
Local Yabloko liberal party deputy Maxim Reznik will testify as a defense witness in the next hearing, due Friday.
Meanwhile, four activists of The Other Russia protested Friday against an eight-year sentence given to Taisia Osipova, a party activist in Smolensk, on debatable drug dealing charges. The protest was part of the regular Strategy 31 rally in defense of the right of assembly. 
The activists were surrounded by about 20 OMON riot police officers and taken to a police bus seconds after two of them unveiled a banner reading “Free Taisia Osipova” while the other two sat in front of them and started to chant. 
In total, 14 people, half of whom were not participating in the rally, were arrested, but were unexpectedly released three hours later.

TITLE: Bookshelves to Appear At Bus Stops, Inside Metro
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Free mini-libraries are set to open at public transport stops around the city and in the metro by the end of this month.
The idea is that travelers will be able to choose a book, read it during their journey and return it to any of the other borrowing points around the city.
 “The first shelf will probably appear in the center, but we will not forget about the commuter belt — it is an opportunity to make all of the urban environment more civilized,” said Viktor Orlov, one of the project’s organizers.
Open libraries already exist in Austria, Germany and other countries. Free book borrowing points were set up in Graz in Austria in 1991, and a few years later open libraries appeared in Hamburg and Mainz and the idea spread throughout Germany. A year ago, a free book vending machine was set up in the Madrid metro.
In St. Petersburg, the Open Library project originated from a roundtable conference about the future of libraries that was held at St. Petersburg State University of Culture and Art, the only university that produces professional librarians. 
“The main idea was to stop libraries being desolated, abandoned places,” said Orlov.
The “libraries at bus stops” program is currently under consideration at City Hall’s Culture Committee, but deputy city governor Vasily Kichedzhi has reportedly already promised to support the idea.
 Books of various genres and languages will be provided on shelves at bus stops and in the metro. They will be donated by the EKSMO and Lenizdat publishing houses and other partners including the HeadHunter recruitment website. Existing libraries will not provide books, as it would be impossible for librarians to control them, but the organizers are not afraid of people taking books home. 
“They’re better being read than standing idle on the shelves of libraries,” said Orlov. 
The shelves are expected to be points of bookcrossing, a movement in which people leave books in a public place to be picked up and read by others, which has developed in recent years in St. Petersburg. An open library was in operation on New Holland island this summer. 
The Open Library project also plans to launch a program called “Open Rule” in district libraries in cooperation with Kichedzhi. The idea is to invite representatives of local government, municipal deputies, and heads of districts to enter into a dialogue with local residents, converting libraries into a discussion ground for local problems. 
Organizers also have plans for the city’s permanent libraries. The Mayakovsky Library, for example, has long hosted meetings and roundtables with leading Russian culture figures as part of a program called “Man As He Is,” at which there is no concrete topic of discussion. Invited speakers talk about whatever they would like. Previous meetings with film director Alexander Sokurov and others proved popular. Orlov said that the writer Zakhar Prilepin, writer and politician Eduard Limonov, screenwriter Avdotia Smirnova and TV host and journalist Leonid Parfyonov are tipped to be the next speakers.

TITLE: Volunteers Form Program To Ease Visa Regulations
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “The Russian passport is a curse!” 
This bitter exclamation is well known to just about any Russian who has spent several hours waiting — in various weather conditions — in seemingly endless, slow-moving lines outside consulates of European countries, carrying thick stacks of documents ranging from bank statements to letters from employers to property ownership deeds.
It is no secret that the sentiments of European residents in need of a Russian visa are no less positive.   
Optimistic and encouraging statements on the visa issue have been made in impressive quantities by both Russian and European politicians with some regularity since at least 2008, but no feasible step forward has yet been seen. Now a new project, titled No Visa, has been born both out of ordinary people’s fatigue and disappointment with the government’s failure to handle the issue efficiently and the hope that a citizens’ initiative will help to ease the visa burden.
The declared goal of No Visa (www.no-visa.info), which was officially launched in St. Petersburg on Aug. 31, is information support regarding the cancelation or facilitation of visa requirements between Russia and EU states.
The project was created in cooperation with the German-Russian Forum in Berlin. At present, No Visa is staffed by 120 volunteers who work to collect and summarize a range of opinions and specific proposals on eliminating or facilitating the visa regime between Russia and EU countries. Through the forum’s connections, these proposals will be handed to — and discussed with — participants of the annual Russian-German St. Petersburg Dialogue Forum, which will next be held in July 2013.
Members of diplomatic circles as well as government organizations have reacted cautiously to the creation of the No Visa project. It is revealing that its presentation on Aug. 31 was ignored by every one of the representatives of local consulates who had been invited. Nor did any members of City Hall attend the meeting.
“It is certainly not that we were too lazy to invite them,” said Darya Bobrovskaya, the project’s coordinator. “Some of the diplomats replied that they were too busy to attend a meeting in the middle of a working day — as if we were asking them out for a coffee, not a matter of crucial importance — while some officials said that the subject is too sensitive, and they either do not know what to say or are afraid of saying something wrong and irritating their bosses.”
The visa issue is indeed a touchy one. 
Not every Russian official would have found it easy to comment on some of the situations that had been collected by the project’s volunteers and were shown on video at the presentation. Take, for instance, the case of Stefan Bistrich, a young man from Germany, who applied for a tourist visa to Russia earlier this year. The invitation that had been issued to him by his Russian friend was declared invalid by the Russian Consulate on the grounds that the friend resides in Germany. Time was becoming a pressing issue, so Bistrich contacted a German travel agency that secured a fake invitation from a Russian company that claimed that Bistrich was its representative in the CIS states. Bistrich received a three-month business visa. The whole process cost him a total of 120 euros, which he paid to the agency.
Although Bistrich got his visa, the experience left a bitter taste in his mouth. 
“Why on earth are bureaucrats forcing normal people, who otherwise respect the law and rules, to resort to tricks that they are embarrassed or ashamed about deep at heart,” he asked. “Would it not be easier to simplify the procedure? In the end, a lot of people end up traveling with visas issued with fake invitations.”
Travel agencies of the kind that Bistrich resorted to exist in large numbers, and not only in Germany. 
“Most professors and teachers whom we invite to give lectures prefer to get their visas via such travel agencies because it is easier,” said Yelena Belokurova, a professor with the Center for European and German Studies of St. Petersburg State University. “Although they come here to teach, they get tourist visas through these agencies. Even creating an official invitation for these professors is a lot of hassle — you have to collect several signatures at the university alone — and then their personal presence is required at the consulate both at the time of application and the time of collection. Many professors would need to travel far from their small towns for these appointments at the consulates.”
It is well known that many people on both sides of the EU-Russia borders solve the bureaucracy versus fake documents dilemma by choosing the latter option. Most are far from happy to do so, but often see no way to legally fulfill all the requirements, despite having no criminal intent.
“To achieve political solutions, the first thing that is required is to call things what they really are,” Bobrovskaya said. “The visa issue has become a lucrative and highly profitable field for all sorts of parasites these days. And that does not help national security.” 
These sentiments are very close to Christoph Hoerstel, head of the Visa working group at the German-Russian Forum in Berlin. For starters, the politician concedes that the easiest way for a St. Petersburg resident to get to Germany is by applying for a Schengen visa at the Finnish Consulate, which requests far fewer documents.
“The Consulate of Finland issues three times as many visas as the German Consulate, and this is hardly surprising considering the impressive difference in the list of documents that is required for application,” he said. “The Schengen requirements are standard for all countries in the agreement, but a lot depends on a particular state’s interpretation of them, and even on the attitude of a particular clerk.” 
In spring, Hoerstel and his counterparts contacted the German parliament with a request to make public the contents of a document that was signed between Russia and the EU at the end of 2011, in which a long list of specific steps essential for reaching visa-free travel was outlined. The appeal has so far gone unanswered.
Yet Hoerstel is not discouraged. He feels that progress on the visa issue is tangible. 
“One serious indicator is this: When my group was beginning its work, politicians referred to 2018 as the possible date for the start of visa-free travel, and now most people are talking about 2014,” he said. 
“This is a clear sign of a crucial change in the mindset of politicians.”

TITLE: Scandal Engulfs Dom Knigi
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s best known bookstore, Dom Knigi, has found itself mired in scandal after a group of those working at St. Petersburgsky Dom Knigi limited liability company sent an open letter to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko on Aug. 29, in which they expressed concern over the future of the historic Singer building in which the bookstore is housed.
“As you may know, the building at 28 Nevsky Prospekt is one of the city’s landmarks, and today the city’s leading bookstore is being forced out,” reads the letter, which has been published by a number of local media outlets.
The situation described in the letter reads like a war of clones. The company behind the letter is accusing a competitor company that has an almost identical name — Trade Firm St. Petersburg Dom Knigi open joint-stock company — of plotting to take over the store.
Founded in 1919, Dom Knigi was the first bookstore in Soviet Russia. Some of the country’s most prominent writers, including Mikhail Zoshchenko and Samuil Marshak, once worked as salesmen there.
Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the building has always belonged to the city government. In 1998 the private company St. Petersburg Real Estate Agency signed a deal to rent it for 49 years — the maximum term allowed by federal legislation. Since then, bookseller Dom Knigi has sublet its home from the agency.
The building was constructed between 1902 and 1904 as the head office of the German-owned Singer Sewing Machine Co. in Russia.
In 2004, the building was closed for renovation, with the bookstore’s main branch moving to 62 Nevsky Prospekt. Upon completion of the restoration, the store continued operating at both addresses.
At present, the three floors of the famous Singer building occupied by the bookstore are rented from the city by the St. Petersburg Real Estate Agency that renovated the building. St. Petersburgsky Dom Knigi LLC is operating there. At the same time, City Hall owns the Trade Firm St. Petersburg Dom Knigi OJSC, which is currently bankrupt, and has closed 11 bookstores around St. Petersburg. After the agency renovated the building, City Hall’s company was not able to pay the high rent.
City Hall nurtures plans to revive its book-selling agent, and the idea is to return the state company to the Singer building. 
Alexander Lobkov, head of City Hall’s Media Relations Committee, told reporters this week that, while the circumstances of the bankruptcy are being investigated, City Hall has already contacted the St. Petersburg Real Estate Agency about renting out at least 4,000 square meters in the Singer building.
“The bankrupt company has already discredited itself,” reads the letter. “We are calling for an open and unbiased discussion on the matter. Perhaps an independent commission should be created that would decide which company should have the right to sell books in the Singer building. The commission should include not only officials, but members of the city’s intellectual and cultural elite.”
“At the same time, we must remind you of the sad fate of other famous city bookstores, including the Military Book House at 20 Nevsky Prospekt that was forced out of its building, despite the fact that it had been rated no. 7 on the list of endangered landmarks in St. Petersburg,” the letter said. “The bookstore has been replaced by a sushi restaurant.”  
Poltavchenko has not yet made a statement on the conflict.

TITLE: News Outlets to Set Age Limits
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s new law on child protection caused a new round of major headaches for media outlets Monday when it became clear that the law obliges online news sites to set age limits for potentially harmful content.
Some big online news resources, including Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru and Newsru.com, added an “18+” adult content warning to the bottom of their websites, meaning that access to these sites could be banned in public places, including Wi-Fi hot spots.
The law, which was signed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev in December 2010 and came into effect on Sept. 1, obliges radio and television stations to inform their audiences about each program’s suitability for various age groups. It introduces limits of 6, 12, 16 and 18 years and stipulates that media outlets classify the content themselves.
As a consequence, small advisories — sometimes in red — sprang up on major TV channels’ websites denominating the appropriate age group for each program. 
The law says that TV channels must display an age advisory, which must cover no less than 5 percent of the screen, for at least eight seconds at the beginning of any program affected, and it must be repeated after commercial breaks.
The law made headlines last week when it became known that TV channels might have to edit some children’s cartoons, including Soviet classics and “The Simpsons,” because they contain smoking and violence, which can be aired only after 11 p.m.
Alexander Zharov, the head of the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta in an interview published Monday that radio stations playing music with explicit lyrics should broadcast corresponding age limits four times a day.
He said most print media and news agencies are exempt. But his spokesman, Vladimir Pikov, made it clear last week that online outlets registered separately with the watchdog will have to comply. 
Most online media, which normally publish hundreds of news items per day, have decided to give a single advisory for their whole site — but with different outcomes. Thus, Komsomolskaya Pravda’s site, Kp.ru, gave itself a “12+” rating, Vedomosti.ru added a “16+”, and the sensationalist Lifenews.ru portal put up an 18+.
“There are just so many things unclear,” said Vedomosti.ru editor Pavel Sukhov. “As a business publication, we hardly carry violent content, but what if we report about people dying in a flood disaster?”
He added that the law gives no guidelines about where to publish the age limit.
“What we do not like is that a single article defines the threshold for the whole publication,” Sukhov said.
Vedomosti is published by Sanoma Independent Media, which is also the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times and the Moscow Times.
Some newspapers, including The St. Petersburg Times, The Moscow Times, Kommersant and Moskovsky Komsomolets, have not placed any advisories on their websites yet.
Experts said that while a 16+ advisory carries little consequences, an 18+ advisory entails that a site will have to be blocked in public places to protect children. Lawyers have argued that public access includes not only Internet cafes but public Wi-Fi hot spots.
“This can be quite harmful for a commercial news site,” said Irina Levova of the Russian Association of Electronic Communication, an industry group.
Levova, who coordinates the association’s Internet media commission, noted that the State Duma in July passed amendments to the law that exempt most websites. “Only sites registered as media failed to get into this amendment,” she said, adding that she had no explanation for this omission.
The commission is now in talks with the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service to implement additional amendments that would address those issues.
Meanwhile, some took the new rule with a dose of humor. The Regnum.ru news site said in a disclaimer that “this resource may contain (adult only) 18+ articles” but added another below saying, “This resource contains IQ135+ articles.”

TITLE: Russia Warns Magnitsky List Will Elicit Tit-for-Tat
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia sternly warned Britain on Monday that it will respond tit-for-tat if London imposes any travel restrictions that would target Russian officials allegedly involved in the prison death of a Russian lawyer.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that Moscow asked London about a Sunday Times report claiming that British authorities had compiled a list of 60 Russian officials who could be denied entry over their alleged involvement in Sergei Magnitsky’s death in November 2009.
“Obviously if London introduces any sanctions against Russian citizens Russia will respond appropriately in line with diplomatic practice,” Lukashevich said.
Magnitsky died in custody of untreated pancreatitis after being arrested by the same Russian government officials he had accused of corruption.
His case further tarnished Russia’s rights record and prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill in June targeting Russian officials involved in the case. The Kremlin has responded angrily to the American action and threatened to take countermeasures.
Russia’s ties with Britain already were strained by the 2006 poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former security agent turned Kremlin critic.
Litvinenko, who died after ingesting radioactive polonium, made a deathbed statement blaming Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for the poisoning. Russia has rejected his accusations and dismissed the British demand to extradite the main suspect in the case, former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, who denies any involvement.
After a long freeze on high-level contacts, British Prime Minister David Cameron paid a visit to Moscow last September, and he met again with Putin last month when the Russian leader visited during the London Olympics. But despite their statements about needing to improve business ties, political differences have continued to strain British-Russian relations.

TITLE: Putin Wants to Raise Top Age for Officials to 70
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has introduced legislation to the State Duma that would raise the maximum age at which officials could still be employed by the state from 65 to 70.
Changes would be made to article 25.1 of the Law on State Service, allowing those older than 65 to continue in their government jobs with the personal approval of the president.
The move is designed to “preserve top, highly qualified personnel in the civil service,” according to the Kremlin, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The average life expectancy in Russia in 2012 is predicted to be 76 years for women and 64 years for men, according to the State Statistics Service.
In 2010, then-President Dmitry Medvedev fixed the upper age limit for civil servants at 60, with special exceptions possible up to the age of 65.
Putin himself turns 60 in October and, if he were to win a fourth term as president in 2018, he would be 71 by the end of that term. At that point he would be obliged to stand down as head of state due to consecutive term limits set by the constitution.
The move by the Kremlin follows a proposal by Putin in May to remove all age restrictions for the post of chairman of the Supreme Court and his deputies. The current chairman is Vyacheslav Lebedev, who will turn 69 this year.

TITLE: Church Group Forms; Surkov Named Envoy
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Orthodox Church officials have announced plans to set up a nationwide youth movement, just days after Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov, formerly the Kremlin’s point man on youth affairs, assumed full responsibility for overseeing ties with religious organizations.
Tens of thousands of young people are ready to join the movement, tentatively called the Voluntary Association of Orthodox Youth, Vadim Kvyatkovsky, who is responsible for youth affairs in the Moscow Patriarchate, told Interfax on Friday.
He said the organization would be open to representatives of the entire political spectrum and be headed by Bishop Ignaty Bronnitsky, who chairs the Patriarchate’s youth affairs department.
The move comes as the Russian Orthodox Church faces criticism at home and abroad over the Pussy Riot case.
President Vladimir Putin endorsed the idea of an Orthodox youth movement in July.
While visiting the Lake Seliger youth camp, he said he would support such a movement if it did not become “a new quasi-Orthodox Komsomol,” a reference to the Soviet Union’s all-embracing Communist youth league.
Kvyatkovsky, however, was adamant that the initiative was by no means artificial but driven by grassroots demand in parishes. “Life is forcing us to make this happen,” he was quoted as saying.
The Kremlin has in the past actively set up youth organizations to counter perceived political threats. One of the most publicized of such groups, Nashi, was founded in 2005 in the wake of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
Surkov, believed to be the key official behind Nashi and other pro-Kremlin youth movements, was last week confirmed as the government’s new point man on religion.
In an Aug. 28 decree, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appointed Surkov chairman of the state’s commission on religious organizations, a job hitherto held by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets. 
Surkov until last year oversaw domestic policies as first deputy head of the presidential administration, a job that included ties with religious organizations. He was appointed a deputy prime minister in December, a move widely seen as a demotion in the wake of mass anti-government protests.
However, Surkov’s star rose again when he assumed the additional post of head of the White House administration in May. In early August, he was given the portfolio for religious affairs — but not the commission chairmanship.
Analysts have said Surkov’s appointment to oversee religious issues in the government is a tool to repair the image of the Orthodox Church, which has suffered heavily not only over the Pussy Riot trial but also from scandals like the one prompted by the manipulation of a photo to remove an expensive watch on Patriarch Kirill’s wrist.
A government source quoted by Kommersant on Friday said Surkov’s appointment was his first political mission since he was removed from the Kremlin in December. The report also said that the commission’s main tasks would be “to prevent the abuse of religion for extremist purposes” and to mend the negative image of the Orthodox Church, among other things.

TITLE: Russia Slams Pardoning Of Returned Azeri Killer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry on Monday expressed concerns over Azerbaijan’s decision to pardon a convicted killer Hungary sent back to Azerbaijan to serve his prison sentence.
Lieutenant Ramil Safarov was given a life sentence in 2006 by a Hungarian court after he confessed to killing Lieutenant Gurgen Markarian, an Armenian, while both were in Hungary for a 2004 NATO language course.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a long-standing feud over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s president pardoned and freed Safarov after he was returned home Friday, prompting Armenia to break diplomatic ties with Hungary.
Hungarian authorities insisted that they returned Safarov, 35, to Azerbaijan only after receiving assurances from the Azeri Justice Ministry that Safarov’s sentence, which included the possibility of parole after 25 years, would be enforced.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry, an important broker in the Armenia-Azerbaijan feud, condemned Safarov’s release in a statement Monday, saying that it hampers peace-keeping efforts by Russia and other international mediators.
“We believe that these actions of Azeri as well as Hungarian authorities contradict internationally brokered efforts, of the OSCE’s Minsk group in particular, to ease tensions in the region,” the ministry said.

TITLE: ‘Pussy Riot’ Murder Suspect Confesses
AUTHOR: By Ezekiel Pfeifer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A university professor has confessed to the brutal murder of two women in a Kazan apartment where the words “Free Pussy Riot” were written in blood on the wall, investigators said Friday.
The suspect, an acquaintance of one of the women, said he wrote the message to throw off investigators.
Investigators on Friday said Igor Danilevsky, a 38-year-old professor at a Kazan university, had confessed to the killings and been detained.
The announcement Thursday that the bodies of a 76-year-old woman and her 38-year-old daughter had been found in their apartment with multiple stab wounds alongside the words “Free Pussy Riot” prompted a Russian Orthodox Church official to urge human rights groups and politicians to disavow their support of the female punk band to prevent further violence. Media outlets declared that a Pussy Riot supporter had been behind the killings.
Three Pussy Riot members were sentenced earlier this month to two years in prison for their performance of a song denouncing President Vladimir Putin in Christ the Savior Cathedral, in a case that has drawn international scrutiny.
A lawyer for the Pussy Riot women on Thursday called the English-language message on the wall of the murdered women’s apartment a “provocation.”
According to a statement posted on the Investigative Committee website Friday, Danilevsky said he had studied with the younger of the two murdered women. Danilevsky had told her that he wanted a family with her and convinced her to take out a loan for him, the money from which he used to pay off debts he had.
Danilevsky promised the woman to go on vacation with her to Egypt, then offered to go to Simferopol instead, citing a lack of funds, the statement said. On Aug. 22, he told the woman that the trip had to be delayed until January.
The woman accused him of perpetually deceiving her, at which point Danilevsky picked up a knife and stabbed her several times, the statement said. Hearing the fight from the next room, the woman’s mother came in, and Danilevsky stabbed her several times as well. Both women died from their wounds.
A knife that investigators presume to be the murder weapon was also found in Danilevsky’s apartment, the statement said.
Danilevsky then looked for the papers showing that he had received money from his acquaintance and stole 100,000 rubles ($3,100) and two cellphones. 
In an attempt to make investigators think it was a “ritual murder,” Danilevsky then arranged the bodies in the form of the number 69 and wrote “Free Pussy Riot” on the wall with their blood, the Investigative Committee statement said.

TITLE: Trucks Dig Deep to Bring More Energy to Moscow
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: BOGORODSKOYE, Moscow Region — Trucks will move almost as much earth for a project here as was excavated to build the Suez Canal.
One of the country’s biggest construction projects, a $2.2 billion RusHydro power station that requires two huge artificial lakes, is under way north of Moscow just two hours by car.
The effort to build Phase Two of the Zagorskaya Pumped-Storage Power Plant will include the moving of 60 million cubic meters of earth, said the plant’s director, Vladimir Magruk.
“The amount of earth-moving work is astounding,” he said.
The builders of the Suez Canal removed 75 million cubic meters of earth.
The digging and embanking impressed Thomas Trone, the former chief of John Deere’s construction equipment division in Russia, so much that he described it as ‘the largest earth-moving project I have ever seen in my life” in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in May.
“This is a lot,” Alexander Salkov, production director at billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s construction company, Inzhtransstroi, said about the earth being moved. “It’s huge and serious work.”
The company moved the same amount of earth while building a 400-kilometer railroad in Yakutia, he said.
Like the existing Phase One of the station, the second phase will generate clean electricity by flushing water from a higher reservoir lake through turbines to a lower lake.
During off-peak hours, between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., pumps will transfer the water back up, taking advantage of the lower price for electricity at that time.
The water will come from the Kunya River, as it does for the station’s Phase One artificial lakes.
The higher lake sits 100 meters above the lower one, about as much of an elevation differential as can be achieved in the Moscow region’s landscape of low hills and valleys.
These may not be the perfect conditions for building pumped-storage power plants, whose efficiency increases with the greater elevation of the higher lake. At the same time, Moscow and its environs are the country’s most populous area, with the biggest need for this type of flexible electricity supply.
Such plants are widely used in the rest of the world to cover peaks in demand during the daytime and to conserve energy at night. And demand fluctuations are especially sharp in and around Moscow.
Zagorskaya’s first phase went into operation in the beginning of the last decade. The massive Moscow blackout in May 2005, caused by a meltdown of the Chagino substation, was one of the things that prompted construction of the plant’s second phase to make supply more stable at peak hours, Magruk said.
Russia has just one other pumped-storage power plant, a tiny one in the south of the country. There are more than 400 of these plants worldwide.
Although plants of this type smooth out fluctuations in demand for electricity generated elsewhere, due to the complexities of buying and selling power on the grid the utility needs to charge a price that’s above the market to earn a profit.

TITLE: Brazil’s Incredible Hulk Set To Descend on St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After two years of minimal transfer activity, Zenit St. Petersburg rocked European sport headlines Monday after completing the two biggest transfers in Russian soccer history for a combined sum of 80 million euros.
Brazilian star striker Hulk and Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel will be arriving from the two Portuguese superclubs FC Porto and SL Benfica respectively on five-year deals.
Givanildo Vieira de Souza, 26, commonly known as Hulk for his impressive physique and explosive pace, scored 78 goals in 169 appearances for Porto, helping them lift the Europa League trophy in 2011. He is also a Brazil international, and was part of the silver-winning Olympic squad in London this summer. 
Witsel, 23, was named best young player of the year in Belgium in 2008. He has 30 caps for the Belgian international team.
While aging European stars are not an uncommon sight in the Russian Premier League, the two transfers secure for Zenit two footballers of global stature at the peak of their careers. The signings are all the more remarkable in that Zenit outmuscled two European giants out of deals rumored to have been completed, beating Chelsea for the Brazilian and Real Madrid for the Belgian. 
The double swoop came just hours before the Sept. 3 deadline for Champions League squads, leaving no doubt as to where Zenit’s ambitions lie this season. 
Zenit president Alexander Dyukov reiterated the claims in an announcement to fans.
“We have ambitious goals, and to achieve them we needed quality additions [to the squad]… we are aiming to take the next step in the Champions League.”
Dyukov said that the transfers each cost 40 million euros, to be paid in increments during three years, so that “an increase in the budget of the club will not be necessary.”
Zenit kick-starts its European Champions League campaign away against Malaga on Sept. 18, with the first home game scheduled against AC Milan on Oct. 3 at Petrovsky stadium.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Stroke Victim Dies</b>
 ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City resident Olga Volobuyeva, an employee at the children’s charity Roditelsky Most, died in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Interfax reported.
Volobuyeva had been in a coma for several weeks after suffering a stroke when on vacation in Bulgaria last month. She was brought back to the city by the Russian emergency services on Aug. 27, but died less than a week later in the hospital.

<b>Local Church Robbed</b>
 ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Relics were stolen from a church on Vasilyevsky Island last week.
The unidentified thieves got into a room in St. Catherine’s Church and stole holy vessels, valuable items and relics of saints including Alexander Nevsky, St. Nicholas and St. Febronia, Interfax reported.
The value of the stolen items was estimated at 350,000 rubles ($11,000). A criminal case has been opened.

TITLE: Producers Fight Over Chocolate Trademark
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The young girl on the wrapping of the Alyonka chocolate bar may look timid and sweet, but to Russian confectioners she is more dangerous than her namesake, Helen of Troy.
The fight for Alyonka between confectioners in the two Russian capitals started when the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service prohibited the St. Petersburg-based Krupskaya Factory from producing Krupskaya Alyonka chocolate. Moscow’s United Confectioners, which had patented the Soviet Alyonka brand in 1999, had complained that the products’ wrappers were too similar.
But now Krupskaya is striking back by producing the Mechta Alyonki (Alyonka’s Dream) chocolate bar. The confectioner, which is owned by Orkla Brands Russia, has also filed a notice with the Federal Service for Intellectual Property to get rights to produce other sweets under the Mechta Alyonki brand, Marker.ru reported, citing Olga Agafonova, a spokeswoman for Orkla Brands.
Representatives of Orkla Brands Russia and Krupskaya Factory could not be reached to confirm these plans.
The Mechta Alyonki brand was registered by Azart, an Orkla subsidiary, in 2003. Sergei Lapin, a partner at Nadmitov, Ivanov & Partners law firm, said that Krupskaya’s use of the brand would not be in violation of the antitrust ruling, but he added that officials could still decide whether this form of the name is acceptable.
The battle for Soviet brands is gaining more momentum now, with companies also squaring off to get rights to old alcohol brands, as well as the famous Vologda butter.
Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization has given local companies new mechanisms for getting and protecting intellectual property rights, which is helping to fuel the fight.
“Now the law allows you to fight for Soviet brands and gives you a sufficiently effective arsenal, which was not the case in the Soviet period,” Lapin said. “So yes, it will become more important to register one or another trademark for yourself to ensure priority use and, if need be, use this trademark to battle the competition.”
But some experts question the value of this struggle. Andrei Stas, founder of Stas Marketing, said that it is not beneficial for companies to have Soviet brands anymore because the younger generations are not loyal to them.
“Their time has passed,” he said. “The generation that grew up on these brands is getting old, and the youth are not interested.”
However, Stas expects that the battle for Soviet brands may still continue for years, in part because companies want to capitalize on the society-wide nostalgia for old times. Zhiguli beer and Yantar and Druzhba processed cheeses are some of the Soviet brands that are still thriving on this nostalgia.
“As long as those who ate these products in Soviet times are alive, the battles will continue,” Stas said.

TITLE: VTB Plans to Fund Nomos-Bank Deal
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State-owned banking giant VTB will play a key role in financing Otkritie’s buyout of Nomos-Bank, creating Russia’s second-biggest private bank, VTB president Andrei Kostin said Monday.
Otkritie is a relatively small player in the banking sector and will be obliged to raise funding, assumed to be loans, to complete the takeover of its bigger competitor Nomos-Bank, valued at 73.29 billion rubles ($2.3 billion). VTB owns 19.9 percent of Otkritie.
“We are not talking about financing 100 percent of the deal,” Kostin said in Vladivostok, Gazeta.ru reported. “It certainly won’t be more than half.”
Otkritie announced Friday that it had already agreed to purchase 58.5 percent of Nomos-Bank’s shares and that it intends to obtain total control and complete a public offering of the new banking entity within three years.
In 2011, VTB engaged in a series of high-profile takeovers, including the $3 billion purchase of TransCreditBank, the country’s 12th-largest bank, and Bank of Moscow, the country’s sixth-largest.
But VTB, because of its current financial position, was unlikely to be in a position to look at an immediate takeover of a bank the size of a joint Nomos-Bank and Otkritie, analysts said.
Under the final shareholder structure, Otkritie managers, including chief executive Vadim Belyaev, will control 25 percent. In addition, 10 percent stakes will be held by metals and finance billionaire Alexander Nesis though his ICT investment vehicle, and also by Otkritie chairman Boris Mints, billionaire Alexander Mamut and VTB, according to Otkritie.
Kostin said he did not yet know what equity share VTB would take in the Nomos-Otkritie tie-up because that question had not yet been looked at properly.
On Monday, Nomos-Bank announced a better-than-expected rise in first-half net profit of 34 percent year on year, to 8.3 billion rubles. The increase was underwritten by a portfolio expansion and an increase in net customer loans, an e-mail from the bank stated.
“We are now reviewing everything,” Jean-Pascal Duvieusart, director of strategy at Nomos-Bank, said during a conference call Monday when asked about the impact of shareholder changes on the bank’s debt. “[But] the market takes some comfort in the ownership of Otkritie.”

TITLE: Government Publishes Data On Car Recycling Charges
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has introduced a recycling fee for vehicles produced in Russia or imported from any country other than Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The fee took effect on Sept. 1, according to a Cabinet announcement published on Rossiiskaya Gazeta’s website.
Individuals importing cars for personal use will pay 2,000 rubles ($61.70) for new cars and 3,000 rubles for cars more than three years old.
People importing new cars for commercial use, including car dealers who then resell the vehicles, will pay fees ranging from 17,200 rubles for automobiles with an engine capacity of up to 1 liter to 110,000 rubles for vehicles with an engine capacity of more than 3.5 liters.
The fees for used cars more than three years old will be between 106,000 rubles and 700,200 rubles.
The fee for new trucks will range from 75,000 rubles for vehicles weighing up to 2.5 tons to 435,000 rubles for those weighing between 20 and 50 tons. People importing trucks over three years old will pay from 132,000 rubles to 1.77 million rubles.
The fee is meant to cover the future costs of decommissioning and recycling vehicles at the end of their lifetime, with revenues raised going to the development of new recycling facilities.
Maria Zaikina, head of corporate communications at Rolf automotive group, said the recycling fee’s introduction could offset the reduction in car import tariffs, which is taking place as a result of the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization.
The fee might have an impact on the price of some vehicles, such as ones with large engines, although their prices are unlikely to rise by more than 1 to 2 percent, Zaikina said.
The purpose of the fee is to stimulate domestic vehicle production and prevent imports of low-quality vehicles, especially used ones, she said.
Domestic producers that promise to recycle their cars in the future will be exempt from the fee, which would place them in a favorable position compared with importers. Some importers eligible for tax breaks will also be exempt from the fee, however.

TITLE: Yo-auto Delays Opening Of Yo-Mobile Plant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Automaker Yo-auto has postponed the launch of its Yo-Mobile plant from the second half of 2012 to late 2014 or early 2015, said Yo-auto’s chief executive Andrei Biryukov, who is leaving the company but will continue to participate in the project as an investor, Interfax reported.
Yo-auto is a joint venture between Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group and Yarovit Motors.
Biryukov attributed the delay to problems with a U.S. subcontractor manufacturing the body for the Yo-Mobile car model.
The Yo-Mobile hybrid electric car has attracted widespread public attention. Its catchy name has been used as a marketing technique, while the model is hailed by some observers as a rare example of innovation in Russia and criticized by others for presumed design flaws.

TITLE: McDonald’s to Open Hotel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — McDonald’s has broken ground on a new hotel for families of patients at the Republic Children’s Clinical Hospital in Kazan.
Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov and Khamzat Khazbulatov, the head of McDonald’s Russia and Eastern Europe, attended the ceremony, which took place last week.
Ronald McDonald House is a “home away from home” for families whose children are undergoing long-term care at the hospital, according to a statement from the fast food giant. The company’s charity program has supported construction of 317 such mini-hotels in 31 countries, but this is the first such project in Russia.
According to a statement from McDonald’s, the hotel will be situated on a 2,000-square-meter plot of land on the territory of the hospital, near its main building. It will have 24 bedrooms, a living room, a playroom for small children, a video game room and computer class for teenagers and a cafeteria. The first floor of the building will be adapted for children with specific health problems. The Ronald McDonald House is designed to provide accommodation to 600 families in the course of a year.
Construction is scheduled for completion by July 2013.

TITLE: Gudkov’s Ouster Would Set a Precedent
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: Within days, maverick State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov is likely to be forced out of the parliament.
The Duma’s United Russia-dominated commission for the oversight of incomes and property is scheduled to review Gudkov’s activities on Sept. 6. Then, on Sept. 12, a vote on whether to strip Gudkov, a member of the Just Russia party, of his mandate and dismiss him from the lower house of parliament will be formally put before the Duma. Some United Russia members have openly acknowledged that the decision to remove Gudkov has already been made and that the vote will be simply a formality.
This would set a precedent for post-Soviet Russia. If Gudkov were forced out, any opposition-minded deputy could similarly be dismissed without a trial and simply by a vote of President Vladimir Putin’s majority of loyal Duma deputies. Having achieved that Duma majority through fraud-stained elections, the authorities are now able to quickly deal with their critics in the parliament. The sixth convocation of the Duma contains only a few outspoken critics of the “party of crooks and thieves,” and Gudkov is their most prominent member. As such, he has been targeted first.
What is Gudkov’s crime, according to United Russia and law enforcement agencies? Charges of “illegal business activity” were filed against him immediately after Gudkov took part in the May 6 protest, where, by the way, he attempted to act as a negotiator between protesters and police to avert a clash. No one disputes that Gudkov owned shares in several companies and received dividends from them, but he handed them over to his wife in 2009. Lawmakers are not prohibited from owning shares and receiving dividends. Furthermore, Gudkov does not play a role in the management of the businesses and does not receive a salary, and he properly declares all of his income and property holdings. What’s more, because all the charges concern events prior to the election of the sixth Duma, the initiative to strip Gudkov of his current post as deputy is actually illegal.
In reality, it is extremely common for Russian politicians and officials to own shares in businesses and to receive dividends. By my count, more than 200 Duma deputies and 100 senators in the Federation Council do, with Anzhi Makhachkala football club owner and billionaire Suleiman Kerimov a prime example. Many governors are also major businesspeople, such as Tula Governor Vladimir Gruzdev, who founded the Sedmoi Kontinent supermarket chain and built up his business while serving as a deputy in the fifth Duma. Billionaire Roman Abramovich — described as a “truthful and on the whole reliable witness” by a British judge who ruled in his favor last week in a lawsuit filed by tycoon Boris Berezovsky — portrayed himself as a businessman during the trial. The problem is that Abramovich was also a businessman when he served as speaker of Chukotka’s regional legislature, and the ban on Duma deputies owning businesses applies to regional deputies as well.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee also see nothing suspicious in First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov’s family acquiring $319 million in assets in the United States.
But law enforcement agencies have not questioned Shuvalov, Abramovich, Gruzdev or Kerimov. They have targeted only Gudkov, whose shares are microscopic in comparison with the businesses owned by other businesspeople who hold public office.
It appears that Gudkov could become the sole casualty in the government’s would-be campaign against politicians who have a conflict of interest with business. And this in a country with a political system notorious for merging business and government, where tens of thousands of officials of every rank and stripe, from Duma deputies and city mayors to military brass from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, are engaged in business. Politics and power have become the surest and safest road to riches in this country, and all politicians know that.
The harassment of Gudkov is a striking illustration of the classic principle attributed to Peruvian dictator Oscar Benavides: “For our friends, everything; for our enemies, the law!”
Stripping Gudkov of his Duma mandate would clearly be illegal. Gudkov did not receive a salary from any companies and did not violate the Constitution, which prohibits deputies from engaging in “other paid activities, except for teaching, scientific and other creative work.” The law also prohibits deputies from serving on the board of directors of any business — and Gudkov did not. Neither was Gudkov convicted of any crime, which is another legitimate basis for dismissal. If the Duma decides to oust Gudkov, its actions would consist of an unjustified breach of the Constitution, of federal law concerning the status of deputies and of the bylaws of the Duma itself.
Deputies have been dismissed without a court ruling only twice in post-Soviet history. MMM financial pyramid founder Sergei Mavrodi was dismissed in 1995, while Dagestani Deputy Nadirshakh Khachilayev was ousted amid accusations that he was involved with terrorism in 1998. Now the authorities want to force out Gudkov simply because he is a member of the opposition.

<i>Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is a co-founder of the opposition Party of People’s Freedom.</i>

TITLE: inside russia: You Shouldn’t Lie, Mr. Berezovsky
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: I must say that I am very happy with Friday’s decision by the London court. Quite unexpectedly for the entire Russian business community, Judge Elizabeth Gloster found that the plaintiff, self-exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky, was an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” who said “almost anything to support his case” and billionaire Roman Abramovich was a “truthful and on the whole reliable witness.”
You were almost certainly amazed and cried out: “What? Berezovsky was not the owner of Sibneft?”
Actually, according to my sources, Abramovich just shrugged his shoulders when Berezovsky first filed the $5.6 billion lawsuit and told his lawyers, “No problem, guys. I admit that he was a shareholder, but I bought out his shares and I will affirm in court that I bought them for a decent price.”
But his lawyers shook their heads and cried, “You don’t understand! When you held the IPO for Sibneft you didn’t state that Berezovsky was a shareholder. Any investor could sue you for that.”
The London court upheld Abramovich’s version of how the oil company was originally structured. In those days, when Berezovsky was a freewheeling and powerful Russian oligarch, he decided not to register Sibneft in his own name but under the name of a virtual unknown at the time, Roman Abramovich. It didn’t matter whose name he used — it might as well have been Santa Claus for all it mattered back then. The unusual business structure only worked because Berezovsky was behind it.
You shouldn’t lie, Mr. Berezovsky — not on the phone, and not in court.
The problem is that Berezovsky once successfully sued Forbes magazine for an article that called him the godfather of the Kremlin. In the affidavit, Berezovsky swore on his mother’s grave that it was all a lie, that he did not own shares in Sibneft and that he had no foot in the Kremlin door with the goal of privatizing the company.
Now, once again in a London court, Berezovsky unblushingly testified that he did, in fact, own Sibneft shares, and he described in detail how he had managed to get his foot in the Kremlin door with the goal of privatizing the company.
You shouldn’t lie, Mr. Berezovsky — not on the phone, and not in court.
The reason that I am happy with the court’s decision is this: I personally have no doubt that Berezovsky really was a Sibneft shareholder. Moreover, Sibneft, once the country’s fourth-largest oil company whose assets are now owned by state-controlled Gazprom Neft, was just the tip of the iceberg. In the primordial soup of Russia in the early 1990s, when power meant property and property was indefensible without political power, Berezovsky owned a stake in Russia itself — a blocking, if not a controlling, one.
Later, however, the structure of shareholding in Russia changed and Berezovsky lost his former status. Even though Abramovich could have given him the boot — as most Russian business raiders would have done in his place — Abramovich paid Berezovsky a hefty sum of money for his shares: $170 million for 49 percent of ORT (now Channel One) television, $1.3 billion for 50 percent of Sibneft and $500 million for 25 percent of RusAl.
As God is my witness, Abramovich was anything but stingy. Berezovsky had originally purchased Sibneft for $100 million, so the $1.3 billion for his 50 percent stake amounted to quite a profit. In a country where the price of your shares depends not on their market value but on the personal clout of the seller, Abramovich treated Berezovsky like royalty.
Incidentally, in a similar situation, Oleg Deripaska just flatly refused to pay anything to Michael Cherney. Within a month, those two businessmen will also be fighting over their 1990s assets in a London court.
During the recent lawsuit in London, Berezovsky demonstrated a remarkable ability to change his testimony every five minutes, saying whatever he thought would be most advantageous at any given moment and never worrying about the truth. That is what killed his chance of winning.
The really horrible part is that this trait once enabled Berezovsky to become the unofficial “landlord” of Russia. And it is this same trait that Russia’s current leadership has inherited. 

<i>Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.</i>

TITLE: Singing for their supper
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yury Shevchuk, Boris Grebenshchikov, Zorge and Markscheider Kunst will perform at a charity concert this week to help the local homeless to survive St. Petersburg’s notoriously harsh cold season. 
But despite the gravity of the issue, Zorge frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov said the concert would be pure rock and roll fun.
“We — everybody who is participating — will play our usual sets, cheerful and upbeat songs,” Fyodorov said. 
“Homeless people have not necessarily found themselves on the streets as a result of bad habits. I know that many homeless people were the victims of imperfect legislation and, above all, real estate fraud. They are not guilty of anything, and they are nice people.
“The guys who are organizing this event [Nochlezhka] are enthusiasts, real idealists, who are doing hard work that is not immediately noticeable but is extremely important because 681 homeless men and women froze to death in St. Petersburg during the past year, according to official estimates. That’s a huge number, and if this year we are able to at least reduce it, if not prevent it from happening at all, that would be great.”
With his former band Tequilajazzz, Fyodorov performed at charity events such as Rock Against Poverty, whose aim was to draw attention to the issues of poverty and homelessness. This time, he said, the event has a concrete goal — to raise money for the Nochlezhka shelter ahead of winter.
“It’s one of those cases when society organizes itself horizontally, without any involvement from the state,” Fyodorov said.
“Artists go on stage, people who have bought tickets come to the venue, and we give them a 100-percent guarantee that this money will go where it is most needed. The ticket cost is affordable for a city resident, but when many of them are sold, the resulting sum can be used to do a good deed.”
Entrance tickets cost 700 rubles ($22) — the amount needed to cover a three-day stay for one person in the shelter — while a place with a seat costs 1,800 rubles ($56) and 2,000 rubles ($62), which cover stays of seven and eight days, respectively.
Fyodorov said that the bands would not receive payment for their performances, while Glavlub offered its stage and venue to the organizers for free.
All proceeds from the concert, called NochlezhkaFest, will go to the shelter run by Nochlezhka (Night Shelter), a local charity for the homeless. Located at 112B Borovaya Ulitsa in the city center, it is the city’s largest and can provide accommodation for 54 people simultaneously.
Fyodorov said he was not an activist, but had never refused when Nochlezhka asked his band for their support. “I feel very close to them emotionally, socially and by any other parameter,” he said.
Zorge was formed by Fyodorov with Germany-born drummer Marc-Oliver Lauber after Tequilajazzz was disbanded in September 2010. 
In addition to Zorge, Akvarium’s Boris Grebenshchikov and DDT’s Yury Shevchuk will take part in the concert, as well as Markscheider Kunst, who have a song about a homeless old woman, called “Tanets” (Dance).
According to Nochlezhka, apart from providing shelter and food, the charity also helps the homeless gain access to the services of social workers, lawyers and psychologists. The foundation also runs a number of services such as the Night Bus mobile help point, heated tents in winter, and programs for alcohol and drug rehabilitation. 
During the 22 years since the charity was founded in 1990, hundreds of Nochlezhka volunteers and partners have helped to save thousands of homeless people’s lives.

<i>NochlezhkaFest — featuring Yury Shevchuk, Boris Grebenshchikov, Zorge and Markscheider Kunst — will take place at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 6 at Glavclub, located at 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Tel. 905 7555.</i>

TITLE: Permission to play for Pussy Riot
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A concert in support of Pussy Riot that came under attack soon after Glavclub — a club with a capacity of 2,500 — was named as its venue earlier this month looks set to go ahead, as the club added the concert to its website and started selling tickets late last week. 
The concert will not, however, be advertised on street posters, because the outdoor advertising agency that was approached to do the job “got scared,” the organizers said.
Earlier, Glavclub’s owner Igor Tonkikh — the only owner of a large club in the city to agree to host the charity show — asked the organizers to get at least some kind of “permit” from the police that would guarantee that the venue would not be shut down on the day of the concert, he said at a press conference last week.
Tonkikh said that he had started receiving threatening calls from the police and district administrations of both the Petrograd Side of the city, where Glavclub’s temporary summer marquee was located, and of the Central District, where Glavclub moved its activities to on Sept. 1.
According to Tonkikh, he was told that there were many agencies who would probe various violations that the club was allegedly responsible for. 
Tonkikh said he had decided to host the Free Pussy Riot Fest because he organized concerts by Televizor — one of the show’s participants — as an underground promoter in Moscow when the band was banned in the late 1980s for its protest songs such as “Get Out of Control” and “Your Daddy Is a Fascist.” However, he said he also felt responsible for the jobs of the people working at his venue.
The Pussy Riot benefit concert on Sept. 9, if it goes ahead, will be the second charity event to be held at the club this week. On Thursday, the club will host a non-political concert aimed at supporting the homeless (see article, this page). 
“We haven’t received any calls about that event,” Tonkikh stressed.
The police denied they had called the venue, and said that no permits for holding concerts were needed, Rosbalt reported last week.
However, on Thursday, organizer Olga Kurnosova said she had managed to get a “permit.” 
“I asked the police to provide assistance in holding the concert and received a document from them,” she said, adding that the piece of paper does not guarantee the event from further harassment from the authorities. Glavclub promptly put an ad for the show on its website and started selling tickets.
Kurnosova said she had previously submitted an application for a Pussy Riot support rally on the Field of Mars, also scheduled to be held Sunday, just in case the concert is shut down by the authorities. 
“Of course we were redirected to the remote Polyustrovsky Park, but I think they realized that if they stop the concert, it will not end there,” she said.
With tickets costing 500 rubles ($15), the proceeds will go to support the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich — who were sentenced to two years each in a prison colony as the result of what was described as a “kangaroo trial” in Moscow last month. Despite the fact that the feminist punk group’s “punk prayer” was directed against President Vladimir Putin and criticized anti-constitutional merging of the state and church in today’s Russia, the women were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by hatred of a religious group,” i.e. Orthodox Christians.
The court refused to acknowledge that the performance — prompted by Patriarch Kirill’s support of Putin as a presidential candidate ahead of the March 3 elections — was a political protest.
Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were arrested on March 4, the next day after the presidential election, while Samutsevich was arrested on March 15. Last week, Pussy Riot released a statement saying that the two other members of the group who took part in the performance had fled Russia.
In addition to political activist Kurnosova, the organizers include musicians Mikhail Borzykin of Televizor and Vadim Kurylyov of the Electric Guerillas, journalists Dmitry Gubin and Valery Nechai and filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov.
According to Kurnosova, the participants’ opinions about Pussy Riot may vary, but they all agreed that the verdict was “monstrous.”
Borzykin, who described the type of former KGB officers who now claim to be Orthodox believers and are in power in Russia — Putin included — in a song years ago, believes that the link between the Church and the Kremlin became more obvious during the Pussy Riot trial.
 “The Russian Orthodox Church has been hired by the authorities and  has stepped under their flags; that is becoming clear to more and more people,” Borzykin said.
According to Kurnosova, one of the police chiefs with whom she negotiated argued that Glavclub was “too close” to the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra monastery — which is about 1 kilometer from the club — and suggested that the organizer should find a venue located further from a church for the concert.
“My brain exploded when I heard that; when reasons like that are offered, I am simply lost for words,” she said.
DDT, Televizor, PTVP, Electric Guerrilas, Razniye Lyudi and Gleb Samoilov will be taking part, as well as some younger bands who offered to play, but several acts refused to take part, most notably Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium.
“I don’t play political games,” was how Grebenshchikov explained his rejection of Borzykin’s emailed invitation, Borzykin said. Grebenshchikov has however met repeatedly with the Kremlin’s “gray cardinal” Vladislav Surkov, played for Dmitry Medvedev during the former president’s meeting with loyal rock musicians at a Moscow club and has spoken favorably of Putin in interviews during the past decade.
“There is a certain split, but I am happy that most of the younger, fresher bands do not need the importance of solidarity between musicians explaining to them,” Borzykin said.
“We still lack the kind of solidarity that was showed by Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and Sting — the people we have been listening to since we were kids. But judging from the hundreds of bands who wished to participate, this solidarity is emerging.”
Tonkikh argued that the word “split” should not be used, because the rock scene was not monolithic. 
“In my family as in no other, we know that society should keep the authorities in check, because one of my grandfathers was killed in the war, and the other was shot on May 9, 1944 by the authorities,” he said. 
“That’s why I am not only a club director, but also a citizen of the Russian Federation.”
A portion of the funds raised will go to the “Prisoners of Bolotnaya,” activists arrested in the aftermath of the May 6 demo on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow that erupted into clashes as the result of an alleged police provocation, and also to Taisia Osipova, an opposition activist sentenced last week to eight years in Smolensk on dubious drug distribution charges.
“The situation is only getting worse,” Kurnosova said.
“First it was two years for Pussy Riot, then eight years for Taisia Osipova, and no-one knows how many the activists of the Bolotnaya Ploshchad rally will get.” 

<i>Free Pussy Riot Fest — featuring DDT, Televizor, PTVP, Electric Guerrilas, Razniye Lyudi, Gleb Samoilov, Makulatura, Brigadir, Kirill Komarov, Vasily K, Mikhail Novitsky, Alexander Zaslavsky, Atmoravi, Vladimir Rekshan and Dmitry Shagin — will take place at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9 at Glavclub, 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Tel. 905 7555.</i>

TITLE: Fresh perspective
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Presidential Library is currently accepting photographs taken by non-professionals from all over the world for its annual Foreign View competition, which will finish in one month.
Both pictures of Russia taken by foreigners and pictures of other countries taken by Russian photographers can be submitted for the competition, whose aim is to establish a dialogue between cultures and attempt to make people look at their own country from another point of view.
“The ultimate purpose is to impart a sense of tolerance and willingness to respect other cultures and bring this feeling to others,” said Olga Preobrazhenskaya, senior researcher in the educational programs department of the Presidential Library. “We are talking not only about the acceptance of human values, but also about the public, historical and cultural values of each other. We should perceive one another as good neighbors, as we receive something new and develop through global diversity.” 
The first Foreign View competition took place in 2010. Nominations change every year. Starting with “landmarks of history,” “debut visit to a country,” “populations and faces” and “world religions” three years ago, they now seem to focus on contemporary problems.
The overall theme of this year is “The state yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Organizers want people to think about the pace of modern life and the continuous flow of information that pours upon the average person, converting phenomena around us into something ordinary, leaving us with nothing to review or challenge. 
“Do we think a lot about things we come into contact with in our life? Are we ready to analyze them and, perhaps, change and improve them?” explained Preobrazhenskaya.
The winners are selected in eight categories: “Countries and people,” “Populations and traditions,” “The interaction of cultures,” “Modern technology,” “From the depths of history” and “Competition series of photos.” There is also a separate category “Germany through the eyes of Russians, and Russia through the eyes of Germans,” held in honor of the official year of Germany in Russia and the year of Russia in Germany. 
“There are no restrictions on age, occupation, place of residence, social or professional status, or denomination,” the organizers say of eligible participants. “We appreciate not only the professional skill of a particular person, but also something special, seen and captured by a participant, that they saw and learned outside of their country.”
Last year, amateur photographers from more than 20 countries participated in the competition. The youngest was eight years old, while the oldest was almost 70. 
The deadline for submitting photos to the competition this year is Oct. 9. Potential participants must register on the Presidential Library website, www.prlib.ru, and upload their photos. They can be individual photos or a series (two to five images) and can be taken using a digital or analog camera. The name of the picture, the category and the country in which it was taken should be included in the description.
The jury consists of members of the Presidential Library and representatives of partner photo competitions. The main evaluation criteria are content, compliance with the competition theme, originality and artistic vision and above all technical execution.
The awards ceremony will take place as usual on Nov. 1 in the Presidential Library. The winning photos will be compiled into an electronic collection of the Presidential Library and published in an album.

TITLE: Fashion’s Night Out
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Local fashionistas are set to join models, designers and bohemians on the evening of Friday, Sept. 7, as they flock to stores around the city to indulge in a bit of nocturnal retail therapy.
This year’s Fashion’s Night Out event is part of an iconic international fashion festival at which surprises, parties, product launches and discounts meet with charity.
Last year, Fashion’s Night Out spread its wings across 17 countries, and featured tens of thousands of events. In the U.S. alone, participating stores threw challenges and tempted customers with more than 4,500 parties, celebrity appearances, performances, festivals and other forms of entertainment.
This year, St. Petersburg is joining the project for the first time since Fashion’s Night Out, the brainchild of Vogue Magazine, was established in 2009.
In St. Petersburg, where the shopping extravaganza kicks off at 7 p.m., the range of participating shopping venues, which can be found in full at the website of its co-organizer, the Russian edition of Vogue magazine (www.vogue.ru), features premier jewelry stores ranging from Boucheron to Russia’s own Mikhailov Gallery to internationally renowned watchmakers such as Rado, Tag Heuer and Longines, to shoemakers and fashion designer stores including Armani Collezioni, Sonia Rykiel,  Salvatore Ferragamo, Baldinini, Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry, Topshop, Missoni, Max Mara, Tru Trussardi, Massimo Dutti, Mango, Karen Millen, Intimissimi and Calzedonia.
Three Russian designers — Tatyana Parfionova, Leonid Alexeyev and Ianis Chamalidy — are also throwing parties and offering special products for their guests that evening.
In Moscow, where the event is being held on Sept. 6, it will feature Natalya Vodyanova, the model and head of The Naked Heart charitable foundation, which she established in 2004 in the wake of the Beslan tragedy, in which nearly 400 people, including many children, died after a school was taken hostage by terrorists.
Since its foundation, the charity has built 67 accessible playgrounds in nearly 50 Russian towns and cities, with some of the playgrounds located in children’s homes, pediatric hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
Three designers — Andrei Bartenev, Darya Fursei and Gabi Trinkaus — have produced original T-shirts with portraits of Vodyanova especially for Fashion’s Night Out, where they will be sold and the profit donated to The Naked Heart Foundation. 
In St. Petersburg, the T-shirts will be on sale at DLT department store.
After the Russian events in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Fashion’s Night Out will travel to Spain, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, the U.K., Brazil and the U.S., and then to India, China and Taiwan. The final events will be held on Sept. 15 in Greece and Turkey.

TITLE: the word’s worth: That cereal is Greek to me
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ãðå÷êà: buckwheat

As I sat in my kitchen the other day, my eyes rested on a box of the most Russian of Russian grains: ÿäðèöà ãðå÷íåâàÿ (whole-grain buckwheat), aka ãðå÷êà. Odd name, isn’t it? It sounds like it’s related to the word ãðå÷åñêèé (Greek).
Assuming that this phonetic association was an inaccurate bit of armchair — or kitchen stool — etymology, I thought I’d look it up. Instead of a quick clarification, I got caught up in a very strange culinary trip involving ancient history, obsolete names and unusual associations.
Hold on to your hats: Russian ãðå÷êà (also ãðå÷à, ãðå÷èõà) really is derived from the word ãðå÷åñêèé. The grain, which was originally grown in Southeast Asia, found its way into Russia via Greek traveling merchants. Hence it was called ãðå÷åñêèé çëàê, cereal from the Greeks.
This might amuse the French and Italians, who call it sarrasin and grano saraceno, the grain of the Saracens. And in Germany, they know everyone’s got it all wrong. There it’s called Heidekorn, the grain of the pagans.
Only up north did this traveling grain get a less exotic name: buckwheat, or beech wheat, so called because its triangular shape is reminiscent of the beechnut.
On a culinary-linguistic roll, I decided to check out ãðåöêèé îðåõ (walnut) and discovered that the adjective ãðåöêèé is indeed an older form of ãðå÷åñêèé. Yet another Greek import.
But the walnut is also called âîëîøñêèé îðåõ, a name that took a bit more time to decipher. Âîëîøñêèé is the adjectival form of âîëîõ, a term used in old Russia to describe, in various centuries, a Celtic tribe that settled in Gaul, Romanians, the peoples living in Wallachia, the Romance peoples of Europe, and Italians.
I can’t figure out when in this linguistic evolution the tasty walnut appeared in Russia, nor can I discover whether the two names ãðåöêèé and âîëîøñêèé existed simultaneously or consecutively. But in any case, the walnut is “the nut that came from Greek/Italy/one of those places to the west where they speak a Romance language.”
Just in case you wondered, fennel apparently took the same route to Russia: Its traditional name is âîëîøñêèé óêðîï (literally “Romance dill”), although in most supermarkets today it’s called ôåíõåëü.
The Greeks seem to have left their greatest linguistic mark on Russian in food, but you might hear the Russian version of “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”: áîéòåñü äàíàéöåâ, äàðû ïðèíîñÿùèõ.
Äàíàéöû is the ancient Russian term for Greeks and should not be confused with the Danaides, the daughters of Danaus who murdered their husbands on their wedding night at their father’s behest. But come to think of it, you should probably beware of those Danaides, too.
Greece and the Greeks also live on in Russia in a phrase from Anton Chekhov’s play “Ñâàäüáà” (The Wedding) uttered ungrammatically by a Greek confectioner: Ýòî â Ðîññèè íèöåãî íåòó, à â Ãðåöèè âñ¸ åñòü! (In Russia there is nothing, but Greece has everything!) Whenever you are astonished by the abundance and variety of something, you can exclaim: Êàê â Ãðåöèè! Âñ¸ åñòü! (Just like Greece, you’ve got everything!)
Ãðå÷êà has also given the language a few expressions. My favorite is a phrase a friend uses frequently: Ãðå÷íåâàÿ êàøà ñàìà ñåáÿ õâàëèò (literally “buckwheat praises itself”), said of people who immodestly sing their own praises.
But considering the illustrious history of ãðå÷êà, a little singing is in order.

<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: The Traugot art dynasty
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new exhibit at the State Russian Museum celebrates one of St. Petersburg’s most illustrious families of artists: The Traugot family. 
The St. Petersburg family is known foremost for the book illustrations by brothers Alexander (1931-present) and Valery Traugot (1936-2009). They illustrated more than 400 books, including the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov and many other authors, totaling about 80 million copies.
The goal of this exhibit is not, however, to show their famed illustrations, but to explore the idea of the Traugot family unity and continuity. For this purpose, the exposition brings together about 200 works by four artists: Paintings, sculpture and porcelain by the aforementioned brothers, watercolor landscapes by their father Georgy (1903-1961) and city landscapes, still life and portraits by his wife Vera Yanova (1907-2004). Many of these works have never been shown before.
According to Natalia Kozyreva, head of the department of drawings and watercolors at the Russian Museum, the cyclical composition of the exposition reflects the concept of a family circle. The beginning and end of the exhibit are comprised of the creative oeuvre of Alexander and Valery, while two central parts are justly devoted to Georgy, head of the household and the principal teacher of his sons, who created their first book illustrations together with their father and used the abbreviation GAV (the initial letters of all of their names) even after his death. 
Nevertheless, the star of the exhibit is their mother, a little-known painter whose pictures are being presented to the public for the first time. The exhibition organizers sought to show that she was a talented artist in her own right, though she did not have a professional education. Her images, which convey an emotional intensity through dramatic brush strokes, are comparable to Van Gogh’s works.
While the members of the Traugot family are independent artists using different art styles, love for St. Petersburg unites them in the exhibit space. They all devoted time and effort to depicting their home city, and a separate room at the museum is dedicated to besieged Leningrad in the works of Georgy Traugot.
“It took nearly three years to prepare the exhibit,” said Kozyreva. “The idea of it was born a long time ago, because the Traugot artists are very famous in our city. 
“Alexander is the only family member still alive. He gave us the opportunity to work with the family collection stored in St. Petersburg, in his parent’s studio on Ulitsa Blokhina,” she added.
Alexander Traugot now lives in Paris, but often visits his native city. He attended the opening of the exhibit and told reporters that despite his advanced age, he continues to work. He is currently working on illustrating Goethe’s “Faust” and Pyotr Yershov’s “Konyok-Gorbunok” (The Little Humpbacked Horse).

<i>The “Traugot Family” exhibit runs through Oct. 15 at the Marble Palace, 
5/1 Millionnaya Ulitsa. Tel. 595 4248. 
M. Nevsky Prospekt. www.rusmuseum.ru</i>

TITLE: A Fragile Beauty
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Pavlova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The breathtaking Altai region is the subject of a new photo exhibit at St. Petersburg’s House of Nationalities. 
“The Melting Beauty of Altai” exhibit consists of more than 30 images captured by art photographers depicting the natural reserves, life and beauty of the centuries-old, majestic yet fragile world of the Altai republic in south-central Siberia. Its main message is the importance of human respect for nature, the conservation of natural resources, man’s responsibility and the prevention of adverse effects caused by the development of modern civilization.
All of the images on show illustrate the connection between natural ecosystems and the devastating results of human interference with the environment.       
The exhibit opened as part of the “Alluring World. Ethnic Russia” folk festival that was held in St. Petersburg last week. The festival saw nomadic indigenous minorities from all over Russia, ranging from Yamal to Kamchatka, gather in the city. Ten nationalities of the Russian North were represented: Itelmen, Nenets, Sami, Chukchi, Eskimo, Even, Evenk, Koryak, Altai and Kumandinian, who all contributed to a varied program of rare music and dance ensembles.  
“This traveling festival is not just a display of the work of individual folk groups, but also a display of great union,” said Alla Dydymova, director of the House of Nationalities in St. Petersburg. 

<i>“The Melting Beauty of Altai” runs through Sept. 30 at the House of Nationalities, 15A Mokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 579 0009.www.spbdn.ru. Admission is free.</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: Censoring Soviet children’s cartoons
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, long-running children’s show “Spokoinoi Nochi, Malyshi,” or “Good Night, Little Ones,” stirred fears that a new law could lead to censorship of the cartoons — or the show even shifting to a louche 11 p.m. slot.
“Good Night, Little Ones” airs daily on Rossiya 1. It has been broadcast since the 1960s, and the show’s hypnotic title song and slightly bedraggled puppets — a dog, a pig and a hare — are deeply imbedded in the nation’s subconscious.
The 10-minute show also includes cartoons, even though they get such a brief daily slot that I wonder how the toddlers retain the plot.
It was a remark on Ekho Moskvy radio station that unleashed a storm on Wednesday. A senior official at the VGTRK group, which runs the channel, said that the new law on protecting children from information, which allows the state to curb the Internet with a blacklist of sites, could also have consequences for a cartoon featured on the show.
The nannyish law calls for age certification of all content and says that scenes of smoking and drinking beer or scenes encouraging violence should not be viewed until after the 11 p.m. watershed.
And the head of the studio of children and young people’s programs, Tatyana Tsyvareva, told Ekho Moskvy that it could rule out a cartoon called “Just You Wait” that will air on the new season of the show.
“We only have two choices: break the law or show it late in the evening,” she said, without saying whether the whole show would have to move its slot.
“Just You Wait” is a sort of Soviet version of “Tom and Jerry” featuring a wolf chasing a hare with plenty of cartoon violence. The wolf smokes a proletarian papirosa, rough tobacco stuffed into a cardboard tube, something hard to imagine all the kids going mad for, although some say they are useful for rolling joints.
Journalists also fretted over other cartoon heroes with nicotine habits, such as kindly Crocodile Gena in the Cheburashka films, who smokes a pipe in his time off from working in a zoo.
“Good Night, Little Ones” already airs at a late hour for a toddler audience — 8:30 p.m. — but this is normal in a country where tots are allowed to stay up late.
The show’s makers denied the rumor, but it became one of the top discussion topics on Russian-language Twitter. It’s a bit odd that people only really seem to engage with a law threatening to arbitrarily restrict their freedoms when it involves a cartoon character smoking a cigarette.
Adult-oriented channel 2x2 announced Thursday that it would cut the violent Itchy and Scratchy cartoon within a cartoon in The Simpsons to stay within the watershed, a measure that seemed half-baked given Homer Simpson’s beer intake. It also said that South Park would move to a time after the watershed.
In other news on “Good Night Little Ones,” the makers announced this week that long-haired pop crooner Dmitry Malikov would join the celebrity cast, including the former Miss Universe Oksana Fyodorova and actress Anna Mikhalkova.
The show seems to feel obliged to inject a touch of glamour to justify its primetime slot, even if it seems a little wasted on the kindergarten crowd.
Former policewoman Fyodorova became a presenter after being disqualified as Miss Universe in 2002, hopefully encouraging fathers to bond with their tots over the show. She compensates for her wooden delivery with lots of mascara, but has also been physically absent of late.
Malikov is another somewhat saccharine figure who plays the piano and has long swishy hair that he has shown off in an ad for an anti-dandruff shampoo. But he definitely doesn’t smoke papirosa.

TITLE: THE DISH: Buffalo Steak House
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Rattey
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>More than steaks</b>
Cozy and mismatched are two words that delicately sum up the newest steakhouse on St. Petersburg’s reigning restaurant street. From its appearance, Buffalo Steak House looks more like a funky organic hideaway with its low, arched brick ceilings, large wooden surfaces and random eclectic d&#233;cor than a typical city steakhouse.
It is these inconsistencies, however, that make the venue unique and endearing (the incredibly helpful and welcoming service adds to this), creating a warm environment in which patrons are happy to sit, chat and eat, forgetting about time, despite a large Roman numeral clock hanging on the wall. Oddly enough for a Saturday night, on our visit, there was only one other party in the quaint two-room restaurant, but friends of the bartender and waitresses had popped in to sit at the bar and keep them company during the slow evening shift. 
The restaurant’s one-page food menu was also unexpected, with a solid appetizer selection of various salads, cheese and meat plates and soups including some Russian classics such as shchi and okroshka (both 280 rubles, $8.70). Surprisingly, the menu boasts only a handful of steak dishes, starting at 540 rubles ($16.70) for the steak burger and climbing up to 1,380 rubles ($42.75) for the 400-gram rib eye steak. For those not big on red meat, it includes a couple of fish options and chicken as well.
The generous portion of chicken salad with green apple, walnuts and mushrooms in mayonnaise for 310 rubles ($9.60) was served on a bed of fresh spinach and was satisfyingly filling, but disappointingly flavorless, despite the wide array of ingredients. The fresh and sun-dried tomato salad with asparagus for 360 rubles ($11.15) was much more of a palate pleaser with basil, tart tomatoes and a salty drizzle of pesto sauce giving the dish a winning kick.
The comfortable and mismatched seating (plush purple benches, tweed armchairs, leather seats and wooden chairs) helped make the lengthy wait between the starters and entrees more tolerable, but the smoky aroma of grilling meat (actually prepared in a charcoal broiler) was a teaser.
The filet mignon (820 rubles, $25.40), cooked medium as asked, was completely unseasoned, showcasing the good cut of meat and giving each individual the chance to season the meal to their taste with the option of slathering it in the tomato garlic sauce served on the side. The only detail out of place was the dill garnish — the chef obviously could not resist adding a Russian touch to the steak.
Another Russian beef classic, Beef Stroganoff (650 rubles, $20.15) proved filling and true to the traditional recipe. The amount of beef was thankfully not overshadowed by the sauce, and had the perfect amount of mushrooms and onion to give the simple classic a hearty flavor. The oven-roasted potatoes ordered on the side (180 rubles, $5.60) were delicately seasoned, however some of the wedges were slightly underdone and overly firm. They nevertheless served as a nice sponge to sop up some of the sauce from the Stroganoff. 
Be forewarned that if looking forward to enjoying a nice steak dinner with a bottle of red, you’ll have to bring your own wine. Although bouquets of flowers decorating the tabletops and windowsills on the venue marked the nine-month anniversary of Buffalo Steak House’s opening, the restaurant has not yet been able to celebrate obtaining a liquor license. Diners are asked to bring a receipt for any bottle of alcohol they bring with them and there is a 290-ruble ($9) cork charge for wine and a 490-ruble ($15.20) charge for anything with a higher alcohol content.
The beer list includes foreign beers only with an average price of 280 rubles ($8.70) per pint. To make up for the limited alcohol selection, the restaurant offers a choice of herbal and berry teas along with fresh juices and smoothies — yet another quality that is more reminiscent of an earthy, hipster hangout than a place frequented by wealthy businessmen to eat expensive meat, shoot vodka and feel rich.
Like some other local restaurants, Buffalo Steak House offers a 20-percent discount on the food menu weekdays from noon to 4 p.m. (excluding holidays). 

TITLE: Hamburg, Window onto the World
AUTHOR: By Alexander Belenky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The summer in St. Petersburg is coming to an end, causing thoughts to turn to holidays abroad. But travel abroad doesn’t necessarily have to entail a long-haul flight to a hot, faraway destination. Europe has an unlimited wealth of cities that are perfect for short breaks, not least of which is St. Petersburg’s twin city of Hamburg.
St. Petersburg and Hamburg are indeed like sister cities — perhaps born of different fathers, but the same mother: The sea. Maritime Hamburg owes its current prosperous situation to the Emperor Charlemagne and Frederick I “Barbarossa”: The first built a castle on the River Alster, the second gave the city trade privileges. St. Petersburg was similarly founded on the River Neva by Peter the Great, which determined its significance as a port and trade city. Germany’s second city is the country’s biggest port and the second biggest in Europe, while Russia’s northern capital is one of the country’s biggest ports, though while Petersburg is home to about 300 bridges, there are more than 2,300 in Hamburg. Petersburg is known as the “window onto Europe,” while the Germans call Hamburg their “window onto the world.”

<b>What to see</b>
One of Hamburg’s most popular sites is the St. Michaelis Church. With its 132-meter bell tower, it is considered one of the most impressive churches in Hamburg and in northern Germany, and its clock is the largest in the country. The church’s bell tower, which houses a viewing platform 106 meters above the ground, is a key part of the city’s distinctive skyline. 
Opposite the church is a small courtyard of apartments that has been preserved from the district where the widows of sailors and dockers were once housed, known as the tradesmen’s widows’ apartments. In every little house that has survived, a mirror is attached to the wall opposite the window. In this way, inquisitive widows could see from their rooms who was walking in the street outside, who was visiting who, and so on.
Those visiting Hamburg for more than a day should definitely set sail on a short sea voyage around the Hamburg port. The port is not only of major economic importance, it is a tourist attraction in its own right. It is truly impressive, with its enormous vessels packed with different colored cube-shaped containers moving slowly along the piers, while — like a life-size version of the computer game Tetris — giant cranes lift and release the cubes into the wombs of cargo ships. Work at the port is very different to what it was 100 years ago: If, back then, ships took weeks to load and unload, during which time the sailors amused themselves with the pleasures offered by the city’s infamous Reeperbahn district, then now even the biggest ship (with a capacity of 8,000 containers) can be loaded in just one day. Russia is Hamburg port’s second biggest trade partner after China, and there can be no doubt, watching the port at work, that some of those multicolored containers will soon be making their way to Petersburg.
About 150,000 people are employed in the port industry, and the enormous territory of the port is connected to the city by numerous bridges, regular ferry services, and the historical tunnel under the Elba, the Alter Elbtunnel. Built in 1911 and considered a miracle of engineering at the time, the tunnel continues to operate more than 100 years later. Four cargo lifts carry transport down to and up from the tunnel during working hours, two cars at a time (tickets cost two euros per vehicle), while the tunnel is open 24 hours free of charge for pedestrians and cyclists. They can descend into the tunnel by the stairs to see how this impressive example of progress and efficiency works.
Visitors who go to the river pier early on a Sunday morning will come across the Fischmarkt (fish market). Its location and opening hours were not determined by chance. It has long been traditional in Hamburg to spend Saturday night in Reeperbahn, and then go to the fish market in the morning to “continue the feast.” For the market is not only a place for selling bounty from the sea at inexpensive prices; there is music playing and a party atmosphere, and the sale process is an attraction in itself. 
Another popular Hamburg attraction is Miniatur Wunderland (www.miniatur-wunderland.com), the most extensive model railroad in the world. Wunderland is a huge yet miniature world, with its own inhabitants and moving transport. The story of its creation is fascinating, and not unlike a German fairy tale: Once upon a time, there lived in Hamburg two twin brothers, Frederik and Gerrit Braun. The first was an optimist and a dreamer, emotional and passionate. The second was rational, cautious and thoughtful. If ever the idea of one brother gained the support of the second, their plans were inevitably realized. After a series of successful projects, Frederik was captivated by the desire to build the longest model railway in the world. Gerrit, having thought it through carefully, supported his brother’s idea. In 2000, they found suitable premises in the form of old warehouses in the Speicherstadt district. Miniatur Wunderland consists of seven geographical areas and more than 1,000 components, including 15 kilometers of railway and thousands of human figures created with incredible imagination and humor. The areas represented include Switzerland, Austria, the U.S., Scandinavia and of course Hamburg — the birthplace of this wonderland. Its copy is the largest and most populous city depicted in the project. This is a must-see site, and with typical German efficiency, a time for visiting can be reserved online to avoid standing in line.
Hamburg is also home to a museum of automobile prototypes, the Automuseum prototyp (www.prototyp-hamburg.de), where a compact old factory building houses a collection of post-war sports cars made by Porsche, Audi and BMW. It is truly a car lovers’ haven, with many models having been driven in rallies held from the mid 20th century up to the Formula One rally at which Michael Schumacher made his debut. A particularly interesting exhibit is Otto Mathe’s small, almost toy-like “Fetzenflieger,” assembled by Porsche. The vehicle set the speed record in 1952 with a speed of 210 kilometers per hour. Visitors to the museum can also sit in a vintage car and race around a computer-generated racetrack, or listen to the sounds made by the engines of various cars in a separate booth. 
The city most associated with The Beatles may be their native Liverpool, but it was in fact Hamburg where the legendary British rock band cut its teeth. The group became extremely popular in Hamburg at the beginning of the 1960s. They first appeared on July 17, 1960 at the Indra club on Grosse Freiheit street. At that time they were simply an unknown group from Liverpool. Here, in the St. Pauli district, they played first in a movie theater, then in the Kaiserkeller club — sharing the stage with strippers — while George Harrison hid from the police because he was only 17 years old. From 1960-62, the band gave about 800 concerts in Hamburg — more than anywhere else at any time. It was here that they perfected their own inimitable style, here that they chose their iconic hairstyle and released their album “The Beatles in Hamburg.” Later John Lennon would say, “I grew up in Liverpool but I came of age in Hamburg.” The city propelled The Beatles from inexperienced amateur musicians into polished professionals, for whom fame and fortune were just around the corner.
Musical excursions around places in the city associated with the band are led by Stefani Hempel and her small ukulele (www.hempels-musictour.com). Stefani takes visitors around the most famous sites, and after each story, performs a Beatles song. 
As a large port city, Hamburg has long been famed for its nightlife, and the Reeperbahn was legendary among generations of young men in the Soviet Union who heard about the hedonistic district from their older comrades who returned from their national service in the navy full of stories. Next to the broad and bustling Reeperbahn street is the small Herbertstrasse with its red lights, famed for the ladies sitting at its windows and for its brothels, all of which are off limits to minors and women. Today, the Reeperbahn district attracts tourists not only with its memories of The Beatles and its sex shops, but with its buzzing nightlife. The red light district has now been transformed into a district of clubs, bars, art galleries, cabarets, theaters and even upscale restaurants. The Reeperbahn is unlikely to make an impression during the daytime; the best time to visit it is after 8 p.m., when the night lights are illuminated and the seedy establishments and cabarets open their doors.  

<b>Architecture</b>
Hamburg is not home to the wealth of historical architecture for which other German cities are famed. After being heavily bombed during World War II in 1943, almost all of the city center was left in ruins and burned down as a result of firebombing. But the city’s contemporary architecture is another impressive asset, not least in the futuristic HafenCity (hafencity.com). At one point in the 19th century, this part of the Speicherstadt district was considered the most elegant warehouse complex in the world. Today, HafenCity is one of the biggest urban accommodation projects in Europe. It is as though the architectural projects of the future have been implemented — and virtually in the center of the city. Taken on its own, each individual building seems like nothing special, but together, they create an unprecedented facade of a modern megalopolis on water. Interestingly, Hamburgers like to see their port out of their windows, and homes with an “industrial port view” have an increased value. 
Strange though it may seem, Hamburg Airport, a transport hub, is transformed on the weekend into a shopping mall (www.airport.de). Residents flock to the airport to do their shopping — after all, stores in the city are closed and the prices are sometimes cheaper here. The airport also offers excursions, taking in its panoramic viewing platforms, an old Junkers Ju 52, the world’s only airport model exhibition and the on-site fire brigade.  
Excursions do not, however, take in the internal workshop and hangars of Lufthansa Technik company (www.lufthansa-technik.de). Here, not only are airplanes serviced and repaired, they are also fitted with seats for passengers — it is a little-known fact that airplanes are bought by airlines with empty interiors, and carriers themselves design and fit out the interiors. Aircraft furniture is big business, involving engineers and designers, among others. Here, standard craft are reequipped to satisfy the whimsical fantasies of wealthy passengers from Russia and the Arab Emirates. However, the most heavily reequipped planes are not shown to the public: What has been done to them, for whom and at what cost is a closely guarded secret. 

<b>How to get there:</b>
The St. Petersburg Times flew courtesy of Lufthansa, Pulkovo Airport’s biggest foreign airline, which this summer launched a direct flight from Petersburg to Hamburg, connecting the two Baltic capitals twice a week — on Wednesdays and Sundays. The flight time is just two and a half hours. www.lufthansa.com.

<b>Where to stay:</b>
Sofitel, 40 Alter Wall, is located near Lake Alster in the historic heart of the city, 500 meters from the Rathaus. www.sofitel.com/Hamburg
Hotel Atlantic Kempinski, 72 An der Alster, is a luxury hotel on the shores of Lake Alster. It is not uncommon to encounter in the hotel lobby the rock star Udo Lindenberg, who has lived here for many years. www.kempinski.com/en/hamburg/hotel-atlantic/welcome

TITLE: Young Offenders Face Tough Time Starting Anew
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Seventeen-year-old Arman says he has no regrets about killing a man who insulted him and his family. 
“I believe in justice: Everyone has to get their due for what they do,” says the teenager, who has been sentenced to eight years in prison for murder.
Arman is one of 20 juvenile inmates of the pre-trial detention center at 39 Ulitsa Lebedeva. Most of the young men get little help from the outside world, while some ended up behind bars in tragic circumstances. 
“Some of them come from children’s homes, but mostly our prisoners do have parents — the problem is that the kids grew up in instable families, where drinking and domestic violence are routine,” said Vitaly Bodarev, head of the detention center. 
On Sept. 1, the young prisoners received unexpected presents sent by Vitaly Milonov, a United Russia lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and Boris Panteleyev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Committee for Citizens’ Rights. Each inmate was given a plastic bag containing a stack of brightly colored exercise books, marker pens, tea, coffee and sweets. Inside was also a greeting card marking the occasion of September 1, which is celebrated in Russia as the Day of Knowledge. The greeting inside encouraged the young prisoners to devote no less attention to their intellectual development than to their physical training.
Most of the young prisoners in Bodyrev’s center are being charged with murder, attempted murder or armed robbery.
“There are no petty cases here,” he said. “In total, the detention center here boasts about 600 inmates, and I have to say that our psychologists spend more time with the 20 juveniles than with the rest of the crowd, because these kids are such difficult cases.”  
“Yes, now that I have been sentenced I have to say that I would still have killed the bastard,” Arman said. “I had given the guy two warnings but he continued to pour shit over my family. I had to put a stop to it. Honor, dignity and principles are above everything for me.”
Arman plans to spend the eight-year sentence studying. 
“I want to study foreign languages,” he said. “I want to speak several languages when I get out, it will help me in my new life.”
Fourteen-year-old Daniil, whose current stay at the center is already his second, looks cheerful. He is being charged with joy-riding. 
“I love cars and anything to do with them; I want to make them my job,” he said. “It was a bit silly of me to get into that car…I left my mobile phone there, stupidly… It sort of all got out of hand.”
Sixteen-year-old Ruslan is charged with murder. He has confessed and is awaiting his sentence. He says he defended the honor of his pregnant girlfriend, who was “insulted.” Ruslan refers to the woman as his wife. She is now the mother of his child. 
“There was a farewell party for a guy who was being drafted into the army,” Ruslan said. “Some guy said a dirty thing about my wife, and I had to respond. A fight started, and I just beat the guy to death. I didn’t really want to kill him. It was a fight, and we were both deranged and got carried away. I hope I will never get into trouble again. I look at the picture of my baby, and I can’t wait to get out.”
How much use these tough-looking inmates would make of the marker-pens was unclear, but they were clearly pleased by the attention.
“I’m from Murmansk, so I don’t get any visitors,” said Alexander, 17. “I’ve been here for eight months now, as the investigation is still in progress, and I’m pleased to get this package.”
According to Bodarev, only about 8 percent of the juvenile inmates in his pre-trial detention center get acquitted.
Panteleyev, of the Committee for Citizens’ Rights, said once released from jail — especially after serving a term — former prisoners find it extremely difficult to start a new life. 
“They see only obstacles around them, instead of help, as if the punishment was being extended,” he said. “They are denied jobs, and people often avoid them.”
Igor Potapenko, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Penal Inspectorate, said a man is released from prison in the morning, and by the evening is already hungry. Not everyone has a place to lay their head or somewhere to get a meal.
 “Most of the prisoners lose any real links with the outside world,” he said. “Their families, friends and colleagues often don’t want to know them anymore. Only fellow criminal gang members may want to give them the time of day. We really ought to start thinking about the future of these people while they’re still in prison, to ensure they have some choices in their life.”

TITLE: ‘Dishonest’ Berezovsky Loses to Abramovich
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky lost his multibillion-dollar legal battle against fellow Russian mogul Roman Abramovich on Friday after a British judge ruled that he didn’t tell the truth in the clash over vast oil wealth.
The case in London’s High Court sparked broad interest because of its focus on the two oligarchs’ personal and business relationship in the chaotic days of post-Soviet Russia. The months of testimony included juicy details about their rise to riches, their jet-set lifestyles on yachts and in luxury hotels, and allegations of “gangster” behavior.
The 64-year-old Berezovsky, a former Kremlin power broker who fell out with Russian President Vladimir Putin, alleged that Abramovich had betrayed and intimidated him into selling his oil stakes vastly beneath their true value, and sold his gas shares without his consent. Berezovsky had sought more than $5.6 billion in damages.
Abramovich had denied all the charges.
On Friday, Judge Elizabeth Gloster scathingly dismissed Berezovsky’s case, calling him “an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be molded to suit his current purposes.”
“I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr. Berezovsky’s credibility is that he would have said almost anything to support his case,” Gloster said in a 38-page summary of her judgment.
In contrast, she found the 45-year-old Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, to be “a truthful, and on the whole reliable, witness.”
Berezovsky, who had alleged blackmail and breach of contract, shook his head in court Friday as his defeat became clear. Abramovich did not attend.
Outside the court, Berezovsky accused Gloster of rewriting Russian history.
“I am absolutely amazed by what happened today,” he told reporters. “Sometimes I have the impression that Putin himself wrote this judgment.”
A statement issued by Abramovich’s representatives said he was “pleased and grateful” that his position had been “comprehensively vindicated by the court.”
In Moscow, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed satisfaction with the decision. “It’s always pleasant when slander is called by its own name,” he was quoted as saying by the state news agency RIA Novosti.
A mathematician-turned-Mercedes dealer, Berezovsky amassed his wealth during Russia’s chaotic privatization of state assets in the early 1990s. In return for backing former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, he gained political clout and opportunities to buy state assets at knockdown prices.
Berezovsky said he mentored Abramovich, treating him like a son, and founded the oil giant Sibneft with him and a third partner. Berezovsky claimed that the friendship faltered when he fell out with Putin, at which point Abramovich “intimidated” him into selling $1.3 billion of his Sibneft shares, which he claimed were really worth almost $6 billion.
Abramovich contradicted that account, saying Berezovsky never had “a cent” of investment in Sibneft. He said he had paid more than $2.5 billion to Berezovsky for his services as his “political godfather” and reluctantly funded Berezovsky’s extravagant lifestyle of yachts and vacation homes because he feared retaliation from Berezovsky, who he alleged had connections to gangsters in Chechnya.
The judge concluded that the deal between the two men was that in return for substantial cash payments, Abramovich and Sibneft would enjoy Berezovsky’s political patronage and influence, “which was indispensable to the construction of any major business in the conditions of the 1990s.”
The judge rejected Berezovksy’s claims that he was threatened by Putin and Alexander Voloshin, a Putin ally, to coerce him to sell his Sibneft stake.
She also rejected Berezovsky’s claim that he had an agreement that gave him an interest in any aluminum holdings that Abramovich might acquire after 1999. There was never any agreement that entitled Berezovsky to shares in the aluminum company RusAl, she added.
The case hinged on four alleged oral agreements and almost every aspect of those alleged deals was in dispute, the judge said.
“Significantly there were no contemporaneous notes, memoranda or other documents recording the making of these alleged agreements or referring to their terms,” the judge said.
The burden fell on Berezovsky to convince the court that the agreements had been made, “not for Mr. Abramovich to convince the court otherwise,” the judge said.
Gloster was scathing about Berezovsky’s credibility.
“At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along in response to the perceived difficulty in answering the questions in a manner consistent with his case; at other times, I gained the impression that he was not necessarily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of events,” she said.
Berezovsky, who has lived in Britain since he fled Russia in 2001, said he hadn’t decided whether to appeal. He declined to comment on the financial implications of losing the case.
“Life is life,” he said. “Now I know what means English court better than before.”

<b>10 Things That We Learned at the Trial</b>
LONDON — The $5.6 billion legal clash between Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich offered a rare window into the lives of the fabulously wealthy. With judge Elizabeth Gloster ruling Friday in Abramovich’s favor, let’s look back at 10 things we learned during the testimony:
1. Oligarchs don’t put anything in writing. Gloster pointed out that almost all aspects of the alleged agreements between Berezovsky and Abramovich were in dispute, largely because many of the alleged deals were made orally. No one even took notes.
Abramovich said the cloud this created was partly intentional: He claimed that for a time, he went along with the fiction that Berezovsky owned part of Abramovich’s oil company, Sibneft, because Berezovsky’s political capital helped protect the business.
2. An office is no place to meet. Even when they were doing business, the two men rarely met in conventional places of business. Their meetings took place at all sorts of exotic and exclusive sites: Berezovsky’s club in Moscow; on the Riviera; in the French Alps; at the Dorchester Hotel in London; in private planes and super-yachts; and at various heliports and airports.
3. Oligarchs don’t need to dress up. In one of the trial’s most colorful scenes, Abramovich said Berezovsky kept his fellow tycoons waiting for an hour at a high-stakes meeting in 2000 at London’s Dorchester Hotel, and when he finally showed up he was wearing a dressing gown and looking disheveled. Berezovsky, who did not confirm his wardrobe choice, claimed that the description was an attempt to smear him and paint him as a Godfather-like mafia figure.
4. A million dollars is nothing. Abramovich said Berezovsky was down to his last $1 million when he fled from Russia in 2000.
“He would not have lived long on that,” Abramovich testified.
5. Witnesses are more effective when they have an incentive. Berezovsky admitted in court that he had promised two potential witnesses 1 percent shares of his judgment — potentially tens of millions of dollars — if he won his case.
6. An oligarch is most vulnerable when shopping. It wasn’t easy for Berezovsky to serve notice that he intended to sue Abramovich. He told The Associated Press that he carried the legal papers in his car for six months while he tried to track Abramovich down, once making a trip 320 kilometers north of London.
“I even flew to Manchester to a game between Manchester United and Chelsea, but he was with 20 bodyguards. It was impossible to give him papers,” Berezovsky said at the time.
Berezovsky finally got his chance on London’s swank Sloane Square, when he spotted Abramovich shopping in a Hermes boutique. Berezovsky walked in, to the horror of Abramovich’s security detail, and served him.
7. Every house needs a roof. The Russian word most bandied about during the trial was “krysha,” which means roof. It also means political patronage that blurred the line between business, politics and shady mafia dealings.
Abramovich testified that in the 1990s, it was impossible for anyone to build up a major business without the help of someone with business and political connections. That someone was Berezovsky, who he claimed demanded millions of dollars in return for protection.
From yachts to French vacation homes to girlfriends’ bills, Abramovich testified that there was nothing he didn’t pay for to subsidize Berezovsky’s extravagant lifestyle.
8. It started with a quack. Abramovich may be one of Russia’s wealthiest men today, but his origins are humble. He was orphaned as a child, and lived with relatives. He did not finish college and went straight into business — his first venture comprised of selling rubber ducks.
9. It pays to be honest. Gloster’s judgment did not use the “L” word, but she did not mince her words in calling Berezovsky “an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be molded to suit his current purposes. At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along ... at other times, I gained the impression that he was not necessarily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of events...
“I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr. Berezovsky’s credibility is that he would have said almost anything to support his case.”
Outside court, Berezovsky denied he was dishonest – and instead maintained that Abramovich was the liar.
10. The winner doesn’t really take it all. Sure, Abramovich won the case. But let’s not forget who’s laughing all the way to the bank: London’s lawyers. Each party shelled out untold sums to hire some of the world’s top lawyers.