SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1732 (43), Wednesday, October 24, 2012
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TITLE: Pussy Riot Rockers 'Won't Be Upset' About Not Receiving Sakharov Prize
TEXT: MOSCOW — The European Parliament announced Friday that the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought would go to two jailed Iranians: human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
Among the nominees for the award, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was punk band Pussy Riot and members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
The trio was nominated for their unsanctioned protest in a Moscow cathedral in which they denounced President Vladimir Putin, a performance for which they were jailed and convicted of hooliganism inspired by religious hatred. In August, a Moscow court sentenced them to two years in prison each. Samutsevich was later released on appeal.
Their losing out to the Iranian campaigner and director would not put them out, lawyer Nikolai Polozov said.
"They won't be upset. What's more important here is the attention of society, of the international community, to the Pussy Riot case," Polozov told Interfax on Friday.
European Parliament members nominated the Pussy Riot women for drawing unprecedented attention to what they called the "absence of rule of law in Russia."
"The acts of protest and arrest of these three young women ... and their sentencing to two years in a labour camp, have done far more to focus the world's attention on the unscrupulous restriction of civil rights and the absence of the rule of law in Russia than did the earlier murders of journalists or the new repressive laws," their nomination said.
The prize winners, Sotoudeh and Panahi, have both been imprisoned by Iranian authorities in connection with their support of anti-government protests in Iran in 2009.
Other nominees for this year's award included jailed Belarusian civil activist Ales Belyatsky and three Rwandan activists.
The Sakharov prize was founded in 1988 and is given annually to one or more human rights campaigners around the world. It includes an award of 50,000 euros ($64,500), according to its website.

TITLE: Government to Crack Down on Animal Trafficking
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Legislation to criminalize trafficking in endangered species or their body parts could be put before parliament as early as next summer, Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Rinat Gizmatulin said earlier this week. 
"The president's chief of staff has decided to draft a bill that basically boils down to this: the criminalization of all stages of handling endangered animals such as tigers, leopards and snow leopards, including illegal production, trade, sale, storage and transportation," Gizmatulin said at a press briefing.
Presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov said earlier that he wanted to criminalize trafficking in protected species, which is currently only an administrative offense.
The World Wildlife Fund Russia estimates that poachers kill 50 to 60 Amur tigers annually.
But estimates of the true extent of the trade in endangered species are hampered by a lack of data, said Vladimir Krever, of WWF Russia's biodiversity program. 
"All we have to go on is the occasional arrest of a middleman selling, for example, tiger skins," Krever said. "A couple of recent arrests show that at least 18 tigers were killed in the last year or so."
Krever, who is part of a team helping to draft the bill, said it will probably be based on a list of species particularly threatened by poaching rather than every species listed in the Red Book.
"That's mostly those favored by Asian medicine, so big cats like the tiger, leopards and snow leopards; bears, which are valued for their paws and gall bladders; and musk deer, which are favored for their musk glands," said Alexei Vaisman of Traffic, an organization dedicated to fighting the trade. 
Other candidates include the saiga antelope, a strange-looking beast that survives in Russia only in Buryatia, and large birds of prey like the gyrfalcon, which is valued in the Middle East for the high-status sport of hawking.
Like his boss, Vladimir Putin, Ivanov has a history of burnishing his image by standing up for endangered species. He was instrumental in pushing for creation of the Land of the Leopard National Park, a sanctuary for critically threatened Amur leopards that opened earlier this year in the Far East.
The Amur leopard is the most endangered big cat on the planet, with just 40 to 50 in the wild.
But environmentalists said Ivanov was simply endorsing a proposal they had been pushing for some time.
"It has been a matter of great pain for us that handling animals and body parts is not punished on the same level as killing them," Krever said.
While it is a criminal offense to kill Red Book-listed animals like the Amur tiger, poachers are rarely caught in the act.
Law enforcement officers are much more likely to catch the middlemen to whom poachers sell pelts and other body parts. Without evidence that a suspect killed the tiger himself, the top punishment for handling tiger pelts is a fine of just 2,000 rubles ($64), Vaisman said.
While poachers are usually individual hunters operating independently, some trafficking can be on a much larger scale. For example, it is not unusual to find shipments of up to 1,000 bear paws en route to China, Vaisman said.
Such operations are run by sophisticated gangs that straddle national borders and engage in organized crime, he said.
"At that level, it can be described only as organized," Vaisman said. "They will be on both sides of the border, and often police officers and customs officials are involved. They need refrigerators and access to preservatives to make it work. They are specialized and quick." 
Environmentalists consulting on the bill, including Vaisman and Krever, want the new law to punish people involved in the trade of endangered species as if they were trafficking drugs. 
The purchase, possession, transportation, manufacture or processing of narcotics carries a maximum sentence of 10 years under Russian law. 
Experts from the WWF and Traffic are guiding the legislation through a long and complex process, which Krever hopes will be complete by next summer.  
Enforcing the law is another question, however. There are only about 170 rangers to patrol the Amur tiger's range in the Primorye and Khabarovsk regions. That's down from a peak of 1,700 some years ago.

TITLE: Economy Is Focal Point for Putin's Foreign Expert Club
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NOVO-OGARYOVO — President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Thursday that he had to make a difficult choice when he approved the purchase of TNK-BP by state behemoth Rosneft, as the decision contradicts the government's policy to reduce its presence in the economy.
But he made it clear that the government had to intervene after numerous requests from BP to help resolve a long-lasting dispute between the shareholders of the Russian-British joint venture.
"Both the government and I had mixed feelings when the idea of this project appeared," Putin said at a meeting with the members of the international Valdai Discussion Club, referring to the intention by BP to sell its stake in the joint venture.
A move by a state-controlled company to increase its market presence "at the cost of its foreign partner" raised doubts, Putin said, adding that at the time there were concerns that Rosneft might subsequently take over the second part of TNK-BP, owned by the AAR consortium.
"This, in general, is not in line with our trend to reduce the growth of the state sector," he said.
Rosneft announced earlier this week that it would acquire 100 percent in TNK-BP from BP and AAR in two separate deals totaling $61 billion.
When TNK-BP was founded in 2003, the Russian authorities weren't opposed to BP's holding a controlling stake, Putin said, adding that he warned that the 50-50 joint venture wouldn't function properly.
He recalled that the shareholders had promised at the time to settle possible issues peacefully, but they ended up being involved in continuous struggles that eventually turned into "hand-to-hand" fighting.
BP clashed with its co-shareholder in TNK-BP, a consortium represented by Soviet-born tycoons Viktor Vekselberg, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Len Blavatnik.
Although the government tried to stay out of the corporate battle, which prompted Robert Dudley to quit as head of TNK-BP and leave the country in 2008, it had been repeatedly approached by BP seeking help in resolving the dispute, Putin said.
"We couldn't say no to them, because otherwise it would look like we were forcing them to be under TNK, with which they had continuous conflict," he said, adding that the presence of a BP representative on Rosneft's board of directors would ensure greater transparency of the Russian company's operations.
Putin also said the sale to Rosneft of the rest of the joint venture had been initiated by the AAR consortium.
The problem of reducing Russia's dependency on natural resources was dwelled on during Putin's meeting with members of the Valdai Club, which was founded in 2004 to facilitate dialogue between Russia and foreign experts.
Raising a glass of white wine, Putin welcomed 50 members of the club, including Russian and foreign economists and political analysts, to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence, saying he was glad that the international business community is interested in the country.
Politics dominated the agenda at last year's Valdai Club meeting, as participants were interested primarily in Putin's outlook on new models of the country's governance as he was preparing to run for his third Kremlin term.
This year, experts focused primarily on economic issues, including the diversification of Russia's economy, external risks from heavily indebted Europe and measures to improve the country's investment climate.  
The Novo-Ogaryovo meeting was the final part of a four-day forum in which about 100 members of the club participated, having gathered in St. Petersburg on Sunday to discuss possible scenarios for Russia's development over the next two decades.
Among the issues discussed by the club this week were the creation of a favorable business climate, development of competition in Russia, stimulation of domestic investment and the fight against corruption.
Members prepared a report containing recommendations for the government on how to proceed with reforming the country based on the pace of Russia's current economic growth and the prospects for its economic development.
The club members suggested four possible scenarios for the country's economic development, which are based on two groups of factors, said Piotr Dutkiewicz, director of the Center for Governance and Public Policy at Carleton University in Canada.
The external factors include dependency on energy resources and the volatility of global financial markets, while domestic ones were related to the efficiency of the country's institutions, he said at the meeting.
Russia's future depends primarily on a focus on domestic factors like "improving the quality of governance on all levels from you and local authorities," Dutkiewicz said, addressing the president, who promptly reacted.
"Everything is OK with me," Putin said.
Dutkiewicz also said the government should enhance dialogue with the liberal segment of society as well as small and medium businesses.
The participants touched on issues of Russia's integration into Europe and the development of alternative industries to oil and gas production.
One answer the experts hoped to get from the country's leader was how he plans to proceed with implementing the reforms outlined in his pre-election articles published in leading Russian newspapers.
The issues highlighted in Putin's articles are important and deeply thought out, but they were followed by "a period of silence," Dutkiewicz said in an interview before the meeting.
"The overarching question that everyone would like to ask is 'where to go?'" he said.

TITLE: Investigators Charge Udaltsov in Riots Case
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee on Friday said it had charged Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov with plotting riots, making him the second prominent opposition figure to be implicated in a criminal case in recent months.
Udaltsov was charged at a scheduled meeting at the Investigative Committee office in Moscow on Friday. During questioning, Udaltsov did not admit his guilt and gave “detailed” testimony regarding the accusations, investigators said in a statement.
Before entering the Investigative Committee building, Udaltsov said he would not flee the country in the face of the charges.
“I'll hold out, I hope. Russia will be free,” he said to journalists, Interfax reported. “If someone thought I would run across the border, he was mistaken.”
Udaltsov had already been named a suspect in the case, which stems from footage in an expose aired on state-controlled NTV television earlier this month. His aide Konstantin Lebedev and fellow Left Front activist Leonid Razvozzhayev have been charged and detained as part of the same case.
Each of them faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the charges of planning mass riots.
Investigators did not arrest Udaltsov on Friday, saying he remained under travel restrictions that he had agreed to when called in for questioning in connection with the case on Oct. 16.
The circumstances surrounding Razvozzhayev's arrest have come under scrutiny by human rights groups and Western governments after he said he was abducted last week while seeking asylum in Ukraine and taken to Moscow by a group of unknown men before being handed over to investigators. He also said he was tortured.
While in custody, Razvozzhayev wrote a confession in which he implicated Udaltsov and Lebedev, according to investigators. He later recanted the statement, saying he had been pressured to write it.
A State Department spokeswoman said Thursday that the United States was troubled by the case against the Left Front activists and against other opposition members, and that those concerns had been communicated to the Russian authorities.
“We are quite concerned about allegations that he [Razvozzhayev] was forced to confess, that he may have been subjected to torture, and we take concerns about this and other arrest actions taken against the May 6 protestors very seriously, including against Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov, Konstantin Lebedev, and now Razvozzhayev,” spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a press briefing, according to a transcript posted on the State Department website.
“We continue to support the rights of all Russians to exercise freedom of expression and assembly regardless of their political views. And we have shared our concerns with the Russian Government, including about the Razvozzhayev case,” she said.
In June, investigators searched the apartment of anti-corruption lawyer Navalny and those of Udaltsov and other prominent anti-Kremlin figures in connection with an inquiry into violence at a May 6 opposition rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad.
Navalny was also charged on July 31 with stealing funds from state-owned timber company KirovLes during his time as an adviser to Kirov region Governor Nikita Belykh in 2009.

TITLE: No Time Change This Fall 
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
TEXT: MOSCOW — When Europe turns its clocks one hour back this Sunday, two countries are going to have it their own way: Russia and Belarus will move out of step with much of the northern hemisphere by sticking with "eternal summer time," introduced last year by then-President Dmitry Medvedev.
Despite attempts by the State Duma to turn the clocks back again to winter time, the government is adamant on keeping summer time.
Prime Minister Medvedev's spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, said Thursday that there are no plans to change the status quo. "The Duma bill has been recalled, and the government will not initiate any change in the law," she told The St. Petersburg Times.
Medvedev announced in February 2011 that the country would abolish daylight-saving time by keeping clocks permanently set one hour forward across its nine time zones from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. Belarus followed suit soon after.
While the twice-yearly switch had been unpopular in the country, the reform has not proven popular either, especially because it introduced an extra hour of darkness during winter mornings in northern regions.
A poll released earlier this month by the state-run VTsIOM agency found that 30 percent of respondents approved the reform, 29 percent said they favor permanent winter time, and 24 percent said they would like to return to the previous system of switching twice a year.
The opt-out from daylight-saving time also creates headaches for travelers and anybody with international ties because the country's time difference changes twice a year.
From Sunday onward, Ukraine and the Baltic states will be two hours behind Moscow time instead of one, most of Western Europe three hours instead of two, while Britain and Portugal will be four hours behind.
U.S. states that observe daylight-saving time will shift on Nov. 4.
The Duma created considerable confusion last month when United Russia, the party headed by Medvedev, backed a bill that would move clocks backward once more — preferably this Sunday together with the rest of Europe.
The move was also seen as another blow to Medvedev, whose liberal reforms are currently being taken apart by lawmakers and the Kremlin. President Vladimir Putin had indicated that it was OK to move back the clocks if people felt the reform was a mistake.
But United Russia then changed tack, saying that instead of a Duma bill the government should introduce the change by decree. The bill's sponsor, Health Committee chairman Sergei Kalashnikov, quickly withdrew the draft.
Kalashnikov, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democrat party, has seemingly not given up. He told RIA-Novosti earlier this week that the country might reintroduce winter time before the end of the year. "The date for this need not be this Sunday because that is only a provisional date," he was quoted as saying.
But government spokeswoman Timakova made it clear that a new Duma bill was not enough. "There also needs to be a public discussion," she said.
Kalashnikov was not available for comment Thursday.

TITLE: Slain Kazan Gunmen Planned Terror Attack
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two Islamist gunmen killed in a special operation in Kazan were planning a major terrorist attack in the city on an upcoming Muslim holiday, the Federal Security Service said Thursday.
The FSB said in a statement on its website that the gunmen, Robert Valeyev and Ruslan Kashapov, had planned to launch the attack on Oct. 26 in areas crowded with people celebrating the first day of the three-day Eid al-Adha holiday.
The two were also suspects in attacks on two senior religious officials in Kazan in July, the statement said.
The FSB said Valeyev shot dead prominent cleric Valiulla Yakupov and planted bombs in the SUV of Tatarstan Mufti Ildus Faizov, who survived the July 19 explosions.
Kashapov was named as an accomplice in those attacks, which the FSB said "aimed to sow fear among the population" on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Law enforcement agencies had earlier issued federal search warrants for the pair.
Unidentified law enforcement officials told the Interfax-Religion news agency that the gunmen were part of an Islamic terrorist organization with links to the Taliban and that they had trained in camps on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Investigators said in a separate statement Thursday that they had opened a criminal case on charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and illegal weapons possession.
The charges carry maximum sentences of life imprisonment and a six-year jail term, respectively, and will be included in the same investigation as the attacks on the lives of the Kazan clerics, investigators said.
On Wednesday, the FSB cornered Valeyev and Kashapov in a building on Ulitsa Khimikov in Kazan, the capital of the mostly Muslim Tatarstan republic, a normally peaceful region favored by foreign investors.
FSB officers ordered the gunmen to lay down their arms, but they opened fire, the statement said. Media reports said the firefight lasted several hours.
Both militants were killed after the FSB stormed the building. An unidentified FSB officer was killed after throwing himself on one of the militants, who was igniting an unspecified explosive device.
"The officer's actions saved the lives of the remaining members of the operation and innocent civilians in the surrounding area," the FSB statement said, describing the officer as a hero.
Inside the Kazan apartment, FSB officers found weapons, ammunition, a bomb-making laboratory and 3 kilograms of explosives, RIA-Novosti reported, citing Tatarstan police.

TITLE: Defense Agency Raided in $95.5M Fraud Case 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators raided the office of a Defense Ministry agency Thursday in a $95.5 million fraud case that could send a signal that the Kremlin won't tolerate corruption in the armed forces as it significantly boosts defense spending.
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov arrived at the Moscow office of Oboronservis, which manages public companies like Voentorg, Oboronstroi and Spetsremont on behalf of his ministry, after the Investigative Committee started the search for evidence in the case.
"Investigators are conducting a search and seizure operation at Oboronservis in a criminal case of property fraud," Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a video published on the committee's website. "Preliminary findings suggest that the property fraud amounts to more than 3 billion rubles."
Five criminal cases have been opened into the fraudulent sale of real estate, land and shares owned by Oboronservis, the committee said in a statement. Under the scheme, it said, Defense Ministry officials chose prestigious Oboronservis properties, including in Moscow, spruced them up with state funds, and then sold them at below-market prices, often with money stolen from Oboronservis.
No suspects were identified except Yelena Vasilyeva, an aide to the defense minister who previously headed the ministry's property department.
Investigators said eight property transactions were under scrutiny, including the sale of the State Design Institute in central Moscow for 282 million rubles below its market value and the sale of the Soyuz hotel and an adjacent land plot at one and a half times less than the market rate. 
Another three buildings in the city center and the land under them were sold for about 700 million rubles, or at least 200 million rubles less than they were worth, they said.
Corruption is believed to run deep in the Defense Ministry, causing defense analysts and other observers to warn that the government must take measures to ensure that the $770 billion that President Vladimir Putin plans to spend on the armed forces over the next decade is spent properly.

TITLE: EasyJet to Fly Moscow-London Route in 2013 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — EasyJet will operate flights between London and Moscow from next year after Britain's Civil Aviation Authority granted the low-cost airline a license for the route over Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic.
Britain's aviation regulator announced its decision Wednesday, choosing the Luton-based easyJet for its "potential to deliver the greatest dynamic fare benefits for customers," said Iain Osborne, the aviation authority's director of regulatory policy.
"We concluded that easyJet's proposal would introduce a distinctly different product into the market and would stimulate innovation on the route as a whole," Osborne said in a statement.
EasyJet said it would offer a fare of no more than £125 ($200) for the first three years of flights between the British and Russian capitals, the Financial Times reported, citing easyJet's chief executive Carolyn McCall.
EasyJet's fares represent a significant discount to current market rates, as flights between London and Moscow frequently stretch to $650 or more.
The budget airline plans to start flying two services a day from London's Gatwick Airport in the spring, according to Reuters.
McCall said that easyJet was considering launching an alternative route between Manchester and Moscow.
In statements at a Civil Aviation Authority hearing three weeks ago, Virgin Atlantic argued that it could better compete with British Airways, the other Moscow-route license holder, and would offer a better service for business and first-class travelers. 
EasyJet responded by saying it could cater to a wider range of customers and stressed that it had 10 million business passengers a year — double Virgin Atlantic's total number of passengers.
The opportunity to bid for the Moscow route opened up in March when International Airlines Group — the holding company that controls British Airways — received approval from European authorities to buy BMI, which had previously offered flights to Moscow.
Under a bilateral agreement, only two British and two Russian carriers can hold licenses to fly between the two countries' capitals.
On the Russian side, flagship Aeroflot and Transaero, the country's second-largest airline, operate the route.

TITLE: Razvozzhayev Tells Harrowing Tale of Kidnap and Torture
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Opposition leaders and human rights groups Wednesday lambasted the apparent kidnapping and torture of Left Front activist Leonid Razvozzhayev as a return to Stalinist political repression and an unprecedented escalation in the crackdown against dissenters.
“Our country has entered a new era of Stalin-like repressions,” veteran rights activist Valery Borshchyov told reporters after visiting Razvozzhayev in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo detention center.
Baffled analysts offered various explanations of why law enforcement bodies would choose to persecute a hitherto little-known activist with a severity likely to invoke an international outcry.
Razvozzhayev on Tuesday told a delegation of the Public Monitoring Commission, an officially sanctioned prison watchdog, that he was subjected to psychological torture before signing an admission of guilt, said Borshchyov, who heads the commission.
Captors told Razvozzhayev that his wife and two children would be killed if he did not confirm allegations made in a recent documentary on the state-controlled NTV channel that he was plotting to incite anti-Kremlin riots, Borshchyov said.
Razvozzhayev disappeared Friday in Kiev, where he had sought assistance to obtain refugee status. He reappeared Sunday in Moscow, where a court sanctioned his arrest, and was charged Tuesday with plotting to incite anti-government riots.
If convicted, he faces up to a decade in prison.
According to Borshchyov, Razvozzhayev told the commission members that he was abducted by four men, three of whom were masked, after leaving the office of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in the Ukrainian capital to buy some food.
The attackers put him in a truck, handcuffed him and chained his legs to the handcuffs before wrapping his hands and legs in tape, he told the commission, adding that a balaclava was forced over his face. He said he would recognize his attackers, one of whom spoke with a Ukrainian accent.
He said that after a five-hour drive he was put into another car with other people, who he believes were Russian. He was driven to a basement, presumably just across the Russian-Ukrainian border, he said, where he was subjected to almost three days of intense pressure, which Borshchyov described as “psychological torture.”
Razvozzhayev told the commission he had to write his confession crouching under the confines of the chains. “He was told he would be killed and no one would find his grave,” Borshchyov said. He explained that Razvozzhayev wanted to reject his confession, but that such a move would be difficult.
“They didn’t give him food or drink. He was not allowed to go to the bathroom and was constantly ridiculed,” fellow commission member Zoya Svetova told reporters. “Any degradation of human dignity is torture,” she said.
The commission members said Razvozzhayev told them he was also threatened with having to take a mind-altering drug if he did not answer questions in the desired way. Razvozzhayev slurred when he spoke, they said, causing them to suspect he had been drugged anyway.
They added that the captors’ skills made it likely they were special service officers rather than ordinary criminals.
Razvozzhayev told the commission that when his captors drove him to the Investigative Committee in Moscow on Sunday, they seemed to know the officers there.
The chairman of the Kremlin’s human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, accused law enforcement authorities of criminal conduct. Speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio Wednesday, Fedotov said that if Razvozzhayev’s claims were confirmed, they entail a criminal case.
“If you look into the Criminal Code, you will see it black and white — to kidnap someone is a crime. I was taught from childhood on — to defend the law you must not break the law,” he said, adding that he had asked both Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin to commence an investigation.
The Investigative Committee said it was looking into the accusations but stressed that Razvozzhayev had not complained. “No official complaint about torture or kidnapping or any other unlawful actions has been received,” committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement on the agency’s website.
Analysts suggested that authorities were going after Razvozzhayev because they had too little evidence against Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov.
Alexei Makarkin, of the Center for Political Technologies, said investigators needed Razvozzhayev’s admission of guilt. “The film is not enough evidence,” he said, referring to the “Anatomy of a Protest 2” documentary.
Svetova, of the monitoring commission, said the film and the criminal cases were “a planned chain of operations” against opposition leaders.
Investigators opened a criminal case against Udaltsov and others after the film was aired Oct. 5. Udaltsov has been barred from leaving Moscow since he was questioned and police searched his home.
Udaltsov’s lawyer, Violetta Volkova, Wednesday dismissed a media report that said he might seek to flee the country but suggested that he expected to be detained soon. Udaltsov had stopped taking telephone calls because he did not want to give interviews and wished to spend his last days in freedom in his own way, Volkova told Interfax.
She also confirmed that Udaltsov had been summoned to the Investigative Committee this Friday.
Volkova had originally planned to defend Razvozzhayev but was refused by investigators who argued that she could not defend multiple suspects with contradicting interests.
Razvozzhayev’s new lawyer, Mark Feigin, who had at first failed to get permission to visit the detainee, said Wednesday on Twitter that the Investigative Committee accepted his request and that he would see his client Thursday. Volkova and Feigin are well-known for their defense of members of the punk band Pussy Riot.
Analysts warned that the case would further damage the government’s standing, both nationally and internationally. “Clearly now everybody will be talking about torture. This is a poison pill for Putin,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, editor of the Russ.ru website and a former Kremlin adviser.
President Vladimir Putin will hold a public discussion with members of the Valdai Club of international Russia experts this Thursday.
Pavlovsky suggested that Razvozzhayev’s case did not reflect a Kremlin plan. “These are [law enforcement] agencies trying to fulfill orders,” he said.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, refused to comment on the accusations Wednesday. “This is hardly a case for the Kremlin … but for investigators, prosecutors judges and lawyers and human rights activists,” Peskov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information, suggested that Razvozzhayev had made up the accusations. “There was probably nothing illegal here,” he said, adding that the trial of the Pussy Riot members had shown how “lawyers, crowds and journalists” acted together to distort the truth.
The pro-Kremlin tabloid site LifeNews, which on Sunday posted the video in which Razvozzhayev first made his torture allegations, published a report Wednesday saying there was evidence that his claims were unsubstantiated. The report quoted an undisclosed Investigative Committee source as saying the agency was checking claims that the so-called abduction was staged.
Also, Interfax quoted an unspecified law enforcement source as saying the abduction and torture accusations reflect a “hysterical media campaign” organized by the opposition.

TITLE: Report Shows Plunging Support for Putin – and Protest Leaders
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russians view the ruling elite as aggressive and predatory and believe that revolution is one of the only realistic ways to change the government, according to a report released Wednesday by an influential think tank.
The report, ordered by the Committee of Civic Initiatives, a group of political and economic experts led by former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, also describes the apparent paradox of falling approval ratings for President Vladimir Putin and a drop in support for the anti-Kremlin protest movement that emerged 11 months ago.
Experts called the study biased, however, noting that it presents Kudrin himself as a trusted public leader and appears to overemphasize opposition views.
The 122-page report, titled “Changes in Russians’ Political Sentiments After the Presidential Election,” was prepared by the respected Center for Strategic Research, chaired by liberal economist Mikhail Dmitriyev.
The report based its findings on interviews with people of various ages and education levels in focus groups held in Moscow and regional cities including Vladimir, Samara and Novokuibyshevsk, a city of 100,000 people in the Samara region.
An overwhelming majority of those surveyed said they thought a political revolution was possible and even desirable. The study said this represented a shift from the spring, when a report by the same organization found that people harbored greater fears regarding the possible “excesses” of a popular uprising.
“A change of leadership through voting, against the will of the authorities, is not considered a realistic option by respondents. This opinion can be considered almost unanimous,” the report said.
It said the protest movement has become more legitimate in the public’s view, making mass demonstrations more likely in the case of a trigger such as a large-scale economic crisis.
Few respondents said they viewed change by way of succession as likely, as in the case of Putin’s taking power in 2000 after the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.
“If neither of those plays out, the most realistic scenario will be national extinction,” said an op-ed describing the report published in Vedomosti on Wednesday, written by Dmitriyev and his colleague Sergei Belanovsky.
“[And] that is the path the current Russian authorities are leading the country down,” it said.
Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information think tank, said that he thinks people want stability but that the current political discontent could be exploited to cause upheaval.
“People want political stability and economic well-being, but there are groups who are interested in disturbing the current situation,” Mukhin said.
The report said that Putin’s approval rating of 44 percent is nearly the lowest since his return to the presidency in March, when it stood at 55 percent, which it said represents the fast drop in his approval numbers since the early 2000s. It also said the majority of Russians are tired of Putin’s PR efforts, such as his flight with migratory cranes last month.
Respondents likewise showed little enthusiasm for the current protest leaders and said the anti-government movement was hurt by their deficiencies.
“People are not ready to take part in protests organized by people whom they don’t understand and who formulate discontent not in the way people feel it,” said a 32-year-old man cited in the report.
In a clear attempt to present an alternative to Putin, the report asked respondents to give their opinion of three prominent political figures as potential leaders: First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, considered a Kremlin liberal, hawkish Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, and Kudrin, a former member of Putin’s inner circle who has attended opposition rallies since resigning as finance minister last September.
The report found that while Rogozin was mostly viewed negatively by respondents and Shuvalov was largely unknown, Kudrin was seen as a financial guru and among the few respected personalities in the ranks of Putin’s elite. But many people said the soft-spoken Kudrin lacks leadership qualities.
Analysts said the fact that the report featured Kudrin so prominently showed that it was biased.
“It is embarrassing when a report is written to please the person who ordered it,” said Oleg Matveichev, a conservative-leaning former presidential administration official and current professor at the Higher School of Economics.
Matveichev said people in the regions mostly support the current political course, even in the regions run by unpopular governors.
Mukhin, of the Center for Political Information, called the report “highly emotional” and said it had been influenced by an anti-Kremlin agenda prominent on the Internet.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the report’s findings “apocalyptic” and said the authors’ conclusions regarding public opinion were “wrong,” Interfax reported Wednesday.
Regarding their views on government, a majority of respondents said the ideal authority would act as a “shepherd” who would combine the semi-socialist Belarusian economic model with qualities of a welfare state like Norway or Sweden.
The most vivid expression of people’s feelings toward government was their response to a request to draw an animal they thought would best symbolize the authorities: 88 percent depicted a beast of prey or other aggressive animal, such as a wolf, lion or wild boar.
“The public is a dog that collects crumbs left by the boar-authorities from the table, and the boar knows that it [the dog] will eat them all up,” one respondent said.

TITLE: Russia Hits Out at European Parliament's Vote on Magnitsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Senior lawmakers Wednesday criticized a resolution by the European Parliament to establish a list of banned Russians similar to one under discussion in the U.S. Congress.
"This is yet another gross attempt to interfere in Russia's internal affairs and [constitutes] bold pressure on our judicial system," said Leonid Slutsky, deputy head of Russia's delegation to the European Parliament and a Liberal Democratic Party member in the State Duma. 
"Russia will not leave these attempts unanswered," he told reporters.
Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma's International Affairs Committee and a United Russia member, said the proposal "aims to divide Europe and Russia" and might create a "negative political climate," Ekho Moskvy radio reported. 
On Tuesday, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved the nonbinding resolution, which recommends entry bans and asset freezes for officials implicated in the 2009 prison death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. 
The lawmakers, who rejected a similar proposal two years ago, this time included a statement urging the Russian government "to conduct a credible and independent investigation encompassing all aspects of the case" and "to put an end to the widespread corruption and to reform the judicial system."
The resolution also asks EU leaders, during their talks with Russian officials, to bring up Magnitsky and "the issue of intimidation and impunity in cases involving human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers in a more determined, resolute and result-oriented manner."
Kristiina Ojuland, an Estonian lawmaker who co-drafted the resolution, said the measure sought to obtain justice for Magnitsky and to show solidarity with ordinary Russians.
"Instead of facing justice, these people are still in office. They travel in the EU, spend their dirty money in the EU, buy real estate and educate their children here," she said in a statement. "At the same time, this recommendation is our sign of solidarity with the Russian people, who are living through challenging times and aspire to genuine, not decorative, democracy."
Magnitsky, who died after a beating by prison guards, was jailed by investigators whom he had accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the Russian government.
Slutsky called the European Parliament's decision "politicized" and expressed regret that the lawmakers "suddenly became interested in the Magnitsky case three and a half years after his tragic death in jail, exactly when negotiations on visa-free travel between Russia and the EU have reached a high-water mark," Interfax reported.
He stressed that Magnitsky's death has been raised repeatedly by both U.S. and European politicians in recent months. 
"Some have pre-election fever, and others are apparently becoming hostages to political lobbying and Cold War remnants," he said.
Slutsky noted that the European resolution is merely a recommendation and that the EU's executive authorities would have the final word.
Although the U.S. Magnitsky List remains under discussion in Congress, the U.S. State Department has denied visas to dozens of Russians implicated in the case since last year. The British government also has enforced a list of banned Russians. Neither country has disclosed the names on their lists.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Hermitage Pickpockets</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The director of the city’s State Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, has complained about pickpockets operating in the halls of the museum, stealing tourists’ purses, wallets and cell phones.
“The director of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Nikolai Burov, told me that they had caught pickpockets stealing tourists’ belongings in the cathedral. So, it looks as if those thieves have now come in our direction. We catch pickpockets, too, though,” said Piotrovsky, adding that for that purpose the museum’s security guards use recordings from the video cameras fixed in the Winter Palace, Interfax reported.

<b>St. Petersburg Expands</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A bill on the expansion of St. Petersburg’s city borders passed Sept. 19 came into effect last week, Interfax reported. 
The bill extends the city’s territory to include several settlements and residential areas that were previously part of the Leningrad Oblast.
As a result of the changes, the city now covers land in and around the village of Pesochnoye to the northwest of the city, as well as artificial land near Sestroretsk to the north of the Kronstadt flood barrier, the reclaimed land on the western edge of Vasilyevsky Island, and the village of Novogorelovo in the Lomonosovsky district to the southwest of the city.

<b>Polish Visa Center </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Poland opened a visa center in St. Petersburg on Friday, Interfax reported.
The visa center will collect visa fees, check application forms and issue processed passports. Decisions on the issuing of visas will remain the exclusive right of the Polish Consulate General. 



TITLE: Finnish ‘Activist’ Backs Down
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Johan B&#228;ckman, who presents himself as a Finnish human rights activist drawing the attention of the Russian media to the alleged harassment of Finland-based Russian mothers due to what he calls Finnish “Russophobia,” has admitted his reports were exaggerated and should not be “taken literally.”
Russian media have repeatedly published information provided to them by B&#228;ckman, who has even gone so far as to describe the treatment of Russian children in Finland as “genocide,” without any fact-checking.
Last week, B&#228;ckman also announced that he had been fired from the University of Helsinki — a statement that was rejected by the institution — and that he had had to hide because of persecution, while the Finnish media revealed that he himself had been involved in a lengthy legal dispute over child custody, which he had lost.
The Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE said Thursday on its website that B&#228;ckman believes the Russian media to be “extremely uncivilized, characterized by emotionality and prone to exaggeration.”
“All discussions are highly emotional in the Russian media, problems are made more intense there,” B&#228;ckman was quoted as saying. 
“You simply cannot speak in Russia the way people do in the Finnish media, where statements are often highly monotonous.”
That is why a special approach was needed, he went on.
“If I speak in the Russian media, I can rave about how children in Finland are put in concentration camps. The recipient will certainly understand the information when it is in that emotional context,” B&#228;ckman told YLE.
On Oct. 16, B&#228;ckman made headlines in Russia by claiming that the University of Helsinki had fired him for his human rights activities and by threatening to sue Rector Thomas Wilhelmsson for “defamation” and “discrimination.” 
Dozens of Russian print publications and websites reacted with headlines such as “Finland Does Not Tolerate Criticism” and “Finnish Human Rights Activist Fired for Defending Russian Mothers.”
Speaking to Interfax, B&#228;ckman described the alleged firing as a “rude violation of the freedom of science.”
“The rector has no right to put pressure on me or other employees of the university for defending human rights,” he was quoted as saying.
The University of Helsinki reacted with a correction the following day.
“The University of Helsinki cannot discharge B&#228;ckman because he is not an employee of the university,” communications director Kirsti Lehmusto said in a statement.
“Docent is a title granted by the university. Therefore, a docent is not an employee of the university. A docent can teach courses or guide doctoral dissertations, if so requested by the university. Docent B&#228;ckman has not taught at the University of Helsinki since 2009.”
The University of Helsinki has decided to shut down B&#228;ckman’s university email account at the end of the month on the grounds that he had not worked there for a long time, and was also looking into whether it was legally possible to rescind his docent’s title, Helsingin Sanomat reported Oct. 17.
The newspaper pointed out that the title of “docent” formally indicated that the holder had an actual job at the institution that granted it, even if nowadays it is a lifetime honorary title.
The news about B&#228;ckman’s own lengthy legal dispute over custody of a child was published in Finland last week.
B&#228;ckman had a relationship with the woman involved in the custody dispute in the early 2000s, but the two separated before the child was born, Helsingin Sanomat reported Friday.
According to the newspaper, the most recent court records relating to his legal battle — which began in 2005 — show that B&#228;ckman’s application for sole custody was not considered.  
According to Helsingin Sanomat, B&#228;ckman told the newspaper at one point that the woman’s family had moved to Finland from the Soviet Union in 1990, but when speaking to the Finnish News Agency STT on Thursday he said she was Finnish.
The newspaper wrote that in court the woman claimed she came from Russia and accused B&#228;ckman of having a negative attitude toward her national background, something that he denied.
On Saturday, the state-owned Voice of Russia radio reported on its English-language website that B&#228;ckman had been obliged to flee Finland due to “immense pressure from the authorities.”
“I feel very uncomfortable, the situation is very risky,” he was quoted as saying. “I could even be assassinated. I receive death threats regularly. They are doing everything to harm my reputation in Finland. Nevertheless, I feel that ordinary people support me. Now I can’t rule out that I will have to flee abroad to escape persecution.”
On Sunday, however, B&#228;ckman appeared in a live talk show broadcast on Finnish television and said that he was not emigrating at this point.
B&#228;ckman’s recent statements include accusing the imprisoned feminist punk group Pussy Riot of being “fascist” and his call for an infamous St. Petersburg law forbidding the “promotion of homosexuality” to be passed in Finland.
In the Russian media, B&#228;ckman has usually been described as a professor at the University of Helsinki, but two months ago the university stated publically that he was not teaching there.
In August, B&#228;ckman accused a University of Helsinki professor of trying to break into a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki for a Pussy Riot-style protest.  
The news was widely reported by the Russian media in August, complete with the detail that the professor allegedly had a canister of urine with him that he planned to throw inside the church. 
B&#228;ckman claimed that a criminal case had been opened against the professor and that his actions were being investigated by the police.
All his claims were dismissed in a statement from the University of Helsinki soon after.
Later on, B&#228;ckman made a statement to the Russian media, claiming that the alleged criminal case had been closed due to “pressure from the University of Helsinki.” 
There has been no confirmation of any legal proceedings from any source other than B&#228;ckman himself.


TITLE: Gallery Owner Cancels Exhibit of Modern Icons
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Outspoken Russian gallery owner Marat Guelman said Tuesday that he had canceled an art exhibit in St. Petersburg that was scheduled to open on Nov. 15 after appeals by the show’s promoter.
The Rizzordi Art Foundation, which had offered to display “Icons,” a religious-themed exhibit, in Russia’s second-largest city, asked to consider postponing the exhibit until late 2013, keeping all preliminary agreements, Guelman wrote on his LiveJournal blog.
“Unfortunately, the current atmosphere in the city is extremely unfavorable to stage the mentioned art show,” the Rizzordi Art Foundation said in a letter, which Guelman posted on his blog.
Guelman, who put together the exhibit, responded by saying that he deeply regretted the current situation but had decided “not to postpone the show, but to cancel it.”
The project’s aim is show modern icon painting that differs from the traditional style espoused by Russian Orthodox painters. The project caused protests by religious activists in the southern city of Krasnodar in May, when the exhibit went on display there.
Guelman said that his decision to cancel the exhibit in St. Petersburg would not affect plans to bring “Icons” to the Urals city of Perm.


TITLE: Migrant Guide Causes Outrage 
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: It was intended as a friendly guide to Russia for labor migrants from Central Asia, but instead it turned into an insult. The brochure with practical advice on how to deal with border guards, police and other authorities was illustrated with depictions of migrant workers as paint brushes, brooms and other tools of low-skilled work.
The anger exploded this week. The government of Tajikistan formally urged Russian authorities to remove the book from circulation, and representatives of the Uzbek community voiced their outrage.
Activists see the book, published in St. Petersburg, as a reflection of the discrimination against the growing number of impoverished, mostly Muslim, migrants in Russia who are working in construction, cleaning offices, sweeping the streets and collecting the garbage.
“It’s xenophobia pure and clear,” said Lev Ponomaryov, a veteran Russian human rights defender. “They show residents of St. Petersburg as humans and depict migrants as construction tools.”
Even though “A Labor Migrant’s Handbook” was promoted on a city government web site, authorities denied any connection to the publication when outrage erupted after bloggers discovered it and publicized it online last week. A non-governmental organization that published 10,000 copies of the book in the Russian, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik languages insisted it just wanted to provide useful information about everyday life in Russia.
“We didn’t mean to insult anyone with this brochure — on the contrary, we aimed to help labor migrants learn about their rights and avoid getting into trouble in this city,” said Gleb Panfilov, deputy head of the Look into the Future group that published the book.
Panfilov said his group had people from the ex-Soviet nations of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan look at the proofs prior to publication and received no complaints. He said he couldn’t understand the public outrage now, many months after its release.
But, in a country where dark-complexioned migrants are commonly victims of hate crimes and frequently live in miserable conditions, others are not surprised by the anger.
Alimzhan Khaidarov, the leader of St. Petersburg’s Uzbek community, said he was offended by the brochure. 
“They compared us, representatives of the ancient Uzbek culture, with construction tools. And not only us, but also representatives of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan,” Khaidarov told The Associated Press.
He said rights groups representing migrants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan will consider filing a lawsuit against the publisher.
On Monday, the Tajik government denounced the brochure as insulting and asked Russian authorities to stop its distribution, according to the Interfax news agency.
More than 1 million of the impoverished ex-Soviet nation’s seven-million population live and work in Russia, and their remittances totaled around $3 billion in 2011, equivalent to around half of the mountainous nation’s gross domestic product. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan also have been major exporters of labor to Russia.
Uzbek activist, Suratbek Abdurakhimov, called the publication an ethical mistake. “They should have consulted with representatives of the diasporas before publication and found a more appropriate way to give the information,” he said. He added that he was against giving the issue too much publicity to avoid fueling xenophobic sentiments among local residents.
“Local people are already to a certain extent irritated with migrants, why irritate them more?” he asked.
Though hate attacks in Russia peaked in 2008, when 115 people were killed and nearly 500 wounded, according to Sova, an independent watchdog, the numbers are still high. A police crackdown on neo-Nazi groups helped stem the tide, but Sova said 20 people were killed and at least 130 others were wounded in racially motivated crimes last year.
Labor migrants often endure horrific labor conditions as well as a complete lack of social protection and medical care.
“The government has done nothing to protect their rights,” Ponomaryov said. “There has been nothing but words.”


TITLE: Kovalchuk Inspires SKA to Winning Streak
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SKA St. Petersburg extended its winning streak to seven games with a 3-2 win over Atlant Moscow Oblast on Monday night in Mytishchi.
U.S. National Hockey League lockout signing and team captain Ilya Kovalchuk scored a goal and an assist in the victory and has been a key element in the team’s success since his arrival on Sept. 17. 
In that time he has played 11 games, tallying seven goals and 13 assists — making him one of the Kontinental Hockey League’s leading players in assists and points.
“He’s been a great leader and his play has been inspirational,” said SKA head coach Milos Riha last week at a post-game press conference in St. Petersburg. “But really the whole team has showed a lot of spirit and fought to the end. I’m proud of them.”
In last week’s home series, SKA scored four goals to down Metallurg Novokuznetsk 4-2 last Monday, hammered Amur Khabarovsk 7-3 the following day and shut out Eastern Division powerhouse Sibir Novosibirsk 2-0 Thursday. 
“Sure, it’s tough playing back-to-back games. October has been a difficult month for us with lots of games and a long road trip,” Miha said, alluding to games in Prague and Bratislava at the start of the month. “Last year we didn’t have such a tight schedule, but I’m not going to complain. We’re just going to do everything we can to prepare for the next game.”
SKA’s winning streak has been built on stellar play by last year’s foreign fan favorites Patrick Thoresen (Norway) and Tony Martensson (Sweden), as well as Canadian newcomer Kevin Dallman, who spent last season with Kazakh side Barys Astana. Unrestricted free agent Viktor Tikhonov is also back in shape and getting more time on the ice, as is another of last year’s leaders, Vladimir Tarasenko, who was set to head to the St. Louis Blues at the start of this season but remained with SKA after the lockout.   
Miha surprised journalists when he said that because Tarasenko had not started playing for the U.S. team, he doesn’t count under the KHL’s special regulations that stipulate that teams may only add three NHL players to their rosters, and that SKA is still eligible to sign one more locked-out player. 
Miha wouldn’t comment on who the team is eyeing, saying only: “That decision will be made by management. I was hoping to get a solid center and we signed a goaltender and a winger.
“The players are hungry for ice time and they have been bringing their best game to practice sessions. Even if the lockout ends, the younger players are getting valuable experience playing with these guys,” he added.
Talks are continuing between the NHL and the NHL Players Association (NHLPA) but negotiations over player rights, contracts and salaries have stalled for the time being after the NHL rejected three counterproposals by the NHLPA last Thursday. On Friday the NHL canceled all games through Nov. 1. 
As a result more and more locked-out players are considering options in Europe. Washington Capitals center Nicklas Backstrom became the 37th locked out player to sign with a KHL team when the Swede inked a deal with Dinamo Moscow last Friday.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>City Dying, Says UN</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — has been included on a UN list of the most rapidly dying cities in the world. According to the Business Insider agency, the city was ranked 11th out of 28 on the list drawn up by UN experts, web portal Fontanka.ru reported.
According to the calculations of the UN, in 1990 the population of St. Petersburg was 4.9 million people, but by 2010 that number had shrunk to 4.5 million people, meaning that the city lost eight percent of its population during that 20-year period.
The UN forecasts that the city’s population will remain at around 4.5 million until 2025.
Curiously, the UN’s data does not correlate with official Russian statistics — St. Petersburg authorities recently proclaimed the birth of the city’s five millionth resident.
St. Petersburg was not the only Russian city to appear on the list. Nizhny Novgorod was ranked fifth on the list, Saratov sixth and Perm ninth. 
Samara, Ufa, Voronezh, Volgograd, Chelyabinsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk also appeared on the list.


TITLE:  Navalny, Kasparov Win Seats  
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Well-known opposition figures like anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and former chess champion Garry Kasparov joined lower-profile personalities like former Kremlin G8 sherpa Andrei Illarionov and political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky in a new 45-member “shadow government,” according to election results released late Monday.
The online election, extended into a third day after hacker attacks disrupted voting, saw a turnout of 83 percent, the head of the shadow elections commission, Leonid Volkov, said on Twitter.
Of the 170,012 people who registered to vote, the identities of 97,727 were verified and 81,801 ended up voting, according to the elections commission’s website, cvk2012.org. Two hundred candidates ran for seats on the council.
The newly elected coordination council is an attempt by the opposition to organize into a united force capable of maintaining its momentum after a tumultuous 11 months that started with mass rallies after disputed State Duma elections in December. Those rallies prompted the Kremlin to promise political reform but also to pass a series of tough laws that have tightened the screws on protests and other initiatives that the Kremlin sees as challenging its legitimacy.
Navalny, with 43,723 votes, won the most support, and will sit on the council with socialite Ksenia Sobchak, Solidarity leader Ilya Yashin, environmentalist Yevgenia Chirikova, Parnas leader Boris Nemtsov, journalists Oleg Kashin and Olga Romanova, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, and recently ousted State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov and his son, Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov.





TITLE: Riot ‘Conspirator’ Alleges PoliceTorture
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An opposition activist shown on national TV plotting with a Georgian power broker to cause “mass riots in Moscow” has turned himself in to police and written a 10-page confession, investigators said Monday.
But Leonid Razvozzhayev, who fled the country last week to seek asylum in Ukraine, said he was abducted by police and tortured.
“They promised to kill me. I was abducted in Ukraine and tortured for two days,” Razvozzhayev, a Left Front activist and adviser to State Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, cried out as he was taken into a police vehicle after a hearing Sunday in Moscow, a LifeNews video showed.
The Investigative Committee said Monday in a statement that it would check Razvozzhayev’s allegations but added that “Razvozzhayev was in a clear state of mind when he wrote his admission of guilt.”
“Before Razvozzhayev was put in the pretrial detention center, he was examined by a doctor, and no bodily injuries were found,” the statement continues. “There were no complaints from Razvozzhayev regarding the state of his health, and he did not request medical assistance.”
Razvozzhayev’s lawyer, Violetta Volkova, told The St. Petersburg Times on Monday that she was sure Razvozzhayev was tortured into confessing. She added that she had not been permitted to enter the Lefortovo detention center to see her client, who was given a two-month pretrial sentence Sunday.
“The Investigative Committee did not allow us to participate in this case,” Volkova said, referring to Razvozzhayev’s defense team. “Our client did not make a public statement refusing our defense.”
She added, “I assume that serious pressure is being put on him.”
Last week, a criminal case was opened against Razvozzhayev, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and aide Konstantin Lebedev, who were depicted scheming with the former head of the Georgian parliament’s defense committee, Givi Targamadze, in the recently aired NTV documentary “Anatomy of a Protest 2.”
The three activists hoped to attract 20 million rubles ($650,000) in financing and gather about 35,000 supporters to cause mass unrest in the nation, investigators said at the time.
Udaltsov was taken in for questioning last week but released the same day. Lebedev was deemed a flight risk and remained in custody Monday.
Razvozzhayev, however, fled to Kiev and “was attacked by several plainclothes people just after he left the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society office,” Kommersant quoted witnesses as saying. “They put him in a car that drove off in an unknown direction.”
Ponomaryov, whom investigators said Monday had been officially notified that his adviser was in jail, said by phone that he believed that Razvozzhayev had been abducted by Russian officials.
“He was abducted last Friday and brought to Moscow only Sunday. No one knows where he was for two days,” he said, adding that a source in Ukraine told him that Razvozzhayev was brought to Moscow on a private aircraft.
Ponomaryov alleged that Russian and Ukrainian authorities violated the law regarding the extradition to Moscow. He suspected that there could have been an agreement between the two nations ahead of an official visit of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to Russia.
“It’s more likely that Yanukovych decided to do Russia a favor to get a cut in prices for gas that Russia supplies to Ukraine,” Ponomaryov said.
Targamadze, the former Georgian defense official, has said he doesn’t know the Left Front members with whom he was accused of hatching a nefarious plot.
“Russian law enforcement agencies set a goal to arrest Udaltsov and began to compile absurd facts to fulfill that goal,” Interfax quoted Targamadze as saying Monday.
“Razvozzhayev’s confession is nonsense. As far as I know, he was detained in Kiev, where he was trying to address the UN human rights commissioner,” Targamadze said. “After the detention, certain measures were applied to him, and he started to say what Russian prosecution agencies wanted him to say.”
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told RIA-Novosti on Monday, “I don’t know what [Razvozzhayev] declared, but the fact remains that he, with his own hand, wrote a 10-page admission of guilt in which he describes preparations for riots.”
Razvozzhayev was put on a wanted list Thursday, and Sunday he “turned himself in to the Investigative Committee to write the acknowledgement, in which he described how he, Udaltsov, Lebedev and others had been plotting mass riots on the territory of Russia,” Markin said in a video posted on the committee’s website.


TITLE: Udmurtia Head’s Breguet Watch ‘Vanishes’ From Billboard 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Bloggers have ridiculed the head of the Udmurtia republic after his pricey golden wristwatch mysteriously disappeared from a billboard at the entrance to the capital’s zoo.
Earlier this month, a LiveJournal blogger nicknamed pravdorub-rus spotted that on the billboard in Izhevsk, Alexander Volkov had his left hand decorated with a luxurious Breguet wristwatch in a picture of him holding a leopard cub.
Bloggers calculated that the value of such a model of Breguet watch, made in Switzerland from 18-carat gold, is approximately the same as Volkov’s annual salary and can range between $100,000 and $120,000.
But local journalist and opposition activist Andrei Konoval wrote on his blog on Monday that the Breguet watch had mysteriously disappeared from the image and that the republic’s head is now pictured wearing an unremarkable, unbranded watch instead.
On closer inspection, Konoval saw that an image of a plain watch had merely been glued over the old image.
As proof, the blogger posted a video online, in which it is clear that the poster has been altered.
In an interview with Russian News Service, a spokesman for the Udmurtia republic’s administration, Vladimir Chulkov, said he had never seen Volkov “wearing such a watch [the Breguet]” and that the original image had been painted on by unnamed designers.
He also speculated that opposition forces could be behind the incident, but did not elaborate.
Bloggers recalled that during his election campaign, Volkov had called on voters, some of whom were experiencing severe financial difficulties, to “tighten their belts.”
The Udmurtia scandal recalls a similar wristwatch incident with Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s top religious official.
In April, a picture of Kirill meeting with Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov went viral after bloggers spotted a reflection of the Patriarch’s Breguet wristwatch in the table they were seated at — but no watch on his wrist.
The Moscow Patriarchate had to apologize, saying that a photo editor had violated the church’s internal ethics when photoshopping the image.


TITLE: Officials Turn Up Heat on U.S. Adoptions
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian officials cranked up their warnings about U.S. child adoptions on Monday as a long-awaited U.S.-Russian agreement neared implementation.
The child adoption agreement, which Moscow demanded after a U.S. mother sent her adopted son back to Russia unaccompanied on a plane in 2010, will come into force Nov. 1.
The agreement will “promote a safe, ethical and transparent adoption process for prospective adoptive parents, birth families and children,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement Thursday.
But a senior Foreign Ministry official and the national children’s ombudsman told the State Duma on Monday that they remained worried about the fate of Russian children sent to the United States.
“Often we don’t see any help from the U.S.,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov, according to Interfax. “We are not even informed of child abuse cases. There is no practical assistance with organizing consular appointments.”
Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said the adoption business is lucrative for the people involved, with an annual market value of $1.5 billion.
“Those who spread the myths about how good it is for our children in America, what a great future they have, are either involved in this business or people without a clear conscience,” he said.
He added that 19 Russian children have died at the hands of their U.S. adoptive parents.
Child adoptions are a hot topic in Russia, where the government cringes at the reality that many Russians would rather leave children in state institutions than take them into their homes. Russian officials have given various figures for the number of children who have died over the past two decades in the U.S., but each instance has sparked major headlines in state-owned media and calls for an end to foreign adoptions.
More than 65,000 Russian children were adopted by American families since 1988, peaking at 5,862 in 2004 but declining to 962 in 2011, according to statistics released by the State Department’s adoption website. 
While cases of abuse of Russian children in the U.S. receive wide media coverage here, similar crimes committed in Russia often go under the radar. Just Monday, Tula prosecutors promised to look into how a local man was able to adopt five children, even though he had previously been convicted of rape, murder and burglary. The case was referred to local prosecutors after the man’s circumstances were reported by local media.
Not all adoption cases look grim, however. Jessica Long, who was born in Bratsk in 1992 and had her legs amputated when she was 18 months old, was adopted by an American family at the age of 1 and became a world record holder in 13 Paralympic events, including five gold medals, in London 2012.
The new U.S.-Russia agreement introduces compulsory background checks and a control mechanism over the well-being of adopted children. Foreign adoption will only be considered in the absence of local adoption prospects.

TITLE: Moscow Condemns U.S. Human Rights
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A senior Foreign Ministry official harshly criticized United States authorities Monday for alleged human rights abuses while presenting a report on human rights in foreign countries.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov condemned what the report described as the often harsh conditions in American prisons, the use of the death penalty and the mistreatment of adopted children in American families.
“Washington’s attempts to become the world’s tutor on democracy are baseless,” Ryabkov said during a hearing by the Duma International Affairs Committee on the human rights situation in the U.S.
The report, which was presented Monday without actually being released, is the second such paper authored by the Foreign Ministry on human rights abroad and comes in the run-up to a U.S. presidential election that could have an impact on the United States’ relationship with Russia.
The first edition of the report was released in December and was seen by foreign relations experts as a response to a similar document published by the U.S. State Department, which is often critical of Russia.
Russian authorities frequently respond to criticism from the West by pointing the finger at the alleged faults of their accusers.
U.S.-Russian relations have shown signs of strain since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency this year, though the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has not responded aggressively to anti-American rhetoric by Russia or to Russia’s moves to limit U.S. influence in the country. Obama has touted the countries’ “reset” policy as one of his foreign policy successes.
Ryabkov reiterated one of the motives for Russia’s most significant action to curb U.S. activity in the country: The expulsion of the United States Agency for International Development, which followed Putin’s allegation that the State Department had been funding the opposition through grants to NGOs.
“Russian civil society has woken up now and no longer needs prompters,” Ryabkov said, using the word for a person in a theater performance who supplies actors with forgotten lines.
The U.S. Embassy, which sent at least one diplomat to Monday’s Duma committee hearing, said the U.S. welcomed dialogue on human rights issues.
“The U.S. government has always demonstrated a readiness to engage in open conversation about democracy and human rights around the world. As our own history clearly demonstrates, open, factual honest discussions of these issues make democracies stronger,” embassy spokesman Joseph Kruzich said.
The bulk of the information presented Monday by the Foreign Ministry was taken from American groups such as Human Rights Watch, a fact not hidden by Konstantin Dolgov, the ministry official who oversees human rights and who also spoke at the hearing.
Mirroring U.S. criticism of a Kremlin crackdown on protesters, Dolgov condemned what he described as police brutality against Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York.
Head of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky used characteristically colorful language to criticize U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul for not coming to the hearing.
“Ambassador Michael McFaul could have come, but he doesn’t like listening to two hours of criticism directed at his country,” Zhirinovsky said. “But his diplomats recorded everything. They will tell him everything, and his lunch will be ruined.”
Alexei Pushkov, the hawkish head of the International Affairs Committee, said McFaul had been invited to attend the hearing.
The Foreign Ministry report was presented two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, in which Obama faces Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who has called Russia the United States’ “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Last year’s report was published in December.


TITLE: Pussy Riot Sent to ‘Brutal’ Jails
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two Pussy Riot musicians were sent to separate prisons over the weekend to serve out two-year sentences for their anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s main cathedral.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was sent to a prison in the Mordovia republic and Maria Alyokhina went to a prison in the Perm region Saturday, Pussy Riot said on its Twitter account.
“These are the most brutal colonies of all possible options,” it said.
The Mordovia and Perm prisons house some of the country’s most dangerous criminals, including killers, robbers and organized crime gangsters.
Defense lawyer Mark Feigin, who was not notified about the women’s move, telephoned the Moscow detention center where they had been held Monday and received confirmation that they had left, Interfax reported. He was trying to determine exactly where they had been sent.
Prison officials did not confirm the location of the women, telling national news agencies that the information would only be shared with immediate family.
A Moscow court in August convicted Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and a third musician, Yekaterina Samutsevich, of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for their February performance in Christ the Savior Cathedral. Samutsevich’s conviction was thrown out on appeal on Oct. 10, with the court ruling that she had not been among the masked women who participated in the performance. She filed a lawsuit against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights last week.
The Moscow court rejected appeals from the other two musicians, despite a plea that the sentences be delayed until the women’s children reached the age of 14 — an option that judges are allowed to grant under the law. Tolokonnikova’s daughter, Gera, is 4, while Alyokhina’s son, Philip, is 5.

TITLE: Publicity of German Spy Case Puzzles Experts
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The German government offered the Kremlin a spy swap involving the exchange of a couple arrested in Germany on charges of being Russian sleeper agents, a news report said Sunday.
German officials asked Russian Ambassador Vladimir Grinin in March to swap Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag for two Russians sentenced to jail time on charges of spying for the West, newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag reported.
Russia did not respond to the offer, however, and prosecutors decided to charge the two suspects, the report said, citing no one.
German federal prosecutors said in a statement last month that the couple, who were arrested last October, had spied for Moscow for more than 20 years, posing as an Austrian couple who had previously lived in Latin America. 
Their surname was officially withheld but has been confirmed by The St. Petersburg Times.
Neither German nor Russian officials had commented on the report by Monday, but experts pointed out that Berlin’s handling of the case showed significant differences from a case involving a ring of illegal agents uncovered in the United States in 2010, a group that included the now famous Anna Chapman.
Andrei Soldatov, a security analyst with the Agentura.ru think tank, said it was odd that German authorities had permitted much wider publicity in the case.
“The Germans limited the scandal much less than the Americans, despite the fact that their intelligence services have such good ties with Moscow,” Soldatov said.
In the 2010 U.S. case, investigators presented the charges against the 10 sleeper agents at a New York court hearing June 29, a day after their arrest. Less than two weeks later, the suspects were flown to Russia in a spy swap July 9.
By contrast, 11 months passed between the October 2011 detention of the Anschlags and the public announcement of charges against them Sept. 14, and both events received widespread media coverage.
Soldatov said Germany’s federal intelligence agency, also known as the BND, is said to enjoy better relations with its Moscow counterparts than most other Western agencies.
In 2000, then-BND head August Hanning even visited Chechnya while a war with separatists and Islamic extremists was in full swing.
Hans-Henning Schroder, an analyst with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, agreed that the publicity of the case was odd. “This story could easily have been solved secretly,” he said by telephone from Berlin.
According to prosecutors, the Anschlags, who had last lived near the central German city of Marburg, passed official documents from NATO and the EU to Moscow that they obtained via an agent in the Dutch Foreign Ministry.
Prosecutors said the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, had paid the couple 100,000 euros ($130,600) per year for their work. Their information was passed on to Moscow via satellite and coded messages on YouTube.


TITLE: Suicide Bomber Kills Policeman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A suicide bombing killed a police officer and injured four other officers early Tuesday at an internal border checkpoint in North Ossetia.
The explosion occurred at about 4:30 a.m. when a Lada VAZ 2109 with Ingush license plates crossed the border from the Ingush side, and was pulled over by the police for inspection, police said.
The driver, who remained inside the vehicle, then set off the explosion, killing police Lieutenant Zaur Dzhilikov.
Four other officers were hospitalized with various injuries.
The powerful blast scattered car parts as far as 100 meters, RIA-Novosti reported, citing police. The border checkpoint was also completely destroyed.
The explosive device is believed to have contained the equivalent of 30 kilograms of TNT, RIA-Novosti said.
The circumstances surrounding the attack were still being clarified. Police believe the car might have been heading to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia.


TITLE: Ryanair Courts Russia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Transportation Ministry has received a request from Ireland’s Foreign Ministry to allow Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair to operate flights between the two countries, a Transportation Ministry spokesman told Interfax. 
The document does not list any possible routes or flight frequency.
“Details will be announced after the two countries’ aviation authorities have held talks,” he said. 
Vedomosti reported last week that First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov welcomed foreign budget airlines’ expansion into the Russian market. 
“We are talking about allowing low-cost airlines to fly to some destinations where their technology, investment and experience of managing this business could increase competition and, of course, lower costs,” the paper said, citing a spokesman for Shuvalov.
Currently, low-cost airlines that fly to Russia include Germany’s Air Berlin and Germanwings, Spain’s Vueling Airlines, Norway’s Norwegian, Austria’s Niki, Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and the United Arab Emirates-based companies Air Arabia and Flydubai. 
Ryanair is Europe’s largest low-cost airline. It flies more than 1,100 routes between 160 airports and makes more than 1,400 flights per day. The company flew more than 75 million passengers in 2011, and it has over 294 airplanes.



TITLE: Rosneft Unveils Historic $61Bln Oil Deal
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosneft chief Igor Sechin proclaimed the “third-largest deal” in history as the state-owned oil firm put together a $61 billion scheme that will see it take over 100 percent of TNK-BP. 
“Taking Rosneftegaz’s stock into account, this deal will require $61 billion, the third-largest deal in the world,” Sechin said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. 
The $61 billion figure includes both funds to be paid by Rosneft for 100 percent in TNK-BP and the money that BP will pay for shares in Rosneft. 
Sechin was speaking hours after the company announced separate deals Monday afternoon to acquire the 50 percent stakes in TNK-BP held by BP and the AAR consortium. 
Rosneft paid BP $17.1 billion in cash plus a package of its own shares amounting to 12.84 percent in exchange for the British oil major’s 50 percent stake of TNK-BP. 
The two-tranche deal will see BP use $4.8 billion of the cash it gets to acquire a further 5.66 percent of Rosneft from the government. 
Rosneft’s shares have been valued at $8 each for the purpose of the deal, a healthy premium on the $7.13 the stock closed at on Oct. 18, when the bid was made, and nearly 14 percent above Monday’s London close of $7.06 per share. 
BP closed down 1.45 percent at 443.45 pence ($7.14) in London on Monday. 
BP said in a statement Monday that it expects to have earned $12.3 billion in cash and hold 19.75 percent of Rosneft — including the 1.25 percent stake it currently owns — when the transaction is completed.
The British oil company, which has been working with Rosneft in one form or another since signing a joint venture to explore reserves off Sakhalin Island in 1998, also expects to gain two seats on Rosneft’s nine-seat board. 
Signing the deal would be dependent on the Russian government agreeing to sell the 5.66 percent of shares in Rosneft. BP said its sale of the TNK-BP stake and acquisition of the additional chunk of Rosneft should occur on the same day.
BP waived its right under the TNK-BP shareholder agreement to negotiate to buy AAR’s stake in order to allow Rosneft to take over the entire company, which is Russia’s third-largest oil firm. 
In a separate deal, Rosneft agreed to pay $28 billion to AAR for its half of TNK BP. AAR is the consortium made up of Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, and Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova Group. 
Both deals remain subject to finalization of documentation and steps for regulatory approval. 
When the deal goes through, Rosneft will overtake ExxonMobil to become the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas producer in terms of output.
Rosneft turned out 2.45 million barrels of oil per day in 2011, while TNK-BP put out 1.99 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. 
Rosneft is already Russia’s leading oil producer, and the acquisition of TNK-BP will make it responsible for 39 percent of the country’s output. 
President Vladimir Putin gave his blessing to the deal during a meeting with Sechin on Monday. 
“This is a good, big deal that is important not only for Russia’s energy sector but for the entire Russian economy,” Putin said in remarks carried by Russian television. 
BP paid $8 billion for its stake in TNK-BP 2003 and has earned more than $19 billion in dividends since, making its investment a lucrative one even without the buyout announced Monday.

TITLE: Medvedev Calls on Market  To Respect Copyright Laws  
AUTHOR: By Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KRASNOGORSK, Moscow Region — With counterfeits making up perhaps as much as a quarter of manufactured goods sold in Russia, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called Monday for the market to become “more civilized” and urged officials, retailers and consumers to uphold copyright laws.
But he declined to back the idea of an oversight body for the government’s anti-counterfeit efforts and predicted that the customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus would create additional problems with fake goods.
Speaking at an anti-counterfeit conference at the Crocus Expo Center to the west of Moscow, the prime minister said Russia — a hotbed of counterfeit electronics, pirated software and illicit vodka — needs to find a balance between promoting innovation through the free exchange of ideas and protecting brands and artistic works.
“The government and civil society must uphold the protection of intellectual property rights on the one hand while stimulating competition and eliminating unreasonable barriers in the market on the other,” Medvedev said.
More than 900 billion rubles ($29 billion) of fake goods are distributed on the Russian market each year, said Alexei Popovichev, executive director of branded-goods manufacturers association RusBrand. Research commissioned by RusBrand and conducted by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics has found that about 24 percent of the retail revenue of consumer goods here comes from counterfeits, with vodka, clothing and shoes being the categories with the most fakes.
The HSE report commissioned by RusBrand, carried out every few years since 2000, has shown a decline in faked goods, and the Federal Customs Service has been actively fighting brand violations, Popovichev said on the sidelines of the conference. But the challenges of cleaning up the market remain huge.
Sharing the stage with Medvedev were Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and a number of intellectual property rights specialists, including Frances Moore, the chief executive officer of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a recording industry lobbyist.
She told Medvedev that one of the biggest Russian market barriers for her group’s members is piracy.
In her speech to the hundreds of (mostly Russian) guests at the forum, Moore singled out Vkontakte, the most popular social network on the Russian-speaking Internet, as a violator of music copyrights.
“The most significant unlicensed player in Russia today is Vkontakte,” she said, arguing that the network allows and even encourages illegal sharing of music.


TITLE: Experts Mull FIDIC Membership at Forum
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Possible Russian participation in the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) was the main item on the agenda at a roundtable discussion at the ITAR-TASS press center in St. Petersburg last Wednesday.
Russia’s recent entry into the WTO has made integration into the world engineering market a priority, and gaining membership of FIDIC would be a significant step forward for the country’s engineering sphere.
The biggest international organization in the field of construction consulting, FIDIC unites 94 national associations around the world. FIDIC’s forms of international contracts are the most widely used in the global consulting engineering industry, and include World Bank projects. Russia is one of the few states that don’t support the FIDIC system. 
Enrico Vink, managing director of FIDIC, spoke at the discussion about the benefits membership of the organization would bring Russia, including the advantages of using FIDIC-approved independent engineer-consultants. 
“There are a lot of engineers in the world who can design whatever you want. But after graduating from engineering institutes they still need to educate themselves in order to understand all the broadening business issues including management and supervision,” said Vink, explaining the difference between a planner engineer and an engineer-consultant. These specialists can work as technical advisors on the financial part of a project to reassure sponsor organizations that everything is going according to plan, or as independent experts in court to ascertain whether any technical mistakes have been made during the realization of a project, thereby they can be of use at various stages of the realization of a contract. 
“The majority of national consulting systems mostly pay attention to one part of the contract, whereas FIDIC contracts are considered to be more balanced,” he added.
A number of companies with positive experience of working with FIDIC contracts also participated in the discussion. Denis Kachkin, managing partner of the Kachkin & Partners law firm, said that FIDIC contracts are indispensable when foreign banks are involved. 
“The use of FIDIC contracts today causes some difficulties for two basic reasons: Firstly, the contracts require adaptation to the Russian legal system, and secondly, the use of these contracts in Russia requires professionals who will be able not only to write the contract but also bring it to realization,” said Kachkin.
The problem of adapting FIDIC contracts to the Russian legal system was highlighted by all speakers. 
“As long as there are no changes on the federal level, all projects will be subject to examination in accordance with Russian law,” said Stanislav Logunov, director of the St. Petersburg Center of State Expertise.
The process of shifting responsibility for examination of the projects from state structures to private business has already started. 
“If the customer is ready to take responsibility not only for the period of realization, but for the whole life cycle of the construction, the renunciation of obligatory expertise is possible,” Logunov said. 
“Only through the use of FIDIC contracts can we bring dialogue with foreign partners to another level,” said Alexander Odinokin, a representative of the Okhta Social and Business Center. He also commented on the difficulty of finding engineer-consultants competent both in the international and Russian construction sectors.
The main purpose of consulting is minimization of the charges and implementation of the contract by both sides. Answering a question about the cost of such consulting services, Vink was evasive, but Logunov said that according to his international experience it is typically around 2-3 percent of the total cost of a project.
Members of FIDIC are also required to adhere to the FIDIC charter on the ethical norms and professional behavior of consultant-engineers, guaranteeing high standards of education for specialists. 
The question of forming a professional institute of engineer consulting in Russia that could be formalized into a national association with membership in FIDIC was also raised at the discussion. 


TITLE: Why the Kremlin Needs BP
AUTHOR: By Chris Weafer
TEXT: Rosneft confirmed on Monday that it will acquire full control of TNK-BP in separate deals concluded with international oil major BP and AAR, the investment vehicle owned by several Russian billionaires. The total cost to Rosneft will be close to $60 billion. The size of the deal ranks it as the third-largest ever done in the history of the global oil industry and is consistent with Russia’s “size-matters” mentality. The deal is great for the Kremlin as it promotes Rosneft and its management into the big league of major oil producers. It also comes as a relief for the embattled BP management and is Christmas come early for the billionaire owners of AAR.
It would seem that everyone is a winner in the deal. But thousands of investors in Rosneft, BP and Russia have reason to question this. While the deal is undoubtedly great for the politicians, billionaires and the oil men, it is much less obviously so for common investors. Instead of following the promised path of divesting assets and pulling back from direct participation in the economy, the Kremlin is instead creating yet another huge state corporation to dominate one of the country’s strategic industries. Given the past performance, reputation and investment return from other big state-controlled enterprises such as Gazprom, the Rosneft purchase certainly gives many reasons to be concerned.
For the Kremlin, though, this is a good deal for four key reasons. First it means that the target set for raising privatization revenues for 2012 is achieved. BP has agreed to use $4.8 billion of the cash it will receive from Rosneft to buy additional shares directly from the state. That, along with the $5.2 billion recently received from the sale of Sberbank shares, brings the total for the year to $10 billion.
Second, BP, previously one of the biggest investors in the country, stays in Russia. Most important, BP, it can be assumed, will now be the partner of choice, if not the exclusive partner, for Rosneft in future new projects. In addition, BP can account for a 20 percent share of Rosneft’s new total oil production, or 1 million barrels per day, and will receive a dividend from Rosneft shares. If BP had walked away, even with a handsome profit, it would have sent a negative signal to other potential investors at a time when the country needs to bring many more in.
Third, the deal takes AAR out of the oil industry and ends the threat of even more bad press about the risks of doing business in Russia.
Fourth, the deal gives much greater visibility to the Kremlin’s position as the world’s most important energy player. Russia is the biggest gas exporter, has been the world’s largest oil producer for some time, and alternates with Saudi Arabia as the largest exporter of oil and oil products. The emergence of Rosneft makes that leading position much clearer and does no harm to the Kremlin’s geopolitical ambitions.
For the management in Rosneft and BP, the deal is also good. Rosneft acquires in-house expertise in technology and has effectively established the mechanism by which it may eventually become more globally diversified. For BP management, the deal ends a long period when the frequent disputes with AAR have pressured the share price and, along with the consequences of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, called into question the company’s future independence. Exchanging their Russian corporate “poison pill” for cash only might easily have left BP vulnerable to predators. AAR will walk away with $28 billion, which speaks for itself as to how they come out ahead in the deal.
But what do investors of the respective oil companies and in Russia in general get out of the deal? The answers are much less obvious. BP investors are giving up a steady dividend stream and a predicable oil flow for a potentially more lucrative future. At the same time, though, they will have less medium term cash flow and a lot of uncertainty. Of course, it can be argued that the deal was inevitable once it became clear that BP’s relationship with AAR had irrevocably broken down. Also, realistically the only way that the company can get access to future major production growth — anywhere on the planet — is alongside a Russian state-controlled company.
Investors in Rosneft now need to worry more about the oil price because of the huge increase in the company’s debt as a result of the deal. Officials in the Finance Ministry are in a similar position as there is now a much bigger chunk of debt interest to be paid ahead of the ministry’s corporation tax calculation.
The main concern about the deal, however, is that it means that the state will have an even bigger role in the country’s key industry at a time when the pre-election talk was all about the state’s divestment and the encouragement of a greater private enterprise role in the economy. In the past, state-controlled enterprises have been among the least efficient in the economy. The pessimists will focus on the inefficiency factor as evidence that we should expect little reform and that the economy will remain in a status quo regime until we reach the next crisis.
Yet there still may be cause to be optimistic for a broader dividend. First, there may be a positive contagion to Rosneft from the BP integration. We have seen that happen already in the auto sector with the Renault-AvtoVAZ partnership. If it also occurs in the oil sector, Rosneft will emerge as a global oil champion, and investors will do very well.
Second, although there is no doubt that the Kremlin is intent on retaining direct control over the country’s strategic energy companies, that does not automatically preclude more pragmatic efforts to improve the business and investment climate in the rest of the economy. It is clear that Russia needs more investment and greater participation by experienced foreign industry investors in key sectors such as agriculture, food and manufacturing. The Rosneft-TNK deal does not in any way preclude that from happening.
The success of the Rosneft deal will ultimately depend on whether it marks a transition from state bureaucracy to international best practice in the oil sector and whether the Kremlin is able to attract the same amounts of investment into the broader economy.

Chris Weafer is chief strategist at Sberbank Investment Research.


TITLE: inside russia: How the Rosneft Deal Went Down
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Rosneft will buy BP’s 50 percent stake in TNK-BP for $17 billion plus 13 percent of Rosneft, and will purchase the AAR consortium’s 50 percent stake for $28 billion.
This deal brings the plundering of Yukos full circle. After all, Rosneft received most of Yukos after its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and the company was forced into bankruptcy. In addition, the deal marks the nearly complete nationalization of Russia’s oil industry and signals a radical change in the rules of the game. It also boosts the status of Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, a man who could rightfully be considered President Vladimir Putin’s financial and administrative alter ego.
Several years ago, the BP management, which has always been frustrated at being denied control over TNK-BP financial flows, began making frequent visits to Sechin. The initiative for this deal came from BP. The company wanted to end its reliance on AAR and switch over to a new patron, Sechin. In return, BP was prepared to offer the Kremlin the very thing it wanted most of all: A way to legalize its plundering of Yukos.
The deal was then approved at the highest levels, but Alfa Group, one of the three members of AAR, blocked it — a move that would hardly have been possible without Putin’s approval.
As far as I know, Alfa Group directors honestly explained to Putin that the agreement between BP and Sechin was a breach of contract. Putin agreed with their argument.
But there was another, weighty factor involved here, and that was the government’s option of forcing BP to buy out Alfa Group’s stake in TNK-BP. Since BP would have had to pay in shares along with cash, the deal would have given the Russian side even more leverage in the foreign company.  
In fact, BP had agreed to buy out Alfa Group’s stake. Both sides had even reached an agreement for a deal that sources say would have exceeded the current deal’s $28 billion price tag, but the agreement reportedly fell through because of opposition from Sechin.
The main intrigue of the 15 months since that deal collapsed and the current agreement was reached was the relationship between Alfa Group and Sechin. They were as tight-lipped and isolated from outside observers as high-level power struggles once were within the Politburo. And the stakes here were just as high.
Rumors flew about what was happening. Sechin’s detractors are numerous, since he is in conflict with almost every influential financial and political player on Putin’s team, from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Gunvor co-owner Gennady Timchenko. They reported all sorts of nonsense, even claiming at one point that Sechin had been in a fistfight with Alfa Bank president Pyotr Aven. Alfa claimed it had achieved friendship and peace.
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Both sides are too pragmatic to allow personal feelings to influence a deal in which billions of dollars are at stake. Alfa Group excluded BP from TNK-BP’s management and, in what was essentially a hostile takeover bid, offered the British $7 billion for a 25 percent stake in TNK-BP. Sechin played the role of a white knight, offering to step in and pay BP far more generously than Alfa.
Alfa Group had probably not intended to sell its stake, but it was the best option for both sides when Sechin moved in. In the end, the Rosneft deal is a reminder that Putin is the most important figure in Russian business.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Roots and soul
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review, which returned in its fourth incarnation and with its third lead singer earlier this year, will perform at Dada club this weekend.
Dada is where new vocalist Margarita Kasayeva first performed with the band — formed a decade ago to perform Jamaican music from the 1950s and 1960s — in February. Kasayeva also sang on “Water Taxi,” the three-track CD single released in May.
The band had to look for yet another singer late last year, when Yulia Kogan, a vocalist with stadium rockers Leningrad, quit due to a ban on performing with acts other than Leningrad reportedly imposed on her by frontman Sergei Shnurov.
According to the founder and only original member Denis Kuptsov, it was due to the supportive attitude of the band Markscheider Kunst, whose musicians perform with him in the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review, that his band has survived.
“They said, no problem, we’ll find another singer,” Kuptsov said, talking to The St. Petersburg Times in a downtown pub on Saturday.
A “female singer wanted” ad was duly put on the Internet, and he said he was surprised by the massive response.
“I got calls all the time, and we even had to reject many from the start, because we asked dilettantes not to apply, because they had to be able to really sing and sing it right,” he said.
“The thing is that aspiring Russian singers all have the same problem: They don’t know how to get the right tone. Everybody wants to sing some fusion jazz and they don’t understand the differences between styles. They seem to have this idea that if they make it more complex and show off their entire vocal palette, that will be great. 
“Now, dear girls, don’t do that — you should really see how the singers of one or another style sang, study it carefully, try to sing like that and get the correct tone. When you know how to do that right, with taste and skill, then you can improvise and do anything you like.”
According to Kuptsov, the chief difficulty in getting a decent vocalist is a lack of knowledge of music and taste.
“Every vocalist wants to sing some horrible cheesy stuff — some R&B or some glamorous pop, they lack roots; they simply don’t know the history of music,” he said.
“At best, they start copying Amy Winehouse, but they don’t know what Amy Winehouse listened to, what her roots were. But that’s very important for every musician.”
Kuptsov said that Kasayeva was the band’s choice out of the nine candidates who were chosen for auditions.
Originally from Moscow, Kasayeva lives in St. Petersburg, where she teaches singing and leads the Lab Show, a vocal and dance project.
“She has good pronunciation, she speaks English and Spanish pretty well, she has sung Latin music, which is basically close to Jamaican music in spirit, she’s very good at getting the right tone and writes all her own songs as well,” Kuptsov said.
“We like what Rita does and she listens to what we all tell her. We want it to sound not cheesy, but tasteful and interesting, tuneful and soulful. There should be soul in it, not just technique.”
The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review started out in 2001 as a purely instrumental outfit formed by drummer Kuptsov with the local ska-punk band Spitfire — with whom he played drums until July 2009 — and two members of Markscheider Kunst (the seminal local band performing Afro-Caribbean music) before it was joined by the then-St. Petersburg-based American vocalist Jennifer Davis. 
“With my former band Spitfire, we toured abroad a lot playing ska punk, but we also had a small set to be performed in small clubs or in the street, which was based on old ska covers and jazz standards,” Kuptsov said.
“Then, it happened that we were co-headlining a ska festival with Bad Manners in Berlin, and were also asked to play original ska at a jam session on a small stage with some other musicians. But because we were coming from far away — from the south of Germany — and hardly arrived in time for our own concert, it didn’t work out. But when we were back in St. Petersburg, we thought, ‘why not start a side project, just for fun?’”
The group’s debut was in 2001 at the SKIF festival, which was held at the city’s Palace of Youth on the Petrograd Side. 
“We played a great jam and everybody got really excited and said, ‘That’s what you should do,’” Kuptsov said.
“We’d always liked the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble, and we decided to start such a project, as a joke, and call it the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review. We played a few concerts both in St. Petersburg and Moscow and suddenly it was a success. 
“Everybody knew what ska punk was by that time, a lot of bands emerged both in Moscow and St. Petersburg, you couldn’t surprise anybody with it anymore, but it was original ska and it turned out that that was the sound that people wanted.”
The band’s debut album, called “The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review” (2002), was instrumental, but by the album’s launch concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow in April 2002, the band was already performing with Davis, who co-wrote a number of songs, including the title track for the follow-up album, “Too Good to Be True,” released in September 2005.
It was followed in 2007 by the live album “Live at Red Club,” recorded at the now-defunct venue in December 2006 and released on both CD and DVD.
Davis also recorded with the band for what was to become The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review’s third album, but it was shelved due to lineup problems.
“It’s all recorded, but only a couple of songs have ever been mixed, everything fell apart because of the crisis, and why was an album needed if the band didn’t exist?” Kuptsov said.
“When I reformed the band with Markscheider Kunst, they basically didn’t need it, because it wasn’t them who recorded it.  We’ve started to write new songs, so we’d do better to wait for a few years and release it as kind of ‘lost tapes’ album. That’ll be interesting.”
Davis moved back to the U.S. in 2008, and — after an 18-month hiatus — the band reformed in July 2010 with Kogan and the musicians of Markscheider Kunst.
“These guys, Markscheider Kunst, despite all their carefree attitude, continue to love music and what they’re doing, something that usually atrophies with time, if we take the musicians of our age,” Kuptsov said.
“They remain creative, attentive to quality and, interestingly, they do listen to music. They haven’t lost that interest. They don’t say, ‘You know, the place is small, the money is no good, so we won’t play, go to hell.’ There’s nothing like that about them, thank God.”
Released in May, The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review’s CD single “Water Taxi” features an original song, “Water Taxi,” written by Kuptsov with saxophone player Ivan Neklyudov, and two instrumentals, Jamaican musicians Coxsone Dodd and Dalton Sinclair Bishop’s “Old Rockin’ Chair” and American jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter’s “Beauty and the Beast.”
“It got very good reviews and we’re putting together a full length-album to release at some time by spring,” Kuptsov said.

The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Dada, 49 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. 
M: Sennaya Ploshchad. 
Tel: 983 7050.

TITLE: Hell at the Hermitage
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An exhibit by the contemporary British sibling duo Jake and Dinos Chapman will leave visitors to the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum shocked or delighted, but certainly not ambivalent.
The central piece of the exhibit — named “The End of Fun” — is a work titled “Fucking Hell.” It is, in short, hellish, but that does not do it justice. It consists of nine enormous glass cubes arranged in a swastika pattern, each of which contains a three-dimensional scene of thousands of small plastic Nazi soldiers engaged in a bloodbath of limitless vulgarity and barbarism in an apocalyptic setting. The original “Hell” was destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004, but undeterred, the brothers went on to make a successor to continue their artistic message, with emphasis added to the title.
The artists, known for making shocking statements — both verbal and artistic — have confirmed their scandalous reputation with the exhibit. Fields of naked and dismembered bodies, orgies between rat, corpse, pig and skeleton, and bloody limbs being hacked off in torture chambers reflect the heights of violent excess and perversity, and disturb as much as they captivate. The devil is in the details, however, and the carnage is lightened by numerous interjections of humor throughout the work, such as a crucified snowman, award-winning British physicist Stephen Hawking amid his own private marijuana island, and frequent appearances by Ronald McDonald.
“This is an outstanding exhibit that is both scary and funny,” said Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, at the official opening of the exhibit Friday, which was also attended by British supermodel Kate Moss, a friend of the artists.
 “The End of Fun” is one of the first exhibits to be held in the newly renovated eastern wing of the General Staff Building, located across the square from the Winter Palace. Renovation work is still going on in the rest of the building, which is not scheduled to open officially until 2014, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Hermitage Museum.
The exhibit therefore represents a chance to inspect the new interiors that are to house the museum’s collection of modern art from the 19th to 21st centuries, as well as an opportunity to enter the grotesque world of the Chapmans.
The museum could not have chosen a more resonant exhibit with which to attract attention to its current projects, or reassert its relevance to the city’s art community in a clean break from its traditionally stuffy and academic image. 
“Modern art is always provocative, but this provocation can either take the form of high art or it can be outside the realm of art,” said Piotrovsky. 
“With this work we are dealing with the first case, and an exceptional example of it at that. We are showing how artistic language can make a statement about terror,” he said.
In spite of the frequent critical and public attention the brothers attract, Jake Chapman, the younger of the two (born in 1966), claims that he doesn’t strive for any particular role or impact in the modern art world.
 “I’m just an artist focusing on my own work, and the meaning that I put into it. I don’t position myself tactically or politically in relation to the art world,” he told The St. Petersburg Times at the exhibit’s opening Friday.
The second part of the exhibit features the Chapmans’ infamous reworkings of a series of Francisco Goya etchings originally entitled “The Horrors of War.” Several years ago, the Chapman brothers bought the series of etchings, added comical elements such as clown and dog heads to the victims and renamed the altered etchings “Insult to Injury.” These “enhanced” etchings, at the time the subject of public outrage, are now on show at the Hermitage alongside a collection of 40 Goya etchings from the Hermitage collection — unaltered, naturally — titled “There is No One to Help Them.” Coupled with a grim range of torture instruments on loan from the city’s Artillery Museum and displayed in the same hall, the works contextualize and accentuate the cruelty and horror of humanity in previous centuries.
“These works show that the humorous but chilling horror that we see in the work of the Chapman brothers has always existed in art and history,” said Piotrovsky.
“The End of Fun” is part of the bold Hermitage 20/21 program that seeks to promote modern art and rejuvenate the public’s interest in the museum through a series of exhibits highlighting tendencies in modern art from both Russia and abroad. The program drew praise earlier this fall for an interactive show devoted to Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
The Chapman brothers exhibit has, however, already attracted inevitable criticism. An organization that calls itself the Cossacks of St. Petersburg has issued a written request to Piotrovsky to close the exhibit for its alleged promotion of Nazi symbolism.
For the Hermitage, this may very well be the beginning of fun. 

“Jake and Dinos Chapman. The End of Fun” runs through Jan. 13 at the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum, 6/8 Palace Square. Tel. 710 9079. www.hermitagemuseum.org.

TITLE: the word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ïîäëûé: loathsome, despicable, contemptible

Once upon a time, everyone living in what is now Russia had to pay a bunch of taxes, first to the grand prince and later to the state. These taxes were collectively called ïîäàòü (tax, assessment; stress on the first syllable). Then Peter the Great assumed the throne and decided to give a tax break to the rich and noble. Over time, the only folks still burdened with ïîäàòü were the lowest merchant class in towns and the peasants in the countryside. They were called ïîäàòíûå ñîñëîâèÿ (the tax-paying classes) — you know, poor working stiffs who always seem to bear the largest tax burden.
Ïîäëûé was originally used to describe these folks and was a neutral word meaning lower-class or poor. But then, as so often happens in society, lower-class began to be associated with low-down behavior, and poor people began to be associated with poor manners and morals. 
Ïîäëûé morphed into the meaning it has today: someone or something that is base, despicable or immoral. Ïîäëåö is a scoundrel, villain or snake. Ïîäëîñòü is baseness or wickedness.
While these are not curse words, they are certainly fighting words. Use them with caution and protective covering. For example, when the guy in the Hummer not only cuts you off but also gives you the finger, you might shout: Ðåäêîñòíûé ïîäëåö! (what a piece of crap; literally “uncommon lout”). But make sure the windows are tightly closed.
Ïîäëàÿ øóòêà might be a mean joke, and ïîäëûé ïîñòóïîê is a low-down, dirty trick. Îäíà äåâóøêà ïîäñòàâèëà ìåíÿ òàê, ÷òî óâîëèëè ñ ðàáîòû. Òàêîãî ïîäëîãî ïîñòóïêà ÿ îò íå¸ íå îæèäàë (A woman at work made me look so bad that I got fired. I didn’t think she was capable of such a dirty trick). Óáèòü íåâîîðóæ¸ííîãî ÷åëîâåêà — âåëè÷àéøàÿ ïîäëîñòü (Killing an unarmed man is the lowest act imaginable).
Another word for nastiness is ìåðçêèé (disgusting), which is someone or something that makes your blood run cold or gives you the creeps. In fact, it’s related to the word ìîðîç (freezing cold). You might use this word when a driver cheerfully waves at you and then zips into the parking place you were waiting for. You could also use the related nouns ìåðçàâåö or ìåðçàâêà: (What a slimeball!) 
Ìåðçîñòü might be vile behavior, or it might be some food left in the back of your fridge that has turned into a multicolored science project. Êàêàÿ ìåðçîñòü! (How revolting!)
Ãàäêèé (ugly, naughty, vile) is a bit lower down the scale of despicable behavior and varies in meaning and strength depending on the context. Ãàäêàÿ ïîãîäà is foul weather. Ãàäêèé óò¸íîê is the proverbial ugly duckling. Ãàäêèé àìåðèêàíåö is the proverbial ugly American. Ãàäêèé ðåá¸íîê is a naughty or misbehaving child. But ãàäêèé ÷åëîâåê is someone thoroughly untrustworthy or unsavory. Êàêîé æå îí ãàäêèé! (What a sleazebag!)
Similar to ãàäêèé is ãíóñíûé, which is someone or something that is foul, rotten or mean. Ãíóñíàÿ ëîæü is what English speakers call a dirty, rotten lie. Ãíóñíàÿ ðàáîòà is work that is miserable or disgusting — like cleaning the fridge of science projects. Someone with ãíóñíûé õàðàêòåð has a foul temper.
To sum it all up, the guy who institutes tax cuts for the rich is ïîäëåö. The guy who spins it is ìåðçàâåö. The whole process is ãàäêèé. And the work of balancing the budget afterwards is ãíóñíûé. 

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

TITLE: Mayakovsky fever
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It is no secret that Russians love to idolize their poets. 
In recent weeks the city has seen a resurgence in events dedicated to the works and lives of Russia’s favorite poets and bards, such as Kino frontman Viktor Tsoi and Soviet legend Vladimir Vysotsky.
In a new festival that began Friday at Mod club, titled “Mayakovsky Takoi,” which can be roughly translated as “Mayakovsky As He Is,” the Silver-Age poet Vladimir Mayakovsky joins the list of venerated great lyricists, in a program of events that stretches over four weekends. 
The poet, who shot himself in 1930, is a cult favorite among Russians of all generations, as was evident at the festival’s launch on Friday, at which hip youths, grunge rockers and elegant elderly women intermingled freely. The program of the night was dedicated to love lyricism, and included an opening lecture on constructivism as well as recitations of Mayakavosky’s poetry set to a musical accompaniment and a closing concert headlined by Jenia Lubich.
An exhibit of artworks has also been assembled for the festival. Created by students, amateurs and local artists, as well as award-winning contemporary artists such as Igor Cholariya, and disabled youth from the Osobiye Masterskiye organization, the exhibit will travel to Moscow and Riga after the festival ends.
According to the organizers, the festival is aimed at “proving Mayakovsky’s relevance to today by revitalizing the persona and ideas of the poet in various genres … reinterpreted by the young poets, actors, beginner artists and musicians of St. Petersburg.”
“Our main goal is to popularize the poetry of Mayakovsky among youth subcultures,” said Yulianna Matrosova, the festival’s main organizer. 
It is this popularization that accounts for the diversity of genres and formats included in the program. Children’s poetry, a dance theater performance and a reggae ska concert will be held on Oct. 26 at Mod, while Nov. 2 will see a lecture on film posters during the day at Radio Baby bar and a program called “The Dark Side of Mayakovsky” in addition to a late-night dark electro concert with a ’20s dress code at Dada club that same night. The festival will close with readings of social and revolutionary poems back at Mod club on Nov. 10. Each day of the festival begins with a lecture on subjects such as the avant-garde and agitprop.
The last event of the festival is likely to be the most resonant, as the hallmark of Mayakovsky’s work was satirical and biting criticism of capitalism and bourgeois society. Alexia Kan, a local artist who contributed to the art exhibit with her work “Mayakovsky and Me Against the New Bourgeois” and helped to organize it, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times about the relevance of Mayakovsky today.
“The festival doesn’t dictate anything in terms of politics,” she said. “Everyone has their own view. But you can see the relationship between the works on show and such things as the revolution that the youth is waiting for, as well as recent events such as Pussy Riot.
“The artists used the groundwork of Mayakovsky to express their views about the current day and revolutionary ideas,” she said.
“I think that the program on the closing day will be read not because we empathize with people back then, but because we are experiencing that today. That’s why we are reading it, presenting it, and uniting under this format. Mayakovsky lives, and the revolution is in our minds. And all of this is relevant.”
Mayakovsky will also be celebrated at a separate event at the legendary Stray Dog cellar bar, where the writer himself was a regular visitor and participant in poetry nights at the beginning of the last century. Readings of his most famous works set to the accompaniment of piano and flute will be held on Nov. 29.
Eighty-two years after his death, Mayakovsky seems to be as topical as ever.



TITLE: Garage guests at Gorky
AUTHOR: By Maximillian Gill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture has set up home in an innovative “temporary” pavilion in Moscow’s Gorky Park designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.
The structure, located near the park’s Pionersky Prud, uses locally produced cardboard tubes for its distinctive columns and continues the park’s tradition of temporary structures.
Garage, which was established by Dasha Zhukova, Roman Abramovich’s partner, had huge success at its previous incarnation at the Bakhmetevsky bus garage, which it left last year, with a series of big name exhibits such as Marina Abramovic and Mark Rothko.
The center’s first exhibition, “Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban” charts the architectural history of the park with rare archival drawings and footage, many of which have never been seen before. Designs bring to life the colorful decoration of buildings, such as the artisanal pavilion and the pavilion of the Far East, buildings normally only seen in grainy black and white.
The pavilion is home to a 800-square-meter exhibition space, as well as a bookshop and caf&#233;.
Temporary structures in Soviet Moscow often produced groundbreaking and progressive experimentation. Built to commemorate a moment in history or a state event in the park, they were also used as vehicles for political expression. Architects such as Konstantin Melnikov, Ivan Zholtovsky and Fyodor Shekhtel were among some of those who built temporary structures in the park.
The exhibit takes the viewer from the early 1920s with works such as Konstantin Melnikov’s wooden Makhorka pavilion, designed for the tobacco industry, to the aftermath of WWII, when the park fell into disrepair.
Today, Garage not only becomes part of the history of the park, but also confirms its resurrection, the jewel in the crown of its recent total reinvention. Thanks to Sergei Kapkov, the park’s director, gone are the cheap bars and dilapidated fairground that made Gorky Park something of an eyesore until last year. On top of Garage, visitors can enjoy mass yoga classes, free Wi-Fi, communal beanbags, skate parks and chichi cafes, as well as frequent highlights in the cultural life of the capital.
“Ours is the youngest and fastest developing gallery in Moscow; it is very appropriate that we are now part of Gorky Park’s fascinating history,” said Anton Belov, director of Garage.
“With this exhibition we hope to show that we have not only become part of that history, but we are developing it and taking it into the future” said Kirstine Wallace, head of Garage’s international office.
The pavilion is set to host exhibits and educational activities until late 2013, when it will be used to house experimental projects. Garage then plans to move to the famous 1960s restaurant “Seasons of the Year,” which is being renovated by Dutch architect Rem Koolhas. Initially, the plan was to move to a hexagonal pavilion in the park, built in the 1920s, but that has been put on hold.
“For me it was a great pleasure to make something so complicated in such a short period of time,” Shigeru Ban told The St. Petersburg Times, referring to the three months it took in total to make the structure from scratch.
“The lifespan of the building is up to Moscow,” he continued “whether a building is permanent or not does not depend on the materials.” For Ban, it was always important that he use local materials and also ones that “could be reused and recycled.”

“Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban” runs till Dec. 9. Garage, Gorky Park, Moscow. Metro. Park Kultury. Tel. +7 (495) 645 0520 garageccc.com


TITLE: THE DISH: Steakout
AUTHOR: By Isabel Makman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: For young Americans, the phrase “meat head” is likely to conjure up images of the cast of Jersey Shore dressed in wife-beater shirts and with greasy hair and fake tans.  For an older generation of U.S. citizens, it evokes memories of Archie Bunker (of the T.V. series All in the Family) yelling “hey meathead” to his son-in-law. While these may not be the exact images that spring to a Russian mind on hearing this phrase, the name Meat Head is still a rather unusual choice for a restaurant.
After stepping inside the latest addition to the culinary hub that is Konyushennaya Ploshchad, however, all thoughts of unsophisticated gym rats quickly evaporate. The restaurant is a sleek establishment that achieves a modern feel without the worn-out use of stainless steel and white leather. Instead, warm red brick covers the walls and ceiling and large plaster heads of cows and pigs adorn the windowsills. Sizeable black chalkboards, decorated with sketches of food, hang on the walls, adding a casual, almost playful tone to the decor. 
In the entryway, a stylish deli counter boasts an array of decadent cakes as well as several cured hams and large selection of cheeses. It seems that this is merely a decorative tease, designed to set patrons’ mouths watering, as the counter remained unmanned throughout our meal. 
Large televisions hang in every corner of the restaurant, and proved the only point of annoyance throughout the evening. Dramatic images flashed continuously across the screen, displaying everything from the mating rituals of tropical birds to tornados sweeping across desolate landscapes. While entertaining for a moment or two, the televisions soon became no more than an unwelcome distraction from the conversation. 
After being graciously seated by a hostess who spoke flawless English, a waiter promptly appeared and began a brief lesson on the restaurant’s pride and joy; Josper. Josper, it turns out, is not a person, but a unique kind of oven manufactured in Spain. Heated by charcoal and lined with metal, it is designed to cook meats from all sides, ensuring that they never dry out or become too tough. The waiter boasted proudly that the restaurant considers its specialty to be steak and promised we would not be disappointed with meat of the rib eye or sirloin variety. Although our party was not comprised of hardened steak aficionados, we opted to test the waiter’s claims and found them all to hold true. 
After starters of wild mushroom soup (480 rubles, $16) and artichoke hearts (310 rubles, $10) we were presented with the acclaimed sirloin steak (1,300 rubles, $42) as well as an entr&#233;e of risotto with chicken and saffron (480 rubles, $16). The flavor of the risotto was rather mild, but a little salt and pepper, combined with its creamy texture, made it a dish worthy of recognition. While all of the food merited high praise, the steak definitely stole the show. It was everything our waiter had promised, and more. Tender and juicy, perfectly browned and accompanied by a porto sauce (210 rubles, $7) that our waiter expertly recommended, the dish left nothing to be desired. 
What little was left of our appetites after the main course was quickly satisfied by dessert. On another well-informed recommendation from the waiter, we ordered the pineapple ravioli with mascarpone (390 rubles, $13) and the more traditional tiramisu (380 rubles, $12). The ravioli was not, in fact, ravioli stuffed with pineapple but rather an imitation of the pasta that included a pineapple casing filled with mascarpone: A strange yet intriguing and ultimately mouthwatering creation. 
Drinks by the glass are not outrageously priced at Meat Head, with a good Sauvignon Blanc starting at 190 rubles ($6). Wine is also available by the bottle and half-bottle, with prices ranging from 9,900 ($320) to 56,000 rubles ($1,814) for a full bottle. 
The attentive service, sophisticated atmosphere and superb food combine to ensure it is hard to leave Meat Head feeling anything less than a prince or princess. The glamour of the experience is completed by the enchanting view of the Church of Spilled Blood that hits you as you step out of the door: The icing on top of the pineapple ravioli.

TITLE: Picturesque Plyos: Pearl of the Volga
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: PLYOS, Ivanovo Region — This small town on the Volga River has long been famous for its serene atmosphere, picturesque hilltop views of a 3-kilometer-long quay and the house-museum of Isaac Levitan, a prominent landscape painter of the 19th century.
But Plyos, population 2,800, may turn into an elite resort amid frequent weekend visits by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and efforts by regional authorities to develop local infrastructure to attract more tourists.
“Dmitry Anatolyevich and his wife visit Plyos quite often,” Ivanovo Governor Mikhail Men said by e-mail. “They have fallen in love with this pearl of the Volga, and, of course, a number of projects in Plyos would have been impossible to start without their support.”
Plyos, located about 370 kilometers northwest of Moscow, in the center of the Golden Ring, is widely referred to as the pearl of the Volga.
Its quay is dotted with one-story wooden and brick buildings with renovated facades on one side, and small boats and yachts scattered along the riverbank on the other. Behind the front buildings, scores of private wooden houses climb up a hill.  
A reporter walking along the quay in late September saw a few luxury private houses under construction. Several old wooden houses carried ads saying they were for sale.
Some residents complained privately that parts of the quay have become off-limits to locals recently amid efforts to turn Plyos into a tourist attraction. One end of the quay, for example, has been completely closed since authorities built an alpine skiing complex there. Before the complex was built, locals used its premises to take walks, gather mushrooms and go cross-country skiing. Other parts of the quay, now closed, were used for fishing.
Men said his office has been actively promoting Plyos as a tourist center for the past six years.
The town was included in a national tourism development program that qualifies for financing on local and federal levels but also requires private investment.
Government funds have been used to renovate the central part of the quay, repair and build roads, clean a small local river, install gas and water supplies in parts of the town that lacked them, and overhaul the electric power grid. By the year’s end, the authorities plan to finish repairing a historic building for the opening of a history museum.
Private investors have bankrolled a number of projects, including the downhill skiing complex, Milaya Gora, which opened in 2010; the Levitan Hall culture center, which opened in September; a mini-golf course, which opened in 2010; and churches, hotels and restaurants. They are also paying for the ongoing reconstruction of a museum of landscape painting, the only one of its kind in Russia.    
The oil giant LUKoil has also built a fueling station for yachts in the town.
Plyos has started hosting events such as Zerkalo, an annual international film festival that started in 2007 and is named after a 1975 film by the late director Andrei Tarkovsky.
This winter, Milaya Gora will open a third slope, where Russia’s national freestyle skiing team will train.  
But any construction must not damage the historical character of Plyos, which is proud to retain the appearance of a 19th-century town.
The governor has even banned local cafes and restaurants from playing “bad” pop music. Men told Dozhd television in late September that music plays “a very important role” in the impression that visitors get about the place.
Instead of pop music, he has ordered local eateries to play the music of Russian singers from the first half of the 20th century, like Fyodor Shalyapin, Leonid Utyosov and Lev Leshchenko.
Plyos’ history, however, stretches much further back than the 1800s and 1900s. The first recorded mention of the town, whose name is derived from the geographical term plyos, meaning a deep section of the river, was in 1141 when local rulers raised a second fortress wall.
The first fortress wall around the city was constructed at an unknown time to protect the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom from attacks by the neighboring state of Volga Bulgaria. It was destroyed in 1238 by the army of the Mongol Tatar ruler Batu Khan.
In 1410, Prince Vasily I, who fled from Moscow to Kostroma to escape from another Mongol Tatar khan, ordered another fortress built here, which was destroyed by the Polish army in 1609.
From the 17th to 19th centuries, Plyos was the main river port for the whole region. Cooks for the tsars prepared dishes with fish caught in Plyos.
Local folklore has it that Plyos merchants bribed the authorities not to allow a railroad to go through their town, fearing the new form of commerce would bankrupt them. Indeed, when the railroad opened between the regional cities of Ivanovo and Kineshma in 1871, it did not pass through Plyos. As Kineshma prospered, about half of Plyos’ population moved there.
In the 1930s, several resorts were built in Plyos, and it began to be recognized as a vacation destination.
About 500,000 tourists visited Plyos last year, a sharp increase that followed the town’s development efforts, Men said.

<b>What to see if you have two hours</b>
Start at the bus station and walk past the yellow-and-white Troitskaya Church and the white Vvedenskaya Church, both built in the early 19th century, to the nearby Sobornaya Gora (Cathedral Hill) for a beautiful view of the town and the river below.
To the left, on the hill itself, you will see a white church with a black roof and domes, the Assumption Cathedral, built in the late 17th century.
Then walk forward down the hill and to the right along the riverbank. A dozen blocks away, cross the bridge over a small river and you will see a white two-story building with a green roof, the Levitan house-museum (4/2 Ulitsa Lunacharskogo; 
+7 493 394 3782; plyos.org/expos/levitan.html).
Guided 45-minute tours of the museum are conducted in Russian, French and German and cost 900 rubles ($30) for a group in a foreign language and 800 rubles ($25) for a group in Russian. Note: No tours are in English. A ticket without a tour costs 60 rubles ($2). You can also buy a 90-minute tour of the town for the same price as the museum tours.

<b>What to do if you have two days</b>
Walk from the Levitan museum along the quay to the right. Several blocks away stands Russia’s only museum of landscape paintings (20 Ulitsa Lunacharskogo; +7 493 394 3264; plyos.org/expos/muzpei.html). The museum is currently closed for renovation.
Walk back along the quay past the Levitan museum, and after number 27, turn left onto the short Kalashnaya Ulitsa, occupied by street vendors selling handmade souvenirs.     
Several blocks farther down the quay looms a building that hosts a permanent exhibit called the Handicraft Industries of the Ivanovo Region (41 Ulitsa Sovietskaya; +7 493 394 3782; plyos.org/expos/ndpi.html).  The exhibit presents jewelry, linen, miniature lacquer paintings and embroidery. Tours are offered in Russian, French and German.
From the exhibit, walk up the hill along Proyezdnoi Pereulok, which changes into a street called Spusk Gory Svobody. Along it stands the Travkin archaeological museum, which, among other exhibits, boasts a replica of the household of an ancient Russian family (1 Spusk Gory Svobody; +7 906 514 4345; travkin-museum.ru/).
Entertainment in Plyos depends on the season. In the summer, locals like to swim and engage in water sports on the quay, while in winter the preferred activities are sledding, skiing or snowboarding at Milaya Gora (90 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 493 392 4100, +7 962 164 5372, +7 962 163 3834; plios.ru/ru/leisure/Milaya_Gora/).  
In the winter, the Plyos Yacht Club (29 Ulitsa Sovietskaya; +7 493 245 8353; plios.ru/ru/leisure/Milaya_Gora/) offers rides across the ice on airboats to neighboring towns or to local fishing holes.

<b>Nightlife</b>

The town has a single concert hall, which opened in September, but it holds no regular events and has no website yet. Plyos has no theaters or nightclubs.

<b>Where to eat</b>

Two restaurants are especially popular with the regional elite, according to the governor’s press office: the Yacht Club restaurant, on the quay (43 Ulitsa Sovietskaya; +7 493 394 3744; plios.ru/ru/gde_poest/), and the restaurant inside the privately owned boutique hotel Chastny Vizit (7 Gornaya Sloboda; +7 909 249 7854; +7 920 343 2998; +7 433 922 819;  pless.ru/cousine).
Medvedev dined at the Yacht Club during his first visit to Plyos in 2008 and stops by Chastny Vizit from time to time. The restaurant offers contemporary regional cuisine and a variety of homemade liqueurs but is only open during the summer months and New Year holidays.
A dinner for one at Chastny Vizit is offered at the fixed price of 2,000 rubles ($65). The menu includes various kinds of meat, poultry and fish dishes, a variety of appetizers, pies and pastries, as well as homemade liqueurs and homemade jams. The restaurant offers a panoramic view of the town and the river.   
Another restaurant worth visiting is Taiga (90 Ulitsa Lenina; + 7 493 394 3781, +7 906 619 1343, +7 916 475 2186; plios.ru./ru/gde_poest/) in the fashionable Fortetsia Rus hotel. A lunch of soup, meat or fish with garnish and salad, dessert and a nonalcoholic drink costs 600 rubles ($20), and a dinner of the same dishes, excluding the soup, goes for 500 rubles ($15), alcohol not included.  
The best local cafes are in the middle of the quay, around Kalashnaya Ulitsa and its souvenirs. To sample the fish treasured by the tsars, look for a white building in the middle of the quay that houses a specialty shop selling only fish.

<b>Where to stay</b>

The most popular places with the regional and Moscow elite are Chastny Vizit (7 Gornaya Sloboda; +7 499 500 3808; +7 920 343 2998; pless.ru) and Fortetsia Rus (90 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 495 981 0766; forteciya.ru/).
At Chastny Vizit, 4,000 rubles gets you a small, cozy house with two beds, a table, a view of the river and a beautiful garden in the summer months. Also included in the price is a substantial breakfast of pancakes, oatmeal, cheese-filled pancakes and tea or coffee served in the room. But the bathroom is in the yard, and the shower is in the main building of the hotel.
For 12,500 rubles, you will get a large room with two beds, a television, a balcony and two windows. Breakfast and dinner or supper are included in the price.
Fortetsia Rus will close for repairs in November, and it is unclear when it will reopen. Its rooms cost 2,300 rubles to 10,400 rubles ($75 to $340).
Other alternatives are the Plyos resort (4 Ulitsa Kalinina; +7 493 394 3276; plyos-adm.ru/city/turizm/hotel/) for 1,500  to 3,800 rubles ($50 to $120) per night, and Plyos-tur (19A Gornaya Sloboda; +7 493 394 3276; plyos-adm.ru/city/turizm/hotel/) for 800 to 1,600 rubles ($25 to $50).

<b>Conversation starters</b>

Residents complain of high unemployment, which forces young and middle-aged people alike to leave, and about tourism-inflated prices at local stores, which they say are higher than in bigger neighboring towns and in the city of Ivanovo. An empathetic word might go a long way.
But don’t expect locals to open up readily about Medvedev’s visits or the authorities’ efforts to reconstruct the town for tourists. Several residents expressed reluctance to discuss the topics, saying previous reporters had distorted their words.

<b>Other useful tips</b>

Announcements for upcoming events in Plyos are posted in the news section of the town’s official website (plyos-adm.ru/about/info/news/) and in the exhibits section of the website for its museums (plyos.org/vistav/).
Most of the town’s museums, churches, restaurants and hotels are on the quay, which is a 10-minute walk down the hill from the bus station. Right beside the bus station stands a bulletin board with a map of Plyos showing places of interest and other useful information.
But if you want a map of your own, you cannot buy one at the Plyos bus station or the Ivanovo train station. You can print one with the sights here: plesru.ru/Information/map_arh.htm. You can find a more detailed map, but one that you cannot print, here: kartoman.ru/karta-goroda-plyos-s-ulicami/
How to get there

A night train runs once every 24 hours from St. Petersburg’s Moscow Railway Station to the regional capital of Ivanovo. The train leaves at 17:20 p.m. and arrives at 9:40 a.m. Ticket prices begin from around 1900 rubles ($60) for economy class to 4000 rubles ($130) for a compartment. A much cheaper train from St. Petersburg to Samara also stops in Ivanovo and runs several times a week.
Ten buses make a daily run to Plyos and back from the Ivanovo train station. The ride takes about two hours and costs 100 rubles ($3). The last bus for Ivanovo leaves at 8 p.m.
Note that the bus may not have a heating system, so if you go anytime other than in summer, it may be better to use a taxi. A one-way ride from Ivanovo costs 1,050 rubles ($35) and will shave 30 to 45 minutes off the time of a bus ride.
Keep in mind that there are no taxicabs in Plyos.
<hr>
<b>Plyos</b>

<i>Population:</i> 2,800
<i>Mayor:</i> Tatyana Bebina
Founded sometime before 1141; 
its official birthdate is 1410, 
the year of the construction of a second fortress wall

Interesting fact: Plyos’ architecture mostly preserves the style of a 19th-century provincial Russian town.

Helpful contacts: 
• Ivanovo regional administration spokesman Oleg Rakitov 
(+7 4932 58-96-72; ivanovoobl.ru/department.aspx?part=134); 
• investment opportunities: invest-ivanovo.ru

<b>Major Businesses</b>
• In addition to teaching future farmers, Plyos Agricultural College (6 Severtsevo village; +7 493 394 3104) runs a thriving business growing and selling various crops. 
• Almaz Holding (57/2 Ulitsa Sovietskaya; +7 493 394 3295) is a factory for Almaz-Holding, one of the country’s top three jewelry companies.


TITLE: Harvesting the Potential of Social Networks
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Of the wide range of tools available in modern marketing, Internet promotion is becoming more and more popular, as online communication and social networking account for approximately a quarter of people’s daytime activity, according to research carried out by several agencies, including Nielsen market research agency. 
As a part of online marketing, social media marketing (SMM), which transfers business-consumer communication to the highest level of interaction, is one of the branches with most potential for growth in the sphere. 
 “You need to communicate with your clients on their territory, and social media such as Facebook, Vkontakte, Twitter and others are the perfect places for this dialogue; they help to get feedback and increase customer loyalty,” said Valeria Ivanova, a former SMM-specialist for the Molinos.ru agency who now works in the development department of the Losevo agricultural enterprise. 
The development of social media has brought business and consumers closer together than ever before, and it is understandable and natural for companies to want to know their audience and communicate with it. But while in many countries, SMM is now a common part of marketing strategy for almost every company, the Russian market has only tentatively embraced the idea. 
“Everybody is talking about SMM, but no one can really say what it is and give an accurate definition,” said Ivanova. “Many companies. when recruiting SMM specialists, can’t even say what exactly they want,” she added. 
Put simply, SMM is the promotion of a product or service with the help of social media, aimed at certain target groups. Experts agree that it is a strictly individual issue and not every business needs SMM.
“Companies usually don’t fully understand their target audience and cannot formulate the purpose of their presence on social networks,” said Artyom Kudryavtsev, SMM-specialist for the Altera Internet agency. 
Kudryavtsev spent a year in Baltimore, U.S., working for the IMRE advertising and PR agency. 
“For Western companies, new media have become a serious marketing tool, a source of valuable feedback and analysis, while in Russia instant sales are still more important,” he said. 
“A big problem for the Russian market is not even that new media are not taken seriously, but that many Russian companies have problems with marketing in general,” added Kudryavtsev. 
According to experts, many Russian businesses still focus primarily on maximizing web traffic and web search optimization rather than the socialization of their business. 
“Of course, the peculiarities of promoting business socially in Russia are more than ever based on people’s mentality and the level of social media penetration,” said Yevgeny Aleksutochkin, a lecturer on SMM courses at the Edukor education center and the author of an educational blog and a public profile on Vkontakte.ru.
The growing recruitment market in the sphere of SMM shows that such services are in demand and many businesses want develop their presence on social media, but very few companies really understand why they need such exposure, if they need it at all.
“There are very few SMM professionals who can answer those questions. In most cases they just offer to create an online community or a public profile on a social network for an enormous amount of money,” said Kudryavtsev. 
The growth in relatively qualified personnel has become a problem in the sphere of SMM. Increased competition has resulted in a cheaper market that disappoints applicants seeking the high dividends they are often promised.
“There are many self-taught SMM specialists now, many courses and SMM workshops, but it is impossible to learn all the peculiarities in a short period of time, because in this sphere technology is much less important than psychology,” said Ivanova.
“The main skills of an SMM specialist are the ability to write appealing texts, follow the news and be a real psychologist while communicating with consumers, plus an ability to transform any negative view into something positive,” said Aleksutochkin.
Some SMM specialists use social media to promote not only their company but themselves as well. 
“That is not, of course, the initial purpose of SMM. To avoid that, we run Losevo’s Twitter account under the name of a cow called Ryazhenka; we communicate with our audience in the form of a game,” said Ivanova.
Another problem of SMM is evaluating its effectiveness, which is a substantial issue for all public relations work. 
“You can count the number of ‘likes’ or discount coupons, but all in all it is impossible to count how many people have bought the product after discovering it via social media,” said Ivanova. 
This leads to the conclusion that sales growth cannot possibly be the main purpose of SMM. In fact the purpose of SMM is rather lofty, as far as this is possible in marketing — the establishment of friendship between business and consumers. 
“I believe that our consumers are mature enough to say thank you and we should give them an opportunity to do so,” said Ivanova. 
 “The problem is that Russian people are not used to seeing brands and companies online who can answer their questions and solve their consumer problems, as is the case now abroad,” said Kudryavtsev. 
“But it is just a matter of time,” he said. 
“There is essentially a two-year difference between the Russian and the foreign market, since Facebook was launched in 2004 and Vkontakte in 2006,” he added.