SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #945 (13), Friday, February 20, 2004
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TITLE: Petitioners See Putin As Panacea
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vadim Ivanov has been trying to prove that he is "not dead" for months. Finally he became desperate and decided to tell his problem to President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm not dead, and I want to get the documents that confirm it," Ivanov said to employees of the public reception room at Putin's election campaign headquarters in St. Petersburg at the Mining Institute on 21 Liniya, on Vasilevsky Island.
Ivanov's plea for help is just one of many similar messages that thousands of Russian residents want to bring to reception rooms created by Putin's campaign across the country's 89 administrative regions.
And though many people appeal for help with less intriguing problems, it seems most of them still see Putin as a universal panacea and last resort for any troubles they have.
A similar body was created during Valentina Matviyenko's successful campaign for the governorship last year. Narodny Control collected many such complaints, pledged its support for Matviyenko, then disappeared after the elections.
However, Svyatoslav Bytchkov, spokesman for Putin's St. Petersburg headquarters, said his office is nothing like Narodny Control. The reception room will close March 14, and if Putin wins the complaints will be compiled and sent to the president for action.
There are also echoes of a Tsarist-era practice in which petitioners called khodoki would walk hundreds of kilometers bearing a request to the Tsar to remedy their problems.
"People come here with all kinds of complaints and offers," Bytchkov said.
"They range from complaints about broken central heating or the loss of a dwelling that has been taken from them illegally to low pensions, suggestions how to fight terrorism and even requests to help 'get rid of a doctor who chases' an old babushka," Bytchkov said.
Vladimir Kann came to the reception room to complain that the roof above his apartment has leaked for the last two years. After getting no help from housing service officials he finally appealed to Putin.
"Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich! The reform of Russia's communal sphere is essential!" he wrote.
Sergei Alexeyev, who is in charge of receiving the public, said problems with housing utilities head the list of complaints.
"The next three issues include difficulties with acquiring Russian citizenship, low pensions, and problems connected to the work of the police," he said.
Out of 1,500 applications the reception room received in its first two weeks, 31 percent had to do with housing services, 17 percent with social security and citizenship, and 8 percent with the police.
Bytchkov said the information they receive from visitors forms a unique sociological database for Putin, where he can instantly see what problems worry the country most, and the kinds of bureaucratic nonsense they have to deal with, often because of imperfect legislation.
Valentina Bondarenko, a social worker in the reception room, said the biggest bureaucratic hoops people have to jump through relate to acquiring Russian citizenship.
"For instance, we had a family of a former military man, who used to serve in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. The man and his wife both received Russian citizenship when they moved to Russia. However, the passport and visa service said that their child, who was born in Kyrgyzstan cannot get Russian citizenship," Bondarenko said.
To get Russian citizenship, the boy was told to go to Kyrgyzstan, get Kyrgyz citizenship, then give it up, and only then would he have the right to apply for Russian citizenship, she said.
Alexeyev said some of the problems are so local that the staff can help solve them on the spot.
Bondarenko said two weeks working in the reception room had made her depressed.
"After hearing all those sad stories I had the impression that life is so gloomy," she said. "I also got the impression that when Russian citizens start to receive a pension they immediately start visiting offices and asking for handouts."
Bondarenko said the reception room's work could be halved if the country's bureaucracy was smaller and if bureaucrats did not abuse their power.
"It often happens that people who have the power to solve those problems are very rude towards their visitors and reluctant to help them," she said.
And that was where the plight of the very much alive Ivanov stemmed from.
Without his knowledge, his former wife had forged documents that confirmed his death in 2000 so that she could acquire the apartment they once shared. However, Ivanov was unaware of her actions for quite some time.
"That man got the 'sad' news when he went to arrange a new foreign passport for himself. People at the OVIR told him he couldn't get one because he was ... dead," said staffer Nikolai Beznosenko.
While many problems that people bring to the reception room are genuine, some are weird, he said.
One old woman called them to ask them to inform Putin that for the last 20 years "an unidentified doctor had been chasing her with a machine that radiates harmful rays," and she asked that Putin protect her from the doctor, he said.
TITLE: Belarus Agrees to Pay More After Gas Cut Off
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Belurussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday furiously accused Russia of resorting to "terrorism" by cutting gas supplies a day earlier but then caved in to demands that Belarus pay more for Russian gas.
Gazprom said gas shipments - which also travel across Belarus to Europe and the Kaliningrad exclave - were fully restored Thursday afternoon.
Lukashenko said Gazprom's switch-off of supplies at 6 p.m. Wednesday was the most hideous act seen by Belarus since World War II and warned that it would "gas" relations with Russia.
"I think this was an act of terrorism of the grandest scale, when in minus 20-degree cold a country ... not some people but half of whom have Russian blood running in their veins - is deprived of natural gas," Lukashenko said in remarks posted on the presidential web site.
Lukashenko, however, ordered his government to pay the higher gas prices demanded by Russia - an increase that is expected to add $200 million to Belarus' gas bill this year.
"We must sign an agreement on [President Vladimir] Putin' s terms. If Putin wants us to pay this much, let's collect it. Let's take it from medications, from Chernobyl veterans, from those who rotted in the trenches [during World War II]," Lukashenko said.
"This moment is indeed historical, but with a bitter, gassy taste. ... And Russian-Belarussian relations are going to be gassed for a long time now."
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow was quick to fire back, saying responsibility for a price dispute that led to the switch-off rested squarely on Lukashenko's shoulders.
"The Belarussian president bears full responsibility for systematic mistakes in internal and foreign policies that have interfered with social and economic development and has led to Belarus' isolation on the international arena," the ministry said in a statement.
Despite the exchange of harsh words, Gazprom and its Belarussian partner, Beltransgaz, agreed to complete negotiations and sign the necessary agreements within a few days, Gazprom said.
In the meantime, Beltransgaz on Thursday signed a 10-day contract with independent gas trader Transnafta.
Gazprom cut supplies through the Yamal-Europe pipeline route after accusing Belarus of illegally siphoning off gas destined for European clients.
Gazprom stopped selling gas to Belarus on Jan.1, and since then has been in locked in fruitless negotiations over gas prices, gas transit costs, and the terms of a planned joint venture with Beltransgaz.
Gazprom insisted that Belarus either pay $50 per 1000 cubic meters of gas or offer it a stake of at least 50 percent in Beltransgaz for no more than $300 million. Belarus had been paying about $32 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas.
Belarus refused to pay more or sell, saying half of Beltransgaz was worth at least $2.5 billion.
As the talks stretched from days into weeks, Belarus got by on short-term contracts with independent traders such as Transnafta.
The previous Transnafta contract expired Wednesday morning, and that was when Gazprom said Belarus started siphoning off gas.
The decision to completely cut off gas was unprecedented, as it also affected supplies to Poland, Germany and Russia's westernmost region, Kaliningrad - which gets most of its gas from the pipeline.
"Most of our boilers and other industrial consumers immediately switched to other fuels like coal or fuel oil," Kaliningrad regional government spokesman Alexander Koretsky said by telephone Thursday. "There is also a smaller alternative gas pipeline that leads to the region via Latvia."
"We would have been fine for a week or two. After that there would have been problems," he said.
While Kaliningrad seemed to have taken the gas interruption stoically, Poland was infuriated.
Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller lambasted Gazprom and said the cutoff undermined Russia's credibility as a supplier.
"This situation will have consequences because it undermines confidence in Russian suppliers, not only
in Poland but also across Western
Europe," Miller told reporters during a parliamentary session, according
to wire reports.
Poland was short of 5 million cubic meters of gas Thursday, even though it turned to alternative sources, including supplies from Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.
The country's largest chemical plant at Pulawy had to dip into its reserves.
Poland in recent years has sought to break away from Russia, which fulfills almost 80 percent of its gas needs, in favor of other suppliers such as Norway.
Last year Miller, however, tore up an agreement that his predecessor had reached with Norway's Statoi, saying it was too expensive.
Still, Poland signed a previously planned memorandum of understanding with the company Thursday.
In Brussels, Belgium, the European Commission expressed alarm Thursday that the cutoff might lead to supply interruptions.
But Gazprom' s decision was welcomed at home.
Mikhail Margelov, the head of the Federation Council's International affairs committee, said the incident should serve as a lesson to Minsk as it works with Moscow to build the elusive Russia-Belarus Union.
"A union of economies cannot be built on a model in which one economy gives everything and the other doesn't give anything in return," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"The Belarussian side is constantly asking for preferential treatment and handouts. But I suggest that they conduct negotiations based on economics, not politics."
Despite Lukashenko' s threat that relations with Russia would be damaged, it was unclear Thursday how the conflict might affect the countries' nine-year-old plans to unite.
"This incident, even if it does not have an immediate impact, could set a new trend in which Russia no longer wants to give away natural gas in exchange for idle talk about the union," said Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Commonwealth of Independent States Institute think tank.
"What it wants are real steps toward the union," he added
He said the dispute arose because Lukashenko failed to recognize that times have changed.
"Back in the mid-1990s, Russia was indeed ready to give things away just for idle talk of someone being an ally," Zharikhin said.
"Now other countries, particularly those within the former Soviet Union, have to earn the right to call themselves Russia' s friends and allies," he said.
TITLE: Rasputin Remembered As Lusty Monk, Spiritual Power
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen," and "Russia's greatest love machine" is how the Boney-M hit described Grigory Rasputin and that is how he is most frequently perceived outside of Russia.
But inside Russia the name of "Father Grigory," describes a once very ordinary muzhik from a Siberian village who became a favorite of Tsar Nicholas II's family, because he appeared to be able to cure the haemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei.
The priest is surrounded by myths and legends about his tremendous spiritual powers.
This winter, 135 years after he was born, and nearly a century since he was murdered in 1916, the city's Museum of Political History of Russia has opened a memorial display which meditates over his murder yet falls short of giving the definite answers to the question who killed Rasputin and why they did it.
One of the most eye-catching items on display is a 1916 photo album compiled by the police who investigated Rasputin's murder. The pictures document the murder scene, in particular the cellar in the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin was attacked. They follow his steps into the garden as he tried to escape from his persecutors who are said to have fired 11 bullets into his body.
The official version of his death is that the Romanov family favorite was killed on Dec. 17, 1916 by a group of "Black Hundreds" led by Prince Felix Yusupov Jr., Prince Dmitry Romanov and State Duma deputy Vladimir Purishkevich. They were concerned that Rasputin's influence over the royal family had to be removed as the country, fighting World War I, faced internal collapse and disaster.
Yusupov and Purishkevich confessed to the crime, saying the "Black Devil" had been invited to Yusupov Palace on the pretense of meeting Yusupov's attractive wife, Irina. Despite different views of his character, everyone agrees Rasputin had an eye for women.
Upon Rasputin's arrival shortly after midnight, he was given poisoned wine but the potassium cyanide failed to kill the priest. An anxious Yusupov allegedly shot the guest. But even that, the story goes, wasn't enough. Rasputin was able to run into the garden, despite his wounds. The persecutors caught him and threw him into an arm of the Neva, but according to some witnesses the story didn't end there, and Rasputin managed to get out of the river and then froze to death.
Historian Alexander Kalmykov, the exhibition's curator and a senior researcher with the museum, said the display doesn't break any new ground as to who was really behind the murder of the Black Monk.
"I can only talk in terms of versions, probabilities and possibilities," Kalmykov said. "The official version is widely accepted but still, it is only a version. Even I can't answer the question of how he died to my own satisfaction. The cause of death could either be drowning or freezing or blood loss."
Kalmykov and several other curators who prepared and mounted the exhibition have been doing research on Rasputin for more than 10 years. "We concentrated on his last days and his murder in an effort to explore his role in Russian history in the light of how his life was suddenly cut," he said.
Rasputin's power continued to operate from beyond the grave. "When his body was buried in Tsarskoye Selo hundreds of worshippers came to pay tribute to their idol," Kalmykov said. "The authorities found it alarming, so the body was exhumed and subsequently cremated."
One of the halls has been arranged to recreate the scene of Rasputin drinking wine with his murderers. Wax figures of Rasputin, Yusupov and other plotters are positioned in accordance to 1916 police reports.
Although yielding no sensations, the exhibition provides a valuable opportunity to learn a bit more about Rasputin than the Boney M song reveals.
"Lots of people have heard the song, yet very few have a reasonable idea who it is about - not to mention the fact that Russia never had a queen," said Peter Kozyrev, founder of Peter's Walking Tours, an agency that caters to more adventurous tourists - or curious locals - and provide an alternative to standard tours.
Kozyrev blends history, gossip, rumors and myth to draw a more detailed portrait of the mysterious and powerful monk who gained enough influence to win over Tsarina Alexandra and through her manipulate her husband.
The Rasputin tour takes walkers to "Father Grigory's" last apartment on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, the site of his murder and many other sites related to the monk's life.
Most people who work at the Museum of Political History of Russia are apparently not superstitious to have wax figures of Rasputin and his self-confessed murderers in Hall No.13. Still the historians are a bit at a loss when they try to explain sudden electricity failures in Hall No. 13.
The lights have flickered off and on for minutes on several occasions since the exhibition began in mid-January.
But the museum staff were staggered when they saw the wax figure of Yusupov had changed its position, becoming much closer to Rasputin.
"Who knows what it means," a museum guard said. "This hall is no different from others, in terms of everything from floor cover to temperature regime."
(See photograph, page 3)
TITLE: Killers Still at Large As City Rues Attacks
AUTHOR: By Simone Kozuharov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: No one has yet been arrested for the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl last week, police said Thursday, despite local media reporting that two teenagers had been detained.
"The prosecutor's office is investigating this case," Yelena Ordynskaya, spokeswoman for the city prosecutor's office said Thursday by telephone. "The investigator doesn't have any officially arrested people."
The murder was the first in a wave of hate crimes that have swept the city in the last fortnight.
While it was widely reported that the girl, Khursheda Sultanova, was killed by skinheads, some authorities were reluctant to label the murder as racially-motivated.
"There is no xenophobia of any kind in St. Petersburg," said Andrei Chernenko, vice governor in charge of law enforcement.
Not all officials agree.
"It's disgusting, all that is being done before our eyes," Interfax quoted Vladimir Litvienko, head of President Vladimir Putin's re-election headquarters in St. Petersburg, as saying. "In this city, there is a problem of extremism, and all the latest expressions of this give reason to say that the work of extremists is growing."
Governor Valentina Matviyenko was reported making an appeal to the public "to create an atmosphere of intolerance to these phenomena in the city that criminals don't feel free. We should angrily stop it together."
After Khursheda's murder more than two dozen headstones at a Jewish cemetery were vandalized Saturday night and the Eternal Flame monument in the Field of Mars was defaced with swastikas on Monday.
No suspects were detained in either of the later cases.
Three alleged skinheads made a court appearance Wednesday in connection with the Sept. 2002 murder of Mamed Mamedov, an Azeri watermelon vendor and father of eight.
"The prosecution and the defense presented questions to medical experts," said Yury Vdovin, deputy head of the Citizen's Watch human rights organization.
The cause of death was being re-examined by the court to determine whether Mamedov had died as result of the attack or as a result of striking the ground when he fell, Vdovin said.
Several witnesses said the group of teenagers had shaven heads and wore leather jackets and army boots when they attacked Mamedov.
One of them recorded the incident on video.
"We have 100-percent evidence against them," Pavel Rayevsky, head of the police press service, said at the time of the arrests.
The murder was widely publicized when it happened. Police arrested the suspects within days and seized the video documenting the murder.
TITLE: Fire Closes Traffic on Nevsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The building housing the Alexander Blok Library at 20 Nevsky Prospekt caught fire at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Up to 30 fire appliances attended and the west end of the city's main thorougfare was closed to private traffic for several hours.
The fire, which was at first rated five on a scale of five, enveloped the second and the third floors of the building and the attic, the city's fire service's press service said. The fire had been rated especially highly because of the large amount of flammable materials, including books, in the library.
"From what we know at the moment, it was the library storeroom that caught fire," spokeswoman Olga Sharova said.
However, Vice Governor Andrei Chernenko who witnessed the blaze, said neither the library's storeroom, nor the library itself caught fire, Interfax reported. A team had been gathered to remove the books, but there was no danger to them, the report said. No mention was made of damage caused by water used to put out the fire.
Staff of the library, a book store and a restaurant located in the building were evacuated.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Anti-Vandalism Steps
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall's monuments committee is inviting residents to make offers and suggestions to protect monuments from acts of vandalism, Interfax reported Thursday.
The committee is said to be seriously concerned by several incidents of vandalism that struck city monuments in the last week. Vandals desecrated about 50 Jewish graves with swastikas at the city's Jan. 9 Cemetery, swastikas were sprayed at the Eternal Flame on the Field of Mars, and parts were cut out of the recently restored fence around Alexander Column on the Palace Square.
Vera Dementyeva, head of the Committee, said the city administration is already working out a special program for the monuments' protection which would use modern technology.
McCartney Concert
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A company hired by ex-Beatle Paul McCartney to organize a concert for him in St. Petersburg in spring is still in negotiations, but no agreements have yet been made, Interfax reported Thursday.
However, Interfax said if the negotiations are successful McCartney will most probably sing in Palace Square on May 27, when St. Petersburg celebrates its city's day.
The first and so far only concert by McCartney in Russia took place in the Red Square in Moscow last year, where the singer was greeted by an audience of 50,000 and President Vladimir Putin.
Norway Funds Projects
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Norway will allocate more than 100 million Norwegian crowns ($14.35 million) for nuclear and radioactive safety projects in Russia's Northwest, Interfax said Tuesday.
Since 1995 Norway has allocated more than 800 million crowns for cleaning up nuclear sites in the Northwest region.
Buildings Inspections
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall will inspect all construction sites in the city in the next month, Interfax reported Thursday.
The city's construction committee said special attention will be paid to the buildings located inside yards and to big developments of a non-standard design, where crowds of people could gather. Serious breaches of construction legislation will be reviewed by the committee.
Kazakhastan Grain
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg and Kazakhstan have made a preliminary agreement so that Kazakhstan could ship 100 tons of grain to the city, Interfax said on Thursday.
Boris Vakhrushev, head of the state-owned enterprise St. Petersburg Food Corporation, said the preliminary agreements on the delivery of third-class grain to the city imply that it will receive the grain at the same price as grain sold on the Russian market.
Vice Ring Busted
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) - Police and border guards have exposed a prostitution ring, with women from Russia and the Baltic countries providing sexual services in Finland for four years, officials said Wednesday.
The operation, which generated an estimated 1.5 million euros ($1.9 million) in illicit earnings, was headed by a Finnish man now being held in prison in Latvia pending charges, said Detective Chief Inspector Jari Raty.
Three Latvians also were being held, suspected of human trafficking and procurement, and police in Estonia were questioning five people suspected of being involved, Raty said.
Presidential Term
MOSCOW (AP) - The State Duma on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to extend the presidential term from four years to seven.
Deputies voted 317 to 51 against the measure with two abstentions.
A regional legislature put the proposal on the house agenda just weeks ahead of the March 14 presidential election, which President Vladimir Putin is expected to win in a landslide. Putin had criticized the proposed change, and the pro-Kremlin majority in the Duma vowed to block it.
"Under the Constitution, the current president already has eight years because if he works normally, he is guaranteed to be elected to a second term," said Alexander Kotenkov, Putin's representative in the Duma.
Tregubova Abroad
MOSCOW (SPT) - Yelena Tregubova, the author of behind-the-scenes book "Tales of a Kremlin Digger," said in a telephone interview Wednesday that she has fled the country over fears for her safety.
Investigators are continuing to look into a Feb. 2 explosion near her apartment.
Tregubova, who declined to name the country she was in, said she last met with police on Feb. 11 and was expecting investigators to keep in touch with her via cellphone. She said investigators had not been keeping her informed about the progress of their inquiry, but one of them told her in a "strange" voice that it was "understandable" who had orchestrated the explosion.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Mikhail Suvorov, was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Anti-Terror Measures
MOSCOW (AP) - Six ex-Soviet republics linked under the Collective Security Treaty plan to draw up a common list of banned extremist and terrorist organizations, officials said Wednesday.
Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will base the list primarily on the 15 extremist organizations that are currently banned in Russia, the treaty's Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said at a meeting of the countries' anti-terrorist bodies, Interfax and Itar-Tass reported.
Meanwhile, the State Duma on Wednesday approved in the first reading a bill that toughens anti-terrorism legislation, allowing convicted terrorists to be sentenced to life imprisonment. The current maximum sentence is 20 years.
Nuclear Training
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has already trained 600 specialists for a nuclear power station it is building in Iran despite U.S. concerns that Tehran wants to use it to develop nuclear weapons, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday.
Russia insists the $800 million Bushehr project is purely for peaceful purposes and will press on with the construction.
TITLE: Yabloko, SPS Work With Putin's Election Campaign
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Representatives of liberal parties Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, are to cooperate with the President Vladimir Putin's St. Petersburg re-election campaign headquarters in order to ensure a good turnout.
Neither party has their own candidate in the March 14 presidential election, although SPS leader Irina Khakamada is running as an independent.
"I'm glad that we managed to work out a joint program for the pre-election period," Vladimir Litvinenko, who runs the headquarters, said Tuesday at a news conference.
"Together we'll be solving our main task - to have people come and vote on election day," Litvinenko said.
The first representative of the city's liberals to officially announce his decision to campaing for Putin was local SPS leader Vitaly Martynenko.
He said a recent meeting of SPS had decided to let SPS members choose which of the seven candidates they would support.
"Therefore I decided to join Putin's campaign," Martynenko said. "This is because I want to participate in drafting the policies that will be implemented in the next four years."
Martynenko said about 75 percent of city residents are planning to vote for Putin, citing "sociological research."
He said he had not informed SPS federal leaders about his decision and therefore didn't know their reaction to his decision to campaign for Putin.
Igor Artemyev, a member of the political council for St. Petersburg's division of Yabloko party, said members would be working in organizations promoting the elections, though not joining Putin's campaign.
Artemyev said that although Yabloko, like SPS, did not have its own candidate, it had also not decided to back any one of the seven candidates registered to run for president.
"The situation in St. Petersburg differs from the elections in other regions because on March 14 we also have local elections [for the Legislative Assembly and for municiplaities]," Artemyev said. "It's important for us to have people participate in the elections."
Meanwhile, Litvinenko said the headquarters had found six different leaflets in the city calling for people to boycott the presidential elections.
TITLE: Navy Launch of Ballistic Missile Fails Twice
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: In a new blow to military prestige, the navy failed for the second consecutive day Wednesday to launch a ballistic missile from a Northern Fleet submarine during maneuvers attended by President Vladimir Putin.
But Putin pronounced the strategic nuclear exercises - the largest in more than 20 years - a success and said they would facilitate the deployment of a new generation of strategic weapons.
"The experiments conducted during these maneuvers, the experiments that were completed successfully, have proven that state-of-the art technical complexes will enter service with the Russian Strategic Missile Forces in the near future," Putin said after watching the launch of a military satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, which was part of the massive exercises.
The new weapons will be "capable of hitting targets continents away with hypersonic speed, high precision and the ability of wide maneuver," Putin said, adding that the new weapons - unparalleled in the world - would "reliably ensure Russia's strategic security for a long historical perspective."
Putin insisted that the designing of new weapons was not directed against the United States. "Modern Russia has no imperial ambitions or hegemonist strivings," he said.
Russia is continuing research in missile defense systems, and may build a new missile shield in the future, Putin said. Russia currently has a missile defense system protecting Moscow that was designed in the 1970s.
Despite the ambitious statement by Putin, the exercises he attended was tarnished by the navy's failure on two consecutive days to launch missiles from nuclear submarines.
The navy on Wednesday sent a Northern Fleet nuclear submarine to repeat Tuesday's unsuccessful launch - only to fail again.
The missile launched from the Karelia submarine started erring from its designated flight path 98 seconds after the launch and was blown up by its self-liquidation system, navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said.
No one was hurt, he said in a telephone interview.
An official investigation has begun.
Some Russian media described the navy's attempt on Wednesday as an effort to rehabilitate itself after the previous day's failure.
Putin went to the Barents Sea on board the giant Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine to observe that missile launch firsthand. But the launch from the Novomoskovsk submarine, which military officials had announced in advance and which was described on the front page of Tuesday's official military daily, Krasnaya Zvezda or Red Star, did not take place.
Russian officials and media made conflicting statements about the reason for the failure. The naval chief, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, ended up saying Tuesday that the navy had never planned a real launch and successfully conducted what he described as a simulated one.
Many Russian newspapers, however, assailed what they described as a clumsy cover-up of Tuesday's failed launch, saying that Kuroyedov's statement resembled official lies about the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, which killed all 118 aboard and badly dented the navy's prestige.
"Apparently they decided not to smear President Vladimir Putin's participation in the exercise with negative information," the Kommersant newspaper said.
Observers said the failed launch highlighted the continuing decline of the military, which has been plagued by a desperate funding shortage since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
"The trouble is that there are few experts left and crews are badly trained," Retired Admiral Eduard Baltin told the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "We failed to show a potential aggressor that Russia's nuclear forces are in full combat readiness."
The exercises are widely seen as part of campaign efforts in the run-up to the March 14 presidential election aimed at playing up Putin's image as a leader bent on restoring Russia's military power and global clout.
Putin, who is expected to easily win the election, swapped the naval officer's garb he wore on the submarine for the green uniform of an officer of the Strategic Missile Forces on his visit Wednesday to the Plesetsk launch pad.
While there he watched the successful launch of the Molniya-M booster rocket, which carried a Kosmos military satellite into orbit. He also viewed the trouble-free liftoff of an RS-18 ballistic missile from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan, via video hookup.
State-run television channels, which are lavishly covering the daily activities of Putin, ran footage of the president watching the launches and congratulating officers in Plesetsk, but kept mum about the failed launches.
The military has dismissed media reports that the military exercises closely resemble Soviet-era simulations of an all-out nuclear war with the United States, saying that they are not directed against any specific country.
At the same time, the military said the maneuvers reflected Moscow's concerns about U.S. plans to develop new types of nuclear weapons. The maneuvers ended Wednesday.
TITLE: Qatar Detains Blast Suspects
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two suspects have been held in the Gulf state of Qatar in connection with the car bomb last Friday that killed former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, Saudi Arabia's Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported Wednesday.
Qatari law enforcers detained two men of European appearance, whose names were not disclosed, in Abu Dhabi in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, the newspaper reported. They were extradited to the Qatari capital, Doha, on suspicion of having organized the car bombing.
Qatari authorities would not confirm the detention, saying that the Interior Ministry would make an official statement shortly, the paper said.
Yandarbiyev, who had lived in exile in Qatar for at least three years, died of his injuries in hospital after a bomb went off in his Toyota Land Cruiser. His two bodyguards died instantly in the explosion, while his 13-year-old son, Daoud, was badly injured.
Russian prosecutors have been seeking Yandarbiyev's extradition, accusing him of being a key link in financing rebels in Chechnya.
Chechen rebels blamed Russia for Yandarbiyev's death. Moscow and pro-Moscow Chechen leaders said it resulted from an internal feud among the separatists. The Foreign Intelligence Service quickly denied any involvement.
TITLE: Handful of Liberal Deputies Fight to Be Heard in Duma
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Five liberal-minded deputies banded together Wednesday to make their voices heard in State Duma debates dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
Announcing the formation of an independent coalition, Mikhail Zadornov told reporters that the deputies would work "to make the political discussion in the Duma more real and the Duma's political structure more balanced."
Zadornov, together with Vladimir Ryzhkov, Sergei Popov, Viktor Pokhmelkin, and Galina Khovanskaya, were left to fend for themselves when their obvious allies, leading liberal-democratic parties Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, failed to win seats in the Dec. 7 elections.
Providing a counterbalance to United Russia, which controls some 306 seats and every committee chair, will be difficult because the coalition has no formal status.
Under the Duma's new leadership, regulations have been changed to increase from 35 to 55 the number of deputies needed to form a deputy group. A group has special voting and debate rights.
Pokhmelkin expressed frustration with such "antidemocratic actions."
His electoral bloc, New Course-Automotive Russia, floundered in the Dec. 7 elections, but Pokhmelkin, like the others, won a single-mandate seat.
Even the 35-member minimum would have been hard to reach in the 450-seat Duma.
Only 15 of the 23 deputies elected as independents remain outside Duma factions.
There had been hope that a liberal group could reach critical mass, but that would have been possible only if United Russia had agreed to donate some of its members to the cause. Then the opposite happened when some independents were absorbed by United Russia in return for various perks.
"United Russia deputies are more constrained than we are," Khovanskaya said, trying to find a silver lining. "We each have a vote, while all together they only have one."
Zadornov, a Yabloko member and former finance minister, was optimistic the new coalition would soon swell to about 10 deputies, saying that "negotiations are under way."
There is strength in numbers in Duma sessions, where "everything is truly programmed," and even getting recognized to speak requires a long series of official requests, Khovanskaya said
TITLE: Transvaal Toll Increases to 26
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Rescuers found the body of a boy in the rubble of the Transvaal water park on Wednesday, raising the death toll from the weekend roof collapse to 26. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov later said that no more bodies remained in the debris.
"Today we can say with guarantees that no one is left under the structure," Luzhkov said. "As a result of this tragedy, 26 people died."
No one from the Emergency Situations Ministry, which ran the search operation since the Saturday collapse, could be reached to comment Wednesday evening.
Natalya Goncharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry's city branch, said earlier that rescuers found the remains of a boy. Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin had said that the boy was 13 years old and his mother's body had been recovered earlier, Interfax reported.
Luzhkov said that of the 26 dead, 17 were from Moscow, two were citizens of Georgia, one was from Tajikistan, one from Lithuania and the remainder were from other Russian regions.
The first funerals of the victims were held at cemeteries around Moscow on Wednesday.
TITLE: Digital Tax Filing in 2004?
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kornienko
TEXT: "We have radically changed our approach to taxpayers." This was the message that Mikhail Mokretsov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Board of the Tax Ministry, tried to get across to participants of a tax seminar Wednesday.
The seminar - held by the St. Petersburg International Business Association, or SPIBA - highlighted revolutionary high-tech reforms in the processing of tax payments and a remodeling of the tax rate distribution. The seminar's speakers had two pieces of news to convey. The good news is that taxpayers will be able to file electronically. The bad news is that taxes will go up.
"In technical collecting, St. Petersburg is far ahead of Russia's other regions," Mokretsov said. Meanwhile, three seminar organizers standing behind the speaker struggled with a stubborn password-demanding laptop.
"But our main problem is people," Mokretsov continued. He explained that all of St. Petersburg's collection agencies are equipped with fiber-optic connections and a total of 31 agencies are hooked up to a centralized program as part of an unprecedented experiment to create a unified digital system for all tax operations.
The reform, which involved a serious reorganization of work distribution among collection agencies' staff, initially had a "revolving door" effect among tax inspectors unwilling to accept the new strictly limited set of tasks. Under the new system, tax inspectors will have to come to grips with the latest Tax Ministry mantra that tax agencies belong to public services, not to the power structures.
St. Petersburg is one of Russia's first regions to fully discard the former pattern of having each taxpayer attached to a certain tax inspector. This system led to a subjective approach. But by mid-2004, all taxpayers are expected to make their relationship with the Tax Ministry a purely digital one.
It used to be part of the inspector's mandate to decide which figures the taxpayer declared. From now on, the taxpayer will decide how much of his earnings he is ready to share with the state.
Meanwhile, Mokretsov cautioned, the Tax Ministry does have other sources of information on taxpayer income. That information will come from banks, which are signing special agreements on digital data transfer to tax inspection offices. "We can put together a tax profile on any individual," Mokretsov said, smiling.
Filing taxes electronically is a good idea and the practice is widely used around the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers St. Petersburg senior tax manager Slava Vlasov said in a telephone interview. However, Vlasov said, Russia lacks the laws needed for the system to function. Besides, it has not been specified who will have access to company accounts. Businessmen may become concerned about risks to their confidentiality. Taxpayers should be able to choose whether to use digital forms or visit the inspector in person, Vlasov stressed.
Halls for the public similar to those in banks will take two to three minutes to serve each client, Mokretsov - who did not hesitate to call himself "a Kremlin dreamer" - said. The same halls will be equipped with computers where visitors will be able to access a frequently asked questions program.
But tax agencies are interested in seeing more people file their tax returns electronically, both to avoid mistakes in entering the figures and to save time. In order to advance to that filing mode, each taxpayer will obtain a digital signature that will make electronic transactions fully legitimate and enable last-minute filing. A pin code will allow access to a personal account for payment management.
The reform will turn tax operations into an objective impersonal system, in which the human factor will be minimized. It will also create greater transparency, thus making it look more attractive and easy to foreign investors.
"The system is largely derived from Western practices and has been heavily funded by the World Bank," Mokretsov told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview. "In St. Petersburg, two thousand taxpayers have already gone digital. Of course, it's only a point-zero share of the overall number, but I believe there is no return to the paper system," he said.
Other legal changes will affect investors.
"Our first piece of advice to each new investor is: Calculate everything, benefits not included," Vlasov of PricewatershouseCoopers said in his seminar presentation on investment legislation changes. According to the new federal laws, investors lose all the tax benefits they originally enjoyed.
A bill on providing some tax benefits to investors in the Leningrad Oblast has been passed in the first reading by the Oblast's legislative assembly. In contrast to the regional draft law, a St.Petersburg bill - also passed in the first reading - extends benefits only to existing investors, and not to newcomers. St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputies should realize what effect their actions may have on the image and the reputation of St. Petersburg with investors, Vlasov warned.
Adding some oil to the fire, Natalia Scherbakova, senior tax department manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers St.Petersburg, voiced other upcoming tax reforms. According to Scherbakova, legislators plan to transfer part of the tax burden from employers to employees. With the expected cut in the unified social tax, income tax will be raised, possibly to the rate of 20 percent.
"No one doubts that our bosses will immediately raise our salaries once this happens, so naturally we all welcome the change," Shcherbakova said with a hint of irony.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Eurosib Wins Contract
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Eurosib SPb Transportation Systems announced Thursday that it won a tender by Ulbinsky Metallurgic Works (UMZ) in Western Kazakhstan for transit rail shipments of hydrofluoric acid through Russia to the Estonian and Ukrainian borders in 2004, a Eurosib SPb press release said.
According to the terms of the contract, Eurosib will move a total of 3,780 tons of acid during 2004.
Hydrofluoric acid is a by-product of the main business at UMZ, which is principally involved in uranium, beryllium and tantalum production.
Paint Production Up
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Kraski Teks, the producer of paints and lacquers in St. Petersburg's Teks holding, upped production by 21 percent in 2003 to more than 75,000 tons, Interfax reported Thursday.
The company plans to increase 2004 production by another 40 percent.
Teks occupies 12 percent of the Russian paint and lacquer market.
A company press release said its components plant in the town of Mga, Leningrad Oblast, will launch a third production line to boost lacquer output by 1.4 times.
SME Loan Program
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The World Bank plans to give Russia a loan for $300 million in 2005 to implement a program to fund small and medium-sized businesses in the regions, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Igor Yurgens, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, made the announcement at a seminar in St. Petersburg Wednesday.
"The feasibility study for this project has been sent to Washington and implementation will begin in 2005," Yurgens said.
The loans will come due for repayment within 17 years of financing.
Vena Net Profits
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Vena brewery saw 160 million rubles in net profits in 2003, the brewery's general director Pyotr Chernyshov told journalists at a press conference Wednesday.
Sales were up in 2003 by 25 percent to 163 million liters.
The brewery invested 13.5 million euros in upgrading equipment and developing a distribution network in 2003.
As part of the investment program an Italian line for packaging 30-liter kegs with a yield of 130 kegs per hour was launched Wednesday.
Oblast Land Sales
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Leningrad Oblast more than doubled revenues from land sales in 2003 to 95 million rubles, Vice Governor Alexander Drozdenko announced at a press conference Tuesday.
Announcing the results of social and economic development in the Oblast in 2003, Drozdenko quoted the average selling price for a hectare of land at 129,000 rubles.
Revenues received by the Oblast budget from land rent in 2003 amounted to 683 million rubles. This figure exceeded the government's target of 543 million rubles.
Lenenergo Investment
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Local electric utility Lenenergo will invest 3.134 million rubles in generating sources and heating networks in 2004, Interfax reported Thursday.
The utility's plan for development through 2010 set the amount to be invested in generators at 1.940 million rubles. The investment figure includes reconstruction of TETs-5 using a 1.4 billion ruble loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Lenenergo will use its own resources to upgrade TETs-7 and TETs-15, at a cost of 200 million rubles and 58 million rubles, respectively.
$822M for MegaFon
MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - MegaFon, the nation's No 3 cell-phone operator, doubled its annual revenues last year to $822 million, the company said Thursday.
Unaudited earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose to $377.6 million against $143.8 million in 2002.
The company, with 6.8 million subscribers, said it plans to nearly double its client base in 2004 and generate revenues of $1.3 billion.
Jailhouse Rock
MOSCOW (MT) - Police have busted a music bootlegging gang working out of a Novosibirsk prison.
Officers seized 170,000 CDs and tapes. The warden and several local businessmen are being questioned, the BBC reported Thursday.
Though music and video pirates often operate on the territory of legitimate factories and even defense plants, this is believed to be the first time a penal institution has been targeted in a sting operation.
The Ananova web site said that prison authorities had known that inmates were making music in the penitentiary and were aware that a contract had been signed with a company that paid the prisoners and supplied them with equipment.
Prison officers were quoted as saying they "didn't know it was illegal."
Water Code Approved
MOSCOW, (Prime-Tass) - The Cabinet on Thursday approved a new draft of the Water Code, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Mukhamed Tsikanov told reporters.
The new code includes "transparent" guidelines for consumers' access to water resources and stipulates stronger ecological requirements to companies whose activities contaminate water supplies, Tsikanov said.
The new code aims to reduce the number of water basin authorities to 10 from the current 16, with a managing agency assigned by the government to coordinate their activities, Tsikanov said.
The water tax is to be abolished and replaced by water fees, which will go into the federal budget, Tsikanov said.
According to the draft code, only self-contained bodies of water that amount to about 2,000 square meters may be privatized, he said.
EBRD Ruble Bonds
LONDON (Bloomberg) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the biggest investor in central and eastern Europe, plans to sell bonds denominated in Russian rubles for the first time by July, EBRD President Jean Lemierre said.
The bonds will help the intergovernmental lender finance as much as 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) of investments planned for Russia this year, about a third of the EBRD's total 2004 investment program, Lemierre said in an interview in London.
The EBRD will be the first AAA-rated borrower to tap Russian ruble investors, helping to revive a market that collapsed in 1998 when the Treasury defaulted on $40 billion of domestic debt and devalued the currency. Gazprom, Russia's largest company, this month sold 10,000 rubles ($350 million) of three-year bonds, the biggest corporate ruble bond issue.
IMF to Fund Georgia
TBILISI, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The IMF said on Thursday it may resume lending to Georgia this year, paving the way for creditors to reschedule the impoverished Caucasus country's massive debts.
The International Monetary Fund suspended lending more than a year ago as relations soured with then-president Eduard Shevardnadze, forced out of office by popular protests in November and widely blamed for leading Georgia to economic ruin.
An IMF mission has been in the former Soviet state for the past two weeks for talks with the new government.
TITLE: UN: AIDS Hurts Economy
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The spread of HIV/AIDS could have calamitous effects on Russia's economy by "brutally altering" the structure of the Russian population, according to a new report released by the United Nations Development Program on Tuesday.
The report warns that Russia's GDP growth could decrease by up to 1 percent due to a higher mortality rate in the labor force, while increased health expenditures for people living with AIDS could absorb up to 3 percentage points of gross domestic product.
"It is too late to avoid a crisis in terms of human cost, and the economic costs will definitely be significant," said Shombi Sharp, UNDP assistant regional representative and one of the authors of the report.
"But Russia still has the opportunity, through effective responses, to avoid the kind of macroeconomic impact that has been experienced in other parts of the world."
A "medium" scenario, or 6 percent adult infection rate in 2015, would mean that Russia's GDP could be 10 to 12 percent lower by 2040 than it would be without the disease.
Russia's current population of about 144 million could fall as low as 100 million in a medium-case AIDS epidemic, or 97 million by 2045 in a worst-case scenario, the report states. Without the disease, the population is projected to be 117 million.
Besides reducing Russia's work force and productivity, the spread of HIV would also diminish public and private savings as well as increase expenses such as wages for firms.
Industries like oil, gas and non-ferrous metals could be especially hard hit, the report said, because their labor force is at high risk for HIV infection.
"You quite often find a lot of commercial sex activity in areas surrounding these activities, and large labor forces comprised of single men," Sharp said. "In some of these areas, like Irkutsk and Khanty-Mansiisk, HIV infection is three hundred percent or more above the national average."
Russia, Ukraine and Estonia have the fastest HIV growth rates in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The region has one of
the fastest HIV growth rates in the world.
"We're hitting the tripwire of 1 percent infection rate among adults, at which there's a high likelihood of acceleration of the disease," said UNDP Director Mark Brown.
While HIV in Russia has been most prominent among drug users, prisoners, homosexuals and sex workers, "the disease is spreading over from these groups to the mainstream," Brown said.
UN officials stressed that Russia will need to craft new methods for dealing with the problem than it has used in the past.
"Russia is much too fond of big institutions - particularly prisons - for solving social problems," said Brown. "Democracy is not a prophylactic, but lack of attention to human rights is a problem."
The Russian federal government yearly spends less than 5 rubles per person to fight HIV/AIDS, according to Mikko Vienonen, head of the World Health Organization's Moscow office.
"That's the cost of a pack of Byelomor cigarettes," Vienonen said. "And this is a country with a huge budget surplus.
"[AIDS] is the biggest epidemic in history," Vienonen said. "We've already gone over the Black Death in the 13th century - this is a bigger threat."
TITLE: Bank Says Oil, Gas Reliance Dangerous
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The economy is nearly three times more dependent on oil and gas than official statistics indicate, making the country much more vulnerable to oil price swings than previously thought, the World Bank said Wednesday.
The State Statistics Committee doesn't properly account for the tax avoidance schemes used by oil and gas companies, the bank concluded in its annual report on the Russian economy. But if it did, the numbers would show that oil and gas accounts not for 9 percent of gross domestic product, but 25 percent, and that services account for just 35 percent of GDP, not 55 percent.
Russia's purported shift to a service-driven economy is "mythical," said Christof Ruehl, the World Bank's chief economist for Russia and the author of the report. "The government shouldn't expect services to take the lead in economic growth."
Ruehl said he recalculated official figures to negate the affect of transfer pricing - when an oil or gas company sells to a trading affiliate at knock-down prices to minimize profit taxes.
The new figures show that the oil and gas sector, despite employing less than 1 percent of the workforce, makes up half of all industrial production. Transfer pricing also artificially inflates the services sector, a major component of which is trade. Oil and gas production is statistically disguised as trade when producers sell to affiliated traders who turn around and sell abroad at an enormous profit, with the difference considered "value added" in the services sector.
"Recent productivity gains in services remain very limited, compared to industrial productivity, and this holds in particular for the very low-productivity (but growing) non-market services," the report said.
This non-market, or public, services sector also depends on subsidies, which in turn depend on oil prices, he added.
The government has moved to close transfer-pricing loopholes, but that's no guarantee that the practice will not continue, he said.
That the economy is over-reliant on oil is not disputed - oil and other natural resources account for 80 percent of all exports, and taxes on the oil and gas sector generates two-fifths of all government revenues. And a forthcoming study by Peter Westin, chief economist at investment bank Aton, found that the oil and gas sector accounts for up to 30 percent of GDP if measured by world prices. The State Statistics Committee uses domestic prices, which are much lower, in its calculations.
International debt rating agencies Standard and Poor's and Fitch consistently cite Russia's vulnerability to oil price swings among their reasons for not raising Russian debt to investment grade.
"This has always been the same [and] you cannot overcome this dependence in the short run," said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog. When oil prices collapsed in the 1980s, the Soviet Union was forced to borrow massive sums abroad, which contributed to the collapse of the country, he said.
The World Bank report, however, highlights just how deep this dependency runs. Officially, the economy grew 7.2 percent last year, but if oil prices had not been unusually high, the growth would have been more like 4 percent, Ruehl said.
"Since 1991, the economy hasn't grown more than 5 percent without oil prices being high," he said.
Some economists took issue with the World Bank's findings.
Al Breach of Brunswick UBS, for example, said the 25 percent figure for the oil and gas sector's share of the economy "seems very high," even when export prices are taken into account.
Other economists, however, said the World Bank's number-crunching demonstrated with figures what many already believed.
Troika's Gavrilenkov said most economists ignore official GDP sector statistics in favor of other indicators, such as the balance of payment figures.
"Economic statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is important, but what they conceal is vital," Gavrilenkov quipped.
Some economists also took issue with Ruehl's claim that it is a "myth" that a structural shift in the economy to the services sector is occurring.
Aton's Westin, for example, said many services that could not possibly be inflated by transfer pricing, such as telecoms, have grown as much as 400 percent in the last five years.
In addition, the comparatively small role that the services sector plays in the economy is more a sign of development than a drag on growth, said Natalya Orlova, senior economist at Alfa Bank.
Developed economies are generally two-third services and one-third industry, she said.
TITLE: Foreign Inflows Hit $29.7Bln in '03
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia attracted a record $29.7 billion of foreign inflows last year, led by foreign loans, as the longest economic expansion since the fall of the Soviet Union boosted demand for credit.
Foreign inflows soared 50 percent from 2002. Foreign loans led the gains with $22.2 billion of the total $29.7 billion, the State Statistics Committee said in a statement.
Foreign direct investment rose 69 percent to $6.8 billion and portfolio investment fell 15 percent to $401 million.
Russia is attracting funds from foreign banks and companies, as well as from Russians who took their money abroad after the fall of the Soviet Union, as a sixth-straight year of economic growth fuels demand for furniture, tea and more expensive cigarettes.
Gross domestic product expanded 7.3 percent last year, the fastest pace since a record expansion of 10 percent in 2000, according to the government.
But Russia has lost out on the foreign direct investment game, said analysts. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it has attracted just $52 in net FDI inflows per capita between 1994 and 2003, one of the poorest showings among the 27 transitional economies. In comparison, oil-producing former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan attracted $938 and $625, respectively.
"Russia has almost completely failed to set up production-sharing agreements" to attract foreign investors into the oil sector, said Peter Westin, chief economist at Aton brokerage. "That's a major reason why we didn't have more FDI."
But the country is succeeding in luring its own money back. Some of the biggest flows of money into Russia come from off-shore centers, which avoid restrictive regulations, taxes and other costs. Investors from Cyprus, Switzerland, the British Virgin Islands and Luxembourg, which together accounted for 30 percent of all investments, are generally considered to be Russians who have taken money out of the country.
"Russians are starting to front Russia, and that's great," Westin said.
The biggest investors in Russia are based in Germany, Cyprus, the United Kingdom and the United States, contributing more than half of the $57 billion of foreign inflows into Russia from abroad since 1991. The figure includes direct, portfolio and other inflows.
Industry, trade and food sectors lured the bulk of last year's inflows, or $22.8 billion.
Meanwhile, outflows from Russia, classified by the Statistics Committee as Russian investment abroad, rose 17 percent last year to $23.3 billion. That money flowed to the British Virgin Islands, Belarus, Iran, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Liberia, Moldova, Switzerland, Armenia and Lithuania, the committee said.
"These flows show the transfer of money from Russia to offshores and later re-investment of that money either in Russia or in other countries,'' Vladimir Tikhomirov, an economist at NIKoil in Moscow. "This is about the optimization of taxes by Russian companies.''
Portfolio investment totaled just $401 million last year, according to the Statistics Committee, while total trading on the Russian Trading System's main stock market reached $6.1 billion last year.
In the second half of 2003, Russia attracted $17 billion of foreign investment, or 57 percent of the total yearly figure, according to Bloomberg calculations based on today's release and the data for the first half.
That indicates that foreign investment, as represented by the State Statistics Committee, wasn't affected by concerns about the Oct. 25 arrest of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
Last July, Khodorkovsky said "politically motivated'' investigations into Yukos and its shareholders would prompt capital to leave the country and delay decisions about investing in Russia.
(Bloomberg, MT)
TITLE: Gref: Stock Bubble Looms
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The stock and property markets may be rising too fast as foreign and domestic investors pump money into the country, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref warned Wednesday.
Russian stock and sovereign bond indices are the best-performing in the world since President Vladimir Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, according to Bloomberg data. Real estate prices are at a record in Moscow.
Russia must cut the role of the state and reduce bureaucracy to open new markets that can grow to absorb the record foreign and domestic investment flowing into the country, Gref said. Without those changes, the country's most liquid markets could overheat.
"We can't process the inflow of investment that has already formed in our economy, and there is an obvious danger of overheating in investment markets - the stock market for portfolio investment and investment in real estate," Gref said in a speech to students at the Academy of National Economy in Moscow.
Gref, the architect of Putin's economic plans, said he wants to cut conflicting functions of different government ministries, bring competition to Unified Energy Systems and Gazprom, and make the banking system better-run.
The Russian Trading System on Wednesday rose to an all-time high of 661.09, extending a yearly gain to 17 percent, trailing only Columbia, Venezuela and China.
The RTS index of 62 companies is the best-performing stock index since Dec. 30, 1999, rising 340 percent while J.P. Morgan's Emerging Market Bond Index plus Russia is the best-performing bond index, rising 336 percent.
"Liquidity is very strong and is pushing the market higher, but from a fundamental point of view, there isn't much upside," said Angelika Millendorfer, who manages more than $500 million in East European equities at Raiffeisen Capital Management in Vienna. Raiffeisen has started to sell some of its Russian holdings, she said.
Last month, brokerage houses had the most "sell" recommendations on Russian stocks since October 1997, when the RTS peaked under Yeltsin.
Less than a year after the October 1997 peak, Russia defaulted on about $40 billion in domestic debt and allowed the ruble to devalue, sending world markets tumbling and losing banks and investors billions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 15 percent in August 1998, the biggest monthly drop since the 1987 recession.
Russia attracted $20.9 billion of foreign investment in the first nine months of 2003, the latest period for which data are available. That is more than the $19.8 billion attracted for all of 2002, according to the State Statistics Committee.
"Today we are not experiencing a deficit of investment resources," Gref said in the speech. "At the present day, we are suffering from an absence of investment proposals."
Russia, the world's largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, is benefiting from oil prices about $5 higher than government forecasts.
That drives investment in the economy as oil and gas exporters such as LUKoil and Gazprom bring dollars back into the country.
The inflow of dollars has driven gold and foreign currency reserves to $84.3 billion in the week ending Feb. 6, the highest level ever reached in Russian and Soviet history, according to the Central Bank.
Gref said that many monopolist companies create affiliated firms that supply them with all ranges of services they need, like transportation, construction and financial services.
"This must be squeezed out in the next few years. This sector must be de-monopolized," he said, adding that the government planned to order monopolies - Gazprom, UES and the Russian Railways Co. - to place state orders on the market.
(Bloomberg, Reuters)
TITLE: 4 Years of Reforming the Federal System
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: At the start of Vladimir Putin's first term as president, the question was: "Who is Mr. Putin?" As his first term comes to a close, the time has come to assess the results of his first and most important policy initiative: reform of the federal system.
Putin launched his program of essentially "anti-federal" reforms immediately after his inauguration in May 2000. The main points of this program were:
. The creation of seven federal districts headed by envoys appointed directly by the president;
. The weakening of the Federation Council as the focus of gubernatorial power in Moscow, achieved by moving the governors into the State Council, a consultative body that meets with the president four times per year;
. The creation of a mechanism allowing federal intervention in regional affairs, including the power to remove elected regional leaders from office and to dissolve regional legislatures.
Federal reform got underway quickly and with very little public debate. The newly-formed federal districts were designed to coincide with the Interior Ministry's troop districts. As his envoys, Putin chose five generals and two top-level (or former top-level) government officials. Their offices, like those of the chief federal inspectors who represent the president in each of Russia's 89 regions, were staffed largely with former agents of the security services. The seven envoys have enjoyed varying degrees of success, but only one district - the Northwest District - has seen leadership changes (twice in 2003).
The envoys are members of the Security Council, reporting to the president twice annually on their districts. The president meets biannually with all of his envoys and federal inspectors, and also meets regularly with the envoys on an individual basis. Once the envoys' offices were up and running, district-level branches of all security and law enforcement agencies were created with the exception of the FSB, which provided oversight of the federal reform process. And many other federal agencies have followed suit.
The aims of Putin's federal reform are not yet entirely clear, but policy statements made over the years have stressed five main points: bringing regional laws into line with federal legislation; coordinating operations of the regional branches of federal agencies; improving the investment climate and developing small and medium-sized businesses in the regions; clearly demarcating the powers and competencies of federal, regional and local authorities; stepping up the war on crime.
None of these goals necessarily requires the appointment of generals or the creation of a burgeoning district-level bureaucracy. And this suggests that the federal districts are destined to play a greater and perhaps a very different role in future than they do at present.
The seven federal districts are quickly emerging as a new level in Russia's state structure aimed at consolidating economic and cultural activity, and the flow of information within their boundaries. The proliferation of district-level branches has created not a single chain of command but a complex tangle of such chains within the various federal agencies. In order to extend this structure downward, a network of local "outreach" offices is being developed to cater to the public. Regional authorities have lost control over the regional field offices of federal agencies. Employees are now regularly rotated to disrupt local ties and promote loyalty to Moscow. The former links between regional authorities and law enforcement agencies, the courts and business have been broken.
The presidential envoys are the primary conduit between Moscow and the regions, pushing the implementation of federal programs and arranging nearly all contacts between governors and the president. Increasingly they control business contacts in their districts, even at the international level. Economic development plans for all seven districts have been drawn up.
The Kremlin has made good use of gubernatorial elections to strengthen its hand in the regions. Putin's envoys pushed successfully to install FSB bigwigs in the governor's mansion in the Voronezh and Smolensk regions and Ingushetia, although similar hardball tactics backfired in the Kursk and Tver regions. But even without a change of governor, Moscow has tightened its grip on the regions by beefing up the regional offices of federal agencies, sending its hand-picked candidates to the Federation Council and taking control of regional business.
All the same, it should be stressed that the envoys are intermediaries, not independent powerbrokers. For all their trying, they have never gotten direct control over financial flows in their districts.
The question of power lies at the heart of reform of the federal system. This does not mean declaring war on the governors, but establishing control over the so-called power agencies (the armed forces, security and law enforcement agencies) and the regions while bypassing the presidential administration, where the influence of Yeltsin-era officials has until recently remained strong.
Taking control of the power agencies at the regional level required more than just a change of leadership, their ties to the regional authorities had to be broken. The first step was a major shake-up within the regional power agencies. The second step, carried out between April 2001 and March 2003, involved wholesale leadership changes in these agencies and the reorganization of the power agencies as a whole. The reform effort was directed at first from the Security Council, drawing heavily on the human resources of the FSB. The federal districts were matched to the Interior Ministry's troop districts because these forces were not under Defense Ministry control and enjoyed significant autonomy within the Interior Ministry itself.
So why do the envoys wear epaulets? The siloviki have been behind the reform program from the beginning. Generals are needed to issue and carry out orders. And besides, who else could manage the siloviki in the regions and on the staff of the envoys and the federal inspectors?
We can say now that the envoys have accomplished the main tasks initially set before them. They are now thrown into all of the president's major initiatives, from the census to doubling GDP and reviving Russian culture - although generals aren't needed for this kind of work. We have seen one general replaced by a former cabinet member in St. Petersburg. Rumor has it that Viktor Kazantsev will soon be replaced in the Southern Federal District.
But it seems to me that the districts will be around for a while yet. As the nexus of innumerable federal agencies, they have acquired enormous inertia. The districts are the key element in a new, centralized network consisting of three levels: envoys, inspectors and local "outreach" offices that are open to the public. Most importantly, the districts have become so ingrained in the political system that ripping them out could cause the entire structure to collapse.
But the presidential envoys' glory days are behind them. Federal reform is entering a new phase of more routine work on strengthening the vertical and horizontal structures of power, consolidating the regions, forming municipal districts and smoothing the functioning of "managed democracy" at all levels.
It's worth bearing in mind that the seven federal districts are not merely an extension of the power agencies - they are the foundation of the Putin regime.
They are essential to his vision of a monolithic society organized along more or less military lines - strict subordination, the clear division of responsibilities, chain of command and state control of business and the institutions of civil society. The point of Putin's federal reform policy is to divert all power to the federal center in order to bolster the power of the Kremlin and force regional law enforcement agencies to toe the line.
The success of this policy means that Putin is well on the way to achieving the primary goal of his first term: absolute power.
Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Rybkin Affair Is No Laughing Matter
AUTHOR: By Matt Bivens
TEXT: Back in 1994, Grigory Yavlinsky's older son, Mikhail, was a piano player in his early twenties. Unknown assailants mangled Mikhail's hands. They also stuffed a note in his pocket warning his father to get out of politics.
Soon after, parents and teachers were pleading with the Yabloko leader to withdraw his younger son, Alexei, from school: They feared getting caught up as collateral damage in an anti-Yavlinsky car bomb, or worse.
The Yavlinskys appealed to the government. But by 1995, an inconclusive police investigation was closed, and the Boris Yeltsin Kremlin had shrugged off pleas for federal protection.
"[Yavlinsky] was told to hire his own bodyguards, or to otherwise look to his family's safety. So he hid his children," said Yevgenia Dillendorf, a Yabloko press secretary.
Mikhail, 32, and Alexei, 23, today live in England. Dillendorf says the British government - unlike the Russian - has formally agreed to guarantee their safety.
Mikhail still writes and plays music. "But he can't play professionally now," Dillendorf said. Of his mangled hands, Dillendorf said, "luckily, they were able to sew his fingers back on."
In 1994, Yabloko's voice was raised loudly in democratic opposition to Yeltsin's rule - and especially to his terrible decision to invade and carpet-bomb Chechnya. So Mikhail Yavlinsky's assailants could have been Kremlin-directed, or could simply have been freelancing nationalists.
If nationalists, they were sophisticated enough to target his son - and the fingers. Which begs the question of why the Yeltsin government refused to protect the Yavlinskys.
Years ago, someone brought me an obscure Harvard University newsletter, with a terse account of a Yavlinsky speech. The newsletter noted that afterward, in private remarks, Yavlinsky recounted an attack on his son. The newsletter version had the webbing between Mikhail's fingers being cut.
For about half an hour I thought this an important story. I called Yabloko spokesman Vladimir Braginsky, who testily confirmed it all - but he argued strenuously against publishing. It was even then a six-year-old story, and the Yavlinskys had fought hard to keep it quiet; I could be putting their family in danger.
I'm not much for parachuting into people's private lives. I wavered; and then, it started to slip slowly through the cracks. I can't remember how, but somehow it got added to the mental pile of things I maybe, possibly, should have seen through to completion.
When Ivan Rybkin disappeared, I joked that he was just out on one of those epic benders celebrated in the Soviet film "Ironiya Sudby" or "The Irony of Fate." As I was chuckling at my wit, Yavlinsky was quoted sternly warning that jokes were inappropriate: A candidate for president had gone missing. Rybkin resurfaced, with his hair-raisingly erratic explanations, and I couldn't help agreeing with Yavlinsky - and remembering he spoke from harsh experience.
This weekend I called Yabloko spokeswoman Dillendorf and told her I was doing the story. Most of all, I wanted to know why Yavlinsky never talks about it.
"Well, he and his wife so decided," she said. "They felt that they needed to protect their kids and so they didn't need a lot of noise. And also, Grigory Alekseyevich [Yavlinsky] did not want to demand pity and tears.
"Grigory Alekseyevich still doesn't like to talk about it. It's still a sore spot, even today - because it tore apart their family. They live without their children. It was a horrible event, it's still painful, and it's not forgotten."
Matt Bivens is a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: german experiment still going on
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Einsturzende Neubauten, the Berlin-based experimental band, that first drew attention for using non-musical instruments, such as electric drills and power hammers, and has been described as "forefathers of noise/industrial music," has again demonstrated that they are still capable of creating music of subtle beauty on its new album.
Released on the U.K. Mute label on Feb. 9, "Perpetuum Mobile," which Einsturzende Neubauten is promoting on its current tour to St. Petersburg this week, the 12-track album deals with transition, change and atmospherics.
As Blixa Bargeld, the band's founder, singer, lyricist and main theoretician, put it in Mute's press release, "There's not one single track which doesn't talk about the wind, the storm - where it isn't mentioned explicitly, you can at least hear it."
The album has also incorporated technologies that the band has never used before and eventually helped the band not to break up.
As it turned out, for a few years the band, whose name translates as "collapsing new buildings" referring to "Neubau" ("new building"), the German term for the post-war steel-and-concrete buildings notorious for their instability and tendency to collapse, was itself on the brink of collapse.
"We've been together for 23 years; within 23 years there are situations when you think 'This could be it,' there were situations like in a marriage. The year 2000 was our 20th anniversary," said Alexander Hacke, who plays guitars, keyboards and various instruments and objects, in a recent telephone interview from his home in Berlin.
For the new album - Einsturzende Neubauten's first studio album since the 2000 "Silence Is Sexy" - the band adopted an unusual production approach having installed Webcams in its studio in Berlin so that the sessions would be transmitted to fans' homes live via the Internet.
"'Silence Is Sexy' came out in 2000, and when we did a tour promoting this record in 2000, we were basically ready to split and do something else, but then this idea of this Internet project came along," said Hacke.
"We've done that and that kind of put the motivation back in order to go on with Einsturzende Neubauten."
To make the whole creative process for "Perpetuum Mobile" financially independent, the fans were asked to make to make a one-time payment of 35 euros.
As supporters, they were granted the opportunity to see the band in the studio, communicate to the members via the Internet and receive a unique, physical copy of the new record, different from those available from the shops.
"What we were selling with the project is intimacy.
"Also it's demystifying the process of working a little bit. Because people found out that we're just regular people, and what we do sometimes can be really, really boring.
"Still it has changed my life, being in contact with thousands of people, talking to them, corresponding to them, talking not only about this record, but all kinds of things, all kinds of subjects," Hacke said.
The experience seems to prove refreshing also for Einsturzende Neubauten's mainstay Bargeld, who even quit his other job, as a guitar player for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, in order to dedicate more time to his own band.
"I think it kind of gave him the strength to do it," said Hacke.
"It has been a successful set-up for him to work with the Bad Seeds ... Blixa is concentrating more on Neubauten, concentrating more on his writing and stuff. I think he's just bored of being a rock and roll guitar player."
Einsturzende Neubauten formed out of Berlin arts conglomerate Die Geniale Dilletanten in April 1980. Its influence on contemporary music cannot be overestimated.
"A lot of things that we did 20 years ago are just regular things for kids now," said Hacke.
"When I was young, when Neubauten started, we would pick up instruments like guitars or drums without knowing how to play them. Now there are young people picking up electronic equipment, and it's the same attitude. They can do what they can do and don't care about traditional schooling."
Einsturzende Neubauten at PORT club at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday. Links: www.neubauten.org
TITLE: tragedy comes back as a comedy
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" has been staged thousands of times but has probably never been presented in the form of historical kitsch - until now.
A new version of Shakespeare's tragedy from the St. Petersburg-based theater troupe "Comic-Trust, which premiered this week, blends together genres and styles of visual theater to create a spicy visual cocktail.
"Antony and Cleopatra" is one of Shakespeare's best known later tragedies, with the Cleopatra role, one of the greatest roles in drama, popular with actresses all over the world. The play focuses on real events from Roman history, and portrays the love story of its title characters against the geopolitical backdrop of the ancient world.
Shakespeare's tragedy was inspired by "Lives", a study by the ancient Roman historian Plutarch. The plot and historical details of the love affair between the Roman general Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra were drawn from Plutarch's book. The play alludes to numerous battles between Caesar's and Antony's armies and navies and features rapid dynamic scene-changes between Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria and Antony's home in Rome.
The "Comic Trust" troupe features just three performing members - Natalya Fisson, Nikolai Kychyov and Igor Sladkevich - and director Vadim Fisson. The plan to stage "Antony and Cleopatra" had less to do with director Vadim Fisson giving his wife Natalya the precious part of Cleopatra than it did his boyish desire to take up the challenge of staging sea battles.
"We were reading the play aloud, and of course, all the notes about armies coming and going and clashing, when the whole picture of us doing that became hilarious," Vadim Fisson recalls. "The idea just boosted my imagination."
Making the audiences feel like they are surrounded by an army is a theatrical trick. But what do the performers do to prepare themselves for imitating two armies? "You just need to be a born fighter, nothing else helps," interjected Natalya Fisson before the men had a chance to have their say. Vadim Fisson was quick to add that cloning technologies have been used.
Cleopatra, the "Comic-Trust" version, is a woman of "classical oriental shapes", who is, well, slightly rotund, but possessing tremendous personal power and a voracious sexual appetite.
The director himself will make a stage appearance, as nothing less than Mars, the god of war - with a friendly nod to the Terminator.
Some of the Shakespearian verse - albeit in translation - will be spoken, but not much. Compared to the troupe's nearly wordless "Second Hand" and emcee-hosted "Cabaret Naphthalene", the verbal element of "Comic Trust" repertoire has indeed developed. The prologue presents genuine Shakespeare but a knowledgeable spectator will spot it's the intro to a different drama. To be safe, have a quick glance at "Henry VIII" before the performance.
The premiere, in fact, is an adaptation of an existing street show which was first performed by "Comic-Trust" in France last year and has been performed in Germany and Portugal since. The spacious stage of Lensoviet Palace of Culture will be turned into a Coliseum-style arena, where the actors will be surrounded by the audience.
The show is not recommended for the faint-hearted, the actors warn. Most of the audience stand a good chance of bring conscripted into battle. Female audience members run the risk of getting converted in courtesans.
"Those who fancy storming snow towers would enjoy it," Vadim smiles. "Our show is optimistic and patriotic."
Wondering whether Shakespeare can really make Russians feel proud of their motherland takes time and is not likely to get you very far. Instead, when approaching this version of "Antony and Cleopatra," shake up your knowledge of Russian history and think of what the folk hero Stepan Razin did to his beloved Persian princess when he threw her into the Volga river from his boat. Antony was not as strong as the Russian rebel, so Cleopatra, who happens to have more character than the princess, will stop short of this watery fate.
Natalya's Cleopatra is an excessively temperamental femme fatale, constantly looking for a new victim (guys in the first rows, beware).
Finally, an asp, that inevitable scene-stealer in ancient tragedies, is being trained specifically for the production. The coach is not entirely satisfied but says the serpent must go on stage even if poorly prepared. Everybody dies in the end anyway.
"Antony and Cleopatra" is playing at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, Metro Petrogradskaya, from Feb. 20 through Feb. 22 and from Feb. 26 through Feb. 29.Links: www.comic-trust.com
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Tequilajazzz, the city's leading alternative band, will play its another traditional winter concert at Moloko this Saturday.
The powerful quartet's frontman, Zhenya Fyodorov, has been busy lately composing film and TV series soundtracks as well as music for theater performances.
His latest work, music for "King Lear," will premiere at the Vasilevsky Ostrov Theater of Satire later this month.
"It's interesting because it has, first, not the traditional translation, not the one by Boris Pasternak; it uses harder version, which is closer to the original," said Fyodorov about the production.
"On the other hand, there are certain tendencies. For instance, when we did 'The Cherry Orchard' at Alexandrinsky Theater, there appeared several 'Cherry Orchards' soon after," he went on.
"Now there are the Maly Drama and several other theaters are going to produce 'King Lear' as well. It looks like the political situation in the country affects the choice of classical plays by directors. That's the way it is."
Rumor has it that the club's management wanted to set ticket prices at 400 rubles ($14) to avoid overcrowding which is usually the case at Tequilajazzz's concerts at Moloko, but the band insisted on its usual 250 ruble ($9) cover price.
La Minor, that band's whose stylish, jazzy version of urban folk, and gangsters' songs in particular, has garnered them quite a few fans, has returned from Western Europe, where it was touring from Dec. 28.
According to the band's singer Slava Shalygin (see photo, page iii), the tour's high points were the joint concerts with Iva Nova and Markscheider Kunst, two other St. Petersburg bands who were traveling across Europe at the same time.
Shalygin's plans for the near future include promoting European bands in St. Petersburg. He said he would start with bringing the French alt. folk band La Varda in April.
La Minor's first local concert - for which the band is planning to bring in additional players - will take place at Red Club this Sunday.
Akvarium will throw yet another club performance at Red Club on Friday but this time for some reason Boris Grebenshchikov's band will be "augmented" by the all-girl band Chempionki Mira and the lame clown troupe Litsedei.
Litsedei actually went awry after its founder and director left them for his solo career and is most remembered for taking part in an anti-NATO concert at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall sponsored by the city authorities and attended by many local officials in 1999 during the bombing of Serbia.
The JFC Jazz Club will promote its Ninth International Festival of Guitar Jazz, this year at the three jazz clubs and cafes simultaneously, the JFC itself, JazzTimeBar and Jazz Blues Phrenia.
Opening on Wednesday, it will culminate in a joint concert by both the Netherlands' Duncan Peltenberg Trio and the French-Russian band Bez Adresa, or Without an Address on Thursday.
Fusion guitarist Peltenberg's band first toured the city last October and now returns for another four dates. See gigs for times and locations.
This week's absolute highlight, however, is Einsturzende Neubauten, the Berlin-based band that has been innovative since it formed in 1980. It will play PORT on Thursday. See article, this page.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: zeppelin gives lift but fails to fly
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On Christmas day last year a new restaurant opened across from the ex-pat friendly Crocodile bar on Galernaya street just off Ploshchad Dekabristrov. A new restaurant is always welcome, of course, especially one that no-one seems to know much about. Or anything about. That is the case with Zeppelin, which many readers will be pleased to know is not a Led Zeppelin tribute bar.
Walking through the "simulated spaceship" door, the first thing I noticed was how small the place is. There are just four small tables in the first room and several bigger ones in the second. There is a bar at the back of the first room and elevated private booths are featured in both rooms. I took a table in the second room at a booth and waited for my companion who arrived a few minutes later. The music was extremely loud and dramatic pop, which thankfully later on metamorphosed into the slightly softer strains of Dire Straits. I was sitting directly across from the guest of honor, a large, highlighted poster of the Hindenburg, flying high over the New York skyline. Were we heading for disaster?
Under the light of the aquarium located directly behind me, I began to glance through the booze menu. In the aquarium itself two over-sized exotic fish were swimming among plastic ruins (including the leaning tower of Pisa). The wine selection looked tempting. The many possibilities include Argentinian, Chilean, Japanese, French, Italian and Spanish wines, some pricey, some not so. My companion and I settled on a the Spanish red Saint Valencia for 110 rubles ($3.85) a glass. It was fruity and vibrant and delicious. We had several more glasses as the night went on. It came recommended by our server.
For appetizers we started out with the jambon, a Spanish specialty of chewy pork jerky for 210 rubles ($7.35). It had been advertised in the menu with a page of its own; the front page to be exact. Served with black olives, it was a good starter. We followed this up with the fresh vegetable plate with tomatoes, red pepper slices and cucumbers and smothered in sour cream (80 rubles, $2.80). Simply stated it was basic, but not bad. Last came the tiger prawns, which were monstrous and meaty, and completely encased in thick shells (370 rubles, $13). These were served with a cream sauce and olives and lemon. The sad thing was that there were only four of them. But who can complain about fresh, delectable shrimp?
Many of the main courses revolve around grilled meats prepared on a spit. Our server had warned us to order them at the same time as the appetizers. We procrastinated, and therefore had a bit of a break between the starters and mains. The grilled possibilities include everything from lamb, pork and beef to various kinds of fish. They were out of the lamb, so I settled on the pork neck for 250 rubles ($8.80). It was a bit chewy, but mostly tender and served with a mildly spicy sauce. This was accompanied by a bland and overcooked baked potato with sour cream (30 rubles, $1.05). My companion had the fish baraboolka for 270 rubles ($9.50). It arrived as two whole fish fillets. She described it as unevenly cooked. Whereas the bottom of the fish was dry and burnt, she said, the top was drenched in sauce, well spiced and moist. On the side she ordered roasted vegetables, which she said were mildly overcooked, but on the whole okay (60 rubles, $2.10).
While listening to the Dire Straits CD play through for the second time, we relaxed in our chairs contemplating dessert. Although the cheese cake came recommended, we simply couldn't find the room. Overall, the service was well above average. We had two servers looking after us and they were prompt, friendly and quick to make recommendations. We were well taken care of. As for the food, the portions were fair, although they were out of a number of items. I would go again if I were in the area, but I would hesitate to make a big effort to return. It just doesn't stand out. That unfortunately is the fate of most of the oddly themed restaurants in town. The stranger the tribute, the more usual the place.
Zeppelin, Galernaya Ul. 11, tel. 318 66 61. Credit cards not accepted. Menu in Russian only. Open daily from noon until the last guest leaves. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1,930 rubles ($67.75).
TITLE: visit oman and wake up to a dream
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Buttenheim
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Try this on for size: My 6-year-old daughter and I ring the bell outside the deserted Russian Embassy. Within seconds, a smiling Russian bustles out to open the gate, escorts us to a comfortable sitting room and invites us to sit, anxiously assuring us that we need only wait a few moments. We are the only visa applicants. And it really is only three or four minutes before a charming young diplomat brings us forms to fill in, wonders, politely, whether we don't mind waiting a week to pick up our visas, assuring us that if that is not convenient, he'll get them to us earlier. Through the window, we glimpse palm trees, an azure sea, a cloudless sky and a pristine beach. Fantasy Island? Close enough - Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman.
Oman is something of a sleeping beauty just waking up. Despite a rich history of being at the crossroads of medieval merchant routes and a center of the frankincense trade, Oman was virtually cut off from the outside world in the 1960s by the isolationist policies of the father of the current sultan, Qabus ibn Sa'id. As British observer Patricia Holton recalled in her book, "Mother Without a Mask," "The door to Oman was locked, and one required a very special key." Happily, under the reforming influence of Sultan Qabus, who assumed power in 1970, Oman is undergoing a dynamic renaissance - throwing its doors wide open to welcome the world to its natural wonders, ancient traditions and modern optimism.
Much of the charm of modern-day Oman lies in its successful balance of Muslim traditionalism and tolerance toward foreigners. The capital, Muscat, is home to numerous expatriates from Britain, the United States, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and India, making English the official second language. It is also a short 45-minute hop from Dubai - a destination already popular with Russia-based travelers - and a convenient base for day trips into Oman's interior. The roads are new and impeccably maintained, and Omanis are careful and considerate drivers, if somewhat disinclined to use their turn signals.
Muscat stretches across the coast of the Gulf of Oman, with its four- and five-star hotels located in the newer Qurm suburb around a meticulously maintained public beach. In the mornings, we had sole ownership of the beach, save for local school children well wrapped against the plus 30 degrees Celsius winter chill and indulgently giggling at our bathing suits. In the afternoons, locals picnicked on the beach while their children joined my daughter in building castles from the sepia-colored sand.
Evenings, against the stunning canvas of the pink and orange Gulf sunset, signaled the beginning of pickup football games and barbecues. Couples strolled along like chess pieces, the men clad in their snow-white dishdasha robes, the mandatory uniform of state employees, and the women elegantly adorned in full-length black. The atmosphere is nonintrusive, and certainly a highlight of any trip to Muscat.
A 15-minute drive from Qurm brings you to Matrah, a vital old port area with a fish market and traditional souk, pungent with the smell of frankincense. Overcoming my husband's allergy to shopping is always difficult, but good behavior earned me two hours of browsing in the souk for traditional Omani crafts. My souvenir of choice would definitely have been a mendoos, or wooden dowry chest, hand-carved from teak and studded with brass and copper, but I conceded that transporting it home could be tricky. So instead, I settled for some carved rosewood Koran stands, several exquisite cushion covers embroidered in silk, and Oman's famous silver jewelry. As ever, the two pillars of successful Middle Eastern shopping apply: Be skeptical as to the provenance of the item, and bargain, bargain, bargain.
Thanks to my husband's distaste for shopping, we did not linger in Matrah, but headed some 6 kilometers onward to the village of Al Bustan, where the local marina offers two unbeatable half-day options that can be combined for a full day of leisure. Start your day off with dolphin-watching. If you do it right, you can entice literally hundreds of dolphins to play in the wake of your boat. Returning to shore, you can arrange to be dropped off on a small sanded inlet for an afternoon of very un-public swimming, sunning and picnicking, and be picked up and returned to the marina at your leisure.
But it is only by striking into Oman's interior that you get a sense of the country's true magnificence. Beyond the lush flora of the coastal areas is a shockingly bare lunar landscape. Within just two or three hours in a number of directions, you'll reach gems like Sohar, the home of Sinbad the Sailor; Quaryat, a charming fishing village; Nizwa, the former capital famed for its fort and pottery; and Barka, home to the Omani version of bullfighting, also known as "bull biting."
Rent a car to take best advantage of Oman's excellent intercity roads, crime-free travel environment and admirable bilingual signage. Several models are available, but a sedan is more than appropriate for most daylong excursions. One exception applies - the Wahiba desert, where I understood that the 4x4 was designed for purposes other than efficient transport to and from IKEA.
The two-hour journey from Muscat to Wahiba affords a stunning look at the purple-hued craggy cliffs of Oman's mountains. But once at Wahiba, we were inducted into the exciting world of sand-dune bashing, as our expert driver, Mr. Fez, navigated our 4x4 down 180o inclines and across seemingly endless stretches of pink and red sand until he somehow managed to find his way without any road signs to our hotel. Sitting around a blazing campfire with the other visitors, we watched the sunset fade to a brilliantly clear, star-studded sky.
Oman is an ideal vacation spot for both adventure travelers and bucket-and-spade holiday makers. But judging from the 350 visitors who took the plane with me from Moscow to Muscat, I clearly am not alone in my approval. As I chatted with souvenir vendors, I was asked more than once how to say "bargain" in Russian. The Russian Embassy in Muscat may need to beef up its staff after all in the very near future.
TRAVELER'S TIPS
WHERE TO STAY
Muscat boasts numerous three-, four- and five-star hotels.
If money is no object, a natural choice is the new luxury property, The Chedi, at North Ghubra 232, Way No. 3215, Street No. 46 (Tel. 968-505-035). For the budget-minded, a good option is the Corniche Hotel, at Building No. 17, Street No. 716 (Tel. 968-714-707).
WHERE TO EAT
Most top hotels offer a range of Western and Eastern fare and the number of Lebanese and Indian restaurants is growing in the shopping districts. See The Times of Oman for complete listings.
HOW TO GET THERE
There are no direct flights from St. Petersburg. Emirates Air Lines (Tel. 095 514 1919) flies daily to Muscat via Dubai from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, with flawless service and
superb on-ground facilities upon arrival.
TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Õîçÿèí: man of the house, boss, manager, owner, director, person in charge.
Xîçÿèí and his female counterpart, õîçÿéêà, are words that make the translator sigh and reach for the thesaurus — along with a long swig of vodka. Sometimes it’s just a question of getting the context right, and then the appropriate English word is easy to find.
The trick, and the problem, with õîçÿèí is that it can mean “owner” or “proprietor,” but also has the meaning of someone being in charge, managing or running something — often with the connotation of running something well. The second trick is that in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet context, “running something” was not always synonymous with “owning something,” while in the English or American context, ownership was often implied.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. One block of meanings for õîçÿèí/õîçÿéêà is connected with being a householder. Õîçÿèí can mean landlord, as in the phrase: ß ñú¸ìùèê — õîçÿèí æèâ¸ò â Íüþ-Éîðêå (I’m renting; the landlord lives in New York). In another context, õîçÿèí/õîçÿéêà can mean the “host” and “hostess”: äàâàéòå âûïüåì çà õîçÿèíà! (Let’s drink to our host!) Õîçÿéêà can also be translated as housekeeper: Îíà ïîòðÿñàþùàÿ õîçÿéêà! Ó íå¸ â äîìå âñ¸ ñâåðêàåò ÷èñòîòîé. (She’s an amazing housekeeper! Everything in her house is sparkling clean.)
But how do you translate the query: õîçÿèí/õîçÿéêà äîìà? When I was growing up in America, this would have been rendered: “Is the man/lady of the house in?” This is an apt translation, since it means “the person in charge” of the house, who may or may not own it. Alas, this apt translation is now archaic. Nowadays people tend to say: “Is the owner at home?”
In reference to a person, õîçÿéñòâåííûé means “economical,” “thrifty,” or “handy/good around the house,” depending on the context. In reference to inanimate objects, it can refer to anything connected with the running of a household — õîçÿéñòâî — which in Russia included not only the house, but also a vegetable garden and livestock, bath house and various outbuildings.
So õîçÿéñòâåííûé ìàãàçèí is a shop that sells everything for an apartment and often for a house and garden. In English, you might call this a household goods store. Õîçÿéñòâåííàÿ ñóìêà is a shopping bag; õîçÿéñòâåííîå ìûëî is usually called “kitchen soap,” even if you use it to wash clothes and floors.
Õîçÿéñêèé is the adjective that means “belonging to the owner/manager/person in charge,” or “belonging to the business.” ×üÿ ìàøèíà? Õîçÿéñêàÿ? (Whose car is this? The owner’s? / The factory’s?) Õîçÿéñêèì ãëàçîì is a nice phrase that means “with a proprietary eye” or “careful eye,” as in the phrase: Îí îñìîòðåë äà÷ó õîçÿéñêèì ãëàçîì (he surveyed his dacha with a careful eye). Äåëî õîçÿéñêîå means “it’s up to you.”
In the business context, Îí íå õîçÿèí can be translated as: “He’s no manager/a bad manager.” If you are speaking of a homeowner, Îí íå õîçÿèí could be translated as “he’s no use around the house,” “he doesn’t take good care of the place.” Îí ñåáå íå õîçÿèí means “he’s not the boss,” “he’s not his own master,” or “he does what he’s told.”
Doing business with someone like this isn’t easy. But it’s a snap with someone who is õîçÿèí ñâîåìó ñëîâó, “a man of his word.”
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter
TITLE: Iran Blast Kills 295
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEYSHABUR, Iran - Runaway train cars carrying a lethal mix of fuel and chemicals derailed, caught fire and then exploded hours later Wednesday in northeast Iran, killing more than 200 people, injuring at least 400 and leaving dozens trapped beneath crumbled mud homes.
Many of those reported dead were firefighters and rescue workers who had extinguished most of the blaze outside Neyshabur, an ancient city of 170,000 people in a farming region 400 miles east of the capital, Tehran.
The dead also included top city officials - including Neyshabur's governor, mayor and fire chief as well as the head of the energy department and the director-general of the provincial railways - who had all gone to the site of the derailment, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
On Thursday, a senior official in Khorasan Province's Emergency Headquarters, Vahid Barakchi, told Iranian state radio that 295 people were killed and 450 others injured in the explosion. But the acting governor of Neyshabur, Mohammad Alajgardi, said that about 180 bodies had been recovered by Thursday morning.
The blast was so powerful that windows were shattered as far as 12 kilometers away. In an apparent indication of the explosion's force, Iranian seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor in the area, IRNA reported.
Many of the buildings that collapsed in a Dec. 26 earthquake in Bam, in southeast Iran, also were mud-brick structures. That tragedy killed more than 41,000 people.
TITLE: Dean Withdraws From Presidential Race
AUTHOR: By Ross Sneyd
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BURLINGTON, Vermont - Faster than you can say dot.com bust, Howard Dean's quest for the presidency ended Wednesday as the Democrat, winless in 17 contests, bowed to political reality and abandoned his bid.
Once the little-known former governor of a small Northeast state, Dean took a summer ride to presidential campaign heights, attracting scores of followers and a Democratic record $41 million in campaign dollars largely through the Internet.
Exactly one month ago, Dean was the candidate to beat - front-runner in national polls and poised to begin his primary romp with a win in the Iowa caucuses. It all crashed when the real votes were counted.
Dean finished a poor third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire and managed just single digits in several states through early February. One of his biggest union backers - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - bailed out on the day of the Washington and Michigan caucuses.
In the meantime, rival John Kerry had cruised to 15 wins and seized the front-runner moniker. Dean dubbed Wisconsin a must-win, then a not really. After the votes were tallied Tuesday, the race had become what Dean had predicted - a two-man contest - but between Kerry and John Edwards.
A day after his distant third-place finish in Wisconsin, Dean announced that he would no longer actively pursue the presidency, but "we will, however, continue to build a new organization using our enormous grass-roots network to continue the effort to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country."
Striking the defiant tone that has been the hallmark of his candidacy, the former Vermont governor urged his delegates of some 200 to stick with him.
"Keep active in the primary," Dean declared to an overflow crowd of more than 500 flag-waving supporters and staff.
"Sending delegates to the convention only continues to energize our party. Fight on in the caucuses. We are on the ballots. Use your network to send progressive delegates to the convention in Boston," he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: No Independent Taipei
TAIPEI, (AFP) - In an attempt to ease international concerns over his leadership, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian pledged not to declare independence from China if re-elected next month .
Chen, who faces a tough battle to retain his job at polls on March 20, said he already considered Taiwan independent but would stick to the promise he made when he secured an historic election victory in 2000 not to declare a permanent split from China, a move that Beijing has promised would lead to war.
"Declaring independence is not an issue because we are already an independent country," he said.
Cyprus Talks Begin
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders met with a UN mediator Thursday, launching talks to reunify the divided island.
United Nations envoy Alvaro de Soto greeted chief Turkish Cypriot negotiator Rauf Denktash and his Greek Cypriot counterpart, President Tassos Papadopoulos, as they arrived.
Hours earlier, a bomb broke the front door and windows of the home of Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat, a leading advocate of reunification, but caused no injuries.
The leaders have five weeks to work out an agreement using a plan written by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as their basis.
Rovers Dig Mars Dirt
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA rovers have scratched the surface of Mars to test soil composition in the deepest probe yet of the Red Planet's mineralogical origins, an official said Wednesday.
A long drive and the most detailed observations yet of the martian soil marked the mid-point of the rover Spirit's planned 90-day mission, project manager Richard Cook said.
Spirit drove about 23 meters on Wednesday to a feature nicknamed Laguna Hollow, and used its wheels to scuff the soil. The rover deployed its robotic arm and adjusted its position to ready itself for detailed tests of the disturbed area Thursday, Cook said.
More Flu Action Urged
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Health experts urged Asian countries Thursday to intensify the war on a deadly bird flu showing no signs of receding.
The World Health Organization said authorities were rushing to declare the disease ravaging their poultry flocks under control and said people were still at risk from the virus that has claimed 22 lives in Asia. "We are in an emergency, urgency mode," said Bjorn Melgaard, the WHO representative in Thailand.
"The bird epidemic is unfolding and continuing to spread at an unprecedented rate."
U.S. Soldier Arrested
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A member of a U.S. National Guard armored unit in Washington state sent details of military weak points to what he thought were al-Qaida operatives in an effort to help them kill U.S. troops, according to Army charges disclosed Wednesday.
Army Specialist Ryan Anderson, 26, who had been slated for deployment to Iraq with his unit based at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington, is being held there on three charges of attempting to aid the enemy.
TITLE: O'Neal, Bryant Shine for Lakers
AUTHOR: By Greg Beacham
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OAKLAND, California - Despite their offseason roster overhaul, the Los Angeles Lakers are back to their favorite strategy - watching Shaq and Kobe do it all.
Kobe Bryant scored 35 points and Shaquille O'Neal capped a dominant game by blocking Clifford Robinson's shot in the final second of the Lakers' 100-99 victory over the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night.
O'Neal had 31 points and 16 rebounds as the Lakers' All-Star duo muscled past the Warriors in a tense fourth quarter to avenge a 107-98 loss in their previous trip to Oakland on Dec. 23. It wasn't an easy night: The game featured short tempers, a short fight and O'Neal's insult to a short coach.
Gary Payton was ejected in the third quarter for fighting with Golden State's Speedy Claxton, but Bryant and O'Neal scored 27 of the Lakers' 29 points over the final 16 minutes. None of their teammates managed more than Payton's seven points.
"On any given night, we can do that," O'Neal said. "But I can't wait until we get back to full strength."
O'Neal and Bryant each got a key rebound after Kareem Rush missed two free throws with 3.9 seconds left, and O'Neal - playing the final six minutes with five fouls - blocked two of Robinson's shots in the final minute.
Afterward, O'Neal again complained about the officiating, calling it "8-on-5" basketball. He also had a few choice words for 5-foot-8 Golden State coach Eric Musselman.
"It's kinda funny, the little midget Warrior coach can say anything he wants, but when Gary says something, he gets ejected," O'Neal said.
Jason Richardson had 25 points and Robinson added 22 in the Warriors' first game since Feb. 11. Nick Van Exel scored 13 points in his first game in two weeks, making clutch back-to-back baskets in the final two minutes to keep Golden State close.
The Warriors had a fine game despite numerous trade rumors around Van Exel and center Erick Dampier, who had just two points and nine rebounds in 34 minutes.
"There's no time or use to talk about who's going to get traded and who's going to be here," Robinson said. "Our focus is just playing hard with the guys we have right now."
Van Exel's high-arching layup with 1:15 left was the game's final basket. The Lakers couldn't score on their next two possessions, but Van Exel missed a floating jumper from the lane with five seconds left.
O'Neal rebounded Rush's second miss, but the All-Star game MVP missed his putback shot. After Bryant rebounded and stepped out of bounds with 1.3 seconds left, Robinson's jumper shortly before time expired was blocked by O'Neal, who grabbed the ball and ran the length of the court with it before rushing into the locker room.