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Basic Political Developments
• Russian political and economic calendar: October 15
o Russian-Tunisian business forum will take place in Tunisia.
o The All-Russia population census will take place (14-25.10.2010).
o Next session of Ministerial council of Union State of Belarus and Russia will pass in Moscow.
o Prime ministries of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus will hold a working meeting in Moscow.
o RZD will hold board of directors meeting.
o Sberbank Russia will lower the interest rate on mortgage loans for direct-deposit payroll clients - the lowest mortgage rate it offers - to 9.5% effective October 15 from 10.5% currently.
o Nomos-bank will finish a road-show for its Eurobonds in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Great Britain.
o Probusinessbank will hold a 5.5 year-old subscribed Eurobond road show in Zurich.
• Venezuelan President Chavez to meet Medvedev, Putin - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is paying his ninth visit to Russia, will hold talks on Friday with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
o Hugo Chavez to talk military, trade in Moscow - Venezuela is constructing three military plants – to produce Kalashnikov rifles, to make cartridges, and an aircraft repair plant to service Russian helicopter equipment. Caracas plans to buy ten Ilyushin planes, two Il-78MK refueling aircraft and Russian Mi-28NE helicopters. Venezuela might also become the first export customer for Sukhoi fighter jets, according to the Russian military export company, Rosoboronexport. In the near future, military equipment exports to Venezuela could reach $5 billion, said Vladimir Putin.
o Venezuela may sell German refinery stakes to Russia's Rosneft - paper: Kommersant daily said Rosneft had started talks with PdVSA in April, though the deal has dragged on since BP also had its stake in German Ruhr Oel GmbH refinery.
• Russia's president to visit Poland on December 6 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to pay official visit to Poland on Dec. 6, 2010, reports Rzeczpospolita.
• Russian, Indonesian top diplomats to meet in Moscow for talks - Indonesian Foreign Minister Raden Mohammad Marty Muliana Natalegawa will be in Moscow with an official visit on October 15-16 to discuss with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov bilateral cooperation in various spheres.
• Russian parliamentary delegation to visit China - Chairman of the Russian Federation Council Sergei Mironov will lead a delegation to China for an official goodwill visit from Oct. 17 to 19.
• Customs Union ready to form legal base ahead of schedule - All the necessary documents for the functioning of the single economic space within the Customs Union may be prepared before January 1, 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday.
o Putin to push CES despite chill with Belarus - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will meet his Belarussian and Kazakh counterparts, Sergei Sidorsky and Karim Maximov, on Friday to promote the creation of a common economic space (CES) of the three countries despite a chill in relations with Belarus following unfriendly rhetoric of President Alexander Lukashenko.
o Union State of Russia and Belarus needs intensive care - The October 15 meeting will also be important. The sides will discuss the draft budget of the Union State for 2011. Sidorsky has indicated that both countries are actively working on this draft. He called it "a growing budget, despite the post-crisis conditions."
o Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to scrap import duties on buckwheat, potatoes and cabbage for six months, the customs union said Thursday. Their prime ministers are scheduled to meet Friday
• Russia and Georgia resume security talks
o Georgia says Russia WTO membershp requires border deal
o Russians to withdraw from Georgian Perevi - The deputy foreign minister of Russia Gregory Karasin announced the decision after the international discussions held in Geneva on Thursday.
India, Russia begin joint antiterrorism drills on Friday - Russian and Indian joint antiterrorism exercises begin on Indian territory on Friday and will last through October 24.
• Germany’s president Christian Wulff wraps up visit to Russia - Wulff visited Moscow, Tver, St. Petersburg and Ulyanovsk, from where the German delegation left for Germany, the Ulyanovsk region government told Itar-Tass on Friday.
o Germany, Russia mull joint plane production - During a meeting with local governor Sergei Morozov on Thursday Wulff said he was primarily interested in the joint production of the Ruslan - the world's biggest transport plane capable of hauling up to 150 tons of cargoes more than 3,000 kilometers away.
• American experts OK Russian nuclear storage facility - An American delegation has visited a nuclear storage facility in Russia’s Tomsk Region as part of a program to carry out inspections of nuclear facilities to prevent theft of nuclear materials and combat terrorism.
• Political Analyst: Russia Must Be More Active in Middle East Conflict - At a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday, Russian President's special envoy for the Middle East, Alexander Saltanov, mentioned the need to remove barriers to promote regional peace process, including differences over Israeli settlement activities, Russian Foreign Ministry reported. The meeting, of which topic was "various aspects of situation in the Middle East with a focus on the prospects for the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations", took place within Saltanov's visit to Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, RIA Novosti reported.
• Kremlin Says Mayor Report ‘Technical Mistake,’ No Decision Taken - The Kremlin said Russian state television made a “technical mistake” in reporting that President Dmitry Medvedev picked Sergei Sobyanin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, to be the next mayor of Moscow.
o Moscow mayor unveiled by mistake - A blundering TV news channel announced Sergei Sobyanin as Moscow’s next mayor – even though Dmitry Medvedev has yet to announce his choice for City Hall.
o TV channel says its report about Sobyanin technical error
• Russia puts U.S. telecoms satellite into orbit - Russia's Proton-M heavy carrier rocket put a U.S. Sirius XM-5 satellite into orbit on Friday, a spokesman for Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, said.
o Proton rocket successfully orbits American communication satellite
• Leaders of “pro-Russian” parties hold consultations in Moscow - The head of the Ar-Namys partly Felix Kulov has already returned to Kyrgyzstan this morning. SDPK leader Almazbek Atambaev, by contrast, went to Moscow a few hours ago.
o Kyrgyzstan’s Winners Make Moscow Pilgrimage - No sooner had Kyrgyz voters picked their fab five, then a gaggle of the winners were off to Moscow to seek instructions on how to form a coalition, and who should lead it.
• New political party emerges in Russia to promote modernization - Party leader Konstantin Babkin, who heads the New Community Group of Companies and is the president of Rosagromash producer of agricultural machinery, said the new party “will occupy pragmatic position and stand for gradual and evolutionary development, modernization, open discussion of problems, and rotation of officials.” The party will work for “reasonable industrial and taxation policy and for fair competition.”
o New 'Party of Action' Looks to 2011 - A wealthy businessman unveiled plans Thursday to create a new party, sparking debate about whether it was another Kremlin-backed project for the 2011 parliamentary elections or the independent initiative of an ambitious entrepreneur.
• Skolkovo scientific council to hold first meeting - Vice-President of the Skolkovo Fund Oleg Alexeyev said they are likely to comprise energy efficiency, high technologies, telecommunications, biometric and nuclear technologies.
• Medvedev Needs Role Models to Spur Innovation, CMEA Capital Says - “You need some role models, people who are self-created, who’ve made something from scratch,” Sohail, a managing director at CMEA Capital in San Francisco, said in an interview. “Often soft investments are missed by countries that want to become innovation economies. That was my central message to the president.”
• Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within - Dagestan is now teetering on the brink of civil war, and locals say the insurgency is being given a boost by the widespread corruption among police officers and government officials in the region.
• Decision to seize Russian assets in Sweden formally suspended after appeal – official
• RIA Novosti Press Review for Friday, October 15, 2010
• Incorrigible Appetites - The Kremlin cannot win the fight against rampant corruption without first winning the confidence of the “siloviki,” who wield immense power and control key sectors of the Russian economy, a researcher with Transparency International Russia, an anti-corruption NGO, said on Thursday. The “siloviki,” a group of Kremlin operators and powerbrokers, often with a background in the security services, may hold the key to rooting out corruption that has been President Dmitry Medvedev’s greatest challenge in office, Ivan Ninenko from Transparency International Russia told Russia Profile.
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• Face to Face with Viktor Bout: Court Room Conversations - Face to Face with Viktor Bout: Court Room Conversations
• Tatar city emerges as new Russian giant - The success of Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan region and once the main city of a medieval khanate that ruled much of the Volga, has not only become the pride of Muslim Tatars but Russians across the country.
• Research vessel returned to Arkhangelsk - The Russian scientific research vessel “Akademik Fedorov” has returned to Russia after a nearly three months long study of the Arctic boundaries of the Russian Continental Shelf.
• Gazeta.ru/Russia Today: Architectural excesses - On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev will meet his French colleague Nikolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France. Read more
• Sources from Elysee Palace promised that he will unveil a new idea for European security and rapprochement of Russia and the European Union without institutional integration. Now the event is guaranteed to get attention from both sides of the Atlantic.
National Economic Trends
• Russian monetary base up 63.4 bln rubles to 5226.7 bln rubles
• ROSSTAT SAYS RUSSIAN PRODUCER PRICES FELL 1.3% IN SEPT, ANALYSTS EXPECTED 1.5% GROWTH
• Russian industrial production is expected to be released today - . Consensus sees some setback in September’s industrial production to 5.7% y/y, down from 7.0% y/y in August.
• Rising food prices return to market focus - 60.9 million tonnes of grain was harvested – a third less than in the same period last year. The Ministry of Agriculture says the cost of lost grain has reached 41.5 billion roubles. Leonid Zlochevsky, President of the Russian Grain Union says the ban is likely to be extended.
• CME In Talks With Russian Exchanges, Government On New Wheat Market - Russia is exploring the creation of a regional wheat futures market and this month held talks with senior executives at CME Group Inc. (CME), according to a senior official at the Chicago-based exchange operator.
• Guest post: a freer rouble lets Russia control its economic destiny - By Roland Nash, chief strategist, Renaissance Capital
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
• Evraz, Rosneft, Norilsk Nickel: Russian Equity Market Preview
• Web Firms Weigh In On New Internet Bill - Five leading Internet companies published an open letter on their web sites Thursday urging Russian lawmakers to exclude intellectual property rights infringement from their realm of responsibility, and proposing what they say are internationally accepted methods to address the problem.
• Evraz cuts Q3 steel output 8.7%, ups EBITDA forecast to $550 mln-$600 mln
• UPDATE 1-Evraz ups Q3 guidance as domestic prices rise
• Wal-Mart May Buy Russian Retailer Kopeyka, Vedomosti Says
• Wal-Mart again in talks to buy Russia's Kopeika: report
• Sberbank readies roadshow ahead of debut Swiss franc
• Russia's Monocrystal Postpones Its $284 Million IPO
• Russian IPO rush stalls – again: The Russian autumn IPO season in London has got off to a poor start with Monocrystal, the world’s largest maker of synthetic sapphires, on Friday pulling its planned $200m-plus offering.
• Economic port zone is finally established in Murmansk - The economic zone will be created in three stages, increasing cargo turnover up to 22,3 mln tons annually by 2025. The relative increase of cargo is expected to reach 45 mln tons of coal, 22,3 mln tons of oil and 4,33 mln TEU containers. New railway line connecting Vyhodnoy and Lavna (30 km) will be constructed.
• Scallops to help monitor pollution at Russian oil port - "Scallops are a very good measure of water pollution because they are very sensitive to contaminants. They absorb and retain impurities," Natalia Vykhodtseva, the organic chemist leading Kozmino's ecological safety department, told Reuters.
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
• Export duty on Russian crude could rise $24.1 to $290.6/tonne on Nov 1
• Finance Ministry: Oil export duty likely to go up 9%
• Lukoil ready to rumble off West Africa - Russia’s Lukoil is preparing for an intensive West African exploration and appraisal drilling campaign at two contract areas in the Gulf of Guinea off Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
• LUKOIL - Vanco Drilling Campaign, Offshore West Africa
• Rosneft Gets Four Off-Shore Fields
• NOVATEK increases productive capacity at the Yurkharovskoye field to 33 bcm
• WEB-EXCLUSIVE: TNK-BP Optimizes HR Policy
Gazprom
• Bulgaria to Push for Lower Gas Prices during Gazprom CEO Visit
• Bulgaria’s Traikov and Gazprom’s Miller will negotiate natural gas contracts today
• Belarus insists on netback parity for Russian gas - "We want a simultaneous transition. If Russia wants to achieve netback parity for export and domestic gas prices for Gazprom by 2014, then we want to achieve this by roughly the same time also," Anatoly Filonov was quoted by Russian media as saying.
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Full Text Articles
Basic Political Developments
Russian political and economic calendar: October 15
MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - The political and economic calendar in Moscow, Russia and Newly Independent States for October 15 is as follows:
• Russian-Tunisian business forum will take place in Tunisia.
• The All-Russia population census will take place (14-25.10.2010).
• Next session of Ministerial council of Union State of Belarus and Russia will pass in Moscow.
• Prime ministries of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus will hold a working meeting in Moscow.
• RZD will hold board of directors meeting.
• Sberbank Russia will lower the interest rate on mortgage loans for direct-deposit payroll clients - the lowest mortgage rate it offers - to 9.5% effective October 15 from 10.5% currently.
• Nomos-bank will finish a road-show for its Eurobonds in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Great Britain.
• Probusinessbank will hold a 5.5 year-old subscribed Eurobond road show in Zurich.
Venezuelan President Chavez to meet Medvedev, Putin
15.10.2010, 05.34
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is paying his ninth visit to Russia, will hold talks on Friday with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Chavez will arrive in the Kremlin after laying the first stone into the foundation of a monument to Venezuela’s national hero Simon Bolivar in southwest Moscow and a wreath to the Eternal Flame at the Kremlin wall.
Talks will focus on a wide range of issued from energy and military-technical cooperation to housing construction.
The visit is to yield a plan of action which will be the basis for cooperation up to 2014. It lists cooperation guidelines, which include foreign policy, financial sector, oil and gas industry, military-technical cooperation, nuclear power engineering, telecommunications, agriculture, fishing, transportation, education, health care, tourism, sport, culture, and elimination of natural calamities aftermath.
Chavez said before the visit he planned to expand the whole cooperation range and deepen strategic relations with Russia.
He said a Russian-Venezuelan joint bank is to be set up with an authorized capital of up to four billion dollars with the head office in Moscow and missions in China and Venezuela. Russia’s VTB and Gazprombank are to hold 51 percent in the joint venture.
Russia will assist Venezuela with its plans to build the first nuclear power plant, as well as with housing construction for the poor.
As for arms trade, Chavez said new Russian military hardware will arrive in Venezuela shortly, including several battalions of modern tanks and air defense systems.
On Wednesday Chavez lectured for an hour in the Foreign Literature Library and had a dinner with Medvedev, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin in charge of energy issues, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Medvedev’s foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko.
Hugo Chavez to talk military, trade in Moscow
15 October, 2010, 08:49
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to seek further cooperation with Russia during his two-day visit to Moscow.
Speaking at the Two Centuries of Independence of Latin America conference, at the Foreign Literature Library in Moscow, Chavez assured that Venezuela was not building a nuclear bomb, as the only kind of nuclear energy it is interested is peaceful.
Chavez also called the collapse of the Soviet Union a “catastrophe”.
He went on to say, “Although the world has changed, Russia and Venezuela continue to play an immense role in the world balance of powers,” Itar Tass quoted.
He also made a number of strong statements regarding the US.
“You must have heard a Mexican leader say, ‘Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States,’” Chavez said. “All of us Latin Americans could say the exact same thing. Our poor America. So far from God and so close to the… Yankee empire that has hurt our continent so badly.”
On Friday Chavez is meeting his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
During his talks with Russian leaders, Chavez is expected to discuss cooperation up to 2014. This covers military, nuclear sectors, construction and also joint financial and industrial plans.
They will be signing the Action Plan which will outline upcoming joint work. The aim is to boost bilateral trade, including in the military-technical sphere.
Military deals between Russia and Venezuela now exceed US$4 billion.
Venezuela is constructing three military plants – to produce Kalashnikov rifles, to make cartridges, and an aircraft repair plant to service Russian helicopter equipment. Caracas plans to buy ten Ilyushin planes, two Il-78MK refueling aircraft and Russian Mi-28NE helicopters.
Venezuela might also become the first export customer for Sukhoi fighter jets, according to the Russian military export company, Rosoboronexport.
In the near future, military equipment exports to Venezuela could reach $5 billion, said Vladimir Putin.
However, the countries’ cooperation is not restricted to the military sector alone. As Hugo Chavez announced earlier, Caracas may build a nuclear power plant in Venezuela with Russia’s support.
The leaders also expect to finalize establishing a joint Russian-Venezuelan bank, as agreed in 2009. The bank’s headquarters would be in Moscow, with offices in Venezuela and China.
Another topic on the agenda is Russia’s assistance in building social housing, hospitals and schools for Venezuela’s poor, which was discussed during a previous visit to Caracas by Russian leaders.
It is the Venezuelan leader’s ninth visit to Russia, after which he’s due to head for Belarus, Ukraine, Iran, Syria and Portugal.
Venezuela may sell German refinery stakes to Russia's Rosneft - paper
10:48 15/10/2010
Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, may acquire 50 percent of Venezuelan state-own oil firm PdVSA's stake in a German refinery, a Russian business daily said on Friday.
Kommersant daily said Rosneft had started talks with PdVSA in April, though the deal has dragged on since BP also had its stake in German Ruhr Oel GmbH refinery.
As the troubled British oil giant has a preference in buying out PdVSA's stake, Russia had to settle the deal with BP. BP demanded the right to participate in developing the Arctic shelf in exchange for giving up its Ruhr Oel GmbH's option , Kommersant said.
Rosneft is currently in talks with BP over the joint Arctic deal.
In April, Venezuela and Russia reached an agreement to draft plans for Russia's National Oil Consortium to participate in the development of the Ayacucho-3 and Hunin-3 oil deposits in the Latin American country.
The National Oil Consortium (NNK) of Russian companies working in Venezuela includes Russian energy giant Gazprom, state-run crude producer Rosneft, Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP, Surgutneftegaz and LUKoil.
Venezuela is one of the largest oil producing countries in the world, with about 87 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves as of 2008. In addition, it has huge non-conventional oil deposits (heavy crude). Most of these deposits are located in the Orinoco oil belt.
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)
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Russia's president to visit Poland on December 6
10/15/2010, 00:55
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to pay official visit to Poland on Dec. 6, 2010, reports Rzeczpospolita. The newspaper reminds that the last official visit to Poland, the Russian president, still it was Vladimir Putin, took place in 2002, while unofficial, the same Putin in 2005. Then he took part in events to mark the 60 anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz. "
Dmitry Medvedev, visited Poland for the ceremonies - the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash near Smolensk on 10 April.
Programme of the visit, which lasts two days, not yet approved. This will be done after October 20, when in Warsaw will be a meeting of the Polish-Russian committee on strategic cooperation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
As REGNUM reported earlier news, according to newly appointed Russian ambassador to Poland, Alexander Alexeyev, the embassy is working to fill the President's visit content. The diplomat stressed that, given "a new stage in relations between Moscow and Warsaw," Medvedev's visit "would not be an ordinary event," and Russia is actively preparing "this new beginning." Recall Dmitry Medvedev will visit at the invitation of Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski.
Sept. 2 at a press conference in Warsaw, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that work is underway to determine timing of the visit of Russian president. His Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski, in turn, said that Poland is preparing a package of agreements, "which I hope will sign in the presence of two presidents." Earlier in an interview with Polish weekly POLITYKA, the president of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski said his dream is to deepen the process of rapprochement with Russia. He also said that in this regard has invited Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to visit Warsaw. In his speech at the inauguration ceremony on August 6 Komorowski expressed his willingness to support the Polish-Russian rapprochement. "Without the cooperation with Russia will not be sustainable development," - he said.
Russian, Indonesian top diplomats to meet in Moscow for talks
02:32 15/10/2010
The foreign ministers of Russia and Indonesia will discuss in Moscow a forthcoming visit of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Russia, a spokesman for the top Russian diplomatic body said.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Raden Mohammad Marty Muliana Natalegawa will be in Moscow with an official visit on October 15-16 to discuss with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov bilateral cooperation in various spheres.
"The particular attention will be paid to the forthcoming visit of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Russia. This visit is intended to boost the whole range of the Russian-Indonesian cooperation and to broaden bilateral ties," Andrei Nesterenko said.
The ministers' agenda for the talks, he said, includes discussions of cooperation in the spheres of energy, civil aviation, telecommunications, medicine, agriculture, tourism as well as in military and technical sector.
Russia signed an agreement with Indonesia in September 2007 to provide a $1 billion credit line to the Southeast Asian country for Russian weapons purchases.
Jakarta became one of Russia's major arms customers in 1999 when the United States tightened an embargo on arms sales to the country over alleged human rights violations.
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)
Russian parliamentary delegation to visit China
2010-10-15 11:31:02
BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Chairman of the Russian Federation Council Sergei Mironov will lead a delegation to China for an official goodwill visit from Oct. 17 to 19.
Mironov will visit as a guest of Wu Bangguo, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.
Customs Union ready to form legal base ahead of schedule
RBC, 15.10.2010, Moscow 10:50:05.All the necessary documents for the functioning of the single economic space within the Customs Union may be prepared before January 1, 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday. As he indicated during a meeting on draft agreements within the single economic space of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the parties passed a consolidated decision "to speed the union's progress along to the next stage of integration."
Prime ministers of member states of the Customs Union are scheduled to meet today to discuss a number of intergovernmental agreements. Putin reiterated that the single economic space would be regulated by a total of 17 agreements, three of which had already been agreed upon, and negotiations on another five were nearing completion. The remainder of the documents are still under consideration.
Putin to push CES despite chill with Belarus
15.10.2010, 06.04
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will meet his Belarussian and Kazakh counterparts, Sergei Sidorsky and Karim Maximov, on Friday to promote the creation of a common economic space (CES) of the three countries despite a chill in relations with Belarus following unfriendly rhetoric of President Alexander Lukashenko.
A Russian government official admitted Lukashenko’s statements, who blamed Russia for all the problems on the eve of the presidential election in the country, delay the work, but will not disrupt the process of CES creation.
“There is definitely an impact. We understand that many things would have been done much faster if it were not for the political and pre-election situation of the Belarusian partners,” he said, adding “despite all rhetoric, Belarussian experts continue the work.”
The prime ministers are to consider close to 17 documents which form the groundwork of the common economic space.
However the introduction of a single currency is not on the agenda.
“A single currency is not discussed, but if the common economic space begins to operate, the economic logic dictates the necessity some time after to introduce a single currency. There's a long way to it, though. We need our Customs Union to work effectively and the CES to start operating from January 1, 2012,” the official concluded.
Union State of Russia and Belarus needs intensive care
23:16 14/10/2010
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Sergei Sidorsky will attend a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State of Russia and Belarus in Moscow on October 15, 2010.
On October 5, an important event took place in Russian-Belarusian relations that went largely unnoticed. In Minsk, the transport departments of the two countries signed an agreement on transferring transport control to the external border of the Union State. Russia's Transport Minister Igor Levitin said that Russia will sign a similar agreement with Kazakhstan, creating a free transport corridor in the countries of the Customs Union. And so, 19 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian-Belarusian border is finally open.
The October 15 meeting will also be important. The sides will discuss the draft budget of the Union State for 2011. Sidorsky has indicated that both countries are actively working on this draft. He called it "a growing budget, despite the post-crisis conditions."
The press service of the Union State's Secretariat reported that the focus of the meeting will be on the implementation of the union's budget for this year, a number of social issues and defense cooperation. In addition, five new production programs - for farm equipment, agriculture and the Russian Federal Space Agency - will be presented to the participants in the meeting.
However, official information does not always give the full picture of cooperation between Moscow and Minsk in the Union State. Is the Union State really necessary? The answer can be found in the numbers. In 2009 and 2010, 42 economics programs were funded from the union's budget. About 180 Belarusian companies and over 250 Russian companies are involved in their implementation.
The union's economic model has largely restored cooperation between the Russian and Belarusian companies and can serve as an example for other post-Soviet states.
In the last few weeks, we have seen progress on the most difficult aspect of bilateral economic relations. On October 8, the CIS Economic Court recommended that the Russian and Belarusian governments negotiate the temporary suspension of export duties on Russian oil products supplied to Belarus. Russia's Deputy Justice Minister Vasily Likhachyov said the sides could settle this issue during discussions on the fuel balance for 2011 by the end of this year. Minsk hopes to persuade Moscow to increase its duty-free oil exports to Belarus by about a million tons. This hope was bolstered recently when experts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised their forecast of Belarusian GDP growth from 2.4% to 7.2%. Belarusian Justice Minister Viktor Golovanov said that more than 70 Russian companies are sustaining losses because of the duties, and mentioned the example of a Russian company that used to buy Belarusian chemical fiber. After duties on oil products were imposed, the company had to start importing fiber from Japan at much higher costs. Meanwhile, Russia remains the largest and, in many ways, the only market for Belarusian goods. In 2010, Belarusian exports of dairy products alone amounted to 2.8 million tons. Nadezhda Kotkovets, the Belarusian minister of agriculture and food, said that Belarus is prepared to increase dairy exports by another 20%.
Putin and Sidorsky will discuss the terms of Russia's participation in the construction of a Russian-designed nuclear power plant in Belarus. The Russian company Atomstroyexport is supposed to be the main contractor. The contract is worth six billion dollars.
Social issues are very important to the union's development, as they concern the everyday life of people in both countries. The agreement guaranteeing citizens of Russia and Belarus equal rights and freedom to move and choose their place of temporary and permanent residence entered into force last year. Issues related to pensions and other social benefits have been settled as well.
Now the sides are working on the main document of the union's social policy, which calls for equal rights to employment and compensation, education, medical care and other social guarantees throughout the Union State.
Defense and security cooperation is an important part of the Union State's activities. The united Russian-Belarusian regional military force has existed for 10 years now. Its main objective is to defend the Union State's western border and the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The sides have adopted a program to install the necessary infrastructure on the external border of the union state between 2007 and 2011. A total of 2.86 billion Russian rubles have been earmarked for this purpose. This program to equip the western border of Belarus has made it possible to form the Customs Union and to discontinue transport control on the Russian-Belarusian border.
A year ago, the Union State's Supreme Council decided to unite the air defense systems of Russia and Belarus. In effect, Moscow's air defense starts in the Belarusian city of Brest, where Belarusian air defense units are deployed. Military experts estimate that Russian air defense missile systems allow these units to detect threats 400 km further west.
It would be counterproductive to scrap the Union State due to the recent political disputes between Moscow and Minsk. State Secretary of the Union State Pavel Borodin has expressed this view in very clear terms: "We are the same people. We have lived together and will continue to live together. We are one country... There is only one way to solve the problem - sit down together and reach an agreement."
Ivan Savelyev, analyst from the magazine Nezavisimy Obozrevatel Stran Sodruzhestva
The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to scrap import duties on buckwheat, potatoes and cabbage for six months, the customs union said Thursday. Their prime ministers are scheduled to meet Friday. (Bloomberg, MT)
Russia and Georgia resume security talks
Posted Thursday, October 14 2010 at 17:36
Geneva, Thursday
Russia and Georgia today resumed internationally-mediated talks in Geneva aimed at preventing another flare-up of violence following their brief war in August 2008, a UN spokeswoman said.
The 13th round of talks, which have also involved representatives of the Moscow-backed breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, began today morning, UN spokeswoman Elena Ponomareva said.
They are due to last one day.
Mediators from the European Union (EU), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations acknowledged “real difficulties” after the last meeting in July despite tentative signs of progress.
The latest round of the confidence-building talks, which have sought to build channels of communication between military forces on the ground, came amid heightened tensions in the region.
Georgia last month accused Russian forces in South Ossetia of seizing territory beyond the boundaries of the region, which Moscow recognised as an independent state after the 2008 war there.
A spokesman for Georgia’s Interior ministry, Shota Utiashvili, said on September 30 that the issue would be raised at the Geneva discussions.
Tblisi has also accused Russia of reinforcing its military presence in the two breakaway regions and breaching the ceasefire deal that ended their conflict.
Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been insisting on an explicit agreement on the non-use of force by Georgia during the Geneva talks, a major stumbling block.
Tbilisi says it has already made that commitment with the 2008 ceasefire accord, mediators said.
The talks have also been trying to deal with humanitarian issues, including free movement for local residents in and out of the two regions.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Tbilisi’s control during wars in the early 1990s after Georgia gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
But it was after the five-day 2008 war that Moscow recognised the two regions as independent states. (AFP)
Georgia says Russia WTO membershp requires border deal
Today at 05:47 | Reuters
GENEVA, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Russia must do a deal with Georgia over customs controls on their internationally recognised border if it is to pursue its goal of joining the World Trade Organization, Georgia's first deputy foreign minister, Giorgi Bokeria, said on Thursday.
Russia called Georgia's demands absurd.
Bokeria's comments suggested the August 2008 war between the two ex-Soviet states, resulting in two Georgian regions seceding with Moscow's recognition, continued to dog relations and could impede Russia's 17-year-old bid to join the WTO.
But Bokeria repeated Georgian government assertions that they did not seek to block Russian WTO membership.
"In principle we are in favour of Russia joining the WTO -- anything which would bring Russia closer to a civilised community of the world," he said.
Russia's membership bid has recently picked up momentum, and Russian and U.S. officials have been working to resolve differences, although the United States says Moscow must do more to tackle piracy and counterfeiting of U.S. goods.
Russian vice minister for foreign affairs Grigory Karasin said Georgia's demands were absurd and failed to reflect changed realities in the region.
Georgia is already a member of the WTO, which umpires global trade, and under WTO consensus rules has an effective veto, like all 153 members, on Russia's accession bid.
Georgia argues that its customs posts are now deep in Russian-controlled territory, so that its own customs officials cannot control trade flows across its northern border.
Bokeria told a briefing that Georgia would not raise issues unrelated to trade when discussing Russia's application.
"One of the fundamental principles of the WTO is transparency of borders. Right now there is no transparency on the Georgia-Russia border," he told a briefing after a round of internationally sponsored talks between the two foes.
Georgia has proposed to Russia that the two states should operate joint customs controls along the internationally recognised border, he said. Other compromises involving international organisations were possible, he said.
Karasin, too, said compromises were needed over the issue, not least in Georgia.
"We are counting on right-mindedness winning out in Tbilisi and on their allies and sponsors explaining to them how unconstructive their position is," he told the briefing, speaking through an interpreter.
If the two sides genuinely wanted a practical solution rather than turning the question into a fundamental status question, one model could be the European Union's border assistance mission between Moldova and Ukraine.
Moldova is unable to control part of the border because the Russian-speaking region of Transdniestria, backed but not recognised by Moscow, has declared unilateral independence.
In contrast, Russia has given diplomatic recognition to Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and promised to help prevent Georgian attempts to regain them by force.
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Russians to withdraw from Georgian Perevi
Fri 15 October 2010 06:49 GMT | 8:49 Local Time
Russian army will withdraw from Perevi - the village occupied after the 2008 Georgia-Russia August war.
The deputy foreign minister of Russia Gregory Karasin announced the decision after the international discussions held in Geneva on Thursday.
`Good news aiming at stability`- this is how Karasin assessed the decision taken at the discussions held with the mediation of international organizations since August war.
The members of Georgian delegation say Russia was obliged to withdraw from Perevi and return to the status quo ante after Georgia, Russia and France signed six-point ceasefire agreement. They say the decision is the first step towards the complete de-occupation of the breakaway territories.
The participants of the discussion agreed on another issue at the 13-th round of talks -the incident prevention and response mechanism group will resume to operate in Tskhinvali Region soon.
As for the issue of the IDPs` repatriation, the representatives of the occupant regimes boycotted the discussion.
Rustavi2
India, Russia begin joint antiterrorism drills on Friday
06:05 15/10/2010
Russian and Indian joint antiterrorism exercises begin on Indian territory on Friday and will last through October 24.
Russia is sending more than 200 troops from its 34th mountain brigade, based in the North Caucasus, to join the Indian troops in the INDRA 2010 drills.
Russian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft delivered the Russian troops in the north-east of India on Thursday.
The Russian troops will be equipped with lightweight Permyachka Infantry Suits, which protect at least 80 percent of the body surface from small-caliber bullets and low-speed shrapnel.
The Indian and Russian military have conducted joint INDRA exercises since 2003, including biannual peacekeeping drills.
India's military cooperation with Russia goes back nearly half a century, and the Asian country accounts for about 40% of Russian arms exports.
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)
Germany’s president Christian Wulff wraps up visit to Russia
15.10.2010, 12.10
ULYANOVSK, October 15 (Itar-Tass) - Germany’s President Christian Wulff has completed his state visit to Russia.
Wulff visited Moscow, Tver, St. Petersburg and Ulyanovsk, from where the German delegation left for Germany, the Ulyanovsk region government told Itar-Tass on Friday.
Earlier in the day the German leader visited the regional training centre of the Ulyanovsk region government and Bosch company that was set up a year ago on the basis of one of the region’s best vocational schools, where modern construction technologies are being studied.
“The centre’s equipment and the scope of work impressed all members of the delegation,” German ambassador Karl-Albrecht Wokalek said noting cordiality of Ulyanovsk’s residents.
The German delegation also visited the dialysis centre of Fresenius NephroCare Ulyanovsk that was built under support of Germany’s Fresenius.
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Germany, Russia mull joint plane production
|Oct 15, 2010 01:46 Moscow Time |
German President Christian Wulff, who is now visiting in Russia's Volga city of Ulyanovsk, is mulling the possibility of setting up a joint venture with Russia to build planes in Germany.
During a meeting with local governor Sergei Morozov on Thursday Wulff said he was primarily interested in the joint production of the Ruslan - the world's biggest transport plane capable of hauling up to 150 tons of cargoes more than 3,000 kilometers away.
As part of his state visit to Russia, Christian Wulff has already been to Moscow, Tver and St. Petersburg.
American experts OK Russian nuclear storage facility
Oct 15, 2010 10:14 Moscow Time
An American delegation has visited a nuclear storage facility in Russia’s Tomsk Region as part of a program to carry out inspections of nuclear facilities to prevent theft of nuclear materials and combat terrorism.
Members of the delegation established that storage conditions at the Siberian chemical plant in Tomsk are safe, the US Department of Energy reported on Thursday.
The visit was timed for the 15th anniversary of cooperation between the United States and the Tomsk facility, the world’s largest nuclear complex which produced and stored huge volumes of highly enriched uranium.
Political Analyst: Russia Must Be More Active in Middle East Conflict
Friday, 15 October 2010
Russia will play a more active role in advancing the peace process in the Middle East, but its success is not guaranteed, like other international mediators, said the deputy dean of the history department at Moscow State University, a member of the Trend Expert Council, Alexei Vlasov.
"Russia must demonstrate greater activity in the settlement of the Middle East question. But the conflict has been lasting since 1948, but the formula for the solution has not been found yet, and no international mediators can help in this case," Vlasov, editor-in-chief of analytical information portal Vestnik Kavkaza (Bulletin of the Caucasus), told Trend journalists.
According to Russian political scientist, the stagnation of the peace process is largely due to internal problems of Palestine and Israel.
"The disagreements inside the Palestine and Israel are closely intertwined. Any government of Israel sits on a powder keg," said Vlasov, adding that so far the only hope is the support of the U.S. administration to the Israeli government.
In such a situation, even Russia's mediation can not take the situation out of the deadlock, he said.
At a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday, Russian President's special envoy for the Middle East, Alexander Saltanov, mentioned the need to remove barriers to promote regional peace process, including differences over Israeli settlement activities, Russian Foreign Ministry reported.
The meeting, of which topic was "various aspects of situation in the Middle East with a focus on the prospects for the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations", took place within Saltanov's visit to Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, RIA Novosti reported.
"It is extremely important to do everything necessary to ensure the settlement of the Palestinian problem. In this regard, it needs to remove all obstacles to the progress of the negotiation process, particularly with regards to issues related to Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territories," said in a press release citing Saltanov, who is also deputy foreign minister.
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the settlement of the conflict appeared in jeopardy because of disagreements between the parties because of the settlement issue. Palestinians sank further participation in the negotiation process with the resumption of the moratorium on building Jewish settlements in the West Bank while Israeli leaders rejected a proposal to "exchange" suspension of settlement activities with recognition of the Jewish character of Israel State.
Saltanov also discussed with Lieberman the issues of bilateral cooperation, primarily in perspective technology sectors in the light of the November meeting of the Russian-Israeli intergovernmental commission, the Foreign Ministry reported.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Trend.az
Kremlin Says Mayor Report ‘Technical Mistake,’ No Decision Taken
By Lyubov Pronina
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The Kremlin said Russian state television made a “technical mistake” in reporting that President Dmitry Medvedev picked Sergei Sobyanin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, to be the next mayor of Moscow.
The president hasn’t decided yet which of the four candidates nominated by the dominant United Russia party will replace Yury Luzhkov, an official in the Kremlin’s press service said by phone today, declining to be identified because of government policy.
Rossiya-24 reported that Medvedev selected Sobyanin, who is also a deputy prime minister, to replace Luzhkov, 74, after 18 years in power. Medvedev cited a “loss of confidence” in Luzhkov.
The firing followed weeks of media reports that accused the former mayor of corruption and favoritism toward his wife, billionaire Yelena Baturina, head of the development company ZAO Inteco. The couple have denied the allegations.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at lpronina@
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brad Cook at bcook7@
Last Updated: October 15, 2010 00:48 EDT
Moscow mayor unveiled by mistake
by Andy Potts at 15/10/2010 10:33
A blundering TV news channel announced Sergei Sobyanin as Moscow’s next mayor – even though Dmitry Medvedev has yet to announce his choice for City Hall.
Rossiya-24 jumped the gun with an online report that Sobyanin, currently deputy prime minister and widely tipped as favourite for the job, had been chosen by the president.
Red-faced journalists at the state-owned broadcaster explained the gaffe to ITAR-TASS.
“The text of a work in progress was mistakenly posted on the website by a moderator, and then quoted during the 7 am radio news show on Vesti-FM,” a source told the agency.
It took 22 minutes for the report to be taken down from the site, Interfax added.
Waiting for a verdict
Moscow is still waiting to here Medvedev’s pick for the city’s top job. On Saturday he was presented with a four-name shortlist, and he has until Tuesday to make his selection.
Sobyanin is in the frame, along with transport minister Igor Levitin, Nizhny Novgorod governor Valery Shantsev and acting deputy mayor of Moscow Lyudmila Shvetsova.
It’s not clear whether Rossiya-24 has any inside knowledge about the new mayor – most media will have prepared “blanks” about the four contenders, ready to run as soon as the name is announced.
Sobyanin not a shoo-in
Meanwhile the delay in a presidential announcement has led some to conclude that Sobyanin is not Medvedev’s preferred candidate.
Over the weekend he was ear-marked as the favourite for the post, but the Kremlin’s extended silence is making some analysts reconsider.
Petersburg-based politician Mikhail Vinogradov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that there was a deliberate attempt to build up suspense, prompting a kind of phoney election campaign.
“The more prolonged this intrigue, the more reason to think that the mayor would not be the main challenger,” he said.
But the director of the Institute of Globalisation, Mikhail Delyagin, sees less intrigue in the delay and feels that Medvedev is faced with an impossible choice.
Delyagin sees only two serious candidates – Sobyanin, “a man owned wholly by Putin”, and Shvetsova, “who is not the PM’s person”.
According to Delyagin, only gambling on the outsider Shvetsova can enable Moscow to back Medvedev in a presidential election campaign in 2012.
TV channel says its report about Sobyanin technical error
15.10.2010, 08.59
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) - The directorate of the Russian TV news channel Rossiya 24 explained to Itar-Tass that the “report about the submission of the candidature of Sergei Sobyanin to the Moscow City Duma” for considering his candidature for the Moscow mayor post “is our technical error.”
“The skeleton text was placed on the news channel’s website due to a moderator’s error, and then cited in the Vesti FM radio station’s news block,” the directorate specified.
Russia puts U.S. telecoms satellite into orbit
08:57 15/10/2010
Russia's Proton-M heavy carrier rocket put a U.S. Sirius XM-5 satellite into orbit on Friday, a spokesman for Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, said.
"The Russian part of the program is complete: the [U.S.] spacecraft separated from the Briz-M upper stage rocket 9 hours and 12 minutes after the blastoff," the spokesman said.
The Proton-M blasted off from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan at 22:53 Moscow time [18:53 GMT] on Thursday.
A contract to launch the Sirius XM-5 was concluded between the Russian-U.S. joint venture International Launch Services (ILS) and the Sirius XM Radio, Inc.
Sirius XM-5, a powerful geostationary satellite built by Space Systems/Loral, will function as an in-orbit backup for the Sirius XM satellite radio network. All four previous Sirius satellites were launched on Proton rockets.
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)
Proton rocket successfully orbits American communication satellite
15.10.2010, 09.28
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) - The Russian carrier rocket Proton-M that was blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrone on Thursday evening has successfully placed on the target orbit the American communications satellite Sirius XM-5.
Press secretary of the Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Centre Alexander Bobrenev told Itar-Tass that “at 08:05, Moscow time, the Sirius XM-5 spacecraft detached from the Briz-M (Breeze-M) upper stage.” The satellite will take the station point on the geostationary orbit 85.2 degrees West longitude.
The Sirius XM-5 spacecraft was created by Space Systems/Loral on the order of the American satellite radio broadcasting SIRIUS XM Radio that has 20 million mobile and stationary subscribers. The satellite’s design useful life in orbit is 15 years, its mass is 5,980 kilograms. The new satellite will be serve as reserve for the existing fleet of the American company that until now has comprised eight spacecraft.
The Proton-M carrier rocket and Breeze-M upper stage were designed by the Khrunichev Centre. The rocket is three-stage, liquid-propelled. Its lift-off mass is about 700 tonnes. The Proton rockets are marketed on the space services market by International Launch Services (ILS). Khrunichev holds the controlling stake in ILS.
“The launch carried out on Thursday has become the ninth for the Proton-M carrier rocket in 2010 and 360th in its flight history,” the Khrunichev State Space research and Production Centre said. “It is the sixth for ILS in 2010 and the 62nd since the beginning of commercial exploitation the Proton in April 1996.”
SIRIUS XM-5 is a high-power geostationary satellite from SIRIUS XM Radio, America’s satellite radio company and the leader in audio entertainment. Sirius XM-5 will serve as an in orbit spare for the existing fleet of Sirius and XM satellites. It will ensure Sirius XM’s array of audio and data services are received robustly by cars, mobile devices and home receivers and will play an important role in bolstering the continuity of our service for years to come. XM-5 will help with the delivery of hundreds of channels of commercial-free music, premier sports, news, talk, entertainment, traffic and weather to close to 20 million subscribers, as well as services such as XM NavTraffic, which delivers real-time traffic information to markets across North America for vehicles with navigational systems. Sirius XM is installed in vehicles of every major automaker and available for sale at retail locations nationwide.
The Breeze-M upper stage is powered by one pump-fed gimbaled main engine that develops thrust of 20 kN (4,500 lbf). It is composed of a central core and an auxiliary propellant tank which is jettisoned in flight following depletion. The Breeze-M control system includes an on-board computer, a three-axis gyro stabilized platform, and a navigation system. The quantity of propellant carried is dependent on specific mission requirements and is varied to maximize mission performance.
International Launch Services is the US based company with exclusive rights for worldwide commercial sales and mission management of satellite launches on Russia's premier vehicle, the Proton. ILS is an American company, headquartered in Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C. The majority shareholder is Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre of Moscow. The Proton vehicle launches both commercial ILS missions and Russian government payloads from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is operated by the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) under lease from the Republic of Kazakhstan. We are a complete launch service organization, committed to nurturing partnerships with our customers, not just marketing and fulfilling launch contracts. We're at the customer's side from contract signing through mission completion.
Leaders of “pro-Russian” parties hold consultations in Moscow
15/10-2010 08:35, Bishkek – 24.kg news agency , by Daniyar KARIMOV
Leaders of the “pro-Russian” political parties, entered the parliament, hold consultations in Moscow. According to various sources, three of them (the leaders of the Ar-Namys party, Ata-Zhurt and Respublica) went to Russia yesterday.
The head of the Ar-Namys partly Felix Kulov has already returned to Kyrgyzstan this morning. SDPK leader Almazbek Atambaev, by contrast, went to Moscow a few hours ago.
It is assumed that they discussed a coalition creation issue. It is known that four “pro-Russian” parties have quite different ideological platforms and not all get along with each other. Some of them even have personal contradictions. Russia's political classes, according to 24.kg news agency own resources, were trying to persuade party leaders to cooperate with each other in parliament.
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Kyrgyzstan’s Winners Make Moscow Pilgrimage
October 15, 2010 - 3:56am, by David Trilling
No sooner had Kyrgyz voters picked their fab five, then a gaggle of the winners were off to Moscow to seek instructions on how to form a coalition, and who should lead it.
In the days up to the October 10 vote, there were signs of a possible coalition involving Ar-Namys, Ata-Jurt, and Respublika, the three parties who’s leaders, according to Vremya Novostei, were in Moscow yesterday.
Though the parties lie on opposite ends of the political spectrum, with Ata-Jurt riding a wave of nationalism to the winning position, Ar-Namys’ Felix Kulov (whose billboards show him shaking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s hand) promising stability and closer ties to Moscow, and Respublika’s Omurbek Babanov campaigning on a centrist pro-business and youth platform, they all made overtures to Moscow during the campaign. Arkady Dubnov writes in Vremya Novostei:
Why have the three politicians gone to the Russian capital, of all places, in search of consensus? (According to Vremya Novostei’s sources, only on the airplane did some of them realize that they had wound up in the company of their opponents.) For the part of the Kyrgyz political spectrum represented by Ata-Meken and the Social Democratic Party (SDPK), the answer to this question seems humiliating – “again Moscow, again big brother is dictating to us how to live.” And they would have been absolutely right, had they gotten as much support in the elections [as the opposition].
Potential problem: Kulov and Babanov both want to be prime minister. If they don't strike a "Moscow deal" with Ata-Jurt and each other, then either could offer his services -- the support of his party’s MPs in exchange for the PM’s post – to the so-called pro-government coalition. The defrocked Social Democrats and Ata-Meken are desperately looking for friends.
Today, 24.kg reports, Social Democrat leader Almazbek Atambayev (a known foe of Kulov’s) went to Moscow as well. That must leave Ata-Meken leader Omurbek Tekebayev, who was smeared in the Russian press just before the elections and is seen as the most pro-Western party leader, feeling scorned.
Will Tekebayev make the pilgrimage to the Third Rome?
New political party emerges in Russia to promote modernization
15.10.2010, 02.33
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) -- A new political party emerged in Russia on Thursday to promote the course of modernization declared by President Dmitry Medvedev.
The Party of Deeds was founded by a congress in Moscow, which united 160 delegates from 51 Russian regions.
Party leader Konstantin Babkin, who heads the New Community Group of Companies and is the president of Rosagromash producer of agricultural machinery, said the new party “will occupy pragmatic position and stand for gradual and evolutionary development, modernization, open discussion of problems, and rotation of officials.” The party will work for “reasonable industrial and taxation policy and for fair competition.”
Babkin said the party plans to run for the State Duma at December 2011 election and wants to “make Russia a high-tech country with multi-vector economy and also preserve raw resources and human potential.” It will also work to restore elections of Russian governors.
Babkin said “creation” and “modernization” are the party motto, while “a laborious bee” is the emblem of the new party.
The Party of Deeds plans to get registered with the Justice ministry by the end of the year.
New 'Party of Action' Looks to 2011
15 October 2010
By Alexander Bratersky and Nabi Abdullaev
A wealthy businessman unveiled plans Thursday to create a new party, sparking debate about whether it was another Kremlin-backed project for the 2011 parliamentary elections or the independent initiative of an ambitious entrepreneur.
Partia Dela — or Party of Action — offered a populist platform that was light on specific policies, with one notable exception. The party will seek to reinstate direct elections for regional leaders, a policy that recently ousted Mayor Yury Luzhkov has said he plans to campaign for.
"We think that a political discussion is needed to create a better environment in the country, and the wrong economic course should be corrected. Those are the things we need to fight for," Konstantin Babkin, 39, told The Moscow Times after holding his party's founding congress.
Babkin is chairman of the Novoye Sodruzhestvo holding, a major producer of agricultural machinery that controls several plants in Russia and Canada. The company, which includes Rostov-based combine producer Rostselmash, was listed 47th on Forbes Russia's 2010 list of largest privately held companies, with annual turnover of 43 billion rubles ($1.4 billion).
More than 160 delegates from 51 Russian regions voted unanimously to make Babkin chairman of the new political party. The congress was held on the outskirts of Moscow in the Soviet-era Izmailovo hotel, which has agreed to host opposition parties in the past.
The program distributed at the congress focused on populist demands, such as universal higher education, measures to raise birth rates, support for the poor and the introduction of a luxury tax.
Delegates selected an image of a bee as their emblem, in what Babkin said should demonstrate the industriousness of the party's members.
A source close to the party denied that the bee was a reference to Luzhkov, a noted beekeeper. The party held "consultations" with Luzhkov, the source said, but the informal talks have ended and are not expected to continue.
Luzhkov has said he plans to stay in politics and fight for the return of gubernatorial elections, although he will not contest the 2012 presidential elections. He said he would revive the long-dormant Russian Movement of Democratic Reform, once chaired by his predecessor and friend, Gavriil Popov.
Babkin said he planned to get the party registered with the Justice Ministry before the year's end so that it could run in next year's elections to the State Duma. Party leaders privately expressed confidence that they would be allowed to register, a process that has been used in the past to exclude opposition groups.
Only seven parties are now registered, and just four have been able to pass the 7 percent threshold to win seats in the Duma.
Babkin denied any Kremlin involvement behind his party. But several political analysts said Party of Action looked like an effort to engage supporters of the now-defunct Agrarian Party, which was swallowed up into Putin's United Russia last year.
"No signals have come yet from the Kremlin — neither positive, nor negative," said the soft-spoken Babkin, who added that he and his supporters "do not always agree" with United Russia.
Babkin said his party would not just be a pro-business party and would seek support from students and pensioners.
The demand to return popular elections of governors, eliminated under then-President Vladimir Putin in 2004, could put the party on course for a rocky relationship with the Kremlin.
President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly said he is against returning to direct elections, and analysts have said Luzhkov's outspoken support for the issue may have contributed to his dismissal.
But analysts noted that businessmen have been careful not to cross the Kremlin with their political ambitions, particularly since 2003 when Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, was jailed in a politically tinged tax case.
Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said it was "absolutely impossible" for a major businessman such as Babkin to go into politics now without first getting a blessing from the Kremlin.
"Or at least from a certain faction in the Kremlin that believes that a certain part of the political spectrum is not well-covered by a loyal party," he said.
Babkin may be trying to realize his political ambitions and might feel encouraged by not being cut short by the Kremlin at the very beginning, said Georgy Bovt, a political analyst and a co-chairman of the liberal Right Cause party, which was registered last year.
"The Kremlin can block them at any step, but they prefer to watch to see whether this effort might yield a new political resource," he said.
Some delegates at the party's forum Thursday were also ambivalent of the perspectives of its leadership.
"Maybe they don't have the charisma needed for political leaders and have not mastered their speeches, but they have a desire to change something," Viktor Moskalyov, a delegate from the city of Smolensk, told The Moscow Times.
Babkin has not criticized Putin or Medvedev in the past.
He has been a vocal advocate for years for import duties on agricultural machinery and called on Putin in July 2009 to make permanent a 15 percent duty introduced during the economic crisis.
Ivan Starikov, a former deputy economy minister who worked on agricultural issues who knows Babkin well, said Thursday that the party was not connected to the Kremlin and would be an "opposition force."
"This party will be democratic-oriented and will act as a lobbyist for business interests," he said.
Starikov said Babkin had decided to go into politics and "is very determined" because he has lost faith in the state's support of the agricultural industry.
He also noted that Babkin is not a political novice. The businessman was a senior member and sponsor of the liberal but Kremlin-loyal Civic Force party, which ceased to exist in 2008.
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Skolkovo scientific council to hold first meeting
15.10.2010, 07.00
MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) -- The consultative scientific council of the Skolkovo project, a Russian analogue of the Silicon Valley, will officially meet for the first time on Friday to determine five guidelines for the innovation center.
Vice-President of the Skolkovo Fund Oleg Alexeyev said they are likely to comprise energy efficiency, high technologies, telecommunications, biometric and nuclear technologies.
He said 12 thousand jobs will be created in the innovation center which will cover a territory of 375 hectares outside Moscow.
Scientific council member Valery Chereshnev, who chairs the State Duma committee for science-intensive technologies, said the council will have to analyze the projects submitted to the Skolkovo Fund.
“It is important to prevent lobbyism and corruption,” he said.
“Science should not be suppressed by administrative influence,” Chereshnev said.
Medvedev Needs Role Models to Spur Innovation, CMEA Capital Says
By Lucian Kim
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Russia needs role models of successful entrepreneurs if President Dmitry Medvedev is to succeed in recreating Silicon Valley in Russia, said Faysal Sohail, a venture capitalist who accompanied California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Moscow this week.
“You need some role models, people who are self-created, who’ve made something from scratch,” Sohail, a managing director at CMEA Capital in San Francisco, said in an interview. “Often soft investments are missed by countries that want to become innovation economies. That was my central message to the president.”
Medvedev, 45, took Schwarzenegger to the future site of the Skolkovo technology hub outside Moscow on Oct. 11, accompanied by two dozen executives from California. Sohail, on his first visit to Russia, was one of the visitors asked to share his experience in financing innovation.
The president, who succeeded current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2008, is calling for an end to Russia’s resource dependence and the transformation of the country into a knowledge-based economy. Improved ties to the U.S., based on Medvedev’s relationships with President Barack Obama and Schwarzenegger, are key to making Skolkovo a success.
Providing “hard infrastructure” such as buildings and roads is just the first step, said Sohail, who toured a technology park in Kazan, 700 kilometers (430 miles) east of Moscow on Oct 13. Other Silicon Valley investors in the group included Dick Kramlich, chairman of New Enterprise Associates, and Franklin Johnson, founding partner of Asset Management Co.
“Create those things and then get out of the way,” Sohail said he told the president. “Let the entrepreneurs loose.”
Two barriers to success in Russia are the country’s resource wealth and a culture that for 70 years stifled entrepreneurship, Sohail said. Russia is the world’s largest energy producer and had a communist command economy for most of the 20th century.
“That can change quickly as soon as you have role models,” Sohail said. “But it doesn’t happen overnight.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Lucian Kim in Moscow at lkim3@
To contact the editor responsible for this story Willy Morris at wmorris@
Last Updated: October 14, 2010 23:57 EDT
Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within
Shaun Walker reports from Dagestan on a generation willing to give up their lives for the fight against Moscow
Friday, 15 October 2010
"He is a hero," says Saida defiantly, recalling the memory of her brother. "He died for what he believed in, and he died because Allah willed it for him. I am proud he died as a shahid [martyr]."
Saida, who never tells me her real name, is in her early 20s and lives in a village outside Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, the restive southern republic of Russia that borders Chechnya on one side and looks out to the Caspian Sea on the other.
The last time Saida saw her brother was about a year ago, when he announced to his family that he was "going to the forest"; the term used here to mean joining the Islamic insurgency. He cut off all contact with the family, and the next they heard of him was when Saida's mother recognised his corpse in television news pictures a month ago from a "special operation" of the Russian security forces to "liquidate bandits".
Dagestan, a land of ancient traditions and beautiful mountains, where dozens of small ethnic groups live side by side, has historically been deeply Islamic, but in the last decade parts of it have become radicalised. With Chechnya now ruled by the iron-fisted Ramzan Kadyrov, chaotic Dagestan has become the heart of Russia's Islamic terrorist problem, and almost every single day of late, the authorities are engaged in shoot-outs to kill men like Saida's brother, often in the heart of Makhachkala.
The attacks on the Moscow Metro in March, by two female suicide bombers from Dagestan, showed how the ongoing struggle in the North Caucasus still has the ability to strike at the heart of Russia, and ever since the bombs there has been a renewed offensive in Dagestan against the militants. In September alone, authorities say they killed 54 terrorist fighters – boyeviki as they are called in Russian. They are almost never captured alive.
Dagestan is now teetering on the brink of civil war, and locals say the insurgency is being given a boost by the widespread corruption among police officers and government officials in the region. Corruption has been named by the Kremlin as a huge problem for the whole of Russia, but in Dagestan, the scale and pervasiveness of graft is eye-watering. Almost everything is for sale here, leading to a culture of extreme corruption and popular resentment. Getting a place at the police training academy reportedly costs around £5,000, which officers then make up by extorting bribes from the population, and everything from university places to government posts are up for sale.
In a further complication, it is widely believed that the insurgents take "orders" for hits on prominent figures, providing a convenient cover for those who want a rival removed from power, and giving the boyeviki a much needed source of funding. They are also known to send senior government figures USB sticks containing threatening video messages demanding money or death. Terrified they will be killed if they don't pay up, many in the government feel they have no choice but to do so.
There is a "battle for the loyalty" of the population at the moment, says Khadzhimurat Kamalov, publisher of Chernovik, an independent local newspaper. "People look at the way that the police and the FSB [security service] behave, and it's easy to understand why a lot of them feel their sympathies are with the other side, with the insurgents," says Mr Kamalov. He estimates that around 25 per cent of the population strongly disapprove of the Islamic insurgency, about 50 per cent are indifferent or undecided, and around 25 per cent support the goals of the terrorists, so long as they don't target "civilians".
In Dagestan itself, attacks are usually carefully targeted on the military and the police, and while it's hard to find anyone who admits to endorsing the attacks on the Moscow Metro, after a few minutes of chatting, many people will offer at least an understanding of the motives behind attacks on law enforcement officials. The police, they say, operate outside the law, soliciting bribes from citizens and fabricating charges.
In Makhachkala's main square last week, next to a large portrait of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (President Dmitry Medvedev, technically the head of state, is nowhere to be seen), a group of pensioners waving placards were being watched over by a dozen armed policemen. The women are from the town of Khasavyurt, and are being kicked out of the building they live in. They say that 310 people live in their block of flats, some of them six to a room – unlike most buildings it wasn't "privatised" at the end of the Soviet Union, and so while they have lived in it all their lives, it isn't technically theirs. The building had been bought by someone in the local government for an absurdly low price, they say, and they will all be kicked out within the month. They wail desperate entreaties on discovering a journalist in their midst. "Nobody is listening to us. We have elderly, sick, disabled people among us, and we'll have nowhere to go. Maybe you can tell Putin or Medvedev about it?" they ask, convinced that the local authorities will never help them.
Everywhere, people have similar tales of injustice and corruption, and it is clear that for some young people, the frustration becomes too much. "The leaders of the boyeviki are manipulative, evil people," says a source in the local government. "But on the whole the insurgents are just cannon fodder who are brainwashed. They are people with no financial or social prospects, they have lost hope, and they see 'going to the forest' as the only way out for them. Perhaps when I was 20 I would have done the same."
In the meeting with Saida, she frequently speaks in Islamic rhetoric, but always brings her grievances back to the corruption and brutality of the system, rather than an overarching Islamism. Her brother had friends who had joined the militants, and the police didn't believe that he didn't know their whereabouts. He was put on the dreaded "list" of around 4,000 people suspected of terrorist links. Every time there was an attack, police would visit the house and ask questions. Several times he was detained, and Saida claims he was tortured, including one occasion when all his fingernails were pulled out. "One day, he just said, 'I can't take this any more.' And he left."
Opinions are divided on how best to fight the terrorists, and stop people like Saida's brother joining their ranks. "The Russian eagle has two heads," says Mr Kamalov. "One of them wants to cut the interior ministry personnel by 20 per cent, to democratise the North Caucasus, and to develop business here, while the other wants to use pressure and force only."
The former broadly corresponds to the views that Mr Medvedev has stated on several occasions before, while the latter line is more associated with Mr Putin, who famously promised to "waste them [militants] in the outhouse" when he came to power. Mr Medvedev has repeatedly spoken of the need for socio-economic measures in the region.
"Medvedev's methods could work here but they need to be more aggressively pursued," says Mr Kamalov, who says there is a similar split in the local FSB structures as to the effectiveness of force. But the Moscow Metro bombs were a trump card for those who support Mr Putin's methods, and since then the focus has been on a stepped-up campaign of special operations. Even the mild-mannered Mr Medvedev vowed that terrorists would be "liquidated".
As dusk fell last Tuesday evening, another counter-terrorist operation started, in the centre of the city on Gogol Street. A boyevik was holed up at house number 42, and special forces were sent in to "liquidate" him. The scene was tense, as residents were evacuated and police set up a security cordon a few dozen metres away from the house in question. A group of nervous-looking policemen smoked cigarettes and fingered their Kalashnikovs at the perimeter, refusing to answer questions about what was going on inside. A week before, at a similar operation, a suicide bomber had approached the outer cordon and detonated himself, in a diversionary tactic, injuring 30. Closer to the house, Omon special forces and FSB operatives were engaged in a gunfight with the boyevik, who would later emerge from the house with guns blazing, and be shot and killed before he could detonate the suicide belt he was wearing.
The worrying thing for the Kremlin is that however many boyeviki they kill, there seem to be more to take their place. Saida's brown eyes, framed with carefully trimmed eyebrows and soft facial features, look out from behind the deep green hijab she has wrapped around her head and neck. She says she can't wait to meet her brother in paradise, a place where "you never need to sleep, nothing ever hurts, all your family and friends are by your side, and anything you wish for will be granted immediately".
"For every one they kill five more will grow in their place," she says. When asked if she might herself one day become a suicide bomber, she laughs uneasily. "Not for the moment, no. But I wouldn't rule it out. I'd never blow myself up on the Metro, but in the FSB building? Why not? Those people are not even humans."
Inside Russia's most religious town
In Gubden, a town of 16,000 people around an hour's drive from Makhachkala, none of the shops sell alcohol or cigarettes. At the school, all the girls from the age of five wear the hijab, covering their hair and necks. This town of tidy cottages stacked above each other, with the imposing Friday Mosque perched at the top of the hill, is widely seen as the most religious town in Dagestan, and perhaps in Russia.
One of the bombers in the Moscow Metro was believed to be the wife of Magomedali Vagabov, leader of the boyeviki in Dagestan, and from Gubden. He was killed nearby in a special operation in August. But ever since the Moscow Metro bombs, the situation in Gubden has been noticeably tense, with the traditional Dagestani hospitality to outsiders replaced with guarded suspicion.
At the entrance to the town, a heavily fortified checkpoint is manned by men in balaclavas wielding assault rifles, and the town's dilapidated administration building is watched over by armed soldiers. They look stressed and weary – hardly surprising, as it is people like them who the insurgents kill on an almost weekly basis. "We're from Makhachkala, we've only been here three days," says one. "The situation here is very tense." Some locals claim that there is no widespread support for the insurgents in their town, just a strict adherence to Islamic tenets, and a few bad apples that have gone over to the other side. Others simply hurry on, ignoring the questions put to them by unwelcome outsiders.
"People here feel defenceless," says Alikpashi Vagabov, the former headteacher of Gubden's school, and Magomedali Vagabov's second cousin. "They feel under threat both from the boyeviki and from the government forces."
October 15, 2010 11:37
Decision to seize Russian assets in Sweden formally suspended after appeal – official (Part 2)
MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - The Russian presidential property management office has lodged a petition with Stockholm's court appealing its decision to seize Russian assets in Sweden, property management office spokesman Viktor Khrekov told Interfax on Friday.
"The execution of the Stockholm City Court's resolution dated October 11 was formally suspended after the appeal was lodged," Khrekov said.
No strict timeframe for hearings into the appeal has been set, Khrekov said.
"However, we hope that such hearings will take place in the near future," he said.
The Kommersant newspaper reported on October 13 citing Sedelmeier that the Stockholm City Court had frozen Russian government property in Sweden on October 11.
However, Khrekov earlier said that Russia's immovable property in Sweden is unencumbered, while German businessman Franz Sedelmeier's statements regarding the seizure of Russian property may be considered as advertising for free.
Sedelmeier told Kommersant that Russian property had been frozen as an injunction for the time of the proceedings at the Swedish Supreme Court. Sedelmeier is demanding over 5 million euros from Russia as compensation for investments he claims he lost while trying to launch a business in St. Petersburg in the 1990s.
Vladimir Kozhin, the presidential property manager, said in early January that a longstanding court battle between the Russian government and Sedelmeier will be finished this year, and he will not receive anything from Russia.
"I hope we will bring the story with this troublemaker to an end this year. He is presenting himself as being all so goody-goody, but everything is in fact different. His business has never been so good. To put it bluntly, he has been engaged in arms trafficking," Kozhin told Interfax.
A number of Russian court rulings on claims on Sedelmeier have been handed down as regards tax evasion and concealment of incomes, he said.
"All this will be presented to the German judicial authorities. I hope this issue will be brought to an end this year. Sedelmeier will not receive anything," he said.
An earlier ruling in Sedelmeier's favor, which was handed down by the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, was due to Russia's weakness in those years, Kozhin said.
"This happened at the end of the 1990s, when we had a weak government in this country, and we absolutely did not know how to protect our interests abroad, not to mention at the top international arbitration court. The preparations for that arbitration procedure were absolutely insipid and feeble. Everybody wanted to bite Russia as much as they could. If this happened these days, I am 200% sure that the ruling would have been in Russia's favor," Kozhin said.
Sedelmeier's company SGC International and the St. Petersburg city police department set up a joint venture in 1991. The police department contributed its mansion on Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg to the joint venture's authorized capital. In 1995, the mansion was passed to the Russian presidential property department's ownership, and Sedelmeier demanded compensation for his expenses on restoring it.
The Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce awarded Sedelmeier $2.3 million in compensation for the lost investment in 1998. With the interest taken into account, this sum has grown to 4.9 million euros.
Sedelmeier has long been insisting on a compulsory sale of a Russian compound in Cologne and the so-called Russian House in Berlin so that he could receive compensation for the damage he claims he suffered due to the Russian government's unlawful actions.
In December 2008, a court barred Sedelmeier from laying claims on the compound in Cologne. As for Sedelmeier's claims on the Russian House, its status is regulated by an intergovernmental agreement, which has priority over national laws. No issues related to such real estate can be considered by general jurisdiction courts, and diplomatic immunities rule out its expropriation.
tm mj ar
RIA Novosti Press Review for Friday, October 15, 2010
08:06 15/10/2010
A brief look at what is in the Russian papers today
POLITICS
The Georgian parliament is set to approve on Friday amendments to the Constitution, which would turn the government from presidential into parliamentary (Vremya Novostei)
Russia's ruling party United Russia believes it has increased the number of its representatives in the Russia regional parliaments following elections last weekend (Vedomosti)
ECONOMY
Boeing expects Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) airlines to buy about 960 new planes for $90 billion in the next 20 years to upgrade the fleet of narrow-bodied planes (Vremya Novostei)
DEFENSE
Russian and Indian joint antiterrorism exercises begin on Indian territory on Friday and will last through October 24 (Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
SOCIETY
A European document aimed to protect languages of lesser peoples has not yet been ratified by the Russian authorities. Experts debate whether it is possible to ratify it and how expensive it would be eventually (Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
One-third of all elevators in Russia might be put out of order. New technical regulations in Russia set deadlines for fixing 'ailing' elevators otherwise they might be pronounced as dangerous and taken out of service (Rossiiskaya Gazeta)
OIL & GAS
Russian prosecutors said they had proven without doubt the guilt of former Yukos oil major CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev on new charges of stealing 350 million tons of oil (Vremya Novostei, Kommersant, Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
For the first time over the past five years, the European Union seems to be ready to restore talks with Russia on the issue of reviewing the Energy Charter (Kommersant)
SPORTS
Russia signed a multimillion dollar agreement with F-1 to stage a Grand Prix near the Black Sea resort of Sochi between 2014 and 2020. Experts debate whether Russia needs such expensive sport not (Vremya Novostei, Kommersant, Rossiiskaya Gazeta)
Ukraine's WBC Heavyweight Champion Vitali Klitschko holds a title defense bout on Saturday against U.S. Shannon 'The Cannon' Briggs in Germany's Hamburg (Kommersant, Vremya Novostei)
October 14, 2010
Incorrigible Appetites
By Tai Adelaja
Russia Profile
Researchers Say State Duma Deputies Still Blatantly Flout Anti-Corruption Legislation, and the Only Solution Left Is to Get the “Siloviki” on Board the President’s Anti-Graft Campaign
The Kremlin cannot win the fight against rampant corruption without first winning the confidence of the “siloviki,” who wield immense power and control key sectors of the Russian economy, a researcher with Transparency International Russia, an anti-corruption NGO, said on Thursday. The “siloviki,” a group of Kremlin operators and powerbrokers, often with a background in the security services, may hold the key to rooting out corruption that has been President Dmitry Medvedev’s greatest challenge in office, Ivan Ninenko from Transparency International Russia told Russia Profile.
“President Medvedev is sincerely trying to do something about rampant corruption, but he needs to have more clout within the ‘siloviki’ block to initiate a change in their attitude, as well as push his crusade through,” Ninenko said. “The problem is that the whole system is corrupt, and without the goodwill of the ‘siloviki’ efforts to combat corruption will continue to be futile.”
Ninenko, whose organization’s official report is due out on October 26, said the government has made a number of small steps, including the adoption of a raft of good anti-corruption laws, but that little is changing for the better because their implementation depends on the goodwill of the “siloviki.” “There has been no practical improvement whatsoever in the level of corruption,” Ninenko said. “The only way forward is to make some fundamental changes that would make the ‘siloviki’ amenable to the president’s anti-corruption campaign.”
Russia’s General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika on Wednesday told a meeting of the heads of law enforcement agencies that the appetite of incorrigible Russian state officials for taking bribes has long outgrown the risk factors of them being caught. This year, the average size of bribes pocketed by greedy officials went up 25 percent to 30,500 rubles from 23,000 rubles a year earlier, the prosecutor said. In the first six months of 2009, there were 4,500 cases of corruption brought to Russian courts, over 500 of them against public officials and 700 against law enforcement agencies. The National Anti-corruption Committee has estimated that every year a huge amount – an estimated $300 billion – is paid in bribes to public officials. Russia ranks 146 out of 180 nations – below Pakistan and Libya – in the corruption perceptions index kept by Transparency International.
While law enforcement officials have widened the scope of their efforts to combat corruption in all state institutions, Chaika said, the level of activity in law enforcement agencies has fallen, especially when compared to 2009. "Only in a few instances have law enforcers achieved positive results," Chaika said. On the bright side, Chaika noted that over 80 percent more corrupt practices were unveiled this year, adding that canny state officials, "who were stealing big time from the government," have been netted. However, Chaika said that “in all the other areas, a reversal for the worst is observable." The number of uncovered corruption crimes was down 11 percent, pushing down the number of officials indicted for bribe-taking or embezzlement, the chief prosecutor said. "At the same time, the appetite of those who are not used to working without bribes, is growing: they have started to demand more," he said.
The prosecutor also frowned on the low level of criminal investigation, saying there were practically no changes in the volume of criminal cases sent to courts. In the first half of the year, the number of acquittals increased two-fold. He cited Voronezh, Ryazan, Tver and Yaroslavl Regions as the places with the most negative reports, where investigators refused to bring charges in 70 to 95 percent of criminal cases.
Ninenko said the chief prosecutor’s report was indeed “a good sign” because it shows for the first time that the number of cases being investigated by law enforcement officials has increased. “Before only the small guys were being caught, but now anti-corruption officials are casting their nets wider,” Ninenko said. “The increase in the average size of bribes could also be interpreted to mean that officials are investigating a lower number of petty bribe-takers and embezzlers,” Ninenko said.
In what has become an annual ritual, state officials from agencies charged with combating rampant corruption gathered on Wednesday to examine how the Kremlin-backed National Anti-Corruption Plan has been faring, and also to devise ways for moving forward. In attendance this year were top state policymakers, including Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Naryshkin, presidential aides Oleg Markov and Konstantin Chuichenko, as well as legislators and representatives from the Audit Chamber. The officials also reviewed the Kremlin anti-corruption campaign, which was launched in March and has since become one of the Kremlin’s boldest efforts to eradicate a disease that analysts say has eaten deep into the fabric of society.
Part of the anti-corruption campaign efforts involved creating special units within state agencies and ministries to rid them of corrupt officials and perform background checks on potential employees, the state-owned RT television channel reported. The plan also envisaged the creation of a subdivision purely devoted to fighting corruption in "every single government ministry, department and agency." Each subdivision will have from three to five employees recruited "preferably" from the ranks of former officials from the FSB security services or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They would be "investigating [and] performing background checks on every employee, cross-referencing the information they provided on their income assets to make sure there are no briberies taking place, and generally ensuring that all the employees operate under the regulations applicable to civil servants," a news item posted RT’s Web site says.
Naryshkin, who also sits on the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, ordered all the recently created anti-corruption commissions in federal agencies to work in coordination with law enforcement agencies. It is imperative, he said, to complete a system of control on the incomes of state officials and members of their families, adding that the quality of expertise of anti-corruption regulations needs to be improved. Naryshkin said he would like to see law enforcement officers educate the masses on the government’s anti-corruption efforts.
Ninenko said seeking support from the populace is a strategy that can pay off. He said his organization has also shifted its attention toward encouraging political parties to monitor and review the income declarations of their members. “According to the law, all registered political parties have the right to launch background check-ups of the members for financial transparency,” Ninenko said. “The findings of these reviews can be sent to a special committee under the president for further investigation. But so far, only Grigory Yavlinsky’s opposition Yabloko Party has been cooperating fully.
Thanks to such efforts, Ninenko said, the anti-corruption watchdog recently received information about State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and two other Duma deputies – Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Ashot Yegiazaryan and Communist Deputy Sergei Levchenko – who had violated an anti-corruption decree on income declarations signed by President Dmitry Medvedev. “By comparing their assets at the beginning of their tenure as state officials with what they own two years into their terms, we can easily see how their fortunes have changed,” Ninenko said. “We also have our eyes on state officials with assets abroad and we will work with the presidential administration to ensure that they declare them.”
Gazeta.ru/Russia Today: Architectural excesses
By Fyodr Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine
On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev will meet his French colleague Nikolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France.
Read more
Sources from Elysee Palace promised that he will unveil a new idea for European security and rapprochement of Russia and the European Union without institutional integration. Now the event is guaranteed to get attention from both sides of the Atlantic.
The trilateral Paris-Berlin-Moscow meetings began in 2003, when the three countries became the leaders of the European opposition to the US military campaign in Iraq. The Iraqi theme gradually receded to the background, but the trilateral summits became customary, and assumptions were even made that, in addition to formal institutions, in the Old World emerged a new architecture, if not one for making, then at least discussing important decisions.
Such a possibility frightened many. The small and medium-sized countries of Europe know all too well how the desire of the larger states to directly negotiate affects them. Washington, too, was alerted – and not in vain. It was the position of Germany and France that killed one of the favorite initiatives of George W. Bush’s administration: to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
Nevertheless, by the end of zero change, the trilateral rapprochement began to wane. First, one of the reasons was the growing tensions in Moscow’s relationship with Western capitals, thus Paris and Berlin were forced to consider the position of their allies, whose attitudes toward Moscow were highly negative. Second, structural changes followed: Gerhard Schroeder stepped down in 2005, Jacques Chirac did in 2007, followed by Vladimir Putin in 2008. Their successors generally agreed with the “troika” approach, but the “personal chemistry” was no longer there. Moreover, world events evolved at such a fast rate that the constantly emerging new conditions made it impossible to focus on a detailed development of the structure of the relations.
The format reemerged last summer during the summit in Toronto. The three leaders are traveling to Deauville especially with the intent to again try to extract the practical use from the triangle. After all, the trilateral cooperation is being restored against the background of some significant changes in Europe. If in the middle 2000s it was considered that friction within the EU and NATO is an inevitable growth cost which will soon be overcome, then today the signs of a conceptual crisis are clear.
The European Union still has trouble dealing with the new quantitative composition and compositional arrangement. The Lisbon Treaty, which was designed to turn the EU into a politically more monolithic and able union, has so far had the opposite effect.
Countries that have ambitions in relation to foreign partners are now trying to implement them on their own, and not through the institutions of a united Europe, which are immersed in self-regulation.
The population of the leading states feels a growing concern about the future, which is reflected in the electoral success of parties with a populist appeal. This forces the governments to worry and demonstrate increased activity of various sorts in order to convince the citizens of their own competence.
NATO is leading an increasingly hopeless campaign in Afghanistan, which will for a long time discourage most allies from wanting to participate in any sort of overseas journeys. At the same time, it is being proposed to present a new strategic conception for the alliance during the next month’s NATO summit in Lisbon. Its text has not yet become public, but the main thing is clear: the document will not contain a new mission for the North Atlantic bloc, because the opinions on this issue greatly differ within NATO.
But the conception will include all possible options – guarantee of integrity of all member states, response methods for the latest challenges (cyber terrorism, piracy, climate change, etc.), and an “expedition alliance” for operations outside of the formal zone of responsibility. How all this can be combined in conditions of a widespread reduction of defense spending is unclear, but no one is offended.
Against the background of all this, as well as the acknowledgement of the fact that Europe, in its current political design, is most likely doomed to be gradually marginalized, attempts to find an unconventional way out are made. It is not surprising that variations on the theme of a new security and cooperation architecture, which was opened by Dmitry Medvedev two and a half years ago, are becoming more and more frequently discussed.
Not that long ago, Russia’s premonition that the European system of security and cooperation calls for a reform was met with the decisive answer – everything is okay, there is NATO, the EU, and the OSCE as an assurance, and nothing else is needed. Then, the text somewhat changed – yes, there are problems, but they should be resolved within the framework of the existing institutions. The idea of the OSCE summit emerged, the first of which was held in 1999, and the Corfu Process for the adaptation of this organization to the new reality. And finally, in recent months a new pitch was made – we need a creative approach.
In June, Medvedev and Merkel designed the Russia-EU Security Forum, the pilot project of which should be the Transdniester settlement (since then, however, not much has been mentioned on this subject). Now, Nikolas Sarkozy wants to develop the proposal for additional cooperation structures.
There is one major difference in opinions.
Russia is ready to preserve the foundation -- in other words, things that were established during the Cold War, such as the basic principles of the Helsinki Act, for example. But it also wants to build a new structure on top, because the existing system represents a time when the Kremlin had practically zero influence on the development of the rules of the game.
The Western partners, on the other hand, are aiming to build additional small towers and extensions to the already-existing construction, without destructing the design of the 1990s, which they so greatly admire.
Read the article on the newspaper's website (in Russian)
Face to Face with Viktor Bout: Court Room Conversations
Posted: 2010/10/15
From: Mathaba
Last Monday, on October 4 2010 in the Honorable Royal Thai court in Bangkok, I was eye to eye and face to face with Viktor Bout.
Court Room Conversations
Viktor Bout arrived to and from the court house donning a bullet-proof vest amid concerns for his safety. He also had a S.W.A.T. team escort him from the prison all the way to the court room. Fortunately for me, the security inside the court room was less stringent. I did not notice any armed security personnel inside the court room. When I left the court room briefly I noticed that the S.W.A.T. team was waiting outside. They did not re-appear inside the court room until after the proceedings where finished.
Dimitri Khalezov, author of the 911thology, as well as Bout’s DE-facto attorney and family friend led me to the very front row where Viktor Bout sat flanked by his devoted wife Alla. Viktor Bout speaks fluent English with no trace of a Russian accent. Not surprising since he is a linguist. He is very articulate, well-spoken, surprisingly well composed for a man in his present circumstances and extremely intelligent and least of not all, polite. He thanked me for the article that I recently wrote titled, The Assassination of Viktor Anatoliyevich Bout and published by the Mathaba News Agency, which describes how the media has assassinated his character. Bout told me, “it is nice to see that there are still some free-thinkers that are not brainwashed by the media.” We then talked briefly about some personal matters before I was told to return to my seat.
No Media Circus
Unfortunately I have spent far too much time inside U.S. court rooms than I would have liked. However, I was utterly shocked by the lack of U.S. media and how low keyed the atmosphere was inside the court room. Being familiar with the allegations, depictions and alleged charges as well as reading an abundance of media articles concerning the case, I thought I was in the wrong court room. Frankly, I was expecting a media circus like I have witnessed so many times before in the States. I have seen much more commotion and attention at divorce hearings in America.
Was this really the court case of the notorious ‘Merchant of Death’ and ‘Lord of War’? I was in shock, if I did not know what was happening I would have thought that it was an insignificant, low profile and simple legal case. It is almost as if the prosecutors intentionally wanted to keep a low profile and quickly snatch Viktor Bout to America before more people become aware of the illegalities and improprieties of this strange and very Curious Case of Viktor Bout.
Puppet-Show
I am vaguely familiar with Thai court proceedings and they are much different than U.S. court procedures but the court room schematics reminded me of an orchestrated puppet-show. Every thing appeared to be predetermined and fixed. For instance, Viktor Bout’s translator could not speak understandable English and Bout asked the judge repeatedly again and again for a Russian translator. Understandably of course, for several reasons, firstly his freedom was at stake, secondly Russian is his native language and lastly because the translator could not be understood and by all accounts was not qualified to be an English translator. The judge denied him a Russian translator which Bout said “was his legal right in Thai court.”
I thought that with a case of this magnitude an importance that they would delay or postpone the court session until a qualified translator could be obtained. However, the judges adamantly insisted on continuing with the session despite Viktor Bout’s obvious concerns and protest’s.
[Mathaba Editor: This may be a typical case of Thai fear of 'losing face' when corrected on any error, they will stick to that error even if it means their complete downfall - when that Thai cultural anomoly however impacts upon justice and another man's freedom, it is totally unacceptable. The new Prime Minister, Mr Abhisit, is however a very capable leader, and it will be hoped that he will step in and prevent an extradition to the U.S.A. in order to preserve Thailand's interests with relations with independent and powerful states such as Russia. The court circus here will not be lost on Russians, who are, like the Thais, very patriotic.]
More Court Room Conversations
Later in the court session when the judges left the room to discuss the case in private, I sat in the row directly behind Viktor and Alla Bout less than 12 inches away. To my right in the same row were two international journalists, Thilo Thielke from Der Spiegel and Kurt Pelda from Die Weltwoche.
Viktor told me face to face (as he has proclaimed continually from day one of his arrest) from his own mouth, “that he is innocent and that he is being set up. That he ran a legitimate and legal transport company.”
Bout also sarcastically commented on the court procedures, asking “is this a judicial system or a theater?”
Bout also expressed concerns about receiving a fair trial if extradited to the U.S. and told me that he does not have any money to pay for a legal defense team to even allow him a fair trial.
Viktor Bout expressed pessimism in a letter he wrote from the prison dubbed the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ on the eve of his possible extradition. According to an article by Der Spiegel, Bout’s letter stated, “The Americans have ways to get anyone to talk. Perhaps they’ll torture me with chemical substances, or perhaps they’ll stick me in a camp like Guantanamo. At any rate, I won’t get a fair trial in the United States.”
Bout ends the letter with these ominous words: “If I die in prison, it won’t be a natural death.”
You Got Mail (but only in English)
When a reporter asked Viktor Bout if he is allowed to read books and to receive mail in prison, Bout replied “yes but only in English.” Viktor Bout then elaborated, “a copy of everything he receives is sent to the U.S. Embassy. Since they do not understand Russian, I am only allowed to receive mail and other reading materials in English.”
This is not only unethical but also a human rights violation and I am not a lawyer but certainly appears to be illegal. Nonetheless, it shows that the Thai legal system is certainly cooperating and giving in to whatever demands the U.S. government ask of it. This is no different than a U.S. citizen being imprisoned in Russia, and only being allowed to receive mail and other reading material’s in Russian and then a copy of everything he receives is sent the the Thai Embassy in Moscow.
AK-47′s, C-4 explosive, UAV’s, Kursk Submarines and Granit Missiles
The principal charges filed against Viktor Bout are “conspiracy with the intent to kill American citizens” and the “support of a foreign terrorist organization.”
Let’s back up. No money ever changed hands between the D.E.A. (who posed as members of F.A.R.C.) and Viktor Bout. For the record, posing as a person or organization that you do not belong to or represent is illegal in Thai law and inadmissible in court. Furthermore, there is absolutely no proof or physical evidence of any kind. No weapons or missiles were found therefore no transaction took place and Viktor Bout has never been to the U.S.
Next the prosecutors will be blaming Viktor Bout for firing the Granit missile that struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 that was stolen from the Kursk submarine (which was sunk by a collision with the SSN 691 Memphis in August 2000) which in turn caused the U.S. government to panic and then to press the buttons to cause the underground nuclear detonation of World Trade Center 1, World Trade Center 2 and World Trade Center 7; thus blaming Bout for those deaths of Americans that died on that tragic day.
Sounds preposterous, outrageous and far-fetched? Ironically, the latter paragraph has much more truth than the former.
(For those interested in 9/11 theories, government cover-ups or who are simply seeking the truth, Dimitri Khazelov, a former Russian nuclear intelligence officer, explains in full-detail, step-by-step with physics what actually happened. It is by far, the most provocative, prohibited and proven 9/11 video as well as his book 911thology.)
It is no more far-fetched or as ludicrous as the current charges of terrorism and intent to murder US citizens that are currently filed against Bout for allegedly agreeing to sell weapons to F.A.R.C. That would eventually be used to kill Americans. That is the testimony according to D.E.A. agents Derek Odney and Andrew Smullian.
Double Standard or Simply No Standard?
According to documents that I have obtained and that are public record, the D.E.A. agents that were major players in the Bout sting operation are Robert Zahariasevich, Derek Odney, Christine A. Hanley and last but not least Andrew Smulian. Ironically, the D.E.A. agents violated Thai law in their quest to set up Viktor Bout. The agents violated Thai law by breaking and entering into Bout’s hotel room without a search warrant after the Thai police refused to do it.
Viktor Bout is a citizen of the Russian Federation, who is being charged for a crime, but has not committed any crime in America or Thailand. According to my conversations with Alla Bout, “he has never been to America.” Despite this the U.S. are trying desperately to extradite Viktor Bout by ‘any means necessary’.
Another interesting case is that of David Headley, a U.S. citizen who allegedly masterminded the Mumbai terror attacks dubbed 26/11 by the Indian authorities. A team of investigators from the National Investigation Agency (N.I.A.) went to the U.S. to question Headley and were sent back to India by the F.B.I. without being able to question him. Headley’s extradition request was also denied by U.S. officials, even though he is accused of committing terrorist acts directly on Indian soil.
These are two separate and distinct cases but they both involve extradition and are both contradictory. The U.S. prosecutors want Bout very badly because the case has become political. Also if the case is not won, it will cause embarrassment since the U.S. government has been spending taxpayers money for many years to build its case against Bout. Headley, on the other hand, will not be extradited from the U.S. to India because he is a former D.E.A. agent turned double-agent working for the C.I.A. / I.S.I.
The point I am trying to make is that in extradition cases, the U.S. has consistently shown a pattern of bending, twisting and sometimes breaking the law to meet its own needs and obtain the desired outcome that it wants.
Circus Clowns
Viktor Bout left me, according to him, with a famous Russian saying, translated into English of course because my Russian is only slightly better than my Thai. Bout said, “the circus is gone but the clowns still remain.” He was referring to the biased, illegal court proceedings that have detained him for over two and half years and that have separated him from his wife Alla and their sixteen year old daughter Elizabeth.
-- G. Alexander blogs at: #
Oct 15 2010 8:58AM
Tatar city emerges as new Russian giant
2010/10/15
DEEP in the region of Russia’s mighty Volga river, a largely Muslim city has emerged as a new sporting giant that is already standing above its rivals in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
The success of Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan region and once the main city of a medieval khanate that ruled much of the Volga, has not only become the pride of Muslim Tatars but Russians across the country.
Kazan’s flagship act is Russian soccer champions Rubin Kazan who astonished observers by beating Barcelona 2-1 at the Camp Nou last year and then holding the Spanish giants to a draw at home this year.
Kazan ice hockey club Ak Bars added to the sporting fame of Tatarstan, clinching four domestic crowns including the last two seasons and also winning the European Champions Cup in 2007.
Volleyball and basketball teams in Tatarstan have gained their places among their league’s leaders, providing the traditional favourites with tough opposition to earn a reputation as uncompromising fighters.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tatarstan’s sports teams went step by step, improving their position in the country’s leagues and clinching their places among the top divisions’ leaders.
Mintimer Shaimiev, the strongman leader who presided over Tatarstan from 1991 until stepping down this year, is a passionate sports lover.
He placed the sports and healthy way of life among the main priorities of the republic’s social policy from the very first days of his presidency.
“We should make a healthy way of life standard for all of the Tatarstan population,” said Shaimiev.
“We all should do our best to raise the level of life in the republic keeping in mind that healthy way of life is one of the most accessible measures of lifting the level of life.”
Under Shaimiev, the local government established an up-to-date and easily accessible sporting infrastructure not only in the republic’s capital Kazan but also throughout Tatarstan.
Energy-rich Tatarstan made noises about independence from Russia in the early years after the fall of the Soviet Union but separatism later died down and the region now enjoys the status of a republic within Russia.
In 2006 Kazan launched a bid for the right to host the World Student Games and just two years later the international student sports ruling body (Fisu) granted the Tatarstan capital the right to host the 2013 Universiade.
That sign of confidence boosted significantly sports development in Tatarstan, not only inspiring the republic’s athletes but also bringing in solid investments into the sports sphere.
Regional oil company Tatneft, the TAIF Group of oil-processing companies, and many others joined the band of investors and sponsors of Tatarstan sport teams adding their money to the budget funding.
The new income of funding allowed the republic’s clubs to bolster their line-ups with a set of experienced players that improved their performance a great deal.
In 2008, Rubin won their first ever national soccer title along with ice hockey outfit Ak Bars Kazan, who became the first winners of the newly-established multi-national Continental Hockey League (KHL).
The next year both clubs managed to repeat their successes.
For the 2013 Student Games, as many as 36 new sporting venues will be constructed in Tatarstan including a new soccer 45000-seater stadium, chess palace and rowing lake.
After Shaimiev’s resignation earlier this year after almost 19 years of presidency, his successor as Tatarstan president Rustam Minnihanov may go even further in developing sports in the republic.
Minnihanov is not only a passionate fan but also a former top-class sportsman, who won two Russian titles in auto racing. — Sapa-AFP
Research vessel returned to Arkhangelsk
2010-10-15
The Russian scientific research vessel “Akademik Fedorov” has returned to Russia after a nearly three months long study of the Arctic boundaries of the Russian Continental Shelf.
The vessel came to Arkhangelsk on Thursday after what has been said to be the largest Russian expedition in ten years time.
The main purpose of the expedition was to get a relief of the sea bottom in order to prove that the underwater Arctic ridges Lomonosov and Mendeleyev are geological continuations of the Russian continental shelf. If Russia can prove this, the country will get the right to exploit the enormous oil and gas fields in the triangle Chukotka-Murmansk-North Pole.
Russia plans to submit a new application to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in the beginning of 2014.
- The data gathered by “Akademik Fedorov” will contribute that the Russian Continental Shelf will be expanded with 1.2 million square kilometers, said Head of the Federal Agency of Mineral Resouces (Rosnedra) Anatoly Ledovskikh when welcoming "Akademik Fedorov", website B- reports.
As BarentsObserver reported, Russia has allocated 35 million EUR to Arctic research missions in 2010-2011.
National Economic Trends
October 15, 2010 09:57
Russian monetary base up 63.4 bln rubles to 5226.7 bln rubles
MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - The narrow monetary base in Russia stood at 5226.7 bln rubles on October 11 up from 5163.3 bln rubles on October 4, the Central Bank reported on Friday.
The narrow monetary base includes cash in circulation (including cash held at credit institutions), and balances on banks' mandatory local-currency-deposit reserve accounts with the Central Bank.
Ak
October 15, 2010
ROSSTAT SAYS RUSSIAN PRODUCER PRICES FELL 1.3% IN SEPT, ANALYSTS EXPECTED 1.5% GROWTH
Russian industrial production is expected to be released today
Fri, Oct 15 2010, 05:29 GMT
by Danske Research Team
Russian industrial production is expected to be released today. Consensus sees some setback in September’s industrial production to 5.7% y/y, down from 7.0% y/y in August.
Rising food prices return to market focus
15 October, 2010, 10:15
Food prices are continuing to rise, with corn posting its biggest one-day jump in three decades, leading experts to worry that this year’s volatile food prices could lead to widespread shortages.
US corn prices rose by 8.5% one day last week – the largest jump since 1973. It left prices 15% higher in just two days.
Wheat and other basic agricultural products have also soared – threatening a global food crisis like that of 2007 and 2008 sparked by droughts, rising fuel prices and subsidies for biofuel.The falling dollar has led to speculation in the commodities markets, pushing up prices and increasing volatility.
This latest food crisis was caused by crop failures in Canada, parts of Europe, and Russia, where drought devastated the wheat crop. By the end of summer the Russian government banned grain exports which contributed to a major jump in world wheat prices. It was said the ban might be lifted after the release of this year’s harvest data. But the first complete figures were as bad as feared.
60.9 million tonnes of grain was harvested – a third less than in the same period last year. The Ministry of Agriculture says the cost of lost grain has reached 41.5 billion roubles. Leonid Zlochevsky, President of the Russian Grain Union says the ban is likely to be extended.
“We believe the ban on exports will be prolonged at least to the next season and I doubt it will be lifted this January. I think the international community should count on our grain only from the start of the next season.”
In global terms, the collapse in Russia’s wheat harvest is the main story. But for farmers and consumers, a far broader range of crops was hit, from potatoes to buckwheat – which has destabilized the retail sector. Amidst fears that governments could respond with controls on food exports, and rising nominal prices in the face of widespread currency devaluation efforts, produce shortages could yet trigger a renewed global food crisis.
CME In Talks With Russian Exchanges, Government On New Wheat Market
By Jacob Bunge, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
CHICAGO -(Dow Jones)- Russia is exploring the creation of a regional wheat futures market and this month held talks with senior executives at CME Group Inc. (CME), according to a senior official at the Chicago-based exchange operator.
The planned venture would add another global platform for trading alongside Chicago and Paris, serving the fast-growing "bread basket" of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which has become an increasingly important source of European food imports.
Leo Melamed, the CME's chairman emeritus, said the discussions with Russian government and exchange officials looked at how the Chicago-based market operator could contribute expertise to the project and list contracts on its Globex electronic trading platform.
The discussions come after the havoc wreaked on this year's Russian grain harvest by drought, prompting a government ban on wheat exports that sent global prices higher. Ukraine, another major grain exporter, curtailed its own wheat exports earlier this month.
"If they had a futures market to help insure their crop, farmers would've saved a lot of money," Melamed said in an interview.
The new wheat venture serving eastern Europe and central Asia is still in the discussion stage, but could see CME help design a new market from the ground up in an area--wheat--that ranks among its most active and long-running commodity markets. The Chicago Board of Trade, owned by CME, is the world's largest wheat exchange and often sets a global benchmark for wheat prices.
Ideally, Melamed said, such an exchange would unify the region's major wheat producers in Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Russian exchange operators RTS Stock Exchange and Micex Group would be involved in shaping the new market, he said, which would also need the blessing of the respective governments.
"If we did put something together with them, it would be a huge benefit to the Eastern European region, and a major benefit for CME Group," he said.
Alongside Melamed, CME Chief Executive Craig Donohue joined in the early October meeting, as well as board members Charles Carey and John Sandner. The discussions were hosted by Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, and included executives from Micex and RTS.
Exchange groups have long sought an entry point to resource-rich Russia, but have been stymied by a regulatory structure that has proven tough for outsiders to navigate. A cross-border market for a politically touchy product like grain poses additional challenges, according to Dan Gramza, a consultant who has worked with more than 30 international exchanges.
"The issue is the political willingness to allow information to be presented, " he said. "Another issue is getting accurate data, so people around the globe can see that the information is reliable."
CME, the biggest futures exchange in the world by contract volume, has arranged tie-ups with a spectrum of developing international markets, including Brazil's BM&FBovespa SA (BVMF3.BR), the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, Bursa Malaysia and the Mexican Derivatives Exchange, a unit of Bolsa Mexicana de Valores SA (BOLSA.MX).
Melamed, who has also met with Ukrainian officials on wheat market matters, said that CME has sent emissaries to that country as well to talk market development.
The biggest hurdle for any new regional commodity market is to expand beyond its base of local users and lure international investors and speculators, said Tim Hannagan, senior grain analyst for brokerage firm PFGBest.
"They tend to get to a point after three to five years where they have all their local grain end-users, but it never goes beyond that," said Hannagan.
-By Jacob Bunge, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4117; jacob.bunge@
(Tom Polansek contributed to this article.)
Guest post: a freer rouble lets Russia control its economic destiny
October 15, 2010 6:00am
By Roland Nash, chief strategist, Renaissance Capital
The announcement on Tuesday that the Russian Central Bank was widening its unofficial intervention corridor by 50 kopeks in both directions did not exactly set global currency markets on fire. But it represented the latest small step towards a radical departure in Russian macro policy.
The managed exchange rate has been the linchpin of economic policy for the last decade. After the economic anarchy of the 1990s, the resolute rouble, slowly appreciating for nearly ten years, became the standard bearer for the stability which defined Vladimir Putin’s presidency.
The Russian government doesn’t much like giving up control. Markets have had an unfortunate tendency to whipsaw through the economy, getting in the way of the implementation of the Kremlin’s long-term strategies.
The move towards a floating exchange rate is therefore controversial. It is being approached with considerable caution. The trading corridor Moscow allows is being widened in small steps that depend on an assessment of the external environment. The markets are purposefully left guessing exactly where and when the central bank will intervene.
But the reasoning behind the shift is actually all about control. Russia is a unique economy. The two most important factors impacting the country are both set externally. Russia must accept the global market price for both the cost of commodities and the cost of capital. For the world’s largest natural resource exporter, which has an open capital account and weak domestic financial system, this creates tremendous volatility.
Any shift in global capital markets or commodities is immediately reflected in the domestic economy. In this sense, Russian macroeconomic policy is set in London, Riyadh and Beijing, as much as Moscow. In a world of volatile financial and commodity markets, Russia is tossed about by forces outside of its control. This is not a viable situation for a country with the aspirations to be considered a Great Power.
The point was brought home to Moscow most dramatically by the 2008 global crisis. In June 2008, one couldn’t move in Moscow for western bankers trying to provide funding to Russian companies and oligarchs. In October, those same bankers were desperately trying to get their money back. In the space of three months, capital went from being freely available to prohibitively expensive. Russia was plunged into the deepest recession of any large country globally, and it had very little to do with Russian policy.
A managed rouble has the effect of reflecting external volatility directly into the Russian economy: a sudden increase in oil prices creates inflation; a shift in sentiment causes rouble interest rates to soar.
A flexible rouble, however, would create a buffer between Russia and the rest of the world. The rouble would shift, compensating for external shocks.
It is with this in mind that Russia is gradually freeing up its exchange rate. By floating the rouble, Russia hopes to be able to set internal monetary policy. But it is not a straightforward concept. Right now, the central bank is stuck between the old fixed regime and the future floating rouble. The temptation is to try and control both the exchange rate and the domestic financial environment, a recipe for failing to do either. Russia wants to get control of its economic destiny. It is a source of some frustration that it has to free the rouble to do so.
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
Evraz, Rosneft, Norilsk Nickel: Russian Equity Market Preview
By Anna Shiryaevskaya
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The following companies may be active in Russian trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and share prices are from the previous close of trading in Moscow.
The 30-stock Micex Index fell 0.3 percent to 1,489.06.
Evraz Group SA (EVR LI): Evraz may release a trading update. Russia’s second-largest steelmaker rose 1.7 percent to $30.60 in London, the highest level since Oct. 5.
OAO Rosneft (ROSN RX): Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state-owned oil company, agreed to sell its stake in a German refinery to a Russian company, President Hugo Chavez said, without naming the potential buyer or the refinery. Rosneft was in talks with PDVSA to buy its 50 percent stake in Germany’s Ruhr Oel refinery. Russia’s largest oil producer declined 0.7 percent to 211.25 rubles.
OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel (GMKN RX): Copper earlier rose to a 27-month high as the dollar declined, boosting demand for metals as alternative investments. Russia’s largest mining company advanced 0.4 percent to 5,429.71 rubles.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Shiryaevskaya in Moscow at ashiryaevska@
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@
Last Updated: October 14, 2010 22:00 EDT
Web Firms Weigh In On New Internet Bill
15 October 2010
By Olga Razumovskaya
Five leading Internet companies published an open letter on their web sites Thursday urging Russian lawmakers to exclude intellectual property rights infringement from their realm of responsibility, and proposing what they say are internationally accepted methods to address the problem.
A bill regulating the Internet, including property rights issues, is now under review by the Communications and Press Ministry.
The letter, which recommends that copyright holders resolve disputes directly with alleged individual violators, was signed by senior management of Google Russia, Mail.Ru, Vkontakte, Yandex, and the merged Afisha and Rambler.
The question of who is responsible for intellectual property violations — Internet companies who hold content, or average users, who, unknowingly or on purpose, upload illegally obtained content, like video or audio files — is the chicken-or-egg dilemma of the dispute.
Internet companies argue that by prosecuting them for pirated content, legislators restrict the freedom of the web. Property rights owners say content providers are just trying to protect their business interests and should bear full responsibility for the fate of the content they store.
Since intellectual property rights protection is a particularly sore subject for Russia, the companies called for legislators to use practices and rules applied worldwide in resolving such disputes.
The Internet companies propose allowing the rights holder to dispute with the violator directly. They say when they get an infringement claim from a rights holder, they will freeze access to the object of dispute and inform the user of the complaint. If the user wants to dispute the allegation, he would then be put in contact with the rights holder via the Internet company, and the two parties can attempt to find a resolution, with the Internet company acting as an intermediary.
It is a reasonable suggestion that will eliminate the problem of identifying the alleged infringer said Yelena Trusova, head of intellectual property at Goltsblat BLP.
The Internet companies said that as of now, "in Russia, copyright holders prefer to put responsibility not on those who upload or distribute content illegally," but on the companies providing the platform.
“Meanwhile the following indisputable fact is being ignored: Companies that offer their services to millions of users have neither the rights, nor the technical capability to track every action of every user and evaluate its legality,” the letter said.
The five companies that signed the letter had been discussing the issue for some time, said Alla Zabrovskaya, a spokeswoman for Google Russia. The idea to write an open letter floated around for a few months before the final draft was published.
“For a complicated issue like this one, this is remarkably fast, given that we have to agree on every word,” Zabrovskaya told The Moscow Times.
Internet companies argue that it would be virtually impossible for them to track down all the copyright infringers even if they hired “an army of a million administrators.”
“Twenty-four hours of video are uploaded every minute [on YouTube]. This is a huge amount of information — the equivalent of having to watch 150,000 feature films a week,” the Google Russia spokeswoman said.
But many people disagree, saying the Internet companies are just lazy and have the technical means and the money to inhibit copyright infringement.
“There is already legal precedence on these issues. Legally, I do not see a difference between Yandex or, say, a web site called Pirate.ru,” Irina Tulubyeva, head of the Russian Organization for Intellectual Property, told The Moscow Times.
The Internet companies that signed the letter are simply trying to lobby their own interests and are “perfectly capable of hiring a team of administrators and putting in a year's worth of work” to make sure that the content found on their web sites is legal, she said. “The revenues they get from advertising are enormous,” she said.
The potential losses from incessant lawsuits, however, may start to become noticeable, she said.
Currently infringing on the rights of one copyright holder may cost the violator anywhere between 10,000 rubles ($334) and 5 million rubles ($167,000) according to Russian law, she said.
“I see no need to change the existing law for the sake of benefiting the content providers,” Tulubyeva said.
October 15, 2010 10:22
Evraz cuts Q3 steel output 8.7%, ups EBITDA forecast to $550 mln-$600 mln (Part 2)
MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - Evraz Group reduced steel production 8.7% year-on-year in Q3 2010 to 3.868 million tonnes, the company said.
Evraz said a decrease in pig iron and steel production volumes was mainly due to scheduled modernisation and repairs at Russian steel mills, and would be reversed in Q4 2010.
"As most of the scheduled modernisation projects and safety equipment installation has been completed, we expect production volumes to recover in Q4, 2010," it said.
Coking coal volumes remain depressed due to stoppages at the mines caused by safety inspections and additional security equipment installation following the accident at Raspadskaya (RTS: RASP). Volumes are expected to return to normalised levels in Q4 2010.
Evraz also said it had raised its forecast Q3 2010 earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to $550 million-$600 million from $480 million-$550 million "due to shorter than expected downtime and improvement in Russian domestic pricing of construction products in September."
Pr
UPDATE 1-Evraz ups Q3 guidance as domestic prices rise
Fri Oct 15, 2010 6:55am GMT
* Sees Q3 EBITDA $550-$600 mln vs previous aim $480-$550 mln
* Q3 crude steel output 3.87 mln T, yr-earlier 4.24 mln T
(adds details)
MOSCOW, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Evraz (HK1q.L), Russia's second-largest steelmaker, on Friday raised its third quarter core earnings guidance by up to 25 percent thanks to stronger domestic prices and shorter-than-expected downtime at its mills.
The steelmaker, part-owned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, said it now expects third quarter earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) between $550 million and $600 million, up from its earlier $480 million to $550 million target.
"The increase is explained by less than expected downtime in the third quarter and improvement in domestic pricing of construction products in September," the company said.
Steelmakers in Russia, the world's third-largest producer, are benefitting from their position as leading low cost producers after suffering through a difficult 2009 as global steel demand declined.
However, Evraz's third quarter crude steel output declined to 3.87 million tonnes from a year-earlier 4.24 million tonne figure as it carried out modernisation projects and idled capacity in the Czech republic because of an ongoing dispute over pig iron supplies. [ID:nLDE65F0SJ] (Reporting by Alfred Kueppers; Editing by Hans Peters)
Wal-Mart May Buy Russian Retailer Kopeyka, Vedomosti Says
By Ilya Khrennikov
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, may buy Russia’s OAO Trade House Kopeyka, Vedomosti reported, citing people familiar with negotiations.
Russian billionaire financier Nikolai Tsvetkov, who owns Kopeyka, values the company at about 50 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) and didn’t want to sell it to X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s biggest retailer, for less, the newspaper said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ilya Khrennikov in Moscow at ikhrennikov@.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amanda Jordan at ajordan11@.
Last Updated: October 15, 2010 00:06 EDT
Wal-Mart again in talks to buy Russia's Kopeika: report
11:00am IST
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest retailer, is again competing with Russian retailer X5 (PJPq.L: Quote, Profile, Research) to buy retailer Kopeika, the business daily Vedomosti reported.
Wal-Mart, which has global expansion as a key priority, has been in talks with several Russian retailers in recent years. Talks to buy Kopeika have been going on sporadically since 2002.
In September, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) cleared the way for X5 to purchase Kopeika, but X5's interest in the acquisition has since decreased, Vedomosti reported, citing company sources.
Wal-Mart's international sales rose about 11 percent last year, topping $100 billion for the first time. International sales account for about a quarter of the company's overall sales.
Sberbank readies roadshow ahead of debut Swiss franc
Issue: 1176 - 15 October 2010
Russian savings bank Sberbank is looking at the Swiss franc market, with a roadshow planned for October 20 to October 22. BNP Paribas and UBS are arranging the meetings, said a UBS syndicate banker. ..
Russia's Monocrystal Postpones Its $284 Million IPO
Oct 14, 2010
MOSCOW -(Dow Jones)- OAO Monocrystal, a Russian maker of components for light- emitting diodes and solar cells, said Friday it would postpone its initial public offering on local stock exchanges.
Monocrystal had sought to raise between $203 million and $284 million selling 10 million new shares and up to 3.5 million existing shares at between $15 and $ 21 each on the Micex Stock Exchange and the RTS exchange.
"We have taken the difficult decision to postpone the international offering as a result of the considerable volatility in global equity markets and a number of other factors unrelated to our business performance," Chief Executive Oleg Kachalov said in a statement.
Morgan Stanley (MS) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CS) had been chosen as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners.
-By William Mauldin, Dow Jones Newswires; +7 495 232-9192, william.mauldin@
Russian IPO rush stalls - again
October 15, 2010 8:56am
by Stefan Wagstyl
The Russian autumn IPO season in London has got off to a poor start with Monocrystal, the world’s largest maker of synthetic sapphires, on Friday pulling its planned $200m-plus offering.
As is common in such cases, the company is blaming “considerable volatility in global equity markets” even though global share prices are on roll, including in Russia, where the RTS index is up 5 per cent this month. It hardly bodes well for other Russian issuers, headed by Mail.ru, the internet group, which has been marketing a share issue in the region of $500m this week.
Monocrystal, which had wanted to sell a stake of around 30 per cent and secure a total valuation of up to $1bn, said in a statement:
ОАО “Monocrystal” (the “Company”, or “Monocrystal”), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of advanced electronic materials that are fundamental to energy efficient products such as light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) and solar cells, today announces that it has decided not to proceed with the international offering of its ordinary shares at this time.
Oleg Kachalov, Chief Executive Officer of Monocrystal commented:
“We have taken the difficult decision to postpone the international offering as a result of the considerable volatility in global equity markets and a number of other factors unrelated to our business performance. We remain very confident in the strength of our business and the prospects for our product sectors. Our business continues to perform well, enjoying favourable pricing trends and volume growth and delivering outstanding value for its shareholders. We are able to finance our 2010-2011 business growth plans from internal sources, however, we may consider returning to the equity market at a future date when conditions become more favourable”.
As the FT has reported, Mail.ru is planning to sell around 10-15 per cent of its stock in an IPO that it hopes might give it a market value of around $5bn. Other companies in the pipeline include Transcontainer, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, O’Key, a St Petersburg-based grocer, and Severstal, the Russian steel company, which is is preparing its gold unit for a London listing that is expected to value the business at about $4bn.
But, as beyondbrics said this week, investors are right to be wary. An expected deluge of Russian capital offerings in 2010 has not materialised after turmoil in the markets in the spring forced some issuers to cancel IPOs including Prof Media, the Russian media group, which pulled an expected $1bn offering in April when it found it could get cheaper financing in the form of a loan from state-controlled Sberbank, and Uralchem, the Russian fertiliser producer, which dropped a planned $600m capital-raising.
Fund managers are well aware of the chequered history of foreign investment in Russia in which the spectacular profits made by some have been overshadowed by high-profile losses in companies which suffered at the hands of either the authorities or of Russian partners. Few can forget Yukos. And even those with very short memories recall the $2.2bn January listing of Russian aluminium producer UC Rusal in Hong Kong, where shares plunged 38 per cent in the weeks after listing. They later recovered to return close to their issue level - but that is hardly the sort of performance IPO investors seek.
Economic port zone is finally established in Murmansk
2010-10-15
In the long run, Russian Gvt signed the resolution to create special economic zone within Murmansk port area.
The economic zone will be created in three stages, increasing cargo turnover up to 22,3 mln tons annually by 2025. The relative increase of cargo is expected to reach 45 mln tons of coal, 22,3 mln tons of oil and 4,33 mln TEU containers. New railway line connecting Vyhodnoy and Lavna (30 km) will be constructed.
– This is a very important decision made by the Russian Government, says Murmansk governor, We plan to open 3,000 vacancies, while the project will eventually boost tax returns to 40 billion RUB. Besides, the new economic regime is favourable for investors willing to work on development of Murmansk transport hub and Shtokman project.
First steps forward port economic zone were taken by Murmansk ex-governor, Yuri Yevdokimov, who regularly contacted federal authorities on the matter, but “the documents sent to Moscow had neither efficient business plan nor even area boundaries for the special economic area except for the appeal for money”, reads Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
The optimism of Murmansk authorities predict that new economic zone in the port area of Murmansk will “stabilize the social sphere of the region through employment opportunities, higher incomes (up to 45,400 RUB by 2025) and greater gross regional product (up to 651,000 RUB per capita).” The unemployment level is expected to drop to 7,4%.
As a matter of fact, special economic zones can be created on the territories of sea/river ports and airports open for international connections. Construction territories may also enjoy the status of economic zones. The territories can favour its status for 49 years with no possibility for prolongation. The residents of economic zones should invest at least 100 mln EUR into the construction of new port infrastructure, at least 50 mln EUR for construction of new river port or airport infrastructure; or 3 mln EUR minimum for the reconstruction of operational ports.
Special economic zone is a specifically-designated area being more liberal than country’s typical economic laws. In Russia there are four available types of special economic zones: tourism, technology development, port, and industrial production zones (the last two correspondingly are – Murmansk port and expectedly – Teriberka). The zones get a tax paradise for investors, easier import and export procedures, and simplified routines of companies’ registration.
Scallops to help monitor pollution at Russian oil port
14th October 2010 17:05 GMT
A project at a Russian oil port will use large quantities of sea scallops to help monitor water pollution levels.
The Kozmino port in Russia's Far East, will be the first Russian port to use mollusks in this way.
80 tubular nets filled with 10,000 sea scallops will be lowered into the cold Pacific Ocean waters later this month, according to the port's chief executive, Boris Melnikov.
"Scallops are a very good measure of water pollution because they are very sensitive to contaminants. They absorb and retain impurities," Natalia Vykhodtseva, the organic chemist leading Kozmino's ecological safety department, told Reuters.
"If the monitoring is successful, we have an idea to create large permanent colonies for scallops, mussels and seaweed at the bottom of the bay and use them to filter the water and keep it clean," Vykhodtseva said.
"If oil happens to leak into the water, the scallops will imbibe it, filtering back out the clean water," she added.
The Kozmino port oil terminal has been set up Russian by oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, and is the only export terminal for crude oil from new East Siberian oil fields.
It is due to ship out 200 million barrels next year, Reuters said, which will double the number of tanker calls at the port.
Russian scientists from the Pacific Ocean Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry in Vladivostok have studied the environmental and sanitary capabilities of scallops since the mid-1990s.
They are of particular interest for fighting pollution in cold waters, where bacterial breakdown of hydrocarbons is much slower than in warm waters.
London News Desk, 14th October 2010 17:05 GMT
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
11:12
Export duty on Russian crude could rise $24.1 to $290.6/tonne on Nov 1
Finance Ministry: Oil export duty likely to go up 9%
RBC, 15.10.2010, Moscow 11:45:32.According to the Finance Ministry's preliminary estimates, Russia's oil export duty is likely to climb 9 percent to $290.6 per tonne starting November 1. The ministry's forecast is based on a monitoring of the Urals oil price between September 15 and October 14, when the average price stood at $80.093 per barrel.
The ministry indicated that the export duty on oil produced in East Siberia may go up from the current $82.1 to $98.8 per tonne.
Export duties on light and heavy oil products, meanwhile, are likely to amount to $208.1 and $112.1 per tonne, respectively.
Lukoil ready to rumble off West Africa
Russia’s Lukoil is preparing for an intensive West African exploration and appraisal drilling campaign at two contract areas in the Gulf of Guinea off Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
Upstream staff 15 October 2010 01:51 GMT
Drilling contractor Ocean Rig will drill four wells in the Cape Three Points Deep-Water (CTPDW) Block off Ghana, including two exploration wells on new structures and two appraisal wells on the Dzata structure, where an oil and gas discovery was announced in February.
Off the Ivory Coast, the drillship is expected to drill one exploration well in Block CI-401, where the Orca-1X bis well was completed in May. The contracts provide for one more optional well and an optional additional one-year term.
Drilling activities will start in the CTPDW Block between April and May next year, while activities in the CI-401 Block are scheduled for the first quarter of 2012. The water depth for each of all the wells is about 1900 meters.
The activities will be performed by a dynamically positioned sixth-generation drilling unit capable of drilling in water depths of up to 3000 meters. Currently, the drillship is being prepared for flotation at the Samsung shipyard in South Korea.
The CTPDW and CI-401 projects share similar ownership structures with Lukoil holding 56.66%, while 28.34% belongs to Vanco Ghana and Vanco Cóte d’Ivoire, respectively; the state companies own a15% share - Ghana National Petroleum Corporation and PETROCI.
Seismic surveys and drilling of one exploration well have been performed at each block thus far. A significant oil and gas field has been discovered in the CTPDW (the Dzata structure) at a depth of about 4500 meters below sea level.
Published: 15 October 2010 01:51 GMT | Last updated: 15 October 2010 01:54 GMT
press release
Oct. 14, 2010, 6:28 p.m. EDT
LUKOIL - Vanco Drilling Campaign, Offshore West Africa
HOUSTON, Oct 14, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- LUKOIL, Vanco and state oil company partners GNPC and PETROCI, are preparing for an intensive West African exploration and appraisal drilling program for two contract areas in the Gulf of Guinea, including Cape Three Points Deep Water (CTPDW, Republic of Ghana) and CI-401 (Republic of Cote d'Ivoire).
The drilling contractor Ocean Rig, a subsidiary of Dryships Inc., entered into contracts to drill four wells in CTPDW block, including two exploration wells on new structures and two appraisal wells on the Dzata structure, where an oil and gas discovery was announced in February 2010. In Cote d'Ivoire, the drillship is expected to drill one exploration well in Block CI-401, where the Orca-1X bis well was completed in May 2010. The contracts provide for one more optional well and an optional additional one-year term.
The commencement of drilling activities in the CTPDW is scheduled for April-May 2011, the CI-401 is scheduled for the first quarter of 2012. The water depth for each of all the wells is approximately 1,900 meters. The activities will be performed by a dynamically positioned sixth-generation drilling unit capable of drilling in water depths of up to 3,000 meters. Currently, the drillship is being prepared for flotation at the Samsung shipyard, the Republic of Korea.
The CTPDW and CI-401 projects share similar ownership structures whereby LUKOIL holds 56.66% and 28.34% belongs to Vanco Ghana Ltd. and Vanco Cote d'Ivoire Ltd., respectively; the state companies own 15% (i.e. Ghana National Petroleum Corporation and PETROCI, respectively). Seismic surveys and drilling of one exploration well have been performed at each block thus far. A significant oil and gas field has been discovered in the CTPDW (the Dzata structure) at a depth of about 4,500 meters below sea level.
15.10.2010
Rosneft Gets Four Off-Shore Fields
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed instructions giving Rosneft the licenses to four off-shore fields including South-Russkoye on the shelf of the Barents Sea, and East-Prinovozemelskoye-1, East-Prinovozemelskoye-2, East-Prinovozemelskoye-3 on the shelf of the Karsk Sea and South-Chernomorskoye in the Black Sea. Gazprom was given the license to the Kharasavey-more block in the Karsk Sea, the Russian Energy Ministry reported.
Copyright 2010, Russian Energy Ministry Statistics Department. All rights reserved.
NOVATEK increases productive capacity at the Yurkharovskoye field to 33 bcm
Thursday, Oct 14, 2010
OAO NOVATEK (“NOVATEK” and/or the “Company”) announced the commencement of the final stage of Phase Two development at its wholly-owned Yurkharovskoye field. As part of the Company’s capital investment program, two additional processing trains for separating natural gas were launched at the field, thus increasing the Yurkharovskoye field’s annual productive capacity to approximately 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas and approximately three million tons of unstable gas condensate.
According to NOVATEK’s CEO, Leonid Mikhelson, “The Company has been consistent in its focused approach to implementing its strategy to increase hydrocarbon production and processing capacities as evidenced by our successes at the Yurkharovskoye field. Moreover, the field’s development program has become a platform for implementing new drilling, production and processing technologies, as well as innovative solutions, which may be applied to our new and future projects.”
WEB-EXCLUSIVE: TNK-BP Optimizes HR Policy
Despite the lack of highly skilled specialists in the market, the aging industry and an overall drop in quality of practical skills obtained by students at college, TNK-BP has managed to continue hiring the creme of industry pros, reduce the average age of its staff and attract the best young engineers Russian academia can offer.
By Bojan Šoć
Out of a 14-million-strong pool of industry workers in Russia, only two million are highly skilled managers and engineers and the hunt for these specialists is only getting tougher, TNK-BP Vice President for Human Resources and Organizational Development Andrei Yanovsky told reporters during the October 12 meeting with the company’s senior HR executives.
The industry is getting older, too. According to statistics, the average age of oil and gas executives in Russia today stands at 45 years. TNK-BP countered the trend by reducing the age of its top brass to 42 years, while the average age of the company’s nearly 46,000-strong staff was also slashed from 41.7 years in 2003 to 39 years in 2010.
In recent years, the company has been offloading non-core assets, ultimately slashing its workforce from 60,000 employees to 45,964.
“Companies are focused on the growth of their productivity and efficiency of operations,” Yanovsky explained.
(read more in the full version of the article which will run in OGE’s November issue)
Gazprom
Bulgaria to Push for Lower Gas Prices during Gazprom CEO Visit
Energy | October 15, 2010, Friday
Bulgaria's government will make a new attempt to cut gas prices and sign a direct gas supply contract with Russian energy giant Gazprom during the one-day visit to Sofia of its chief executive officer Alexei Miller.
Miller will hold talks with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Minister of Economy and Energy Traicho Traikov.
Minister Traikov negotiated a gas price reduction during his talks with Russian officials in July and forecast that prices for industry and households will be "a few percent lower", but this did not happen to be the case.
Gazprom CEO will also discuss delivery of Russian natural gas and the signing of a contract, which will imply no intermediaries in the deal. According to energy experts Bulgaria will back its demands by pointing out the newly discovered local deposits of gas near Kavarna and the agreements for construction of gas network connections with Turkey and Greece.
The future of the South Stream gas pipeline project will also be on the agenda.
In July Russia and Bulgaria signed a roadmap agreement on Saturday to speed up the building of the gas pipeline on the Bulgarian territory.
Bulgaria however has had an uncertain stance on South Stream, which has led to an activizing on the part of the Russian side. Just Monday Russian press characterized Buglaria as the "problematic" country for South Stream.
Jut a day before Miller's visit to Sofia the Russian energy giant practically renewed its threats to replace Bulgaria with Romania as the primary transit hub of the South Stream gas pipeline.
Bulgaria has been committed to the execution of the EU-sponsored Nabucco gas pipeline project, which is widely seen as rival to South Stream, designed to bypass Ukraine in transporting Russian gas to Europe.
Imports account for nearly 70% of the energy Bulgaria uses and Gazprom provides almost all of its gas.
15.10.2010 8:02
Bulgaria’s Traikov and Gazprom’s Miller will negotiate natural gas contracts today
The main topics are “South Stream” and the new supply contracts for Bulgaria
AUTHOR: publics.bg
The Bulgarian Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism announced that minister Traicho Traikov will meet with the chairman of the management board of Gazprom today, October 15, in the ministerial building. They will discuss the realization of the “South Stream” project and the new supply contracts for Bulgaria.
This week Miller is visiting both Romania and Bulgaria in relation to the “South Stream” project.
Belarus insists on netback parity for Russian gas
09:36, October 15, 2010
Belarus wanted a simultaneous switch with Russia to netback parity for gas prices, the country's Deputy Economics Minister said Thursday.
"We want a simultaneous transition. If Russia wants to achieve netback parity for export and domestic gas prices for Gazprom by 2014, then we want to achieve this by roughly the same time also," Anatoly Filonov was quoted by Russian media as saying.
Filinov said the country was due to propose amendments to the existing two-sided gas contract to secure further discounts in 2011.
Experts believe both countries should speed up efforts to form a common economic space by creating equal terms for energy prices.
"The sooner we create this space, the sooner we'll eliminate the difference in prices for hydrocarbons and the difference in approaches to export duties," Interfax news agency quoted the head the Russian Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaniniv as saying.
The prime ministers of the two countries are scheduled to hold a meeting over the issue on Oct. 15, where they will also discuss 20 agreements concerning the economic space formation.
Source: Xinhua
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