SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1730 (41), Wednesday, October 10, 2012
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TITLE: Moscow Mayor Speaks Out Against Construction of Mosques
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin spoke out against construction of a large number of mosques for the city's booming Muslim population because many worshippers are not Muscovites.
Sobyanin told reporters late Thursday that a residency check revealed that "two-thirds" of the worshippers at the city's main Cathedral Mosque were not registered in the city of Moscow.
"These are either people from the Moscow region or migrants without residency permits," he said in comments carried by Interfax.
Analysts and a prominent opposition leader said Friday that the comments were discriminatory and risked inciting renewed ethnic tensions.
Sobyanin said Thursday that "if only Muscovites came to the mosque, people who live here on a permanent basis and have residency status, there probably wouldn't be such a huge crowd."
In August, some 90,000 worshippers packed the streets around the Cathedral Mosque, near Olimpiisky Stadium, to mark the end of Ramadan.
Muslim leaders have long complained that Moscow, with just four mosques for an estimated 2 million worshippers, has a huge shortage of Muslim prayer houses. The Council of Muftis has demanded that a mosque be built in each of the city's 12 administrative districts.
But authorities have been quick to abandon plans to construct mosques following protests by locals.
Last month, City Hall announced that it was scrapping plans to build a large mosque in Mitino after 2,000 people gathered in the northwestern neighborhood to protest the mosque's construction.
Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party and a former City Duma deputy, said Sobyanin's argument was "weird" because the city's Christian churches were also used by nonresidents.
"Rather than formulating a policy for a multiconfessional city, he allows himself [to make] statements that can lead to interreligious tension," Mitrokhin told The St. Petersburg Times.
Mitrokhin added that City Hall was "going along" with an Orthodox Church program of "mass construction of churches." He said local residents also felt provoked when churches were being built in "inappropriate" places, such as parks.
Olga Sibiryova, an analyst for the Sova think tank, said Sobyanin's statement is discriminatory because City Hall is not doing anything about protests of Orthodox church construction and because authorities are unlikely to conduct checks on the residency status of Christians.
"Ultimately, the lack of mosques might incite more tensions than the plans to build more," she said.
TITLE: United Russia Heavily Favored in Regional Votes
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The first popular gubernatorial elections since 2005 were held Sunday in five regions, with the ruling party's candidates expected to win in all of them after many of the opposition hopefuls withdrew from the races.
Mayoral elections were also held in cities across the country, including in the Moscow region town of Khimki, where opposition leader Yevgenia Chirikova was running, along with thousands of other local votes, amid scattered reports of elections violations and low turnout in many regional contests.
A total of 4,866 elections took place in the regions Sunday, according to the Central Elections Commission. No elections were held in Moscow.
Voters chose governors in the Bryansk, Ryazan, Belgorod, Novgorod and Amur regions. Mayors were elected in the western city of Kaliningrad as well as in the Moscow region towns of Khimki, Elektrogorsk, Sergiyev Posad and Pushkino, and in other towns across Russia.
United Russia candidates were favored in all the gubernatorial races, and the ruling party was expected to outperform its competitors in many of the local and other regional races as well.
By Sunday afternoon, preliminary results had been counted in the Far East, which is seven hours ahead of Moscow. United Russia was leading amid low turnout in votes for the governor of Amur region and legislatures in Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Sakhalin, media reports said.
Dmitry Travkin, head of United Russia's Central Executive Committee, said the ruling party was leading in the eastern part of the country according to preliminary vote results.
"This is a result of the fact that United Russia had offered an agenda that [Russian] residents understand," Travkin said, according to comments posted on the ruling party's website.
But Communist State Duma Deputy Sergei Obukhov noted that turnout was low in the Far East, calling it "explicit passivity," saying it showed that "voters don't believe that elections will be held honestly," Interfax reported.
Turnout appeared to be particularly low in the Kaliningrad mayoral election, in which just under 13 percent of voters had participated by 3 p.m., Interfax reported.
Golos, Russia's only nationwide independent elections watchdog, began registering election violations soon after the polls opened, including reports that the rights of vote monitors and reporters had been breached at polling places and that rules on campaigning were being broken.
Golos observers said elections officials obstructed monitors and reporters by barring them from entering polling stations, restricting their movements, and limiting their ability to take photos and record video.
On a smaller scale, the organization's members also cited instances of repeated voting by the same groups of people at different polling stations, or so-called carousels, as well as ballot stuffing and voting for other people.
The Central Elections Commission got into a verbal battle with Golos regarding a statement by a Golos official made days before the elections saying that no one expected the contests to be honest, and accused the organization of falsifying reports of violations.
“On Golos' violations map, the statistics are artificially, inflammatorily being slanted to fit that ideologue,” deputy elections chief Leonid Ivlev told journalists at the elections commission press center Sunday, Interfax reported.
Golos director Lilia Shibanova shot back that evidence from the organization showed that the elections were not free and open.
“When we have shown that 74 percent of independent observers were not registered at polling places; when we have shown inequality in campaigning in the media; when we have shown in long-term observations that there has been a mass withdrawal of candidates, and usually the most active and impressive — all that indeed pointed to the elections in Russia not being able to be called competitive,” Shibanova told Interfax.
Sunday's elections for governors were the first since they were restored earlier this year in legislation seen as a response to mass street demonstrations that broke out in December following a disputed parliamentary vote. Direct gubernatorial elections had been eliminated by President Vladimir Putin in 2004.
Under the law reinstating the elections, gubernatorial candidates must pass multiple so-called “filters.” Hopefuls have to gather signatures from 5 to 10 percent of municipal deputies in a region, and political parties are required to consult with the president before nominating a candidate if the president asks them to.
The incumbent in the far eastern Amur region, Oleg Kozhemyako of United Russia, was set to win his race, gaining 77 percent of the vote with 98 percent of ballots counted, Interfax reported. The next highest vote total went to Communist Party candidate Roman Kobyzov with 10 percent.
In the Bryansk region near the Belarussian border, Governor Nikolai Denin of United Russia looked to be on course for victory despite low popularity against his sole competitor, Communist Party candidate Vladimir Potomsky.
Candidates from the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and the liberal Yabloko party had withdrawn from the race last week, in moves expected to benefit Denin. A local court had removed Denin from the contest, but he was put back after winning an appeal with the Supreme Court.
Potomsky's vote monitors said they had observed massive ballot stuffing and carousels, Potomsky told Interfax. The turnout was at just under 35 percent in the region at 6 p.m., two hours before polls were set to close, according to the Central Elections Commission.
Dozhd television reported that a Mercedes owned by a local United Russia lawmaker was allegedly used to hand out absentee ballots in the region. When Potomsky's monitors told the people inside the Mercedes that police had been called to examine their activities, the car tried to flee, picking up one of the observers on its hood and carrying him for some 300 meters.
In Ryazan, a region about 150 kilometers southwest of Moscow, United Russia candidate and acting Governor Oleg Kovalyov was also up against a Communist Party hopeful as his main rival, State Duma Deputy Vladimir Fedotkin. Kovalyov was favored in the race.
Fedotkin filed six complaints with the regional elections commission alleging violations, news agency Media Ryazan reported. Turnout stood at just under 35 percent at 6 p.m. in the region.
Multiple candidates, including a popular one from the Patriots of Russia party, had dropped out of the Ryazan race in recent weeks.
The two current governors in the other gubernatorial races — Sergei Mitin in the Novgorod region and Yevgeny Savchenko in the Belgorod region — were expected to win their elections easily. Turnout stood at 30 percent in Novgorod and about 48 percent in Belgorod at 6 p.m.
In the Novgorod region, monitors of the Liberal Democratic Party's candidate complained to elections officials that detention center officials had coerced prisoners to vote for a certain candidate in exchange for perks, Novgorod.ru reported.
Regional legislatures were elected in regions including the republic of North Ossetia, Krasnodar and Penza, while municipal legislatures were chosen in Barnaul in Altai region, Vladivostok, Kursk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, among other cities and towns.
Fights erupted at two polling stations over electoral violations in Vladikavkaz, the regional center of North Ossetia in the North Caucasus, where people voted for the regional legislature and in a number of local elections, Yuga.ru reported.
One fight broke out between elections officials, voters and monitors after observers from the Patriots of Russia party noticed a man who they said tried to vote without a passport. The other fight broke out between observers from Patriots of Russia and other observers after the latter remarked that the Patriots monitors were filming polling stations in unauthorized locations.
The Patriots of Russia party in turn complained that their monitors in North Ossetia were not allowed to move freely around polling stations and were removed by police when they pointed out violations, party spokesman Yury Fidarov told Regnum.
The regional elections commission refused to comment to Regnum about the party's complaints.
TITLE: Dvorkovich Confirms $192M For Drought Relief
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will distribute 6 billion rubles ($192 million) to farmers hit by this summer's drought that blighted Siberia and Russia's southern regions, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said.
As the last crops are gathered across the country, the Agriculture Ministry now expects the grain harvest to come in at 71.7 million tons — down from forecasts of 90 million at the beginning of the year. The 2011 harvest was 94.2 million tons.
"Everything's agreed, the changes are in the budget," Dvorkovich said Friday when asked about compensation for farmers Friday, RIA-Novosti reported.
The measure to help mitigate the effects of drought, however, is just one of several in recent weeks to have received official approval.
State intervention on grain markets to control rising prices will begin later in October. The sale of about one million tons from government grain reserves will be enough to stabilize prices by the end of the year, the president of the Russian Grain Union Arkady Zlochevsky said Friday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Offering his congratulations to those marking Sunday's holiday for Agricultural and Manufacturing Workers, President Putin admitted that 2012 had been a challenging year.
"This harvest season was really difficult," Putin said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin website. "[But] the demands of the internal market … are, of course, our priority. And agricultural producers dealt with that task."
The blanket grain export ban feared by international markets earlier this summer now looks remote. Putin said Wednesday that there were no discussions about taking such a step.
Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fedorov has reassured farmers that state assistance for agriculture will not fade. Suggestions that Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization could hit financing were "nonsense," he said Thursday, RIA-Novosti reported.
About $48 billion is earmarked from the budget to support agriculture through 2020, he added.
TITLE: Fog Disrupts St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — St. Petersburg's main airport temporarily halted all inbound and outbound flights Sunday morning due to thick fog shrouding its runways.
Pulkovo Airport's press service said in a statement on its website that airport management took the decision to halt all flights from 8:40 a.m., citing adverse weather conditions.
In a separate statement released lunchtime, the airport's press service said the fog had cleared and that a normal service would be resumed as quickly as possible.
As of midday, at least 38 flights had been delayed by the airport's closure, including 24 departures and 14 arrivals, Interfax reported.
All flights heading for Pulkovo Airport on Sunday morning were rerouted via Moscow, Arkhangelsk or Tallinn, the news agency said.
Services were also disrupted Monday morning, according to web portal Fontanka.ru.
Passengers are advised to check the situation on the airport’s website www.pulkovoairport.ru/ before traveling.
TITLE: Transaero Seeks Leading Role at Vnukovo
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Transaero could account for up to a third of the 15 million passengers Vnukovo Airport expects to handle next year, as the airline continues an aggressive expansion.
The company has signed a memorandum with the airport to expand services to "not less than" 2 million passengers a year, Vedomosti reported.
Transaero, which also operates flights from Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo, began flying out of Vnukovo in April. It plans to start flying new routes to London, Yekaterinburg and the Kazakh cities of Astana and Almaty from Vnukovo in 2013.
Transaero is the country's second-largest airline, after state-owned Aeroflot, and it has already outpaced the flagship carrier in the area of leisure travel, flying 2.5 million tourists in 2011, up 42.8 percent from 2010.
Results for the first eight months of 2012 show that the airline's passenger turnover has risen to 27.1 billion passenger-kilometers, up 26.2 percent over the same period last year.
It was rated the sixth-largest tourist airline in the world, according to a survey published earlier this month in Airline Business, a Britain-based trade publication.
The airline opened 23 new routes from regional airports to international destinations last year, allowing it to cash in on growing affluence outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Earlier this month, Transaero began selling tickets to a host of U.S. destinations under a code-sharing agreement with Virgin Atlantic.
TITLE: U.S. Accuses Electronics Boss of Scheming to Sell Technology to Russia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HOUSTON — The owner of a Texas microelectronics company instructed co-workers and associates to cover their tracks as they conspired to sell highly regulated microelectronics to the Russian military, U.S. authorities said in a court hearing.
Alexander Fishenko and three others appeared in a Houston courtroom on Wednesday for hearings on whether they should be granted bail before trial. Prosecutors argued that Fishenko, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Kazakhstan, was a flight risk. Fishenko's attorney, Eric Reed, said his client would not flee because he has a 7-year-old son living in the area.
A judge was expected to decide Thursday whether to allow bail.
Fishenko, the owner of Houston-based Arc Electronics Inc., and seven of his employees were arrested last week. They are accused of scheming to illicitly sell military technology to Russia, starting in 2008.
In a case with Cold War-era echoes, U.S. authorities say Fishenko was running a Houston-based company that obtained highly regulated technology and clandestinely exported it to Russia for use by that country's military and intelligence agencies. The microelectronics could have a wide range of military uses, including radar and surveillance systems, weapons guidance systems and detonation triggers, U.S. authorities say.
Reed has said he plans to review the charges against his client with a critical eye. The Russian Foreign Ministry has noted that the defendants are not charged with espionage.
"I think these are fairly dramatic allegations that we will certainly take a hard look at to determine whether there is any evidence to back that up," Reed said.
FBI special agent Crosby Houpt testified Wednesday that Fishenko knew the microelectronics were eventually going to the Russian military and took pains to hide that knowledge with phone conversations and e-mails.
Fishenko is accused of coaching the companies in Russia that were working with his firm to remove all references to a known supplier to the Russian military.
Houpt also said a letter from the manufacturer Toshiba said the company did not know its products were being shipped overseas by Arc Electronics. In the letter, Toshiba said it planned to file a voluntary report with the U.S. Commerce Department — which made Fishenko and others nervous, Houpt said.
According to court documents, Fishenko was born in Kazakhstan and graduated from a technical institute in St. Petersburg before coming to the U.S. in 1994. In his initial asylum application, Fishenko stated he had no prior military experience, but elsewhere he claimed to have served in a Soviet military intelligence unit in Berlin in the 1980s, according to court records.
Fishenko filed paperwork with the Texas secretary of state to form a for-profit corporation with his Houston business, Arc Electronics, in 2001. His company proved to be successful, earning him about $50 million in gross revenue since 2002.
TITLE: Udaltsov Questioned Over NTV Claims
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov was questioned by investigators Thursday in connection with a documentary accusing him of plotting a revolution in Russia.
"Anatomy of a Protest 2," which aired last Friday on state-controlled NTV, included footage that it said showed Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement, receiving instructions from Givi Targamadze, the former head of the Georgian parliament's defense committee and a close ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, about how to trigger mass riots across the country.
"Udaltsov confired that in summer 2012 he contacted unnamed Georgian citizens, one of who he identified as Georgy Vasilyevich," the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
It also said Udaltsov acknowledged discussing possible legal resources to fund the Left Front, but not any illegal plans to start a violent revolution.
"I absolutely deny receiving any money and orders from from foreign agencies," Udaltsov said on Twitter after the questioning.
He has repeatedly said that the documentary was a fake and that he didn't recall meeting Targamadze.
The NTV documentary said that Targamadze was involved in color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. The day after the program was aired, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika ordered an investigation into its claims.
Investigators plan to study the original videos used by the channel to verify its credibility.
TITLE: Turkey Says Syria Plane Carried Russian Ammunition
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that a civilian plane headed to Syria grounded by Turkish fighter jets was carrying Russian-made munitions, an announcement that could put strain into Moscow's relationship with Ankara.
Erdogan said the plane was carrying ammunition from the Russian equivalent of Turkey’s Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation to the Syrian Defense Ministry.
His comments followed a murkier description of the cargo, found on the Syrian Air jet flying from Moscow to Damascus on Wednesday, by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had said earlier Thursday that Turkey had grounded the plane based on intelligence that its cargo was “of a nature that could not possibly be in compliance with the rules of civil aviation.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry, which did not give official comment on the nature of the cargo, said it was “troubled” by Turkey’s grounding of the plane, which it said had 17 Russian citizens on board, alleging that the incident had endangered their lives.
“The Russian side continues to insist on an explanation of the reasons for these actions by the Turkish authorities in relation to Russian citizens and that measures be taken to prevent such incidents in the future,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.
An unidentified Russian arms export official on Thursday denied that the plane was carrying arms.
Davutoglu said it was “unacceptable” for the country’s airspace to be used for weapons transfers to the Syrian government, which Turkey fervently opposes.
“We are determined to control weapons transfers to a regime that carries out such brutal massacres against civilians,” Davutoglu said in remarks shown live on Turkish television.
Erdogan’s announcement that there were Russian-made munitions on the plane could produce tension in Turkish-Russian relations.
A report published in Thursday’s issue of Vedomosti said President Vladimir Putin had delayed a trip to Ankara previously set for Sunday. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Interfax that the visit could take place Dec. 3.
Russia is one of Syria’s few close allies after months of civil unrest that has killed thousands of Syrians and recently spilled over the border into Turkey.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Turkish F-16 fighter jets forced the Syrian Air A320 jet with 25 to 35 passengers on board to land at Ankara’s airport, where Turkish authorities removed communications equipment, radios and radio jammers before allowing the plane to leave nine hours later, at 2:30 a.m., local media reported.
Syrian Air, the country’s national air carrier, offers a weekly charter flight between Damascus and Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. The plane left 20 minutes after its scheduled departure time of 3:06 p.m. Wednesday, Interfax said, citing airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova.
Lukashevich, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Russia has demanded an official explanation from Turkey for grounding the plane.
On Thursday, Turkey’s ambassador to Russia visited the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, while the Russian ambassador to Turkey went to the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara for talks.
Russian officials and military analysts cast doubt on Turkey’s claims that the plane was carrying arms, saying it was unlikely that Russia would transport weapons on a civilian aircraft.
Yelena Kara-Sal, an official at the Russian Consulate in Ankara, told Itar-Tass that the equipment on board was not Russian in origin, while a senior Russian official from the arms export industry denied that any military equipment could have been found.
“No weapons, systems or other kinds of military equipment was on board the passenger aircraft, nor could there be,” the unidentified official told Interfax.
He said Russia would never carry out military sales to Syria illegally, “especially with the use of civilians.”
That view was echoed by defense industry analyst Igor Korotchenko, who said he doubted that Russia would use a civilian plane to carry military equipment.
Korotchenko also said Turkey would be more open on the details of the seized cargo if it was military in nature.
“If they found something like that, it would be immediately shown on all the television channels,” Korotchenko, editor of the National Defense magazine, said.
But the arms export official who spoke to Interfax pointed out that Russia has not halted military cooperation with Syria.
Russia has been a major arms supplier to Syria in recent years, with sales of $1.3 billion over the period 2002-2009.
In June, a Russian cargo ship carrying helicopters destined for Syria was forced to turn back after the ship’s British insurer canceled its coverage. Russia said at the time that the helicopters had been undergoing maintenance in Russia.
An unidentified military official told Interfax in July that the helicopters would be delivered to Syria after the country stabilizes.
Alexander Perenzhiyev, a member of the Association of Military Experts, said Syria is not interested in a fight with Turkey and that a third party might be trying to provoke a conflict.
TITLE: Nuclear Dismantlement Program's End Draws Near
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — News that Moscow wants to end a multibillion-dollar program with Washington to dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons triggered fears Thursday that the Kremlin is embarking on an increasingly isolationist foreign policy course.
The Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that the United States wants to prolong the so-called Nunn-Lugar program, which expires next year, but that it believes the agreement is outdated in its current form.
"[Our] American partners know that their offer is not in accordance with our ideas about … future cooperation. For this, a different and more modern legal framework is needed," the ministry said in a statement on its website.
The Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which is named after U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, funds safety enhancement efforts at nuclear weapons sites, the dismantling of nuclear submarines and the elimination of chemical weapons. Since its inception in 1992, the program has funneled some $5 billion in U.S. taxpayers' money to Russia, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Russian officials now say they dislike the program because it reduces the country to aid recipient status.
"We are not satisfied with this agreement, especially given the new realities of the changed situation in Russia, including the fact that our financial capabilities are now substantially bigger," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax on Wednesday.
He added that Moscow wants a new arrangement to treat it fairer. "We are interested in a normal, peer-to-peer collaboration that benefits both sides," he said.
However, U.S. officials were adamant that they want to see Nunn-Lugar carried on. "Maybe it will take on another format, but in substance the cooperation will continue,"Ambassador Michael McFaul told Interfax on Wednesday.
Lugar himself said Wednesday that his understanding was that Moscow just wanted to change the program. During talks in Moscow in August, Foreign and Defense Ministry officials showed "a desire to make changes," but at no time did they indicate that "they were intent on ending it, only amending it," Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, said in a statement on his website.
He added that during his visit to a missile dismantlement facility in Surovatikha in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Federal Space Agency officials welcomed prospects for future work. "There are several more missiles we could work on this year at the [facility], all of them capable of carrying multiple warheads with hundreds of kilotons of nuclear yield," he said.
Experts linked the move to the Kremlin's recent policy of opting out of international aid and development programs.
On Oct. 1, USAID had to close its operations in the country after the Foreign Ministry accused Washington's biggest development agency of political interference.
Earlier this week, the ministry said it had given UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, until the end of the year to wrap up its existing programs in Russia. In both cases, the ministry argued that Russia should no longer act as a recipient of aid but as a donor.
Critics have said those cancellations damage many domestic organizations that have to look for domestic funding, which is harder to get and often scarce.
The Foreign Ministry's Nunn-Lugar decision elicited similar criticism. "Declarations of self-sufficiency to dispose of ammunition sound good in light of the explosion of thousands of shells in the Orenburg region," a Vedomosti editorial said Thursday.
Four kilotons of munitions, including Uragan missiles, exploded at an Army base in the Urals region Tuesday. Prosecutors later said the blasts were caused by soldiers' cigarettes.
Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, denied that Nunn-Lugar could be linked to aid cooperation. He told Interfax that the government had already mulled opting out in 2006, when the agreement was last up for prolongation. He also said most of the program had already been fulfilled.
Analysts said Thursday that the Kremlin’s stance on the program reflected similar trade-offs as with USAID. “On the one hand, there is a clear will to end dependence from the U.S., especially in the defense sector. On the other hand, there are benefits from receiving more money,” said Alexander Khramchikhin of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
Khramchikhin also dismissed fears that the program gives Washington too much access to sensitive information. "Real secrets are divulged only by treason or stupidity," he said.
Even some Defense Ministry officials admitted that they liked the Nunn-Lugar program. "If it will not be prolonged, we will have to find new funding that does not exist because there are no provisions for this in the state arms program," a ministry source told Kommersant.
Pyotr Topychkanov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that prolonging the program was unlikely because Moscow wants to move from bilateral to multilateral nuclear safety agreements.
"They will try to welcome Britain, France and China in those talks," he said by telephone.
Topychkanov also offered a positive assessment of Nunn-Lugar by saying that ending it now was a sign that the country's nuclear safety standards were high.
"If the current leaders believe they need no more U.S. support, this means that we have achieved good results," he said.
He added that Moscow could probably project a new nuclear security program to countries like Pakistan, India and Vietnam.
TITLE: Masked Attackers Storm Moscow Gay Club
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A gay activist says three people have been injured by masked men who stormed into a Moscow gay club in an apparent hate crime.
Viktoria Soto of the 7 Freedays club said Friday that a dozen attackers broke in late Thursday during a "Coming Out" party.
Soto said the attack was organized, and that the attackers were “especially aggressive” toward women.
Moscow police told Russian media that a young woman was hospitalized with broken glass in her eye. Police were using security cameras footage to identify the attackers.
Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993, discrimination against gays remains strong in Russia. Attempts to hold gay pride events have provoked violence by police and militant Orthodox activists.
Recently, St. Petersburg and two other Russian cities passed laws imposing fines for "homosexual propaganda."
TITLE: One Pussy Riot Member Freed by Moscow Court
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Moscow court Wednesday released one member of punk band Pussy Riot and upheld two-year prison terms for the other two members convicted of hooliganism for performing a song decrying President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.
The Moscow City Court freed Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, in the courtroom, to the joyous screams of about 130 spectators and reporters outside the courtroom where the band members' appeal was being heard Wednesday.
The court upheld prison terms for the two other defendants in the trial on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24 — issued by Moscow's Khamovnichesky District Court in mid-August.
Hundreds of reporters and spectators converged on the court building Wednesday for the appeal hearing in a case that has prompted criticism from fellow musicians including Madonna and Paul McCartney and from Western governments. Human rights groups have also denounced the jailing and convictions of the women.
The Moscow City Court judges didn't acquit Samutsevich, instead freeing her on the basis of her lawyer's argument that her punishment should be softened because Samutsevich had only planned to take part in the performance but didn't actually participate, having been prevented from doing so by guards at the church.
Her lawyer, Irina Khrunova, said Samutsevich had barely managed to mount the solea, the raised area of the cathedral where the other members performed their song, put on a balaclava and get out a guitar before guards grabbed her and led her out of the church.
The trio was convicted partly on the basis of witness testimony citing specific movements Pussy Riot members had made during their performance on the solea that had offended them as religious believers.
The court accepted Khrunova's argument and replaced the prison term for Samutsevich with a two-year suspended sentence.
She will be on probation for two years, during which time she cannot change her place of residence without notifying the authorities, must check in with authorities once a month and must not take part in similar performances or will go to prison, judge Larisa Polyakova said.
"I want to draw your attention to this," Polyakova said, raising her voice at Samutsevich, who had let out a celebratory cry in the defendants' glass cage. "Is this clear to you?" the judge said.
"Yes," Samutsevich replied, smiling.
Mark Feigin, one of the trio's defense lawyers, told reporters outside the court building after the hearing that the more lenient sentence for Samutsevich could be a kind of "political game" that authorities were playing given that "the law didn't work" in regard to the other two defendants.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International, which had declared the three Pussy Riot members prisoners of conscience, called the ruling a "half-measure."
"Any decision that shortens the wrongful detention of the three women is welcome. But no one should be fooled — justice has not been done today," the organization said in a statement.
Feigin had been concerned that the court could be influenced in its ruling by comments made by President Vladimir Putin in a televised interview Sunday, Putin's 60th birthday, in which the president said he approved of the two-year prison terms for the punk rockers.
Feigin called on the judges not to be guided in their decision by Putin's words.
"It is unacceptable for anyone, even the president, to influence the court," Feigin said at Wednesday's hearing.
TITLE: Limonov Denies Activists Acted as NBP
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Author Eduard Limonov, chair of the Other Russia opposition party, said Friday that the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which he co-founded in Sept. 1993, has not existed since it was banned as “extremist” in 2007.
Limonov testified as a defense witness at Vyborgsky District Court, where St. Petersburg activists from The Other Russia are on trial on charges of allegedly continuing the “extremist” activities of the NBP.
“I don’t look suicidal, and why should we take such a risk?” Limonov said. “No, we submitted to the ruling, without arguing with the law. How could we argue? The party was banned and that’s that.”
Limonov said he had applied for registration for a new party, The Other Russia, in May 2007, a month after a Moscow court banned the NBP. The ban came into force in August the same year.
Earlier, in February 2006, Limonov had formed a coalition called The Other Russia with liberal opposition leaders Mikhail Kasyanov and Garry Kasparov. The name The Other Russia was the title of a book of political essays written by Limonov in 2003.
A large amount of evidence presented by the prosecution in the ongoing trial was aimed at proving the activists’ connection to Limonov, describing him as the “NBP leader.”
Books by Limonov, including those he wrote as an émigré in the U.S. and France in the early 1980s, were confiscated during searches at the activists’ homes, while at the hearings, the prosecution drew specific attention to excerpts from secretly made videos from the group’s weekly meetings at which Limonov was mentioned.
Limonov, however, said that he had never been accused of continuing the activities of the banned NBP. “Never, not the slightest mention, nobody has ever even got in touch with me about that,” he said.
Limonov said that not all the former NBP members joined the new party, citing the National Bolshevik Front (NBF), the NBP Without Limonov and Natsiya I Svoboda (Nation and Freedom) as rival National Bolshevik organizations that have existed after the ban.
According to Limonov, the main defendants Andrei Dmitriyev and Andrei Pesotsky, who belonged to the NBP before the ban, complied with the ruling and became members of The Other Russia.
“The Other Russia emerged even before the ban on the NBP, because we already had somewhat different ideas of forming a different party with a different program: A mostly socialist program, a program with a slant on democratic changes, human rights activities, that kind of program,” Limonov said.
The author and politician explained that National Bolshevism is an ideology that emerged in the early 20th century both in Russia and Germany, and sharing this ideology does not necessarily entail belonging to any specific political organization.
In Russia, the ideas of National Bolshevism were developed by Nikolai Ustryalov, who was shot at the height of the Stalinist terror in 1937, while German proponent of National Bolshevism Ernst Niekisch was sentenced to life imprisonment under Hitler for his pamphlet “Hitler: German Doom,” Limonov pointed out. According to him, this ideology combined socialist ideas with those of national self-consciousness.
“National Bolshevism has never been banned, being rooted in anti-fascism,” he said.
Limonov claimed he authored the term “Natsbol” as a shortened form of “National Bolshevik.”
“It took root, and I think it has been included in the French dictionary Le Petit Robert, like [the word] ‘sputnik,’” he said.
“A [Natsbol] could be a member of a different organization and even be my opponent, as in the case of the National Bolshevik Front led by [pro-Putin philosopher Alexander] Dugin. They were my opponents, but they are also Natsbols.”
According to Limonov, the idea of starting a new party emerged long before the NBP was banned.
“We had been discontent with that party for a long time,” he said.
“The National Bolshevik Party — its very name sounded archaic — it belonged to the 1990s, we had wanted to get rid of it for a long time.”
He said that The Other Russia had not used the banned NBP’s red flags with a circled hammer and sickle symbol, as the prosecution had claimed.
“I’ll repeat myself; we are not suicidal. I would even go as far as to say we are afraid and were afraid of legal persecution, and we don’t need this,” Limonov said.
Limonov denied the prosecution’s allegations that Strategy 31 rallies, during which the defendants were detained, were NBP rallies and used the party’s paraphernalia.
“It’s solely my project, they are non-partisan rallies that people do not attend with paraphernalia; we banned it and fought against it,” he said.
“They are rallies in defense of Article 31 of the Constitution that says that citizens have the right to assemble peacefully, without arms, to hold meetings, rallies and demonstrations, marches and pickets. My idea, which everybody found witty, was to come on the 31st day of the months that have 31 days and rally in defense of this right.
“In Moscow, at one point we got strong support from human rights activists such as the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial and Lev Ponomaryov’s Movement for Human Rights, and these rallies gathered up to several thousand people.”
Limonov said that the activists had tried hard to keep the atmosphere at the Strategy 31 rallies “politically neutral.”
“For instance, a lot of liberals came to [the rallies] and it might be unpleasant for them to see the flags of opposing ideologies, for instance, a socialist one,” he said.
“We wanted people to leave their political beliefs at the door of those 31 rallies.”
TITLE: Scandal-Hit Store Listed Ghost Firms As Suppliers
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s controversial Narodny supermarket listed several phantom firms as its official food suppliers, according to inspectors for St. Petersburg’s Russian Consumer Watch (Rospotrebnadzor).
Rospotrebnadzor investigated a number of Narodny’s suppliers, including Telsi, Orkhideya, Geostar and Interform, according to the watchdog’s press service, Interfax reported.
“During the administrative investigation it was found that at the addresses where those companies were registered, there were residential properties and no legal representatives. Those facts clearly confirm the conclusions of Rospotrebnadzor about the abuse of the law by a group of legal entities, as a result of which investigational procedures are now underway,” the press service said.
“According to legislation, the supply of foodstuffs from unknown sources poses a potential hazard to the lives and health of the population,” Rospotrebnadzor said.
On Sept. 28, the court temporarily suspended the operations of Narodny supermarket for 60 days.
Located on Prospekt Kosygina in the city’s northeast, Narodny is a low-price supermarket whose activities have often come under scrutiny by the city prosecutor’s office. Members of the Khryushi Protiv (“Piggies Against”) group — founded by the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi — who proclaim their mission as a campaign against poor-quality products in food stores, performed several “quality-control raids” on the supermarket and reported their conclusions to President Vladimir Putin when they met him at the Seliger youth camp in the Tverskaya Oblast this summer.
Attempts to curtail the illegal activities of the store were for a long time unsuccessful because the owner of the commercial premises repeatedly changed the names of the legal entities renting the supermarket space.
TITLE: Contest Inspires Families to Design Dream Playground
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A children’s playground to be designed by St. Petersburg families will be set up in one of the city’s residential complexes.
The winning design in the “Children’s Dream Playground” contest will be built in the yard of the Tridevyatkino Tsarstvo residential complex in the northeastern part of the city on the order of the complex’s developer, the Unisto Petrostal consortium.
Anyone can submit an idea through Oct. 20 in the form of a childish drawing with a description of the advantages of their playground. The ten designs selected by an open vote will be shortlisted for consideration by a professional jury consisting of specialists in child development and experts on playground construction and safety, said Svetlana Agapitova, children’s ombudswoman for St. Petersburg.
The winning design will be turned into a reality by specialists in playground construction, who will create an engineering model to be tested by experts.
“With this contest we want to draw attention to the problem of children’s playground safety,” said Arseny Vasiliyev, general director of Unisto Petrostal.
“We are used to seeing children’s playgrounds in every yard. In some places they are better, in others — not so good. Unfortunately rusty swings are such a common sight in the city that many people expect nothing more. However, the quality of children’s playgrounds is a matter of the utmost seriousness, for children’s health is at stake. Every detail, every screw should meet certain requirements. To build a safe children’s playground is maybe even more difficult than building a full residential complex. A developer should carry out that responsibility to the best of its ability and ensure it is financed adequately and not on a leftover principle,” he said.
To submit a design for the playground, people should send a scanned drawing of their playground with a description to the email address of the contest organizers: Tridevyatkino_Tsarstvo@mail.ru.
The principal consideration for voting will be the originality of the idea. It should also look attractive to city residents, the organizers of the contest said.
TITLE: City Sees Hike in Visitors Thanks to Direct Flights
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The number of tourists visiting St. Petersburg this year will increase by 3.6 percent to 5.7 million people, said Tatyana Gavrilova, director of the northwestern office of the Russian Tourism Union, Interfax reported.
“It is expected that this year 5.7 million people will visit St. Petersburg: 2.5 million foreign tourists and 3.2 million Russian travelers. Among foreign tourists, the majority come from China, Germany and Turkey,” Gavrilova said, pointing out that in 2011 the city was visited by 5.5 million tourists.
Gavrilova said the positive trend of the incoming tourism volume had been influenced by the introduction of direct flights to St. Petersburg as well as visa-free regimes with a number of countries.
As a result, the 2012 tourist season was characterized by the appearance of wealthy tourists from India and an increase in visitors from Brazil and a number of other Latin American countries, as well as Israel. The Japanese are also taking a big interest in Russia.
On the other hand, fewer Spaniards, Danes, Finns and Estonians traveled to St. Petersburg this year compared to previous years.
According to the forecast of the city’s Investment and Strategic Projects Committee, by 2016 the number of tourists visiting the city will have increased to 7 million people a year.
The committee listed the visa requirement, traffic jams and the cost of package tours as factors dissuading foreigners from travel to Russia.
Speaking about outbound tourism, Gavrilova said that in the summer months alone up to 6.5 million people crossed border points in Russia’s northwest. Russian travelers most often traveled to Turkey, Greece and Egypt. Travel agents have registered an annual 15 percent increase in Russian tourists traveling abroad.
TITLE: Palace Bridge Repairs to Start
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Repairs to St. Petersburg’s celebrated Dvortsovy (Palace) Bridge are due to start in the middle of October, Boris Murashov, head of the city’s Transport Development Committee said last week, Interfax reported.
During the repair work, only four lanes of the bridge will be open to traffic.
“Palace Bridge is safe for traffic but its lifting machinery is in urgent need of attention,” Murashov said.
The construction of the span dates back to 1916 and cracks in it “may appear at any moment,” Murashov said. Therefore it is not possible to postpone the repair work until the next navigation season, he said.
The company Pilon is to reconstruct the bridge at a cost of 2.7 billion rubles ($866.5 million). Under the terms of the tender, the reconstruction work is scheduled to last from between 470 to 627 days.
Named after the nearby Winter Palace, Palace Bridge is a cast-iron bascule bridge that spans the Bolshaya Neva River, connecting the central part of the city to Vasilyevsky Island.
Construction of the bridge began just before World War I and was completed in 1916. For some time after the 1917 Revolution, the bridge was called Respublikansky, but later its historical name was restored.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Aloft Hotel Project
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s town planning committee last week approved the design for the construction of a new hotel on Pirogovskaya Naberezhnaya.
The hotel will be operated under Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s brand Aloft. The three-star hotel is scheduled to open in 2015.
The project’s contractor is Remstroiintur and the general designer is Tekhnologiya Stroitelstva, Interfax reported.
Pyotr Nikolayevich, general director of Tekhnologiya Stroitelstva, said the hotel would occupy an area of 10,000 square meters, with 180 rooms and 40 parking spaces.
The town planning committee recommended that the designers improve the façade of the building to ensure the hotel’s appearance will not conflict with the surrounding buildings.
More Toyota Cars
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Toyota Motor Manufacturing Russia increased production at its St. Petersburg plant by 1.6 percent during the past nine months, Interfax reported.
It increased production of the Toyota Camry model during the same period of time by 62 percent.
Sales of new Toyotas increased by 1.4 times to 117,800 cars, including 25,753 Camry models. The Toyota Camry is produced both at the company’s plant in St. Petersburg and in
Japan.
TITLE: Foreign Ministry Disapproves of St. Petersburg Metro Station Name
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry has weighed in on a subject not typically within its purview: the naming of a St. Petersburg metro station.
The ministry sent a letter to St. Petersburg City Hall recommending that the name of Bukharestskaya station, set to open in the city's south in December, be changed on the grounds that Russia has strained relations with Romania. Bucharest is the capital of Romania.
But the city's place-naming commission objected to the ministry's reasoning, saying the name simply serves to tell metro passengers where they are in the city: Bukharestskaya Ulitsa.
"The Foreign Ministry's letter provides a general political argument about relations between the two countries that has nothing to do with city life and specifically with its underground system," said Valeria Kozlova, executive secretary of the Toponymy Commission, part of the city administration's Culture Committee.
"The subway is a practical thing and shouldn't have anything to do with the current political situation," Kozlova said.
The name Bukharestskaya was chosen for the station 10 years ago, when construction on it began, based on the fact that it has an exit onto a street of the same name, she said.
That street, Bukhrestskaya Ulitsa, was named in 1964. The city is not considering renaming it.
The Foreign Ministry sent its letter after State Duma deputy Andrei Isayev of United Russia told the ministry he was concerned about the name.
"I asked the Foreign Ministry whether relations between Russia and Romania were amicable enough to name a metro station in honor of [Romania's] capital," Isayev said by telephone.
He said he received a reply signed by First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov saying that relations with Romania were indeed very poor and that the decision to name a metro station Bukharestskaya therefore was "strange."
An official statement posted on City Hall's website says the Toponymy Commission was informed of the Foreign Ministry's stance on the issue at a meeting of the commission Monday chaired by Deputy Governor Vasily Kichedzhi.
The Toponymy Commission ruled not to change the name of the station, but the final decision rests with Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, who is set to announce his ruling next week, Kichedzhi told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Several metro stations in Moscow have the names of Eastern European capitals, including Bratislavskaya station on the light green Lyublinskaya Line, which took its name from Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, when it opened in 1996, and Prazhskaya station on the gray Serpukhovkso-Timiryazevskaya Line, opened in 1985 and named after Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.
There was also a popular store called Bucharest in Moscow during Soviet times that sold goods from Romania such as leather bags and furniture. Relations with Romania were not particularly positive then either, particularly during the Romanian rule of Nicolae Ceaucescu.
Sergei Utkin, an expert on European politics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that while Russian-Romanian relations are troubled, the link between the political situation and the metro station name was "unclear."
"Relations between the two nations are not limited to current issues and have a long history, though it's hard to remember vivid positive moments in official relations between Russia and Romania in recent years," Utkin said.
He said bilateral relations would likely improve only after a new generation of politicians took the reins in each country, particularly in Romania.
Both the Foreign Ministry and the Romanian Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the situation.
TITLE: Lavrov Speaks Out on EU Visas
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The European Union might be dragging out the possible cancellation of the visa regime with Russia, since the main reason this goal can’t be reached could be of a political nature, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.
“We have a feeling that … the reasons on the side of our partners from the European Union are not of a technical or administrative nature,” he said at a meeting with the leaders of the Association of European Businesses. “The information is coming to us that the main reason is political,” he said without specifying the sources.
Lavrov suggested that delays in making the final decision on lifting visa requirements might be based on the “solidarity principle” in the European Union and that introducing a visa-free regime with Russia before lifting visa regulations between the European Union and the countries in the EU neighborhood, like Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia “might be politically unacceptable.”
“If this is so, it is a purely politicized approach that does not take into account what Russia has actually done to ensure the safety of a visa-free regime and is based exclusively on political feasibility,’ he said.
He said that he plans to discuss the issue at a meeting with his counterparts from the EU countries that will take place in Luxembourg next week, and he hopes they will dispel any doubts about their motives.
Meanwhile, Soren Liborius, a spokesman for the EU delegation in Russia, described such assumptions as groundless, saying making travel across borders easy for both Russians and Europeans is critical for the bloc.
“We are working as fast as we can to advance the preparation for launching the talks on visa-free travel,” he said by telephone.
Lavrov said that upon request from Moscow, the European Union had provided a full list of problems Russia needs to resolve to facilitate the cancellation of the visa regime.
Based on that list, the sides agreed on mutual steps that should be taken to end the need for visas, including the introduction of biometric passports, combating illegal immigration and law enforcement cooperation.
“After that, there is nothing preventing us from sitting down and signing a simple and understandable agreement on introducing a visa-free regime for short-term trips for the citizens of Russia and the Shengen countries,” Lavrov said.
He insisted that Europe analyze the reasons why this goal can’t be achieved in the fastest possible way and said he hopes that the sides would sign an agreement on easing visa rules by Nov. 1, an interim step before lifting the regulations completely.
Easing or canceling visa regulations is critical for boosting economic cooperation with the European Union, which remains the No. 1 trade partner for Russia, Lavrov said, adding that mutual trade reached $400 billion last year.
TITLE: Udaltsov Faces Enquiry Following NTV Expose
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has ordered an investigation into claims in a television expose that opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov received funding from an ally of Georgia’s president and the former head of Bank of Moscow aimed at sowing discord in Russia.
It was unclear Sunday what the investigation might mean for Udaltsov, who with other opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny and Gennady Gudkov has faced numerous legal problems since initiating an aggressive, anti-Vladimir Putin campaign following disputed State Duma elections in December.
But the television expose and subsequent order for an investigation appear to indicate that the Kremlin intends to keep up the pressure on the opposition after approving harsh laws that restrict their activities over the summer.
“Anatomy of a Protest 2,” which aired Friday on state-controlled NTV, included footage that it said showed Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement, receiving instructions from Givi Targamadze, the former head of the Georgian parliament’s defense committee and a close ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
In a scene presumably shot with a hidden camera, someone resembling Targamadze tells someone resembling Udaltsov that Andrei Borodin, the self-exiled former head of Bank of Moscow, agreed to contribute $50 million to the protest movement. He also promises to get another $150 million from other Russian emigres living in London.
“If the investigation uncovers an instance of a law being broken, Mr. Chaika has ordered that prosecutors undertake all necessary measures,” Prosecutor General’s Office spokeswoman Marina Gridneva said in comments carried by Interfax on Saturday.
Borodin, who left Bank of Moscow, formerly controlled by City Hall, in 2011 following the ouster of Mayor Yury Luzhkov, is wanted by Russian authorities on mismanagement charges and currently lives in London.
In the video, the Targamadze look-alike mentions that Vladimir Antonov, a former Conversbank head who fled the country following embezzlement allegations, would back the opposition.
He says Antonov suggested that militant ultranationalists from the banned Russian National Unity movement should march on the Kremlin. He adds that Antonov had good ties with former National Unity members.
Also, he says he is considering a plot to instigate a rebellion in the Kaliningrad exclave that would elicit a military response. Such a situation might create tensions between Russia and NATO, he says.
The airing of “Anatomy of a Protest 2” came days after the Georgian Dream coalition, led by Saakashvili rival Bidzina Ivanishvili, won parliamentary elections in Georgia.
Udaltsov said Saturday that he did not recall ever meeting Targamadze but that he meets with so many people that the encounter could have happened. However, he denied breaking the law.
“An existence of any instances of financing from Western intelligence and … of ‘coup attempts’ would lead toward the opening of highly publicized criminal cases against me,” Udaltsov wrote in his blog on Ekho Moskvy’s website.
He added that he remained under close police surveillance for being an active participant in opposition meetings.
Targamadze told Novaya Gazeta on Saturday that he did not recall meeting Udaltsov or Antonov and dismissed the NTV expose as “propaganda.” But, curiously, he conceded that the program’s producers “might have taken” the footage “from somewhere.”
Political analyst Vladimir Prybilovsky told The St. Petersburg Times that even if a meeting between Targamadze and Udaltsov took place it was still unclear whether the footage was doctored. He pointed out that it was difficult to discern whether the actual dialogue matched the presented subtitles.
While the person resembling Udaltsov speaks with the opposition leader’s trademark husky voice, he is shown from a distance and only his profile is visible.
“This film is shown to please the most stupid portion of Putin’s electoral base. They can’t prove that Putin is good, so they show that others are much worse,” Prybilovsky said.
On the program, Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov claims Udaltsov could be manipulated by “Russian enemies” because of his “passion” for the opposition movement.
The leftist Udaltsov endorsed Zyuganov’s 2010 presidential campaign. Although he is not a member of the Communist Party, many pundits have said he is a possible successor to Zyuganov.
The “Udaltsov-Targamadze” footage was the only new allegation against the political opposition. The other parts of the program essentially repeated previous accusations — such as opposition leader Boris Nemtsov having ties to the U.S. — that featured in the first “Anatomy of a Protest” in March.
In his blog, Nemtsov called the recent program “untalented” and said it was targeting the opposition ahead of the Oct. 21 elections for the movement’s coordination council, which is expected to represent different opposition groups among them liberal, nationalist and leftist.
Some analysts said the program was trying to play on political differences between the various opposition groups, mentioning the existence of far-right elements among the protest marches.
TITLE: Most Russians View Putin Era Positively
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Most Russians believe that the Vladimir Putin era has brought positive changes, although Putin’s approval ratings are far from uniform across the country, a poll released Monday said.
Five months into Putin’s third term as president, sixty-four percent of respondents told the state-run VTsIOM pollster that his work as president has brought improvements, with 83 percent of United Russia supporters and 74 percent of those in midsize towns backing the country’s leader.
But Communist Party faithful and inhabitants of Moscow and St. Petersburg reacted less favorably to Putin’s time as head of state. Thirty-five percent and 20 percent of those polled in these two groups said life under Putin had noticeably deteriorated.
Respondents said Putin had achieved the most in international relations (45 percent) and in raising people’s standard of living (44 percent), while they were ambivalent toward his efforts to decrease unemployment and policies in the troubled North Caucasus republics.
Among areas where Putin should focus future efforts, respondents said he should concentrate on further raising people’s standard of living (18 percent); tackling corruption and providing good-quality, free medical care (14 percent); and boosting industrial and agricultural output (13 percent).
VTsIOM questioned 1,600 people for the survey, which was carried out Sept. 29 to 30 in 46 Russian regions. The pollster gave a margin of error of 3.4 percent.
TITLE: Public Support for Protests Slides
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Public support for large opposition protests is slipping, with 39 percent of Russians continuing to support them, compared with 44 percent after disputed State Duma elections in December, according to a new poll released Monday, Interfax reported.
The poll, conducted by the independent Levada Center, found that only 17 percent of respondents would attend protests against election fraud if they were held in the near future. The majority, 74 percent, said they would not participate.
The last March of Millions was held Sept. 15, attracting about 10,000 to 30,000 people in Moscow, according to estimates. No new rally has been scheduled, but opposition leaders have discussed holding one in late October.
While most Russians are in no mood to protest elections, many are unhappy with the government’s decision several years ago to remove the “against all” line from ballots, Levada found in a second poll released Monday, which indicated that 74 percent of Russians think the line should be brought back, while 15 percent opposed the idea.
TITLE: Residents Evacuated After Orenburg Explosions
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Three train cars carrying ammunition to an Orenburg region military base exploded Tuesday, sending a white cloud of smoke into the air and causing emergency workers to evacuate thousands of residents from the surrounding area.
As a result of the explosions, which took place at the Donguzsky base at about 1 p.m. local time, up to 10,000 residents of two nearby towns were being evacuated Tuesday afternoon, emergency officials told Interfax. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties in the incident, but Interfax reported that ambulances and rescuers had set out for the base.
When questioned about the cause of the explosions, emergency officials told RIA-Novosti that they were triggered by a fire at the Donguzsky base’s ammunition-loading station.
Local media said the explosions shattered windows and felled trees in the adjacent town of Donguz and that traffic on local roads was at a standstill to allow firefighters and ambulances to access the military base.
In Orenburg, the regional capital located some 30 kilometers from the scene of the explosions, residents reported feeling shockwaves.
In a video shot in Orenburg and posted on YouTube, a white smoke cloud can be seen rising on the horizon. Minutes into the clip, a loud crack is heard, setting off car alarms in the vicinity.
This is not the first time that discarded ammunition has exploded at the Donguzsky base. Six soldiers have suffered injuries in minor incidents since late August, Gazeta.ru reported.
TITLE: Putin Dismisses Criticism on Birthday
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said in a first-person documentary aired on his 60th birthday Sunday that the current generation of opposition leaders needs to be cast aside, and he brushed aside concerns that the two-year jail sentence for punk bank Pussy Riot was too severe.
The documentary portrayed Putin as a tireless and no-nonsense leader contemptuous of domestic and international criticism. It also depicted a Spartan lifestyle of daily exercise, plain breakfasts and late-night working sessions.
Putin said in the program that he welcomed opposing views but that they should come from people willing to take responsibility for running the country. Putin’s dismissive remarks addressed at the opposition, which he called “husks” to be thrown out, will reconsolidate anxiety over his perceived disregard for pluralism in Russia.
Celebrations took place all over Russia to celebrate Putin’s birthday, although the Kremlin has said the president opted for low-key celebrations with friends and family. The documentary was one of a series of candid public displays of support for Putin.
The leader exuded a typical lack of self-doubt in the documentary, despite the unprecedented street protests that accompanied his re-election to the post of president earlier this year after a four-year hiatus as prime minister.
“From the very first steps, everything I did came in for criticism, but I was absolutely convinced in what I was doing and that there was no other path,” he said, referring to his first term as president, which began in 2000.
Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison in August for performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” at Moscow’s main cathedral, a verdict that drew global outrage and came to symbolize the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent.
Putin dismissed that criticism, however, and said the court was right in its decision.
“My first reaction was they should ask believers for forgiveness and that would have been that,” Putin said. “But they kept building it up and building it up, and so the whole case ended up in court, and the judge slipped them two years.”
With the band’s case coming up for appeal this week, some will worry about the court’s ability to reach an independent decision in the face of the Kremlin’s clear position.
Much of Sunday’s documentary focused on more trivial details of the president’s daily life and fondness for his black Labrador, Koni.
Putin was shown performing daily weightlifting exercises and swimming in the pool at his residence. In an apparent demonstration of Putin’s attachment to his work desk, the narrator explains that Putin keeps a flask of tea under his desk.
Koni was seen at her master’s side almost at all times and was on occasion lightly chided. “Koni, stop being a pest; it’s not nice,” he tells the dog as she sniffs at the interviewer.
Later, while the two discuss the ingredients of a vegetable juice made by Putin — of which two elements are garlic and horseradish — the president tells the dog “no, Koni, you can’t have any.”
TITLE: Disabled Passengers Barred From Flight
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A group of people in wheelchairs were blocked from boarding an Air Berlin flight to Germany at Domodedovo Airport early Monday due to an airline policy limiting the number of immobile passengers in wheelchairs on a flight.
One person in the group, which was traveling to Dusseldorf for a conference on creating accessible environments for people with disabilities, said the incident highlighted the need to pass legislation specifying the transportation rights of people with disabilities.
Vladimir Krupennikov, one of the disabled conference-goers and a State Duma deputy, said the 34-member group had passed a security checkpoint and passport control before some passengers were turned away from the flight. Six members of the group were in wheelchairs, he said.
When the passengers were boarding, the airplane’s captain said he couldn’t allow so many disabled passengers due to safety issues, stranding 13 passengers at the airport, including all six group members in wheelchairs.
Anton Steklov, one of the group members who did not board the flight, told RIA-Novosti that the captain cited an internal Air Berlin regulation stating that only two wheelchair users are allowed on a single flight.
“When we asked them to show us the regulation, Air Berlin representatives refused,” Krupennikov said.
He said the group had notified the airline a month earlier that a large group of disabled people in wheelchairs would be traveling on the Monday morning flight.
“Two weeks before the flight, they made us give them information on the wheelchairs we use but said nothing about possible problems with allowing us onto the flight,” he said.
An Air Berlin spokesman said that the group had provided incorrect information regarding their passengers in wheelchairs and that the captain was following airline rules.
“Two of the disabled passengers were registered as incapable of moving at all, while four others were listed as in need of a wheelchair only until the airstairs. During boarding, it turned out that all six wheelchair users couldn’t move unaided,” the spokesman said.
The captain then decided to allow only two of the wheelchair passengers on board, in accordance with Air Berlin internal safety regulations, the spokesman said. All the group members in wheelchairs declined to board after the captain’s decision, however.
Members of the group are going to sue Air Berlin, seeking compensation for the unused plane tickets and for emotional distress, he said.
Air Berlin, which has two daily flights to Dusseldorf, offered to transport the group members on different flights.
But the 13 group members got tickets on an Aeroflot flight out of Sheremetyevo Airport instead, Krupennikov said.
TITLE: Believers Seek to Close Gay Clubs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A group of Russian Orthodox believers Monday called for the closure of all gay clubs in Moscow as part of the drive to ban the promotion of homosexuality, Interfax reported.
The People’s Council, a nationalist Orthodox organization, said in a statement that homosexuality is “a grave sin” and that it was seeking to close gay clubs that “entice fragile members of society into the gay community.” Moscow has around 10 gay or gay-friendly bars and clubs, including the 12 Volt bar and Body & Soul (Chance), the city’s oldest gay club, according to various Internet listings.
The People’s Council believes that Moscow deputies should follow the example set by their counterparts in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, where the “promotion of homosexuality to minors” has already been banned.
The law, upheld by the Supreme Court, which came into effect in St. Petersburg on March 17, stipulates that companies and individuals can be fined between 5,000 and 500,000 rubles ($160-16,000) for so-called “homosexual propaganda.”
TITLE: Don’t Drink Kefir and Drive, Says Official
AUTHOR: By Max Seddon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s top health official said Monday that drinking and driving don’t mix — even when the drink in question is kefir, a fermented milk beverage containing less than one percent alcohol.
The comments by Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector, sparked an outburst of criticism and ridicule on Twitter. Dozens of users circulated a picture of a glass of kefir with the caption, “Kefir? NO! I’m driving!”
Officials have scrambling to condemn drunk driving since an intoxicated driver in September killed seven people, including five orphans, after crashing into a bus stop in Moscow. Some lawmakers have proposed life sentences for drivers who cause death while under the influence. One has said drunk driving is a bigger threat than terrorism.
During a hearing of the Public Chamber, a governmental oversight body, on a proposal to raise the minimum blood-alcohol level for drivers, Onishchenko said kefir lovers “should decide — are you going to get behind the wheel, or drink kefir?”
“Here’s a guy who loves kefir, poor baby, we’ve curbed his rights,” Onishchenko went on. “But what about when he kills our children and our citizens?”
Getting drunk from kefir is practically impossible.
The comments mark an about-face for Onishchenko, previously a staunch supporter of kefir. During record heat waves in 2010, Onishchenko suggested that traffic policemen in southern Russia drink kefir to stay cool. Last year he suggested Russians choose the healthier option of kefir over sugar-filled, foreign-made soft drinks.
Russia’s tolerated blood-alcohol level for drivers is zero, which means people who take certain medications or drink kefir can be found guilty of drunk driving. Critics allege that the law encourages police corruption, and have called for the level to be raised.
About 30,000 Russians die in road accidents each year — about the same as in the European Union, which has three times as many people and six times as many cars. Only 1,000 of those are caused by drunk driving, according to official statistics, but given lax police enforcement, the real total is widely believed to be much higher.
Onishchenko is regularly mocked for supposed health concerns that curiously coincide with political disputes. He has issued blanket bans on Georgian wine and mineral water and Ukrainian cheese amid Russian spats with those countries. As the Kremlin issued increasingly anti-American pronouncements this summer, Onishchenko implored Russians not to eat hamburgers, which he said were “not our food.”
And as Moscow prepared for unprecedented protests against President Vladimir Putin last December, Onishchenko warned Russians against taking to the streets for fear of catching cold.
TITLE: Russian Ties With NATO Strained by Disputes, Says Lavrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia's foreign minister says a dispute over the U.S.-led missile defense plans and other frictions have strained Moscow's ties with NATO.
Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow is continuing to seek guarantees that the planned shield wouldn't pose a threat to Russia's nuclear forces. He said the failure to negotiate a settlement was rooted in Washington's refusal to accept any limitations on the missile shield.
The U.S. says the missile defense plan is aimed at fending off an Iranian missile threat, but Moscow has rejected the claim, saying the system may eventually grow powerful enough to threaten Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Lavrov said Russia was ready to continue cooperate with NATO on Afghanistan and other issues. But he voiced grievances about the alliance's expansion plans and its activities near Russian borders.
TITLE: More Than 60% of Russians Back Online Censorship, Poll Says
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Almost two-thirds of Russians believe that Internet censorship is a necessary measure to restrict access to harmful online content, a poll released Wednesday said.
Sixty-three percent of respondents backed Internet censorship in the independent Levada Center poll, while only 19 percent said the dangers of the Web are overrated, Interfax reported. A further 17 percent were undecided one way or another.
The poll's findings come ahead of new legislation set to come into effect in November that will require websites, website-hosting companies and Internet service providers to remove or block content that the government adds to a blacklist of illicit online material.
In particular, the legislation aims to ban material displaying child pornography, soliciting children for porn, encouraging drug use or promoting suicide. It also contains a less specific ban on distribution of content that is illegal under Russian law.
Commenting on the new restrictions Tuesday, Alexei Mitrofanov, head of the State Duma's Information Policy Committee, told Interfax that "we won't set up a firewall, but we won't allow the sort of free-for-all on offer when the Internet was first created either."
TITLE: Russia Demands Answers After Turkey Forces Down Syrian Plane
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian diplomats demanded an explanation from Ankara on Thursday after Turkish fighter jets forced down a Syrian passenger plane on suspicion of carrying Russian military equipment on a Moscow-Damascus flight and seized some of its cargo.
Turkish F-16 fighter jets forced the Syrian Air A320 jet with 25 to 35 passengers on board to land late Wednesday afternoon at Ankara's airport, where Turkish authorities removed communications equipment, radios and radio jammers before allowing the plane to leave nine hours later, at 2:30 a.m., local media reported.
"Today we received information this plane was carrying cargo of a nature that could not possibly be in compliance with the rules of civil aviation," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in remarks shown live on Turkish television.
"We are determined to control weapons transfers to a regime that carries out such brutal massacres against civilians," he said. "It is unacceptable that such a transfer is made using our airspace."
But Russia — one of Syria's few close allies after months of civil unrest that has killed thousands of Syrians and recently spilled over the border into Turkey — questioned Ankara's decision to ground the plane, which it said was carrying 17 Russians, including children.
"The Russian Embassy in Ankara immediately contacted the Turkish Foreign Ministry and demanded that it clarify the circumstances of the incident and to ask for access to any Russians on board the Syrian aircraft, which was on a regular flight from Moscow to Damascus," said a Foreign Ministry official in Moscow, according to Interfax.
The official, who was not identified, said Russian diplomats made a beeline for the Ankara airport "to ensure the safety, rights and interests" of the Russian passengers.
Few details have been made public about the cargo seized from the plane.
But a senior Russian official from the arms export industry denied that any military equipment could have been found.
"No weapons, systems or other kinds of military equipment were on board the passenger aircraft nor could there be," the unidentified official told Interfax.
He said Russia would never carry out military sales to Syria illegally, "especially with the use of civilians."
Turkey's foreign minister played down the possibility that the incident might affect relations with Russia.
Syria's transportation minister angrily accused Turkey of "air piracy."
Syrian Air offers a weekly charter flight between Damascus and Moscow's Vnukovo Airport. The plane left 20 minutes after its scheduled departure time of 3:06 p.m. Wednesday, Interfax said, citing airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova.
She said 25 passengers were on board, while Turkish media reports put the figure at 35.
TITLE: Canadian Sold Secrets to Russia for $3,000 a Month
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A former Canadian navy intelligence officer who pleaded guilty to espionage was selling secrets to the Russians for about $3,000 a month.
Sub-lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle showed no emotion as he acknowledged to a Nova Scotia provincial court judge Wednesday that he understood the consequences of entering guilty pleas to three charges and was voluntarily giving up his right to a trial.
Federal prosecutor Lyne Decarie outlined the case against Delisle during a bail hearing in March, saying he voluntarily entered the Russian Embassy in Ottawa in 2007 and offered to sell information to them. A publication ban was imposed on those hearings at the time.
At the bail hearing, Decarie read portions of a police statement where Delisle reportedly described the day he walked into the embassy as "professional suicide."
"The day I flipped sides … from that day on, that was the end of my days as Jeff Delisle," Decarie read from his statement.
She said he claimed to police that his betrayal "was for ideological reasons" and that he wasn't doing it for the money."
Delisle, 41, worked at a naval communications and intelligence center in Halifax that was a multinational base with access to secret data from NATO countries.
Decarie said Delisle had access to the facility's secure and unsecured systems that contained information from Canada and allies, and that he shared mostly military data.
Decarie said Delisle was asked to search for Russian references in the past month on his work computer, then copy it onto a USB key and take it home with him where he uploaded it to an e-mail program that he shared with his foreign handler.
Decarie said Delisle, a father who is divorced from his first wife, received $5,000 for the first couple of transfers and then $3,000 every month. Decarie said he began doing it "following some personal problem."
He came to the authorities' attention when he was returning from a trip to Brazil to meet a Russian handler in the fall of 2011, Decarie said. He was carrying several thousand dollars after staying in the country only four days, raising the suspicions of Canada Border Services agents who shared their concerns with the police and military.
The prosecution said some time after that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took over the account he shared with the Russians, allowing him to think he was transmitting material to a Russian agent when "it was actually the RCMP opening the e-mail."
Delisle was arrested in Halifax on Jan. 13 and charged with espionage and breach of trust, making him the first person in Canada to be convicted under the country's Security of Information Act, which was passed by parliament after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
Defense lawyer Mike Taylor said the evidence against his client is overwhelming.
"You reach a point in which you say, 'OK we're toast,'" Taylor said in a telephone interview. "Barring some catastrophic happening there was going to be a conviction."
Taylor said at no time did his client put any Canadian troops in danger.
"There was no information that indicated where troops were or ships were," he said.
Taylor also suggested that the Russians put pressure on his client when at one point he tried to stop spying. Decarie said Delisle told officers that the Russians had pictures of his children.
"They had all my information. They had photos of me," Decarie read from the statement. "They had photos of my children and I knew exactly what it was for."
Delisle, wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, jeans and glasses, clasped his hands and appeared unmoved as the judge asked him whether he understood the consequences of the plea Wednesday.
Taylor said no deal on sentencing was reached with the prosecution.
Delisle is looking at life in prison, but Taylor said it will be up to the judge. Two days of sentencing hearings will start Jan. 10.
The Canadian military, the government and police have not revealed any details about what information is believed to have been disclosed.
A spokesman for Canada's defense minister said they would reserve comment as the judicial process continues.
Delisle, who joined the navy as a reservist in 1996, became a member of the regular forces in 2001 and was promoted to officer rank in 2008. He had access to systems with information shared by the Five Eyes community that includes Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
In damage assessments read in court, officials in the Canadian intelligence community said the breaches from 2007 to 2012 could unmask intelligence sources and place a chill on the sharing of vital security information among allies.
"Delisle's unauthorized disclosure to the Russians since 2007 has caused severe and irreparable damage to Canadian interests," one official wrote in a statement read by Decarie.
TITLE: Gazprom Launches 2nd Phase of $9.6 Bln Pipeline
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: PORTOVAYA COMPRESSOR STATION, Leningrad Oblast — The second phase of the mammoth Nord Stream pipeline went into operation Monday, increasing Gazprom’s options for selling its natural gas to Europe.
Unlike for the first line, no country leaders turned out for the ceremony, but President Vladimir Putin received perhaps the biggest ever tribute for his distinct role in the Gazprom-led project.
Gazprom chief Alexei Miller described the completion of the second — and as yet final — phase as a present to Putin, who celebrated his 60th birthday Sunday.
“There is symbolism in the fact that we’re bringing the capacity to its fullest during the days of Vladimir Putin’s birthday,” Miller said, addressing an audience that included former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, now chairman of Nord Stream’s board. “It’s a gift of sorts to the author of the idea.”
The second of the twin pipelines brings the combined capacity to 55 billion cubic meters of gas annually to consumers in countries such as Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Britain.
Nord Stream expects that the pipelines will carry more than 10 billion cubic meters of gas this year, company spokesman Jens Mueller told The St. Petersburg Times. The second line simply took half of the gas the first one had been transporting, he said.
Gazprom looks to export about 150 bcm of gas to Europe this year.
Alexei Miller said that Nord Stream shareholders concluded earlier that day that it was feasible and commercially viable to add a third and a fourth line to the project. They agreed that a separate company would execute any further expansion, Nord Stream said in a statement. The shareholders will decide on their participation by the end of March, which will also be the deadline for incorporating that company.
Gazprom holds 51 percent in Nord Stream AG, the Swiss-based joint venture that operates the route. Germany’s BASF and E.On Ruhrgas own 15.5 percent each, while Holland’s Gasunie and France’s GDF Suez split the rest.
When the first phase of Nord Stream opened in November, President Dmitry Medvedev, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his French counterpart Francois Fillon were on hand for the grand opening in Germany, where the pipes resurface after going under the sea near Portovaya.
Putin, Merkel, Rutte and French President Francois Hollande spoke only in video messages this time around, extolling the cooperative effort and the advantages of such clean fuel as gas.
Putin also noted that the route was free of transit risks.
Russian deliveries to Europe suffered several breakdowns over the last decade during standoffs with Ukraine and Belarus over energy supplies to those transit countries.
Before the first of the Nord Stream pipelines began operating, 80 percent of Russian gas exports to Europe ran across Ukraine.
“In any industry, it is generally considered risky for both the supplier and the customer to be so dependent on one route to the market,” Nord Stream said in a statement Monday.
Gazprom curtailed the threat of a transit disruption in Belarus by acquiring full control of the country’s gas pipeline monopoly Beltransgaz in 2011.
The highest-level government official present was Sergei Ivanov, chief of Kremlin staff, who remarked that Putin expended a lot of time and effort to make the route a reality. The ceremony was quick, and a helicopter whisked away the top visitors within minutes after the speeches and photo opportunities had wrapped up in the rain-battered makeshift white tents three hours north-west of St. Petersburg.
The Nord Stream consortium spent 7.4 billion euros ($9.6 billion) to build both pipelines.
TITLE: Heritage Council Rejects Malaya Sadovaya Stalls
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva and Yevgeny Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The council for the protection of cultural heritage has spoken out against restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin’s proposal to set up retail stalls in the city center.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s company submitted an application to set up retail stalls on Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa back in the spring.
“We consulted specialists from the Committee for State Control, Use, and Protection of Historical Monuments [KGIOP] and decided the proposed plan is unfeasible,” explained Yury Mityurev, the city’s chief architect, at a meeting of heads of the Town Planning and Architecture Committee.
“The investor, however, is very assertive: He appealed to the authorities, and we were asked to consider the issue at a council meeting.”
The blueprint for the project, which would see the appearance of the stalls along the entire length of the pedestrianized street, was revealed at Thursday’s meeting. The stalls would be positioned in the center of the street.
Prigozhin’s Concord group comprises nine restaurants in St. Petersburg and Moscow, a chain of chocolate stores under the name Chocolate Museum, two food production facilities and a catering company. In 2009 the group opened a restaurant in the White House in Moscow. Prigozhin’s company was also responsible for renovating and reopening the historical Yeliseyevsky store on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa earlier this year.
Prigozhin was not present at the meeting, at which the council unanimously rejected his proposal.
“The street’s center point must be preserved; it is a unified ensemble, and the open space should not be closed off, not to mention the fact that there are already a number of shops in that area,” said the architects.
Former KGIOP chairwoman Vera Dementyeva recommended that the street be cleared of minor business operations altogether. Her view was supported by a number of architects. The chairman of the Committee for Economic Development agreed that it was inappropriate to set up retail stalls near cultural and national heritage sites.
Prigozhin declined to comment on Thursday’s decision. The city governor will be informed of the council’s decision, said Alexander Makarov, head of KGIOP.
A representative of the Kroshka Kartoshka baked potato café-chain supported the council’s initiative. The pedestrian zone should be wide enough to allow people to move along the street unhindered, said Eduard Mezentsev, the chain’s deputy regional marketing director.
Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa is already home to a number of outdoor cafes that are included in City Hall’s approved street plan. Coffeshop Company has opened a summer terrace there for the past three years, said Alexei Fyodorov, the operational director of Kofe Set, the brand’s master-franchise in Russia. He said that the footfall of customers in the coffee shop would quadruple in the summer. He added that obtaining permission from the city authorities to open a summer terrace usually takes about two years.
TITLE: TNK-BP Russian Shareholders Consider Sale
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — BP’s billionaire Russian partners in TNK-BP indicated Tuesday that they are considering selling their stake in the oil joint venture.
Moscow-based TNK-BP is jointly owned by BP and AAR, a group of Russian billionaire shareholders. The two partners have been locked in a boardroom dispute for much of the group’s existence. In June, BP said it intended to sell its 50 percent in TNK-BP, which AAR signaled it would be interested in buying. Among the other bidders for the share is Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft, chaired by Putin’s former energy tsar Igor Sechin.
On Tuesday, AAR’s chief executive Stan Polovets said it had notified BP of its intention to sell its holding as well. Polovets said AAR would still like to buy out BP, but added that this notice to sell the stake should give it “flexibility” in resolving the shareholder situation in case their own bid fails.
In case Rosneft buys out BP, AAR may be able to sell its stake through an IPO, Polovets said.
A source close to AAR, who refused to be named because he was unauthorized to comment publicly, said that Russian group’s move would provide the Russian shareholders with an exit strategy in case Rosneft wins the bid for BP’s stake. The source said that the AAR shareholders doubt that Rosneft has the technology or expertise to match BP’s and this could hamper TNK-BP’s international expansion.
TNK-BP has been a key asset for BP, representing 27 percent of its reserves and 29 percent of its production. Its stake, when sold, could fetch some $15 billion.
TITLE: World Bank: Russian Economy Growing
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Despite near-record oil prices, the Russian economy is expanding at its slowest pace in 15 years, excluding the 2009 and 1998 recessions, the World Bank said Monday.
Economic growth forecasts have been cut to just 3.5 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2013, the bank said in a biannual report. Last year, it predicted 3.9 percent growth for 2012.
“That’s a very low growth rate given the last decade and a half,” Kaspar Richter, the bank’s chief economist in Russia, told reporters.
The downward revisions contained in the Russian Economic Report reflected slowing domestic demand, a poor harvest, flaccid investment and a volatile global economy.
“Whereas earlier in the year, growth was rising and inflation declining,” the report said, “now growth is declining and inflation rising.”
The predicted drop to 3.5 percent growth compares with the 4.3 percent growth recorded last year and comes despite buoyant oil prices.
Oil prices averaged $104 a barrel last year and are expected to rise slightly to an average of $105.70 a barrel this year and $105.80 in 2013, the World Bank said.
The expectation of faltering growth comes on the back of a 4.5 percent expansion in the first six months of this year, which made Russia stand out globally.
“Russia, in a sense, has delinked itself from a slowdown in the global economy,” Richter said.
Much of the expansion, dependent on solid consumer demand, has been built on an 11 percent increase in real wages in the first half of this year, the World Bank said.
Nonmarket wages, mostly in the state sector, increased even more rapidly: 20 percent between January and July.
Salaries were boosted for the majority of state employees in late 2011 and early 2012 as then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin campaigned to win a third presidential term.
“It is a labor market that is very good for workers,” Richter said. Unemployment shrank in August to its lowest level in two decades, according to the report.
Underwritten by low inflation in food prices, the poverty rate also struck record lows, at 17.7 million people in the first half of this year, down from 21.1 million in the year-earlier period.
But inflation is expected to pick up toward the end of the year, as the summer drought pushes food prices higher, delayed increases in utility rates begin to bite and core inflation grows.
Inflation will rise to between 6.5 and 7 percent by the year’s end, the World Bank said.
With the interbank market rate, the current inflation rate of 6.6 percent means that “at this point in Russia, in the short term, you have a negative real interest rate,” Richter said.
TITLE: New Cargo Plane Nears Commercial Production
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia has moved closer to commercial production of a military transport aircraft that will rival the Boeing C-17 Globemaster.
A demonstration flight of the upgraded Ilyushin-76 airlifter took place as President Vladimir Putin looked on late last week.
Russia has been working toward domestic production of an improved version of the airliner ever since it concluded in 2005 that efforts to assemble it in Uzbekistan had failed.
Following the flight Thursday, the Defense Ministry signed a contract with the plane-maker, United Aircraft Corp., to buy 39 craft worth 140 billion rubles ($4.5 billion).
Putin described the agreement as the biggest single deal for the Russian aircraft industry since the Soviet break-up, and he noted that only the United States manufactured similar airlifters.
“Incidentally, no other country, as a matter of fact, except us and our American partners, produces this type of machine for now,” he said at an industry meeting in Ulyanovsk.
Previously, one of the biggest contracts for Russian airliners came from Aeroflot, which placed a firm order for 30 Sukhoi Superjets, estimated to be worth more than $820 million.
The new Ilyushin-76, officially referred to as Ilyushin-476 or Ilyushin-76MD-90A, is 1.5 meters longer than its predecessor and has a larger airlift capacity, more energy-efficient Russian engines, a digital dashboard and better wings. It can also fly longer distances.
The Defense Ministry is using Ilyushin-76s that are at least 20 years old and whose service life is on the verge of expiring, said Vasily Kashin, an expert at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a research institution.
The government, including the Emergency Situations Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Transportation Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the presidential administration, will order a further 100 of the planes to be delivered by 2020, said Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin chief of staff. The airliner is convertible into a firefighting plane or a flying clinic, he said.
Additional orders could come from the country’s private cargo companies. Ivanov said Ilyushin-76s are widely used commercially for shipping flowers to Moscow — presumably from the Netherlands — seafood from the Far East and salmon from Norway.
Russia decided to move production to Ulyanovsk after it had to cancel a contract with China for the airliners because the plant in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, couldn’t assemble them, Kashin said. United Aircraft Corp. will use its Aviastar-SP unit in Ulyanovsk to produce the aircraft.
Ivanov said China and India could still be interested in a deal.
The newer Ilyushin-76s will begin rolling off the line in 2014, the Defense Ministry said.
Kashin said the United States is politically finicky about its arms exports, leaving the door open for Russia to export to countries like China.
China is developing its own airlifter of a similar class, the Y-20, but still has a long way to go, Kashin said.
Boeing exported some of its C-17’s to Britain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year.
TITLE: Putin to Replace Foreign Flotilla With Russian-Built Limousines
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin will soon travel around Moscow in a Russian-built limousine, a prototype of which has already been completed.
Putin said in an interview broadcast on NTV television late Sunday that the model was finished and currently undergoing tests.
The president and his top officials are currently driven in a flotilla of Mercedes and BMWs, but the new Russian-made vehicle will be based on the ZiL model, the official brand used during the Soviet period by bureaucrats and leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
The executive director of Depo-ZiL, Sergei Sokolov, said that the factory’s designers have been working on the project intermittently since 2004, Izvestia reported last month.
The manufacturers also offered assurances that the new ZiL limousines would be much easier to maneuver than their bulky Soviet predecessors.
In September, Viktor Khrekov, a spokesman for the Office for Presidential Affairs, told Interfax a project was under way to enlist a Russian carmaker to make multiple models of luxury cars for use by officials, including for use in official motorcades.
Khrekov said, however, that ZiL would most likely not be the producer of a new line of luxury cars, adding that other options were being examined.
GAZ Group is being considered for participation in the project, unidentified sources in the car industry told Kommersant last month.
Putin said in April that all “state and municipal” officials should only purchase cars produced within the countries of the customs union, which includes Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Kommersant report said.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 ordered his administration to examine the possibility of renewing the production of limousines at legendary Soviet carmaker ZiL.
TITLE: MegaFon To Go Public In November
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s second-largest mobile phone operator MegaFon says it will go public in London and Moscow in November.
MegaFon, the last of Russia’s big three mobile companies to hold an IPO, said Tuesday in a regulatory filing that it would sell an unspecified amount of stock at Moscow’s MICEX and the London Stock Exchange by the end of the year.
MegaFon is controlled by Russian tycoon Alisher Usamov’s investment vehicle.
Shares will be sold by Swedish co-owner TeliaSonera, which owns 35.6 percent, and MegaFon itself.
MegaFon, second only to MTS in the number of subscribers, is focused on the Russian market, unlike MTS and Vimpelcom which have expanded outside Russia.
Moscow-based bank UralSib estimates the company value at $13 billion.
TITLE: Plans for New City Axed
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Spanish architecture firm has won a state contest to design a new, sustainable city on the banks of the Volga, but the designs won’t be realized since the land on which the new city was to be built is now being sold in pieces at an auction.
The Malaga-based HCP Architecture & Engineering firm and MGPM architects from Mytishchi, a suburb of Moscow, beat out 39 other contenders to win the urban development contest this summer. The architects drafted the designs for the city, which would be near Nizhny Novgorod, about 420 kilometers from Moscow.
This is the third time that the Russian Housing Development Foundation and the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences held such a competition, but the first time that a foreign firm had won.
“The construction boom in our country, a fact that has not happened in other countries, and the experience we have acquired in the development of large projects makes us very valued outside of Spain,” said Emad Fikry, partner at HCP Architecture & Engineering.
The annual public contest is part of the Housing Foundation’s initiative to encourage the development of more energy-efficient, comfortable and affordable housing on its land plots.
“The point of the project is to stimulate architects to create interesting new projects,” the foundation’s spokeswoman, Anastasia Lim, said. “The idea is to create low-rise houses so that people don’t have to live in city centers but in areas that are next to the cities.”
But the designs for the new city near Nizhny Novgorod won’t be used because the Russian Housing Development Foundation deemed the 833-hectare property, which was used as a basis for the designs, too large and carved it up into separate plots for sale at an ongoing auction. Six of the land plots have already been sold to investors.
The winning proposal from MGPM envisioned a town that would have 10,000 housing units to accommodate up to 35,000 residents. According to Fikry, half the housing units would be low-rise apartment buildings. The city would also have terraced plots and isolated villas.
TITLE: Why Russia Smuggles U.S. Electronics
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: Among all the senior officials, only Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin felt it necessary to respond to the FBI’s arrest of former Russian nationals in the United States on charges of illegally exporting advanced electronics to Russia. Although Rogozin denied that any such shipments had occurred, he also said, “If we start saying publicly that we have a shortage of certain imported components, our oxygen will be cut off and their delivery will be cut off.” Rogozin effectively admitted that deliveries of contraband do take place.
When the FBI arrested members of a Russian spy ring two years ago, it did not understand what the sleeper agents had been up to for more than a decade other than enjoying their U.S. upper-middle-class lifestyles on Russia’s tab. This time the situation is far more transparent. Alexander Fishenko and 10 other colleagues who worked at Houston-based Arc Electronics are charged with working as unregistered agents and illegally exporting advanced electronics to Russia. Those components were reportedly used in the targeting systems of modern Russian weapons, avionics for combat aircraft and other projects that the Federal Security Service’s secret Military Division 35533 laboratory had ordered.
But it seems that Fishenko and his partners were remarkably careless. According to the FBI, they exchanged candid e-mails with Russian buyers without taking any precautions whatsoever. For example, one Arc employee involved in the illegal exports repeatedly warned a Russian buyer that the equipment he had requested was on a list of products prohibited from export or else required special licensing. At the same time, he openly boasted in e-mails that he knew how to circumvent U.S. export-restriction laws. In addition, other employees openly stated in their correspondence that they had fabricated documents.
The way Russia tries to obtain intelligence and technology says much about the country. More than anything else, the use of sleeper agents showed that the Kremlin and its intelligence agencies were still stuck in 1950s-era thinking, despite the fact that the existence of nuclear weapons made it clear by the 1960s that this type of reconnaissance was unnecessary.
Perhaps, however, there is a better explanation: The intelligence network was set up to launder money for a group of senior Moscow officials. Thus, the illegal network was either set up to satisfy the wildly Cold War-era imperial aspirations of Russia’s top brass, or else it was an illegal means of personal enrichment for powerful Russian officials.
Corruption coupled with weak attempts to imitate being a superpower have become the defining features of President Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule.
The current smuggling scandal demonstrates another important aspect of Putin’s Russia. According to the FBI, U.S. electronic components were installed in MiG aircraft, air defense systems, anti-ship weaponry and secret electronic devices created by the FSB. This is what marks the fundamental difference between the way Russia carries out industrial espionage today and how it did so under Josef Stalin. Spies working under Stalin obtained the technology behind the components and spent insane amounts of money to manufacture these products domestically. Today, China follows this same pattern, manufacturing knockoffs of Western components.
By contrast, Russia can’t pull off what the Chinese have done. Instead, Russia buys contraband electronic components. When these supplies run out, the country simply buys more. Nobody even attempts to manufacture those parts because Russia is incapable of implementing serial production of advanced electronic components in the country. One senior official from the defense sector interviewed by Interfax said 60 to 70 percent — and in some areas, up to 95 percent — of all electronics used in Russia’s defense equipment are purchased abroad.
The best explanation for this is that producing it domestically is unprofitable. In the current Russian economy, it makes much more economic sense to have a few dozen firms acting as middlemen to buy the necessary electronics from all over the world — legally or illegally, if necessary.
The much-discussed 20 trillion ruble ($644 billion) rearmament program though 2020 is supposed to finally introduce serial production in the country’s military production chain. But sooner or later, it will become evident that the new “advanced weapons” Russia is supposed to produce will be missing the electronics needed to make them work.
Still, does anyone really believe that serial production will ever implemented? Isn’t the real goal to embezzle as much money as possible by promising to flood the army with modern equipment? To procure that government funding in the first place, military officials have to demonstrate the occasional “miracle” weapon that functions with the help of smuggled electronics.
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.
TITLE: comment: Digging an Early Grave for Radio Liberty
AUTHOR: By Tatiana Yankelevich
TEXT: In October 2004, I stood next to my mother, Yelena Bonner, at an elegant dinner at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and translated her keynote remarks addressed to the participants of a conference on the impact of Cold War broadcasting. This three-day conference brought together the veterans of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and those, who like my mother and myself, represented the audience on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Our lives and the fates of the countries we lived in were directly affected by the independent news coverage and analysis coming from these programs.
My mother, in her usual direct manner, was not afraid to utter words that were not exactly in sync with the festive and pleasant atmosphere. I did my best to convey the sense and style of her remarks, though, as often with translators, it was not easy to overcome the temptation to smooth over the rough edges. She predicted that should the plans to reorganize Radio Liberty materialize, they would alter its image beyond recognition and put an end to Radio Liberty as we know it.
Two months later, in December 2004, Bonner, together with dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, wrote a comment in The Moscow Times about the danger of ignoring the reality of the times: “The Constitution has been demolished. The two-chamber parliament has been destroyed. Elections were violated. Federalism has been annihilated. Independent courts are being liquidated. The Orthodox church is coalescing with the political authorities and threatening the secular nature of the state. … Public officials at all levels are being replaced by veterans of agencies like the NKVD, KGB and FSB. … All this is taking place while almost all the independent media, the press as well as radio and television are being wiped out.”
Mothers are usually right, and in the eight years that followed I had many chances to confirm this. Still I have not felt the need to get involved directly until now. Today a grave and gross error of judgement is taking place with Radio Liberty.
It would not be an overstatement to say that Radio Liberty has been a source of free speech and free thought over the years, allowing a unique, albeit dangerous, chance to those behind the Iron Curtain to exercise the right to a free flow of information and ideas.
Today, when the regime of President Vladimir Putin has initiated a new attack on freedom of speech and the democracy movement in Russia, human rights organizations have been declared “foreign agents,” and USAID has been ousted from Russia, the U.S. management team of Radio Liberty has ended its medium-wave broadcasts and dismissed its top journalists, whose broadcasts attracted hundreds of thousands of listeners.
These actions go against the spirit and the mission of Radio Liberty. These actions dig an early grave for Radio Liberty as free and independent radio broadcasting. They put an end to the collaboration of people of high public repute, essential for a democratic public discourse, and they completely compromise the station’s moral authority.
This is why I am raising my voice against these policies. They are foolhardy at best and cynical at worst. They will quickly lead to a sad day when, to paraphrase writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, Radio Liberty will have only one future: its past.
Tatiana Yankelevich is former director of the Sakharov Program on Human Rights at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
TITLE: A thinking man’s venue
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The opening of new venue A2’s main room Saturday turned into near-chaos when thousands turned up to see French musician Yann Tiersen and formed a nearly half-kilometer line to get into the show, which started with a huge delay.
The 5,000-capacity room was packed and Tiersen later posted a photo of the crowd with their arms raised on Twitter, adding “You all look good,” while many visitors complained on the club’s blogs about having to wait.
“We offered our apologies,” said art director Claire Yalakas. “There were a number of problems, one of which was an electrical problem that caused the delay of the soundcheck, after which Yann rehearsed for two hours, and people could not be let in into the venue. I wouldn’t say it was a standard situation for an opening, but can you tell me about an opening where nothing of this kind happened?”
Saturday saw a number of big concerts happening in the city at the same time, including hugely popular band Leningrad, Afrobeat legend Tony Allen and a semi-reunion of the city’s favorites Tequilajazzz, so getting an estimated 4,000 for a Tiersen concert was a surprise for the organizers.
“To be honest, we didn’t count on getting that many people at the show,” Yalakas said. “We thought that we would get about 2,000 at best, selling not very expensive tickets, because his music is oriented toward young people in their twenties, who are not a very well-off section of the public. But we wanted to aim at this kind of audience, because Tiersen occupies a very good niche, which implies a certain pop sound, but he retains his intellectual background. We thought it was a good combination for the opening and that we’d get a crowd that we’d be able to serve easily and well.”
Located in an industrial area on the Petrograd Side, the reincarnated A2 has little in common with the 300-capacity club of the same name that its team ran several years ago on the second floor of a former Soviet consumer services center on Razyezzhaya Ulitsa.
But curiously, Tiersen was one of the last artists to perform at the old venue, which existed for two years before closing in early 2010. Back then, a long line also gathered outside for Tiersen, and the interior was overcrowded. The difference was that only 400 people came to see the show in December 2009.
“It was much colder outside, but no one complained,” Yalakas said.
A2 is owned by Natalya Leushina and managed by Alla Pelsitskaya, the same team who were behind the former A2 and Kosmonavt, which was sold earlier this year and is now co-owned by the NCA concert agency. Yalakas is art director in charge of live shows, while DJ parties are the responsibility of dance promoter Nikolai Toper.
“It’s because there’s a good team that I started to work at this venue; I honestly didn’t plan on ever becoming an art director with any club again, but it can be a very interesting experiment and very good experience,” said Yalakas, a concert promoter who was art director for a number of clubs including the now-defunct Red Club.
“They are good and reliable partners who are great to work with. Natalya likes experimenting and adrenaline. She built one club, then another and now a third, which was probably the most nerve-racking construction process and is the most difficult club.”
The club occupies a portion of Lenpoligrafmash, a massive plant built in 1890 on the bank of the Karpovka River on the Petrograd Side and officially specializing in printing machinery.
“It looks ruinous but it has very large and beautiful spaces,” Yalakas says.
“When we went there for the first time, it looked very appealing, because it had a glass roof and large windows, but unfortunately our construction workers walled up some windows by mistake, which we plan to undo later. The interesting spaces gave us some ideas.”
The original plan was to call the venue “Fabrika” (Factory), because of its location, Yalakas said, but the idea was eventually dropped.
“The name would have been very appropriate, but unfortunately it’s too overused,” she says.
Work started in March and the club’s smaller room, which has a capacity of 1,500, opened on Sept. 14 with the post-rock festival Astral, headlined by the British instrumental band 65daysofstatic.
“Everything was done in record-breaking time; if you visited the place in June, there was a hole filled with water in place of the large room, with no walls, no roof, nothing. Before that there was a large workshop with a glass ceiling, which was of course highly dangerous, because everything was black, covered in cracks, and it looked as if everything would fall apart if you touched anything. But it looked very picturesque.”
Yalakas says a number of international artists with whom she negotiated in June declined to appear because of uncertainty over whether the work would be finished on time.
“Big acts set up their tour schedules well in advance, so it was not possible to make a full schedule for the large room,” she said. However, the venue did manage to get some international acts, including Garbage, who are due to perform at A2 on November 9.
“Right until the very last moment, many people said we wouldn’t open,” she says. “Basically, everything is finished, but it doesn’t yet look cozy enough, because we had no time to complete the design, which makes our designer sad, but I think everything will be great by New Year.”
By booking bands such as Garbage, A2 puts itself in competition not only with Glavclub, which until recently claimed to be the city’s largest club, with a capacity of 2,000, but also with local sports arenas that play host to bigger international pop and rock bands.
“We’ll even have Scooter [on Nov. 30]; it’s interesting to give it a try, although the audience [of the German techno band] is different from what we initially had in mind,” Yalakas said. “But perhaps there are not so many acts that can fill a 5,000-capacity venue here, so it will be interesting for this kind of audience.”
DJ parties — most famously The World of Drum & Bass planned for Oct. 20 — draw a different kind of public from concert audiences, Yalakas admits, but are necessary for the venue to survive.
“It’s the most commercially profitable thing for the club, because the revenues that DJ parties bring in are much, much bigger than what we can get from concerts,” she said.
Tiersen fits the paradigm of the artists toward whom A2 is oriented, according to Yalakas. “The acts that the club books on its own are oriented toward a young and intelligent audience,” she said.
“Essentially, a standing venue can’t be oriented toward older people, who need some comfort; people who are able to stand for two or three hours on their feet are usually not very old, which imposes certain limitations on us. We can’t have a good jazz concert or some other kind of adult music. We hope to draw a hipster crowd, and Yann Tiersen is one of their idols.”
Yalakas cites U.S. hip-hop artist Madlib (due Oct. 16), British electronic musician Alex Clare (Nov. 6) and Icelandic experimental pop band Mum (Dec. 2) as some of the most interesting international acts who are confirmed to perform at A2 in its first few months.
“There are a lot of negotiations going on, and many contracts yet to be signed,” she said.
A2 is located at 3 Prospekt Medikov. Metro Petrogradskaya. Tel. 309 9922. www.a2.fm
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian language is believed to be rich and highly nuanced.
This made foreign journalists think hard about how to translate the word dvushechka, used by President Vladimir Putin in reference to the two-year sentences the imprisoned women of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot were given in August for an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
“The whole case ended up in court and the judge slipped them a dvushechka,” Putin said when interviewed for his 60th birthday television special, which aired Sunday.
Dvushechka sounds like a vulgar diminutive of “two,” and so news agency Agence France-Presse translated it as “a little two,” while the Associated Press news agency chose to avoid the subtleties and translated the word as a plain “two years.”
This is a pity because the Russian word says a lot about the person who uses it. It sounds loutish, somewhat tender and almost lustful, giving the idea that a man who has it in his vocabulary has certain power, finds nearly sexual pleasure in imposing it on those who cannot defend themselves and does not care about what others think about it.
In classic Russian literature, diminutives are frequently used by the most repulsive characters.
Using the word about prison terms for anybody — even if it were not young women, two of whom have young children — suggests an evil background and evil frame of mind.
After dropping his dvushechka, Putin, however, was quick to remark, “I have nothing to do with it.”
According to Putin, Pussy Riot’s performance was not political, but pure hooliganism, for which they “got what they asked for.”
If anybody had any doubts about his direct involvement, now they should not.
Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were arrested March 3, while Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was arrested March 16. The three have been held in a Moscow detention center since then.
Their crime consisted of entering the church, when there was no service being held, and trying to videotape a music performance, which was stopped by the church’s guards after less than 60 seconds.
Like Pussy Riot’s other performances, it was directed against Putin and was called “Holy Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.”
Putin expressed his satisfaction about the verdict three days before a postponed appeal hearing, due Wednesday, Oct. 10. The women’s defense said it sees his words as applying pressure on the court.
But quite frankly, an official of such stature has many other, more discreet ways to give orders to the court than via television.
A number of protests are planned around the world Wednesday, but not in St. Petersburg, where a rally was held Oct. 1. Check Pussy Riot’s support websites for times and locations.
TITLE: French connection
AUTHOR: By Alexander Goborov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This year’s Week of French Film, which opens at Dom Kino movie theater on Oct. 12, celebrates the award-winning actress Nathalie Baye.
Three of the films being shown at this year’s festival star Baye: “Every Man for Himself” (1980), a drama directed by Jean-Luc Godard; “The Flower of Evil” (2003), a thriller directed by Claude Chabrol; and “Together Is Too Much” (2010), a comedy directed by Léa Fazer.
“The festival is intended to celebrate Nathalie Baye, [who] has always managed to combine work in auteur and commercial projects and whose acting, full of subtle nuance and emotional experience, won the love of French audiences with her very first films,” said the festival’s organizers.
This year’s special guest at the festival is Caroline Bottaro, the director of “Queen to Play” (2009), a melodrama based upon “La Joueuse d’Echecs” (The Chess Player), a novel by Bertina Henrichs about a French chambermaid (played by Sandrine Bonnaire) working on the island of Corsica, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she develops a fascination for chess. According to Tour de Film, one of the festival’s organizers, “Bottaro managed to put together a truly romantic film whose intricacies and exquisiteness can only be rivaled by the staggering beauty of Corsica’s natural landscapes depicted in the film.”
Also showing at this year’s festival are the passionate drama “The Three-Way Wedding” (2010) written and directed by the French master of cinematography Jacques Doillon, as well as two thought-provoking documentaries: “Nenette” (2010), directed by Nicolas Philibert, and “Dance — Ballet of the Paris Opera” (2009) directed by Frederick Wiseman. The two films tackle very different themes: “Nenette” (given a four-star rating by the prestigious Total Film magazine) tells the heartwarming story of the oldest inhabitant of the Jardin des Plantes zoo in Paris, an orangutan named Nenette, while “Dance —Ballet of the Paris Opera,” shot backstage at the Paris Opera, is “sumptuous in its length and graceful in its rhythm... a feast for ballet lovers,” according to a review in The New York Times.
The festival also comprises a program of shorts, which will also present nominees for the Lutin Short Film Award.
“This award for short films is considered to be as significant as the César [award] for full-length films,” said Sasha Akhmadshchina, the festival’s spokeswoman.
“It is awarded to the best of more than 600 shorts filmed in France every year. For beginners, short film is often a preparatory phase before entering the big wide world of cinema. For producers, it can be a means of finding a young talent and helping them to try their hand at a full-length project.”
The week is therefore also a rare chances for audiences in St. Petersburg to see the freshest cream of the crop of short films, hand-picked by the prestigious Lutin panel.
The larger purpose of the festival is to “give an opportunity to viewers from different parts of Russia, both Russian and foreign, to re-examine celebrated French classics as well as those French films that are not available for DVD purchase and rent in Russia,” said Akhmadshchina.
The week’s program also includes many animated films, “some experimental, some scary, and some funny — all of them very different — but all are indicative of the artistic horizons that modern French directors are exploring today,” said Akhmadshchina.
“The festival does not limit itself to one particular genre or style; rather, it strives to bring out the best and the most original aspects of French cinema,” she added.
The festival, whose sponsors include the French Institute in St. Petersburg, will also be held in Petrozavodsk, Kaliningrad, Naryan-Mar, Vologda, Veliky Novgorod and Murmansk.
“The week is a complete portrait of French cinema as it stands today, a layered cake, if you will, a multi-genre festival that originated back in the Soviet 1950s,” said Yulia Starovoitova, a representative of the French Institute.
“From Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Belmondo... all the way to Nathalie Baye, Gerard Depardieu, Jean Reno and Sophie Marceau, French cinematography has captivated Russia and continues to do so today,” she said.
“The theater is full, the lights are off, and the show starts.”
The Week of French Film 2012 runs from Oct. 12 to Oct. 17 at Dom Kino movie theater, 12 Karavannaya Ulitsa. Tel. 314 0638. All films will be screened in French with Russian subtitles. For more information, visit www.tourdefilm.ru.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Armed to the teeth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Òðàâìàòèêà: traumatic or nonlethal weapon, slang
On their resumes, translators and interpreters list their education, experience and particular areas of expertise. I think it would also be useful to list areas of incompetence — subjects the translator knows nothing about, wouldn’t know how to research and moreover, couldn’t care less about. For me, that’s weaponry.
Potential clients: If you have a text that involves any kind of weapon, do not hire me. Unless, of course, you want a Monty Python sketch.
But living in Moscow where half the news stories involve some kind of mayhem, usually with weapons, even I have to figure out a term or two.
Take the recent wedding party that drove down Tverskaya Ulitsa toward the Kremlin shooting guns into the air in a curious tradition of newlywed joie de vivre. One headline read: Êàêàÿ ñâàäüáà áåç íàãàíà! I get the first part: What’s a wedding without … but fall apart on the last word. Íàãàí, it turns out, is a handgun made by the Belgian company Nagant that was used in the pre-revolutionary Russian army.
Of course, the headline doesn’t mean that the wedding party was shooting off antique guns. Like so many Russian headlines, this one is a punning allusion — in this case, to the title of a popular late Soviet-era song, Êàêàÿ ïåñíÿ áåç áàÿíà (What’s a song without an accordion). This is supposed to be a rhetorical question, although my response would be: A song without an accordion is a really good song.
But I digress. Russian divides weapons into îãíåñòðåëüíîå îðóæèå (firearms) and õîëîäíîå îðóæèå (melee weapons — that is, weaponry that doesn’t fire a projectile). English speakers and texts don’t use the latter term much. They tend to be more specific, saying, for example, that the assailant was armed with a knife or blunt weapon.
Even for a dolt like me, Russian handguns are pretty easy to understand and translate, since most of the terms and guns are imports: ïèñòîëåò (pistol), ðåâîëüâåð (revolver), ìàóçåð (Mauser), êîëüò (Colt). The slang term for all this is ïóøêà (literally “canon”). Îí îòêðûâàåò ÿùèê ñâîåãî ñòîëà è âûíèìàåò ïóøêó êðóïíîãî êàëèáðà (He opens his desk drawer and takes out a large caliber piece).
Long-barreled guns required some research and resulted in a revelation. Ðóæü¸ is a smoothbore shotgun. Âèíòîâêà is a rifle, so called because the barrel is rifled — cut with helical grooves to make the bullet spin and hit its target more accurately. Âèíòîâêà follows the same derivational pattern. Âèíò is a screw, and âèíòîâîé is helical. Cool, huh? Did everyone know this but me?
Today Russia is famous for its wide variety of òðàâìàòè÷åñêèå îðóæèÿ (traumatic or nonlethal weapons), slangily called òðàâìàòèêà. These are considered defensive weapons that harm but don’t kill. However, I gather that if used at close range by an idiot who is drunk out of his mind, grievous bodily harm may occur. I also gather that they are a Russian thing because this newspaper always adds a descriptive translation: “a traumatic gun that shoots rubber bullets or gas-fired pellets.” The classic ãàçîâîé ïèñòîëåò (gas pistol) just sprays gas.
In any case, my advice to the newly married: Consider the ridiculous American tradition of tying a bunch of empty tin cans to the car bumpers. It’s totally senseless, makes a lot of noise, and, best of all, you won’t spend your honeymoon in his and hers jail cells.
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Blood, sweat and photos
AUTHOR: By Varvara Morozova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A selection of the most accomplished work by the students and graduates of local photographer Andrei Chepakin’s school went on show at the beginning of this month in a photo exhibit titled “The Best 2011-2012.”
Hosted at the Karl Bulla Photosalon, a quiet gallery located four floors above Nevsky Prospekt, “The Best” brings together 150 pieces of documentary photography created by students and graduates of Chepakin’s Modern Photo school. Organized by the Karl Bulla Foundation for Historical Photography together with Chepakin’s art association, the exhibit is a significant landmark in the career and creative development of the young photographers.
The exhibit has no particular theme, as each photo depicts its own moment, however it does form a complete and unified whole, which could be described as an exploration of the life of contemporary people. A portrait of a schoolgirl sitting at her desk with her cheeks puffed out, a photo of young men celebrating the Day of the Airborne Forces (on Aug. 2) by jumping into a fountain, or a close-up of President Vladimir Putin greeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among the photo stories presented at the exhibit.
“There were so many works that we simply could not find room on the walls for all of them, so we had to place the rest on the floor,” said a gallery representative.
Founded by Chepakin — a prominent documentary photographer and the director of the photo desk at local newspaper Nevskoye Vremya — the Modern Photo school grew from an occasional collaboration into an ongoing project aiming to train future photojournalists and highly qualified specialists who are capable not only of finding a topic for their photo projects, but also of efficiently organizing the entire shooting process, including the visual presentation of the final result.
“At first I thought it would be a one-off project and there would be no more people willing to devote themselves entirely to working in photography,” said Chepakin about his first teaching experience. “Last year, however, some promising new photographers came to me, and the story repeated itself.”
The photos on show at the Karl Bulla Photosalon have already been exhibited in public as a part of a series of photos published by Nevskoye Vremya. The newspaper has a strong visual emphasis, with two photo sections published daily under the titles “Photo Topic” and “Photo of the Day.” The series represents another professional opportunity aspired to by Chepakin’s students, as the best photo reports and single photos serve as regular content for these two sections.
Among the photographers whose work can be seen at the Karl Bulla Photosalon are four graduates of Chepakin’s school who were his very first students: Yury Goldenshtein, Yelena Ignatieva, Alyona Kalinina and Viktoria Lamzina. Today they are not only full-fledged professionals, but also Chepakin’s colleagues, who continue to work with him as a team in varying circumstances.
At the time, envisaging the school as a one-off, Chepakin thought they would be his only students. This year, however, the Modern Photo school opens its doors to a new generation of promising students who are willing to go all out to become the next wave of successful documentary photographers.
“The Best 2011-2012” runs through Oct. 31 at the Karl Bulla Photosalon, 54 Nevsky Prospekt. M. Gostiny Dvor. Tel. +7 921 429 6369.
www.modernphoto.info
TITLE: Royal brushstrokes
AUTHOR: By Viktoria Koltsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The artist behind a new exhibit at the State Hermitage Museum is no poverty-stricken bohemian struggling to meet ends meet in a chilly garret. The author of the “Wild Swans” exhibit, which comprises decoupages and costumes for the film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, is no other than Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
“Wild Swans” features 43 decoupages and 11 costumes by the queen created specially for the JJ-Film production of the Wild Swans fairy tale. The film itself can be seen in one of the rooms of the exhibit, which was opened to the public Monday in the General Staff Building by Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, the queen’s daughter-in-law.
“The idea to combine modern technology with the art of decoupage [the art of decorating objects by gluing colored paper cutouts onto them and varnishing them] came directly from Her Majesty,” said Jacob Jorgensen, the producer of JJ-Film.
“Her Majesty is the author of the decoupages that were used as the background. She was on the set every morning from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for a month. We had two directors on the set, but really there were three: The Queen was also directing on and off,” he added.
This is far from Margrethe II’s first foray into the world of art. The queen is known for her passion for painting, church textiles, watercolors, prints, book illustrations, decoupage, scenery and embroidery, and for many years Her Majesty has been creating artistic decorations for Andersen’s tales. During the production of the film adaptation of “Wild Swans,” she also worked as a scenery artist.
Jorgensen has been working in collaboration with the Danish queen for 20 years, first creating documentary films, and then Snow Queen, another adaptation of an Andersen fairy tale.
“Wild Swans” tells the story of a princess whose brothers are turned into swans by a wicked stepmother. The girl has to save her beloved brothers from the curse, which she only just manages to do.
“My parents read Andersen’s fairy tales to me, and now the time has come when my husband and I read the tales to our children,” said Crown Princess Mary at the exhibit’s opening Monday.
“‘Wild Swans’ is a well known tale and it teaches us some valuable lessons. This exhibit is about one of the greatest story tellers, but it also tells another fascinating story about the creation of a film: The story of how Jacob Jorgensen, in cooperation with my mother-in-law, Queen Margrethe, was able to combine modern technologies with the art of decoupage.
“The queen composed the decoupages with pieces of paper, and images carefully cut out from magazines and auction catalogues. These decoupages were used as the background for the film. The actors were wearing costumes also designed by Her Majesty, and using green screen technology. The result was the creation of a magical universe. I hope this film will impress you as it has impressed me,” Crown Princess Mary added.
The exhibit is part of the Hermitage 20-21 program that aims to present the most outstanding and cutting-edge trends in both Russian and foreign modern art.
“Wild Swans” also features some items from the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense, Denmark. Among them are the first Russian editions of Andersen’s tales. A showpiece of the exhibit is an edition of his fairy tales that was published during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. Another very special place is occupied by a letter written by Andersen after the departure of Princess Dagmar of Denmark to St. Petersburg, where she became Empress Maria Fyodorovna after marrying Tsar Alexander III.
The “Wild Swans” exhibit runs from Oct. 9 to Dec. 2 at the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum, 1 Palace Square, M. Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 571 3420.
www.hermitagemuseum.org.
TITLE: THE DISH: Legran
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Golden age dining
French cuisine is somewhat richer than the baguettes, soups and éclairs that the city’s many boulangeries would have us believe, and newly opened Legran aims to restore the good name of haute cuisine by proving just that. Nestled in a shy corner of Millionnaya Ulitsa, in a district that was once occupied by wealthy expatriates (and still is, to a large extent), the restaurant aims to satisfy their tastes 200 years on.
The concept of the restaurant has been meticulously executed, in a menu divided into regional French and “old style” Russian cuisine, both limited to a dozen or so dishes in the finest traditions of “less is more.” The French side of the equation is represented by dishes from Normandy, Alsace, Brittany and Auvergne.
More importantly, the restaurant confidently passes the test for schizophrenia that is all too relevant to Russia’s fusion scene: You won’t be allowed to order such harmonious combinations as salmon sushi and spaghetti Bolognese here. The Russian menu is composed mostly of pre-revolutionary recipes that hark back to the country’s Francophile past, or at least that of the Europeanized aristocracy from the nearby Winter Palace. Think head of pike in cream or roast honey duck, rather than good old Soviet cutlets.
The interior is equally refined, starting with the elegant entrance from the cream-colored veranda out on the street and red-carpeted steps into the restaurant proper below ground level. Four spacious rooms occupy what appears to be a redesigned red-brick cellar, which the custom-made furniture, imported lamps from France and Belgium and intricate Italian plates and cutlery complement perfectly. The rooms are divided by theme: A cigar room, lunch room, private banquet room and bar, with each one outdoing the other in terms of attention to detail. A potpourri of interior accessories lends a rustic charm to the space, including old clocks, bronze-framed mirrors, statuettes, a model sailboat and a scattering of books on French cuisine, all accentuated by a soft ambient lighting that creates shadow plays on the red brick walls and arched ceiling. Comfortable velvet dining chairs and ample space between tables provide for a pleasant dining experience.
The waiters were equally drilled to convention, insistently ushering us to the cloakroom when we set out to explore the halls. Other than that minor annoyance, the service was attentive and professional throughout our visit, and the sommelier deserves special credit for choosing a wine from the extensive selection that perfectly complemented our meal: An Italian Santa Cristina Antinori light-bodied red (400 rubles, $13) for the meat, and a Sancerre Les Baronnes Sauvignon Blanc (720 rubles, $24) for the fish.
Complementary glasses of a cheesy mousse-like cream with shredded tomato were a pleasant surprise with which to start, and the appetizer of fried goat cheese with arugula salad, roasted pear, raspberries and walnuts (600 rubles, $20) was as spectacularly presented as it was excellent on the palate.
In true French style, though ordered to be cooked medium, the beef medallions glazed with cognac and blue cheese sauce (1,350 rubles, $45) were in fact bloody, but were also mouthwateringly soft, and paired excellently with the sharpness of the cheese and juicy cognac marinade over a bed of creamy mashed potatoes and steamed carrots. The other main, fillet of salmon with pearl barley and oyster sauce (690 rubles, $23) was tender and its accompanying barley was declared the best the diner had ever tried.
Riding these high expectations, the pear cooked in raspberry syrup with basil cream (430 rubles, $14) was a bit of a disappointment and did not seem to justify its high price, consisting of an average cooked pear and a slab of basil cream, which though interesting, was too meager to save the rest of the pear from mediocrity.
Although the traditions of the past can never be fully experienced and the golden age of Russian and French cuisine is long gone, Legran has reinvented the experience of fine dining, enabling one to feel like — and eat like — an aristocrat.
TITLE: Desnogorsk: Young and Prosperous
AUTHOR: By Matthew Luxmoore
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: DESNOGORSK, Smolensk Region — At a time when many of the country’s single-factory towns are crumbling, one settlement located 350 kilometers southwest of Moscow tells a different story.
Fueled by one of Russia’s 10 nuclear power plants, Desnogorsk has boasted steady growth throughout its short history. The town, which traces its roots to a cluster of apartment blocks built in 1974 to house the employees of the then-newly constructed Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, only gained the status of a municipality in 1989. It has retained an unassuming appearance, with many typical nine-story Soviet buildings. Only recently have several family estates begun to spring up in the outskirts.
More than 80 percent of residents are involved in the smooth running of the nuclear power plant, and the figures associated with the work that they perform are astonishing. Every year, the facility churns out 20 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, which accounts for 13 percent of all nuclear power produced in Russia and 80 percent of all electricity generated in the Smolensk region. A significant proportion is also exported to former Soviet states, in particular to neighboring Belarus. The plant accounts for 82 percent of the town’s industrial output, and a drive to diversify the economy away from energy is in its infancy.
But Desnogorsk defies expectations when judged against the financial stagnation that many other so-called monogorods are experiencing. The town has the youngest population of any in the Smolensk region, with an average age of 30, and for most of the past decade, it is the only one whose population has grown. Indeed, it is the only town in the Central Federal District whose birthrate exceeds its death rate, according to its website. With an average monthly salary of 32,000 rubles (just over $1,000), residents earn twice as much as their neighbors in the rest of the Smolensk region. The 2011 unemployment rate of 0.57 percent, in contrast to 7.7 percent for the region, outperforms even the economic powerhouse that is Moscow, which recorded 1.40 percent, according to the State Statistics Service. The social credentials are also impressive: Free housing is offered to a large part of the population, and a system is in place that offers extra financial assistance to young families.
But for a time, it looked like Desnogorsk would follow the fate of other monogorods. After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the government came under pressure to suspend the use of the RBMK-1000, the Soviet-designed reactor that exploded in Ukraine and remains in use throughout Russia. As a result, the construction of a fourth and final reactor unit at the Desnogorsk plant was halted and eventually canceled. A few years later, a decision was made to dismantle the plant by 2015.
In 2000, however, the government overturned the decision in a remarkable about-face and drafted plans to build a second nuclear power plant in the town in line with a nationwide drive to double nuclear power production by 2020. Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant 2, as it will be called upon completion, is due to replace the existing facility by 2027. According to official estimates, the town’s population of 30,000 will increase by 15,000 to 20,000 people once construction is complete.
No doubt the town’s location near the major 101 Highway to Belarus will facilitate its diversification efforts. But perhaps the real secret to the town’s success will lie in the resolve with which its inhabitants have worked to develop a sustainable economic base for the future. Several companies have opened their doors in the past two decades, including the Desnogorsk Polymer Plant, a 2009 finalist in the “100 Best Russian Products” competition, an annual government-run incentive initiated in 1998 as a way of encouraging domestic manufacturers to raise the quality and competitiveness of their products.
Desnogorsk’s inhabitants discuss with pride the dynamic and vibrant atmosphere of their town. Yet such overtures may conjure up disappointment for a visitor venturing out on a Saturday night. The empty streets and eerie silence can serve as an anticlimax for anyone expecting a weekly carnival.
That is until you get to the downtown area. Nestled in a small corner of the main square (a large patch of grass with a modern Orthodox church planted in the middle) is the place to be: Marzipan, restaurant by day and party central by night. Anyone who is anybody in Desnogorsk goes to Marzipan on Saturday night. The look and feel is distinctly that of a village disco: Girls in short skirts writhe around on the blindingly lit dance floor, while what seems like the town’s entire male contingent lines its edges, looking on wide-eyed while trying to gather enough courage to step forward.
Although many beautiful women can be spotted at the Marzipan, the coveted Miss Atom title has never been brought home to Desnogorsk. The beauty pageant, which began in 2004, is open to all women from former Soviet states working in the nuclear industry.
Some events do unite the town’s young population. A national youth festival held in June gathers thousands each year to celebrate Desnogorsk’s status as the “youth capital of the Smolensk region.” This year, the attractions included break-dance, beat-box and street-art competitions. The revelry served as a fitting warm-up for Heavy Water, a free rock festival in its second year whose 4,000-fan turnout marked a sixfold improvement from its 2011 numbers. Organizers of both events are convinced that they will enjoy high attendance in upcoming years.
Lying beside the town is the biggest reservoir in the region. Constructed in 1979 as a cooling pond for the nuclear power station, it is separated from the Desna River by a dam. The 44-square-kilometer reservoir is so large that it spans three districts of the Smolensk region, and its depth at certain points reaches 22 meters. A unique microclimate surrounding the reservoir, the result of its proximity to the power station, means that the water is around 10 degrees warmer than other bodies of water in the region. In addition, most of it remains immune to the ice that blankets neighboring lakes and ponds during winter. Even in February, the coldest month of the year, its temperature rarely slips below 17 degrees Celsius.
Fishing enthusiasts can catch diverse species teeming in its waters, including sturgeon and the increasingly rare grass carp, also known as the white amur. Some locals have even reported spotting fish as exotic as the tilapia, which relies on warm water for survival. A large population of crab and shrimp testifies to the cleanliness of the water.
As a result, Desnogorsk’s reservoir is known as one of the best fishing spots in European Russia. In June, it played host to a national float-fishing championship, which gathered over 70 participants and was sponsored, among others, by Rosatom, the federal nuclear power agency.
What to see
if you have two hours
Those who find themselves strapped for time or perhaps are stopping off in Desnogorsk as part of a trip to Smolensk or Belarus should set as their priority a moment’s relaxation by the warm waters of the reservoir, which spans the northern reaches of the town. A convenient position along its bank can afford the weary traveler a spectacular view of the nuclear power station and surrounding nature. On cooler days, a thick blanket of steam can be seen rising from the water’s surface, forming an opaque screen above the town that is evocative of the air of mystery in which its activities were once shrouded.
Following the bank of the reservoir to the northeasternmost point of the town, you will reach the 17-meter-tall dam separating the body of water from the Desna River. The area is crowned by an enormous, star-shaped memorial to those who died fighting in World War II. Alongside it lie five mass graves containing the bodies of more than 550 Red Army soldiers who died defending the Smolensk region from invading Nazi forces.
Heading back into the town itself, spend your remaining time exploring its center. The beautiful wooden Stephen of Perm church (4th Microdistrict), constructed in 1997, is particularly worth a visit, while the Church of Our Lady the Joy of All Who Sorrow, located in the main square, is hard to miss. Local inhabitants take pride in the fact that it was personally blessed by Patriarch Kirill in 2010.
Don’t miss a memorial to victims of nuclear disasters located in the 2nd Microdistrict next to the Town Hall. It was erected on the eve of the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in 2008.
What to do
if you have two days
Regardless of where you stand within Desnogorsk, you can see the three imposing towers of the enormous nuclear power plant that dominates the landscape. The facility, located three kilometers away, looms over the expanse of water that separates it from the town and makes its presence felt by every resident. It would be a shame, therefore, not to venture closer and admire the various components that make up the complex.
Although a free shuttle bus runs from the town center from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., with an extra lunchtime service during working days, the bus is officially reserved for workers of the plant. It may be easy to blend in with the morning rush-hour crowd, but if you have access to private transportation or 100 rubles to spare for a taxi, you will save some hassle. The plant is not open to the public, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to skirt its perimeter and satisfy your curiosity. Be warned: Taking photos is forbidden.
The thing most likely to catch the visitor’s eye is a huge Lenin mural that hangs above the main entrance to the plant. Emblazoned on it are the words “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire nation,” a reminder that although the town may be young, its roots are in a country very different from modern-day Russia.
A stop by the Desnogorsk History Museum (1st Microdistrict; +7 (48153) 3-36-86; desnogorsk.ru/istoriko-kraevedcheskii-muzei) will offer photographs and various artifacts preserved from the earliest stages of the town’s existence. It also has a collection of historical items that date from World War II and beyond and were dug up by workers constructing the power plant. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Sunday.
Desnogorsk’s mayor recommends a visit to Yekimovichi, a village 7 kilometers south of the town with a history of monasticism dating back to the 18th century. It still attracts visitors as a religious center today. Also pay your respects at a mass grave to 1,400 Soviet soldiers and peek into the quaint 19th-century Moscow-Warsaw Highway Post Office. Buses to Yekimovichi leave hourly from Desnogorsk’s bus station and return with the same frequency.
Remaining hours, weather permitting, can be spent exploring the town and relaxing by the reservoir bank. This is a great place to try your hand at fishing, because the odds are favorable even for those with little to no experience. The town’s tourism board was unable to advise on any options for fishing equipment rental in the local area but said a program to facilitate this is currently being looked into.
Where to eat
Several decent restaurants dot the town. None is geared toward the wealthy visitor with a penchant for gourmet cuisine, but most offer an affordable, quality menu consisting mainly of traditional Russian dishes.
Cafe Marzipan (1st Microdistrict; +7 (48153) 3-32-32) is the most popular place to dine in the town. Spacious and in a central location next to the main square, the restaurant offers a surprising choice of dishes and even a separate sushi menu. A wide range of cocktails is available at the bar, which is open all day. The food is good, but don’t expect anything spectacular, and don’t try the sushi. The average bill for one is 400 rubles, excluding alcohol.
Tri Tolstyaka (3rd Microdistrict; +7 (48153) 7-57-45), whose name comes from the revolutionary Soviet fairy tale “Three Fat Men” and accurately reflects the sizes of the portions it serves, is an unassuming eatery with an interior decorated in a hunting theme and a wall adorned with what is probably the biggest moose head in European Russia. The menu is comprised of Russian dishes including solyanka soup and zharkoye, a traditional stew. Expect to pay around 400 rubles per person, excluding alcohol.
Where to stay
Only one hotel is currently open to all visitors. It is in the Institute of Nuclear Training (6th Microdistrict, Building 180; +7 (48153) 7-19-78; desnogorsk-67.narod2.ru/gostinitsi), which specializes in preparing personnel to work in the industry and is referred to locally as UTTS, an abbreviated version of the institute’s name. A night at the hotel costs 2,530 rubles for an apartment with a single room and 2,720 for an apartment with a double room. Included in each are a kitchen, a fridge and other basic amenities.
In anticipation of the reopening of the nuclear power plant’s third reactor, which is currently undergoing a thorough refurbishment, a number of bed-and-breakfast cottages are being constructed on the outskirts of the town. But information regarding completion dates is scant.
Conversation Starters
The town’s name is the result of a competition held between construction workers to determine what the future settlement should be called. Among the most memorable suggestions, as local inhabitants clued in on trivia will tell you, were Mechtal (short for Mechta Lenina, or Lenin’s Dream) and Kurchatovsk (after the Soviet nuclear physicist). A surefire way of breaking the ice with a Desnogorsk local would be to point out the irony evident in adding the suffix “gorsk” to the name of a town intentionally built on a flat surface.
How to get there
Desnogorsk is best reached from St. Petersburg by train and bus via Smolensk. Trains to Smolensk depart almost daily from St. Petersburg’s Vitebsky Railway Station, although be warned that some trains travel via Vitebsk in Belarus, necessitating a separate transit visa.
The journey to Smolensk from St. Petersburg takes around 13 hours and costs around 2,000 rubles ($64) traveling in second class and around 1,000 rubles ($32) in third class. Buses cover the 130 kilometers between Smolensk and Desnogorsk five times daily, but an overnight stop in Smolensk may be required.
A nascent tourist industry means a lack of public transportation links. There is no train station, and although a public bus service operates in the town, the buses are few and far between, and punctuality can often leave something to be desired.
Most sites worth visiting locally are within walking distance, but the combined distances involved will likely appeal only to visitors who are prepared to trek along roads and across fields to reach their destinations. The walks, at least, are picturesque.
Desnogorsk
Population: 29,716
Main industries: Nuclear power
Mayor: Mikhail Khobotov
Founded in 1974
Interesting fact: Desnogorsk has no street names. Instead it is split up into eight micro-districts. The main street, located in the 1st Microdistrict, is referred to colloquially by locals as Broadway, after the name of a large grocery store that used to operate there in Soviet times.
Sister cities: Chavusy, Belarus
Helpful contacts: Mayor Mikhail Khobotov (+7 48153-7-12-50; admin-smolensk.ru), Oleg Prudnikov, head of the sports and tourism department (+7 48153-7-19-74; admin-smolensk.ru)
Major Businesses
Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant (+7 48153-7-05-21; snpp.rosenergoatom.ru) is one of the biggest energy producers in Russia, responsible for more than a tenth of the country’s output. Three RMBK-1000 reactors are currently in operation at the site. Construction of a second facility due to replace the aging plant by 2027 have already begun, although progress is slow.
Desnogorsk Polymer Plant (+7 48153-7-22-04; dppsm.ru) is one of the largest manufacturers of polymer film in Russia. Founded in 1990, it produces a wide range of plastics for use in the packaging of food products and domestic storage. Fresh from a recent merger with St. Petersburg-based Tekhnopak-Flex, it has partnerships with several European companies, including Macchi and Ampacet.
Atomtrans (+7 48153-7-23-23; atomtrans.ru) is a transport company and subsidiary of the state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom.
It serves as one of the main goods couriers in the Smolensk region and runs a parallel vehicle repair service for local residents. Along with the local administration, Atomtrans funded the construction of the local football stadium in 2008, which recently underwent a major refurbishment.
Mikhail Khobotov,
Mayor
Q: How has Desnogorsk managed to overcome the limitations associated with single-industry towns?
A: In 2009, Desnogorsk was included in the official list of Russian monogorods, and a 10-year modernization plan was drafted. But Desnogorsk continues to be a monogorod. The town’s income depends almost entirely on the nuclear power plant, which is responsible for more than 40 percent of the municipal budget.
Q: Do you see potential for growth, perhaps through foreign investment?
A: One of the main hopes for Desnogorsk’s future development lies in the execution of a thorough refurbishment and modernization of the nuclear power plant’s reactors, which would ensure continued operation until 2027. The construction of a second plant would give further impetus to the town’s drive to develop.
As part of a government-funded modernization program, land plots have been designated in the southern part of the town for the construction of an exhibition hall, a business center and a science park, complete with facilities for the manufacture and assembly of household appliances. Of course, these ambitious projects would require an increase in housing, and residential construction is already under way, most of which will take the shape of low-rise family houses and hotels.
We are always ready and willing to cooperate with anyone keen to contribute in whatever way to the development of our town and are ready to establish business connections to facilitate this process.
Q: What are the perspectives for tourism in Desnogorsk?
A: Desnogorsk is the youngest town in the Smolensk region; this year we are celebrating our 38th birthday. We cannot boast of ancient landmarks or historical sites, but the town has its own unique history and traditions. Beautiful landscapes, a calm atmosphere and a huge reservoir with clean water all create perfect conditions for water sports such as diving, yachting, fishing and extreme sports. About 10 sacred springs are located within 30 kilometers of the town.
The town’s immediate surroundings include many great places for skiing and snowboarding, and plans are in place to construct ski lifts on nearby hills.
Desnogorsk also has a wide array of youth festivals, which we hope to promote in upcoming years.
Andrei Petrov,
Director, Smolensk nuclear power plant
Q: Why was Desnogorsk chosen as the home for the Smolensk nuclear power plant?
A: The Soviet government’s decision to build a nuclear power station in the Smolensk region was guided by industrial growth in the European part of the country and an accompanying power deficit. Desnogorsk was the most suitable location in the region.
Q: What impact did the Chernobyl disaster have on nuclear power safety at the Smolensk plant?
A: Every nuclear disaster has been subjected to a thorough analysis, and we have learned from each mistake. The safety of RBMK reactors, such as those used at our plant, is on par with that of reactors used abroad. The safety of our operations is the top priority.
Q: What is the safety record of your plant?
A: The safety of the Smolensk power plant is, first and foremost, under the control of the government. Our work is closely monitored by experts from Russia and abroad, and all of them confirm the reliability of the plant and its adherence to the industry’s safety principles. In 2006, 2010 and 2011, the Smolensk power plant was awarded the title of safest nuclear power plant in Russia. In 2010, we won a corporate competition for the best nuclear power plant in Russia.
Alexander Sherstnyov,
Founder of the annual Heavy Water music festival, an employee at the nuclear power plant, and a Desnogorsk native
Q: What gave you the idea to start the festival?
A: The idea came from Alex Sigmer, a friend and musician based in the Smolensk region. He called me one day and asked, “Why don’t you create a music festival?” I thought, “Why not?” It was as simple as that. The festival was a success the first and second year, and so we decided to continue.
We chose Desnogorsk because it’s the youngest town in the Smolensk region and has a great youthful atmosphere that you can really feel. It’s also a very progressive town. We’re urbanized people who lead lifestyles far removed from the traditional small-town ways.
Q: How popular is the festival?
A: Exact attendance figures are hard to cite because we don’t sell tickets. Entrance is free, and people simply come to camp out in the open air and enjoy the music. In 2011, the first year the festival was held, about 600 people turned out despite bad weather. This year, we had about 4,000 visitors.
We plan to move to a new location on the other side of the reservoir, where there is far more space and a hostel currently being built. We also want to extend the festival’s length to three days and include more music genres. The idea for next year is to start with alternative music Friday, move to heavy music Saturday, and then have a relaxed Sunday with soft rock and jazz.
Q: What future do you see for your town?
A: Desnogorsk could grow through the construction of new reactors and technological production of any kind. But the future is bright. After all, everyone needs electricity.
Q: What would be a good way for a visitor to spend time here?
A: We have plenty to do. We have an enormous reservoir, great fishing opportunities and year-round capabilities for diving and other water sports. The possibilities for relaxing while being surrounded by nature are open to everyone.
TITLE: St. Petersburg’s Forgotten UNESCO Fort
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mysterious, half-forgotten and little visited by tourists, the medieval fortress of Oreshek is situated at the source of the Neva River in Lake Ladoga, about 50 kilometers from St. Petersburg. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the small island with majestic fortifying stone walls has guarded the outlet from Lake Ladoga to the Neva for more than 600 years, during which it has seen an extraordinary number of historic events.
Oreshek is now open to the public and makes a fascinating daytrip from St. Petersburg. In its present-day form, the fortress is a classic example of 16th-century fortification, though the date of its foundation goes back to the 1320s when the Neva’s banks were the territory of the Novgorod principality.
The site was desirable for both the Russians and the Swedes because of its advantageous location on the crucial trade route between Russia and Western Europe. The fortress founded by Alexander Nevsky’s grandson Yury as Russia’s response to the Swedish outpost of Vyborg founded in 1293 solved the question of trade relations and strengthened the economic position of the ancient Russian state.
“In peacetime, trade ships entered the fortress through the gates in the water, merchants paid fees and the town grew and flourished; and when it became too cramped to live there, two neighboring villages were founded: The present Morozov and Schlisselburg,” said Sergei Tsherbovich, a historian and local tour guide.
Sweden attempted to capture the fortress of Oreshek on many occasions, causing it to change hands several times. The Swedes succeeded definitively at the beginning of the 17th century when Russia sank into dynastic discords known as the Time of Troubles. When the Swedes occupied the fortress, they translated the name Oreshek into Swedish and named it Nöteborg, meaning “nut town.”
“There are two versions of the origin of the name,” says Tsherbovich.
“One is that there were a lot of nut trees on the island, but as you can see there aren’t any now, so the second version is more believable: That the nut-like shape of the island gave the fortress its name.”
Ninety years of Swedish occupation ended at the beginning of the 18th century when Peter I started the Great Northern War in a desire to regain the Neva’s territories and an outlet to the high seas. In 1702, Peter took the fortress after a bloody battle. Hundreds of Russian soldiers died in the attack, and are buried in a mass grave on the island. Peter I would later say that “the nut was indeed rather hard, but happily cracked.” He renamed the fortress as Schlisselburg (from the German Schlüsselburg, meaning “key town”) as it gave him an outlet to the Baltic Sea.
With the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg and the fortress of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island, and the expansion of Russian territory, Schlisselburg lost its military importance. After Peter’s death the fortress became a political prison.
The fortress was a very convenient prison, being located not too far from St. Petersburg and yet hidden from curious eyes. With its six-meter high walls, insular location and armed garrison, Oreshek was something of a Russian Chateau d’If, from which it was impossible to escape. Certainly, no one managed this feat during the 200 years of the prison’s existence.
The walls of the former barracks and buildings constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries especially for the needs of the prison once contained within them Russia’s Man in the Iron Mask: Ivan VI, the emperor crowned as a child and soon dethroned, who spent all his life imprisoned and was killed during an attempt made to free him in 1764. Other prisoners included the Decembrists, who waited for their departure to Siberia from the so-called Secret House, and the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) terrorists who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.
The members of the People’s Will organization were kept in the New Prison, built in 1884 especially for their life imprisonment. Almost half of them died or were executed in imprisonment, some went mad, and several others killed themselves. Only a handful managed to survive and live for any significant period of time after amnesty in 1905-1906, most notably Nikolai Morozov, who survived 20 years in prison, two revolutions, the civil war and World War II, and eventually died at the age of 92. A nearby village on the right bank of the Neva is named after him.
Today, the Oreshek museum offers tours of the territory of the fortress, as well as excursions to the so-called New Prison and Old Prison (Secret House), with restored 19th century interiors.
The New Prison houses solitary cells and a display devoted to the revolutionary activity of the prisoners and the conditions in which they were kept.
World War II brought with it a new chapter in the island’s history. In 1941, the Germans entered the town of Shlisselburg, located on the left bank of the Neva opposite the fortress, but encouraged by their swift success — by taking Schlisselburg, the Germans closed the circle of their siege of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known — and didn’t bother to occupy the fortress. Soviet scouts soon worked this out and placed a garrison there. The defense lasted for 500 days, with the medieval fortress ultimately proving resistant to modern weapons, though it was severely damaged.
In remembrance of Schlisselburg’s heroic defenders, today there is a memorial inside the fortress’s half-ruined Church of St. John the Baptist.
Oreshek sustained more damage during the 500 days of artillery shelling than it had during all of the past six centuries.
During Soviet times, restoration work continued mainly because Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s elder brother, was hanged on the island in 1887 after being sentenced to death for plotting against Alexander III. The outer walls and towers were restored, which was a huge amount of work, but the restoration work required by the museum now is even greater.
Last year, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, whose branches include the Peter and Paul Fortress and Oreshek, received a grant under the “Castle to Castle” project for the creation of a multifunctional information center at Oreshek, which is due to start work in 2014. The museum is currently in search of an investor.
Six centuries of history have produced some contrasting pictures, from prosperous medieval fortress in the 16th century to a forgotten, half-ruined museum in the 21st.
“Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan comes to mind: I think when describing the tsar Gvidon’s island, Pushkin described this very place,” says Tsherbovich.
“The image of the squirrel fits perfectly, if you remember it was eating golden nuts,” he added.
The Oreshek fortress is open to the public daily from May 1 to Oct. 31 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How to get there:
Take bus #575 from metro station Ulitsa Dybenko to Shlisselburg, or a train from the Finland Railway Station to Petrokrepost, and from there take a motorboat across the river to Orekhovy island. Excursions can be booked in advance — enabling participants to a discount on the motorboat fare — or upon arrival.
Several companies now offer five-hour hydrofoil excursions. The cost of the tour, which includes transport, an excursion and lunch on the way back, is about 1,500 rubles ($48). The hydrofoil goes along the Neva from its mouth to its source, passing many places of interest on the way, including the Road of Life built over Lake Ladoga during the Siege of Leningrad.
TITLE: Taliban Attack 14-Year-Old Pakistani Girl Activist
AUTHOR: By Sherin Zada
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINGORA, Pakistan — A Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in Pakistan’s volatile Swat Valley on Tuesday and shot and wounded a 14-year-old activist known for championing the education of girls and publicizing atrocities committed by the Taliban, officials said.
The attack in the city of Mingora targeted 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who is widely respected for her work to promote the schooling of girls — something that the Taliban strongly opposes. She was nominated last year for the International Children’s Peace Prize.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, calling Malala’s work “obscenity.”
“This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter,” said Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan by telephone. “We have carried out this attack.”
The school bus was about to leave the school grounds in Mingora when a bearded man approached it and asked which one of the girls was Malala, said Rasool Shah, the police chief in the town. Another girl pointed to Malala, but the activist denied it was her and the gunmen then shot both of the girls, the police chief said.
Malala was shot twice — once in the head and once in the neck — but her wounds were not life-threatening, said Tariq Mohammad, a doctor at the main hospital in Mingora. The second girl shot was in stable condition, the doctor said. Pakistani television showed pictures of Malala being taken by helicopter to a military hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar.
In the past, the Taliban has threatened Malala and her family for her activism. When she was only 11 years old, she began writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC’s Urdu service about life under Taliban occupation. After the Taliban were ejected from the Swat Valley in the summer of 2009, she began speaking out publicly about the militant group and the need for girls’ education.
While chairing a session of a children’s assembly supported by UNICEF in the valley last year, the then-13-year-old championed a greater role for young people.
“Girl members play an active role,” she said, according to an article on the U.N. organization’s website. “We have highlighted important issues concerning children, especially promoting girls’ education in Swat.”
The attack displayed the viciousness of Islamic militants in the Swat Valley, where the military conducted a major operation in 2009 to clear out insurgents. It was a reminder of the challenges the government faces in keeping the area free of militant influence.
The scenic valley — nicknamed the Switzerland of Pakistan — was once a popular tourist destination for Pakistanis, and honeymooners used to vacation in the numerous hotels dotted along the river running through Swat. But the Taliban’s near-total takeover of the valley just 175 miles (280 kilometers) from the capital in 2008 shocked many Pakistanis, who considered militancy to be a far-away problem in Afghanistan or Pakistan’s rugged tribal regions.
Militants began asserting their influence in Swat in 2007 — part of a wave of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters expanding their reach from safe havens near the Afghan border. By 2008 they controlled much of the valley and began meting out their own brand of justice.
They forced men to grow beards, restricted women from going to the bazaar, whipped women they considered immoral and beheaded opponents.
During the roughly two years of their rule, Taliban in the region destroyed around 200 schools. Most were girls’ institutions, though some prominent boys’ schools were struck as well.
At one point, the Taliban said they were halting female education, a move that echoed their militant brethren in neighboring Afghanistan who during their rule barred girls from attending school.
While the Pakistani military managed to flush out the insurgents during the military operation, their Taliban’s top leadership escaped, leaving many of the valley’s residents on edge.
Kamila Hayat, a senior official of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, praised Malala for standing up to the militants and sending a message across the world that Pakistani girls had the courage to fight for their rights. But she also worried that Tuesday’s shooting would prevent other parents from letting their children speak out against the Taliban.
“This is an attack to silence courage through a bullet,” Hayat said. “These are the forces who want to take us to the dark ages.”
The problems of young women in Pakistan were also the focus of a separate case before the high court, which ordered a probe into an alleged barter of seven girls to settle a blood feud in a remote southwestern district. Such feuds in Pakistan’s tribal areas often arise from disputes between families or tribes and can last generations.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry began proceedings into the allegations, which were first reported in the local media. The alleged trade happened in the Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan province between two groups within the Bugti tribe, one of the more prominent in the province.
A tribal council ordered the barter in early September, the district deputy commissioner, Saeed Faisal, told the court. He did not know the girls’ ages but local media reported they were between 4 and 13 years old.
However, the Advocate General for the province could not confirm the incident.
Chaudhry, the chief justice, ordered Faisal to ensure that all members of the tribal council appear in court on Wednesday, as well as a local lawmaker who belongs to one of the two sub-tribes believed involved in the incident.
The tradition of families exchanging unmarried girls to settle feuds is banned under Pakistani law but still practiced in the country’s more conservative, tribal areas.
TITLE: Egyptian President Decrees Pardon for Revolutionaries
AUTHOR: By Sarah El Deeb
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO — Egypt’s new president on Monday issued a decree pardoning all those charged with or convicted of acts “in support of the revolution” since the beginning of the popular uprising that forced his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, from power.
The move by Mohammed Morsi was long demanded by Egypt’s youth groups behind the uprising. It could potentially benefit more than 1,000 protesters currently on trial following their arrests during demonstrations since the uprising against Mubarak erupted on Jan. 25, 2011 and until Morsi was sworn in on June 30.
Those already convicted for their role in the protests may also be pardoned. Most of those on trial or convicted were detained during the rule of the generals who took over after Mubarak stepped down in February 2011.
Mohammed Gadallah, Morsi’s legal advisor, said the decree is “one of the revolution’s most important victories.”
“It shows the revolution is now in power and guides the decision-making,” Gadallah told The Associated Press. “This is a legislation that protects the revolutionaries.”
However, the wording of the decree is vague and doesn’t immediately set anyone free, according to several human rights lawyers. It asks the prosecutor general and the military prosecutor to prepare a list of names, within a month of the decree’s issuance, of those who may benefit from the pardon.
The first article of the decree, which was published on Morsi’s official Facebook page, orders a “comprehensive pardon for crimes and misdemeanors or attempts to commit them in support of the revolution and the realization of its goals.”
The only suspects exempted from the decree are those charged with premeditated murder over that time period.
“It is a great step, but not enough,” said Ahmed Seif, a member of the committee formed by Morsi to review cases of those tried following the uprising. He said he had advised Morsi to specify who would benefit from the pardon.
“Now, there will be differences over how to implement the pardon, and a debate,” Seif said.
Gadallah said the decree is likely to cover all major court cases where protesters clashed with military troops and security forces. However, he admitted it is not clear how many would benefit from the pardon.
Another human rights lawyer, Ahmed Ragheb, praised Morsi’s decree but said it doesn’t include “all the victims of the past period.”
TITLE: Syrian Attacks Test Turkish Resolve
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth A. Kennedy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT — Syria’s cross-border attacks on Turkey in the past week look increasingly like they could be an intentional escalation meant to send a clear message to Ankara and beyond, that the crisis is simply too explosive to risk foreign military intervention.
With Turkey eager to defuse the crisis, the spillover of fighting is giving new life to a longshot political solution, with the Turks floating the idea of making President Bashar Assad’s longtime vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa, interim leader if the president steps aside.
A military option — which would involve foreign powers that already have expressed a deep reluctance to getting involved in the crisis — is still not on the table, analysts say, despite six consecutive days of Turkish retaliation against bombardment from inside Syria.
“Syria is aware that Turkey cannot go a step further,” said Ali Tekin, assistant professor of International Relations at Ankara’s Bilkent University. “The Turkish people don’t want a war and there are no vital national interests at stake to warrant a war. Syria sees this.”
The Syrian conflict has taken a prominent role in the U.S. presidential election at a time when the U.S. and its allies have shown little appetite for getting involved.
On Monday, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said the U.S. should work with other countries to arm the Syrian rebels, allowing the rebels to drive Assad from power themselves. Romney did not call for the U.S. to directly arm the Syrian rebels.
The most recent flare-up between Syria and Turkey started last Wednesday, when a shell fired from Syria slammed into a house in the Turkish border village of Akcakale, killing two women and three children. That set off the most serious and prolonged eruption of violence along the frontier since the uprising began nearly 19 months ago.
Although it was not clear whether Wednesday’s shelling was intentional, Turkey responded swiftly by firing back and convening parliament for a vote that authorized further cross-border military operations if necessary.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cautioned Damascus not to test Turkey’s “limits and determination.” But the Syrian shelling has continued every day — leading many observers to conclude the acts are intentional provocation.
“It’s not an accident. You can’t send shells across the border by mistake five days in a row,” said Mustafa Alani, a Middle East analyst of the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center, just hours before Syrian shelling struck Turkey for a sixth day.
There have been no other reports of casualties from the shelling since Wednesday’s deaths.
TITLE: Merkel Hails Greek Progress During Landmark Visit
AUTHOR: By Derek Gatopoulos
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS, Greece — German chancellor Angela Merkel said Greece has covered “much of the ground” required for recovery, during her landmark visit to the financially stricken country.
Merkel, who stopped in Athens on Tuesday for five hours, said she hoped Greece would remain in the 17-country group that uses the euro and stressed the government in Athens still had to push through more key cost-cutting reforms.
“Much of the ground has been covered ... There is daily progress,” Merkel said after talks with conservative Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. “This is an effort that should be seen through because otherwise it would make the circumstances even more dramatic later on.”
Paying her first visit to Greece in five years, Merkel’s arrival triggered protests attended by some 50,000 demonstrators in Athens. The rallies were mostly peaceful, but police briefly clashed with several dozen demonstrators and detained more than 50 people throughout the day.