Russia - WikiLeaks
Russia 101029
Basic Political Developments
• Oct 31: Russia to move clock back by one hour
• Oct 30–31: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in Russia–ASEAN summit in Hanoi, to make official visit to Vietnam
• Nov 1–2: German Vice Chancellor, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to visit Moscow
• Nov 5: NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen to visit Moscow
• Nov 9: President Dmitry Medvedev to meet with Finnish President Tarja Halonen in Moscow
• Nov 11–12: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in G20 summit in South Korea
• Nov 13–14: President Dmitry Medvedev to attend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Japan
• Nov 19–20: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in Russia–NATO summit in Lisbon
• Dec 1–2: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in OSCE summit in Astana
• Dec 7: Russia–EU summit in Brussels
• Medvedev to strengthen trust between Russia, NATO – source: "We are talking about equal cooperation, balanced and long-term cooperation that is dictated by state interests of Russia and NATO member countries," the source said.
• RF, US presidents to meet in Yokohama on Nov 14 - Presidents of Russia and the United States Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama will hold a bilateral meeting in the Japanese city of Yokohama on November 14 within the framework of the APEC summit. White House national security aide Ben Rhodes said this at a briefing for journalists on the threshold of the US president’s Asian tour.
o Medvedev and Hu meetings on Obama Asia agenda
o Medvedev, Obama to meet next month in Japan - "The Russian and American presidents will have a full meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Yokohama in Japan on November 13-14," a statement said without giving further details.
o Source: Moscow won't negotiate Medvedev's trip to Kurils with Tokyo - Russia is not obliged to negotiate President Dmitry Medvedev's trips to Russian regions with anyone ahead of his visits to foreign countries, a Kremlin source told Interfax.
• Komorowski hopes for dynamic relations with Russia - “Komorowski expressed gratitude for Russian assistance to the pilgrimage of the relatives of the killed to Smolensk and Katyn on October 10 and the participation of the wife of the Russian president in the event. Full disclosure of Katyn documents and their transfer to the Polish side are key for the process of Polish-Russian reconciliation,” the office said.
o Russia's Medvedev to visit Poland by yearend – presidential aide: "I confirm that intensive preparations for the visit are underway upon an order from the president. The visit has been long planned and is very necessary for our bilateral relations," Sergei Prikhodko said.
o Lavrov, Medvedev, Putin... in Poland? – by Agnes Sekowski
• Klaus to attend prize-giving ceremony in Moscow - The Award for Excellence is annually given by the Alfa-Bank along with the Oxford Said Business School to the foreign companies successfully conducting business in Russia.
• Russia has 'more than 50 pct' chance of joining WTO in 2010 - presidential aide: Russia has a much higher chance of joining the organization now than it did two or three years ago, Dvorkovich said during a banking conference in Moscow.
• Medvedev to verify implementation of his instructions - President Dmitry Medvedev will verify on Friday how regional governors and ministry officials fulfill his instructions. His spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said a TV link-up will be arranged to discuss a number of issues, including housing and communal problems.
• Putin to discuss concept for specially protected natural areas
• Putin calls for transition to int’l accounting standards - “Russian companies have a range of resource and processing assets abroad and that’s why we should assimilate the international standards of accounting as early as possible,” he said at a conference on the general pattern for developing the Russian oil industry.
• Governor thanks Putin for AvtoVAZ bailout
• Russian official applauds joint effort with U.S. on drug bust - A senior Drug Enforcement Administration official said almost $56 million worth of high-quality heroin was seized in the busts.
o $1 billion worth of drugs destroyed in U.S.-Russian operation in Afghanistan - The operation, during which almost 1 metric ton of heroin was destroyed, took place in a remote area near the Afghan border with Pakistan, Viktor Ivanov said during a news conference in Moscow with Deputy Head of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Russia Eric Rubin.
o Number of Afghan drug labs rises 2.5 times in two years -"The number of Afghan drug labs, discovered by the Russian Drug Control Service, has increased from 175 in 2008 to 425 in 2010. We have to acknowledge that the effectiveness of efforts to eliminate drug labs is very low," the official said.
• U.S., France Hail Medvedev Mediation on Karabakh
• Russia, Serbia agree to speed up realisation of Russian loan - Ivica Dacic and Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, declared that they agreed to speed up talks on the realisation of a Russian loan for the Serbian railway network and that according to the Free Trade Agreement between Serbia and Russia, customs tax will be revoked for producers of furniture, TVs, carpets and floor coverings.
o Jeremic: Russia endorses Serbia in international arena - Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic stated in Moscow that today’s session of the Intergovernmental Russian-Serbian Committee for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was very successful and that Russia will keep endorsing Serbia in the international arena.
o Serbia and Russia to expand cooperation in energy
• Russia carries out another successful test launch of Bulava missile - A test warhead from a Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile successfully hit its target on the Kura test range in Russia's Far East Kamchatka region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.
o Bulava test-fired successfully
o Bulava missile test failures caused by assembly problems -"Therefore, we can make a preliminary conclusion that the test launches failed because of the [missile's] assembly technology," the source said, adding that final conclusion will be made after one more test launch which is set for the year end.
o Russian Navy hopes Bulava will enter duty in September 2011 - source (Part 2)
• Russia's fleet to receive long-range frigates - The Admiral Sergey Gorshkov frigate, a forerunner of the Russian Navy, is to be launched at St.Petersburg’s shipyard today as part of a project to supply the Russian naval fleet with ships designed to execute long-range strike, anti-submarine and escort missions in far ocean zones.
• Russian sailors stranded in Vietnam turn for aid to Medvedev
• Major terror attack thwarted in Russia’s south - The head of the FSB, Aleksandr Bortnikov, told President Dmitry Medvedev that terrorists planned to strike in the city of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region.
• Medvedev closes approval rating gap on Putin - paper
o Medvedev’s Rating Matches Putin’s for First Time, Vedomosti Says - Seventy-six percent of Russians approve of Medvedev’s handling of his Kremlin role, compared to 77 percent for Putin’s work as head of the government, a difference that’s less than the margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, the Moscow-based newspaper said today, citing a national Levada Center poll.
o At Yury Luzhkov’s expense - The approval ratings of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have leveled, for the first time in the history of the Levada Center’s observations. The rise in popularity of the president could be linked to the dismissal of Moscow mayor’s, Yury Luzhkov.
England withdraws complaint from FIFA as Russia apologizes
• Moscow remembers victims of Stalin repressions - For several years now, human rights activists have been arranging the event on the eve of October 30 - Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. From 10 am to 10 pm they will be reading the names of those who were executed.
• Volcanic eruptions on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula cease, airspace open
• Warning after Russian eruptions
• Russian Press at a Glance, Friday, October 29, 2010
o A police reform bill, submitted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the lower house of parliament on October 28, has been criticized for doing nothing more than changing the name of the country's police force from 'militia' to 'police.' (Kommersant)
o The Council of Europe has recommended that Russia return to direct elections of city mayors and regional governors.(Kommersant)
o Carmaker Renault-Nissan is in talks with Russia's biggest private investment bank, Troika Dialog, on the purchase of Troika's stake in the country's largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ. The stake will allow Renault-Nissan to increase its share in AvtoVAZ to 50 percent.(Vedomosti)
o The Moscow City Court sentenced a 22-year-old Muscovite to life in jail after he was found guilty of 15 racially motivated murders.(Vremya Novostei, Kommersant)
o Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a session to outline the priorities for the development of the Russian oil sector until 2020.(Vremya Novostei, Kommersant)
o A recent survey carried out by the Levada independent polling agency shows that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoy equal popularity among Russians.(Vedomosti)
o Russia may set a new record in the export of military equipment and hardware in 2010. Total income from this year's military exports is estimated at $10 billion.(Vremya Novostei)
o Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov approved new regulations for the provision of housing to military servicemen. All officers awaiting their housing allowance were listed in a single electronic database.(Rossiiskaya Gazeta)
o New Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin put forward strategies for solving Moscow's notorious traffic problems. One solution is to increase the number of parking places in the Russian capital.(Vremya Novostei)
o Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who picked Sergei Sobyanin to replace Yury Luzhkov as Moscow's mayor last week, said he would personally oversee the effort to resolve traffic problems in the Russian capital.(Kommersant)
o The film Silent Souls (Ovsyanki) by Russian film director Alexei Fedorchenko, which was awarded the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize at the 67th Venice Film Festival, has been released in Russian movie theaters.(Kommersant)
• It’s the Gas, Stupid! - Can High Gas Prices Test the Fragility of the Warm Relations Between Russia and Ukraine?
• On the Source - Thinly Veiled Threats From the FSB Aside, WikiLeaks Still Faces Challenges in Credibly Leaking Classified Information on Russia
• MOSCOW BLOG: Shadow boxing and squawking chickens - Most people (Russians included) believe that Putin remains in full control, but if Medvedev loses all creditability as a president then he becomes useless, especially in relation to his mission to oversee the "modernisation" of the country. A better explanation of the whole Luzhkov episode then, is that Putin engineered it to shore up Medvedev's image, and restore his creditability through the next 18 months before the next presidential elections.
• Russia's bullet train a runaway success with all but rural citizens
• Have Kalashnikov - will travel: The State Duma is preparing a bill that will allow Russia’s security firms to work abroad, armed. This will allow for better protecting the interests of Russia’s businesses in conflict zones, as well as vessels from piracy, deputies say. Companies admit they can work with the Russians. Meanwhile, the work of private security companies in Iraq and Afghanistan had caused a number of scandals.
National Economic Trends
• GDP growth might equal 1.5%-2% in 2011 under pessimistic scenario – Dvorkovich
• Russia's central bank leaves its interest rates unchanged
• Russia Leaves Rates Unchanged as Recovery Stumbles (Update1)
• Russian recovery boosts Central Asia and Caucasus - IMF
• Only VTB to be privatized in 2010, official says
• Russia not to become the net-importer of grains in the current season
• RenCap: What's ruffling the rouble? - The world is searching for commodity currencies to maintain value against competitive devaluation. Fortunately, Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural resources, running a current account surplus of $60bn YtD. Yet, despite this, the rouble is about the only currency globally which has significantly depreciated against the dollar. Since 1 Aug 2010, the rouble lost 0.5% vs the dollar and 4.3% against the dual-currency basket.
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
• AvtoVAZ, Norilsk Nickel, Rosneft and Transneft: Russian Preview
• Russia Polymetal eyes $1 bln London listing-paper
• Russia's VEB plans $1 bln Eurobond in Nov –sources
• Magna Opens Kaluga Factory
• Russian service providers call Skype 'parasite'
• Danone said Thursday that it completed the sale of its 18.4 percent stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods for $470 million.(Bloomberg)
• Russia agreed to buy an additional 2 million tons of corn from Ukraine this year, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said Thursday. (Bloomberg)
• Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ Group transferred half its stake in a Montenegro bauxite mine and aluminum smelter to the local government, the company said Wednesday. (Bloomberg)
• Yandex search engine signed an agreement with Facebook to integrate posts from the social network with its front page, the two companies said Thursday. (Bloomberg)
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
• Russian govt considering proposals on privileges to oil projects
• Existing fields will sustain oil production until 2020 - Shmatko
• Extraction and refining the focus as industry mulls taxes
• Tax to fall to 2/3 of Russia oilco sales in '20-oilmin
• Putin sees oil cos drafting upgrade plans worth 780 bln rubles
• Lukoil to provide natural gas to Turkey
• Transneft may speed up Pacific oil pipeline start
Gazprom
• Naftogaz owes Gazprom $1 billion by Nov. 7 for October gas imports
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Full Text Articles
Basic Political Developments
Oct 31: Russia to move clock back by one hour
Oct 30–31: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in Russia–ASEAN summit in Hanoi, to make official visit to Vietnam
Nov 1–2: German Vice Chancellor, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to visit Moscow
Nov 5: NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen to visit Moscow
Nov 9: President Dmitry Medvedev to meet with Finnish President Tarja Halonen in Moscow
Nov 11–12: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in G20 summit in South Korea
Nov 13–14: President Dmitry Medvedev to attend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Japan
Nov 19–20: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in Russia–NATO summit in Lisbon
Dec 1–2: President Dmitry Medvedev to take part in OSCE summit in Astana
Dec 7: Russia–EU summit in Brussels
Medvedev to strengthen trust between Russia, NATO – source
00:05 29/10/2010
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will work to ensure that NATO takes Russia's views into account and to strengthen trust between Russia and the alliance at its summit next month, a Kremlin source said on Thursday.
The source said the goal is to create stronger trust to solve problems that have held back Russia-NATO cooperation.
"We are talking about equal cooperation, balanced and long-term cooperation that is dictated by state interests of Russia and NATO member countries," the source said.
He said that the attitude towards NATO remains highly skeptical due to the effects of the Cold War, but both sides are working to reduce the level of confrontation.
"We have learned and continue to learn to listen to each other," he said. "The main thing now is to learn to match strategic goals by determining of the really existing risks and hazards, responses to common threats," the source continued.
Medvedev announced last week he would attend the Russia-NATO Council summit, part of the NATO Lisbon Summit, on November 20.
Topics on the agenda will include such priorities as Euro-Atlantic security, regional conflicts, disarmament, nonproliferation, international terrorism, missile defense and arms control, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will visit Moscow on November 5 to discuss cooperation on Afghanistan, in particular expanding rail transit of NATO shipments via Russian territory and the training of Afghan anti-drug specialists.
Other topics will include "Euro-missile defense," the fight against international terrorism and sea piracy.
Western media reported earlier this month that NATO had invited Russia to attend the summit in Lisbon a bid to enhance cooperation on security issues, including Afghanistan and Iran.
MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti)
RF, US presidents to meet in Yokohama on Nov 14
29.10.2010, 10.59
WASHINGTON, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Presidents of Russia and the United States Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama will hold a bilateral meeting in the Japanese city of Yokohama on November 14 within the framework of the APEC summit. White House national security aide Ben Rhodes said this at a briefing for journalists on the threshold of the US president’s Asian tour.
Among the expected topics for discussion, Rhodes named issues of nuclear security and nuclear non-proliferation, as well as prospects for Russia’s joining the World Trade Organization. At the request of ITAR-TAS, he confirmed that Obama will inform the Russian president on the situation around the ratification of a new START treaty in the US Senate after the November elections to the Congress. As Rhodes said, they believe that the voting will be held before the end of the current year.
Medvedev and Hu meetings on Obama Asia agenda
2:33pm EDT
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders during his upcoming trip to Asia, White House officials said on Thursday.
Obama leaves on November 5 for a 10-day trip that will take him to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. He is attending a G20 summit in Seoul and an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Yokohama.
Obama will meet with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other officials in India, his first stop on the November 5-14 trip.
In Indonesia, he will meet with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on November 9, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told a news conference.
Obama will hold a bilateral meeting in Seoul on November 11 with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
He also will meet with Hu on November 11 on the sidelines of the G20 in Seoul. They will discuss the global economy, trade, North Korea, Iran and other issues. [nN28214554]
In Japan, Obama will meet with November 13 with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Australia's new prime minister, Julia Gillard, his first meeting with her since her government was sworn in last month.
"Australia's obviously one of our closest allies in the region, and the world as well," Rhodes said.
On November 14, also on the sidelines of APEC, Obama will hold a bilateral meeting with Medvedev.
"This, of course, is one of the president's closest and most active relationships with any foreign leader," Rhodes said.
He said they would discuss a range of issues, including Moscow's bid for World Trade Organization membership, and cooperation on issues like nonproliferation, nuclear security and other security issues.
The White House wants the Senate to vote on whether to ratify a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia that would result in a modest cut in both countries' new arsenals during its "lame duck" session after Tuesday's elections but before a new session convenes with newly elected members.
Opposition Republicans are expected to cut into, or even eliminate, the majorities that Obama's fellow Democrats now hold in both houses of Congress in the November 2 vote.
Obama will also hold four news conferences during the trip, one with Singh, one with Yudhoyono, one with Lee and another at the conclusion of the G20, Rhodes said.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Alister Bull; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Medvedev, Obama to meet next month in Japan
Posted: 29 October 2010 0930 hrs
MOSCOW: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart Barack Obama will hold talks on the sidelines of an APEC summit in Japan next month, the Kremlin said Thursday.
"The Russian and American presidents will have a full meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Yokohama in Japan on November 13-14," a statement said without giving further details.
The two leaders will travel to Japan after attending a Group of 20 economic summit in South Korea on November 11-12.
At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit the 21 members are expected to again talk about the tricky issue of opening up their markets to each other.
Although APEC has made little headway for years in creating a free trade zone in the dynamic Pacific Rim region, a US-backed initiative that started five years ago with a group of small economies is gaining momentum.
Obama will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in South Korea on November 11 ahead of the G20 summit as Sino-US economic tensions flare and territorial rows fester between Beijing and its neighbours.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said that Obama's relationship with Medvedev was one of the "closest and most active" with any foreign leader.
"They'll have an opportunity to discuss a number of issues, including the progress that's been made recently in terms of US support for Russia's entry into the WTO, as well as our ongoing cooperation on issues like non-proliferation, nuclear security, and other security issues," Rhodes said.
-AFP/wk
Source: Moscow won't negotiate Medvedev's trip to Kurils with Tokyo
Today at 09:27 | Interfax-Ukraine
Russia is not obliged to negotiate President Dmitry Medvedev's trips to Russian regions with anyone ahead of his visits to foreign countries, a Kremlin source told Interfax.
This comment was made in the wake of claims that Medvedev's trip to the Kuril Islands ahead of his upcoming visit to Japan will arouse a robust reaction in Japan.
"Do we have to ask Poland for permission to visit the Kaliningrad region? This is ludicrous, and also humiliating for residents of Russia," the source said.
"Does this mean we must fly to Saratov region after a visit to Kazakhstan? What's the link?" he said.
Read more:
Komorowski hopes for dynamic relations with Russia
29.10.2010, 02.03
WARSAW, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski expressed hope at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday that bilateral relations will continue to dynamically develop.
“Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed the intention of the Russian president to develop strategic and partnership relations with Poland and… assured that Russia is open in the investigation of the plane crash near Smolensk” that killed President Lech Kaczynski, Komorowski’s office said.
“Komorowski expressed gratitude for Russian assistance to the pilgrimage of the relatives of the killed to Smolensk and Katyn on October 10 and the participation of the wife of the Russian president in the event. Full disclosure of Katyn documents and their transfer to the Polish side are key for the process of Polish-Russian reconciliation,” the office said.
“Both politicians stressed the significance of public dialogue, specifically youth exchanges between the countries, and welcomed further initiatives in the sphere,” it added.
Russia's Medvedev to visit Poland by yearend – presidential aide
03:00 29/10/2010
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will pay an official visit to Poland by the end of this year, a Russian presidential aide said.
"I confirm that intensive preparations for the visit are underway upon an order from the president. The visit has been long planned and is very necessary for our bilateral relations," Sergei Prikhodko said.
"We would like for the visit to take place by the yearend," he said adding that the date would be officially announced later.
Some experts say that Russian-Polish relations, which deteriorated during Lech Kaczynski's presidency over a range of historical disputes, are likely to improve under President Bronislaw Komorowski.
Following Komorowski's victory in early elections called after Kaczynski's death in a plane crash in western Russia in April this year, Medvedev pledged to continue "regular dialogue to expand all-embracing cooperation between Russia and Poland."
Lavrov, Medvedev, Putin... in Poland?
Agnes Sekowski | 28th October 2010
The Russian power trio is separately descending on Warsaw
Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Warsaw for the third time this year. His main aim is to prepare for the visit of Russian President Medvedev on 6 December this year. His agenda is packed full with discussions on a variety of topics and a meeting with President Bronisław Komorowski and Speaker of the Senate Bogdan Borusewicz.
His first agenda item will be to rendezvous with the Polish-Russian Committee for Strategic Cooperation. A Polish diplomat told Gazeta Wyborcza that the Committee seeks approval for open air space above Siberia for Polish planes flying to the Far East, an increase in shipments to Kaliningrad through the port in Gdynia, to initiate a limited no-visa travel zone between the Russian enclave and two bordering Polish voivodships, to expand an existing but meagre student exchange program between the two countries, and to create a Polish-Russian Centre for Dialog and Understanding (which is ready to start functioning as an institution on the Polish side).
Lavrov will then meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski to discuss historic issues. Topping that list, as anyone might have guessed, is the disclosure of all the materials related to the Russian investigation into the Katyń massacre by NKVD officers. The Polish side hopes to accomplish this during or prior to Medvedev’s visit in December. Poland also hopes to discuss the exchange of post-Soviet property between the two countries. Wrapping up the talks is a discussion of Russia’s opinion on NATO’s current strategy, or more specifically, its aims to constructively engage Russia while alleviating growing concerns of certain Baltic members.
Medvedev’s Three Point Agenda
The three cornerstones of Russia’s presidential visit include historic, economic, and political aims. As mentioned previously, Poland will ask for the remaining 96 of 183 Katyń documents to be released, in order to close the case on the investigation and rehabilitation of Polish officers killed there. These include some of the most important documents explaining why the Russian investigation suddenly came to a halt six years ago, which remain classified. The economic leg of the agenda will follow up on a Polish-Russian business forum set to take place before 6 December.
Some might say the most ambitious goal of the meeting rests in the political sphere. The Polish-Russian Forum of Experts, including social activists, artists, and intellectuals, has established itself as an active force in both countries over the last few years. Poland will now try to convince Russia that the Polish-Russian Forum should join forces with the Russian-German Petersburg Dialog (a forum of Berlin and Moscow elites), changing both from two-way to trilateral assemblies.
Putin’s Surprise Appearance?
To add to the excitement, there are rumors that Vladimir Putin is to arrive in Warsaw today, most probably to attend negotiations and the signing of a gas agreement between Poland and Russia. However, official sources on either side have not confirmed this rumor. Instead, Gazeta Wyborcza was told by the head of the Russian Press Offices that Putin is in Samara today, but his closest associate, Igor Sechin, is scheduled to arrive in Warsaw on Friday.
Klaus to attend prize-giving ceremony in Moscow
ČTK |
29 October 2010
Prague/Moscow, Oct 27 (CTK) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus will pay a visit to Moscow on November 11 to deliver a speech on the occasion of awarding a prize for foreign investments in Russia, the Presidential Office announced Wednesday.
According to diplomats, Klaus is to be the most prominent guest to the ceremony, but they did not elaborate. This is to be Klaus's private trip.
The Award for Excellence is annually given by the Alfa-Bank along with the Oxford Said Business School to the foreign companies successfully conducting business in Russia.
Alfa-Bank is one of the most important private financial institutions in Russia.
Klaus travels to Russia quite often. He was the most recently to Moscow during the May Victory celebrations when he dismissed the perception of Russia as a threat to Czech security.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Prague this April when he and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama signed a new disarmament treaty there.
Next year, Medvedev may visit the Czech Republic again. Along with Klaus, he is to open an exhibition of the Kremlin collections at the Prague Castle.
Klaus is a proponent of intensive relations with Russia.
Copyright 2009 by the Czech News Agency (ČTK). All rights reserved.
Russia has 'more than 50 pct' chance of joining WTO in 2010 - presidential aide
11:42 29/10/2010
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russian presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich said on Friday that Russia has more than a 50 percent chance of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2011.
Russia has a much higher chance of joining the organization now than it did two or three years ago, Dvorkovich said during a banking conference in Moscow.
Russia, which is the only major economy outside the global trade body, has been seeking WTO membership for 17 years, although the accession process usually takes from five to seven years.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama confirmed on October 1 that bilateral talks on Russia's accession to the organization are complete, which opens the way for Russia's membership.
Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin then said that preparations for Russia's accession to the WTO will take from two to four months, after which the accession procedure will begin.
Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, estimated earlier this month that Russia may join the organziation within a year.
Earlier, Russian officials projected that Russia would become a WTO member by January 1, 2011.
Medvedev has admitted that Russia still has problems with the protection of intellectual property rights, a major impediment to WTO accession, but says tackling this issue is a priority for the Russian government.
Medvedev to verify implementation of his instructions
29.10.2010, 05.30
MOSCOW, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- President Dmitry Medvedev will verify on Friday how regional governors and ministry officials fulfill his instructions. His spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said a TV link-up will be arranged to discuss a number of issues, including housing and communal problems.
Medvedev held the first such conference in March and promised to hold them every quarter.
Head of the Kremlin control department Konstantin Chuichenko said in summer the number of presidential instructions fulfilled on time increased to 68 percent in the first five months of the year. “Earlier it was every sixth instruction, now it is every fifth,” he said.
Chuichenko said the number of presidential instructions grew 40 percent in January-May and comprised 2602.
However Chuicheko said in some cases the implementation of the instructions “leaves much to be desired” and the president demanded a list of violators.
Putin to discuss concept for specially protected natural areas
29.10.2010, 06.04
MOSCOW, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will chair a meeting on Friday to discuss the concept for the development of specially protected natural territories.
The concept drafted by the Natural Resources Ministry calls to increase the number of nature reserves and national parks, develop educational tourism and raise ecological awareness, and mount protection of the territories, the government press service said.
Putin discussed the issue in detail during his visit to the famous Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka which was badly hit by a massive mudslide in 2007.
The 2011 federal draft budget appropriates 1.5 billion rubles more for the development of specially protected natural territories against 2010.
Putin calls for transition to int’l accounting standards
29.10.2010, 00.00
NOVOKUIBYSHEVSK, Samara region (Itar-Tass) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin believes it is necessary to change over to the international standards of accounting and financial reporting.
“Russian companies have a range of resource and processing assets abroad and that’s why we should assimilate the international standards of accounting as early as possible,” he said at a conference on the general pattern for developing the Russian oil industry.
He indicated that the Russian oil sector has long become a part of the global energy resource industry, and “about 25% of shareholding capitals in it belongs to foreign investors.”
Governor thanks Putin for AvtoVAZ bailout
29.10.2010, 01.02
NOVOKUIBYSHEVSK, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- The governor of Samara region on the Volga, where the main Russian car maker AvtoVAZ is located, thanked Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday for multi-billion ruble bailout of the enterprise during economic crisis.
“AvtoVAZ is the cornerstone of the national car industry. (Federal government) support to AvtoVAZ played a major role in regional economic recovery in general,” Vladimir Artyakov told the prime minister.
This year AvtoVAZ will increase the output to 600 thousand vehicles and will begin to modernize production, according to the governor.
The economic crisis forced the car maker to radically cut the workforce. Artyakov said the total number of AvtoVAZ employees in the region fell from 102 thousand to 70 thousand.
Russian official applauds joint effort with U.S. on drug bust
From Mathew Chance, CNN
October 29, 2010 -- Updated 0816 GMT (1616 HKT)
Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- This week's multimillion dollar drug bust in Afghanistan is good evidence that the reset of U.S. and Russian relations has started, the head of Russia's drug control agency said Friday.
The Thursday morning raids of four drug laboratories was conducted by the DEA, the Department of Defense, NATO, the Afghanistan Ministry of Interior and the Russian drug control agency.
A senior Drug Enforcement Administration official said almost $56 million worth of high-quality heroin was seized in the busts.
Victor Ivanov, the head of Russia's federal drug control agency, said the figure could be higher and said drugs worth an estimated quarter billion dollars were confiscated or destroyed in the operation.
At a news conference Friday, Ivanov said the operation was the first time Russia had deployed military personnel to work with U.S. troops in Afghanistan since Russia withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.
$1 billion worth of drugs destroyed in U.S.-Russian operation in Afghanistan
11:55 29/10/2010
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russian and U.S. drug control services have carried out their first joint anti-narcotics operation in Afghanistan, destroying drugs supplies worth more than $1 billion, the head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said on Friday.
The operation, during which almost 1 metric ton of heroin was destroyed, took place in a remote area near the Afghan border with Pakistan, Viktor Ivanov said during a news conference in Moscow with Deputy Head of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Russia Eric Rubin.
"As a result of this operation, four drug laboratories were eliminated. Three of them were heroin laboratories, and one was a morphine laboratory," Ivanov said.
The destroyed stashes were enough for 200 doses of heroine, he added.
Ivanov praised joint efforts by Russian and U.S. anti-drug services and said the effective work of a Russian-U.S. presidential commission in the sphere of drug trafficking was a good example of a "reset" in relations between the two countries.
Rubin also praised the results of the operation.
"This investigation is a very concrete example of real cooperation," he said. "We cannot succeed alone."
However, Ivanov also admitted that "drug infrastructure in Afghanistan in expanding."
He said the number of drug laboratories in the country has increased by almost 2.5 times in the past two years, from 175 in 2008 to 425 in 2010.
Earlier in the day, Ivanov told RIA Novosti "we have to acknowledge that the effectiveness of efforts to eliminate drug labs is very low."
Afghan drug production increased dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001, and Russia has been one of the most affected countries, with heroin consumption rising steeply.
An estimated 90 percent of heroin consumed in Russia is trafficked from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Number of Afghan drug labs rises 2.5 times in two years
11:01 29/10/2010
The number of drug laboratories in Afghanistan has increased by almost 2.5 times in the past two years, a Russian Drug Control Service official said on Friday.
"The number of Afghan drug labs, discovered by the Russian Drug Control Service, has increased from 175 in 2008 to 425 in 2010. We have to acknowledge that the effectiveness of efforts to eliminate drug labs is very low," the official said.
"In 2009, 245,000 Afghan families were involved in cultivating opium poppies, now the figure is as high as 248,000 families," he said, adding that this constituted 6.4 percent of the Afghan population.
Drug trafficking is a major source of income for Afghanistan's impoverished rural population, and also for its militants. The country produces a total of 90 percent of the world's opium.
Afghan drug production increased dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001, and Russia has been one of the most affected countries, with heroin consumption rising steeply.
An estimated 90 percent of heroin consumed in Russia is trafficked from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Moscow has repeatedly criticized U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan for failing to eradicate heroin production and warned that drug trafficking is endangering Russia's national security.
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
U.S., France Hail Medvedev Mediation on Karabakh
29.10.2010
Officials in Washington and Paris have hailed the latest efforts by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Karabakh peace process to broker an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the exchange of prisoners of war and bodies of soldiers killed in recent clashes.
Medevdev hosted the latest round of talks between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev in Astrakhan, southern Russia, on Wednesday. The meeting resulted in a joint declaration in which the sides agreed on the need for confidence-building measures, including a POWs and human remains swap “with the assistance of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs and the International Committee of the Red Cross.”
At a press briefing in Washington on Thursday U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley welcomed the 27 October joint statement by the presidents as a ‘positive development’.
“We appreciate President [Dmitry] Medvedev’s personal efforts to reach this agreement, which aims to build confidence between the parties and to strengthen the 1994 ceasefire,” said Crowley. “This joint statement represents a positive development in the ongoing OSCE Minsk Group process to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh and we look forward to seeing its implementation as soon as possible.”
France, the other OSCE Minsk Group co-chair state, also welcomed the declaration signed through Moscow’s mediation.
“The measures set out in the resolution adopted in Astrakhan can help to reduce tension and violations of the ceasefire, which have become frequent in past months. Therefore, France expects them to be executed immediately,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Early reactions from Yerevan about the declaration were also mostly positive amid cautious optimism about the future of peace talks.
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian called the meeting in Astrakhan “useful and important” in a statement.
Internationally mediated talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been ongoing since 1994 when an uneasy ceasefire brokered by Russia was signed between the warring parties in Karabakh to end nearly three years of hostilities.
By that time some 30,000 people had been killed in the conflict and hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced.
Skirmishes along the line of contact between the Karabakh-Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces intensified in recent months amid a faltering peace process.
Russia, Serbia agree to speed up realisation of Russian loan
29. October 2010. | 07:39
Source: Emg.rs
Ivica Dacic and Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, declared that they agreed to speed up talks on the realisation of a Russian loan for the Serbian railway network and that according to the Free Trade Agreement between Serbia and Russia, customs tax will be revoked for producers of furniture, TVs, carpets and floor coverings.
The Co-chairmen of the Intergovernmental Russian-Serbian Committee for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic and Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, stated in Moscow yesterday that the Committee meeting was successful and that there is great potential for cooperation in many sectors.
Following the meeting, Dacic declared that they agreed to speed up talks on the realisation of a Russian loan for the Serbian railway network and that according to the Free Trade Agreement between Serbia and Russia, customs tax will be revoked for producers of furniture, TVs, carpets and floor coverings.
As for the Russian loan, agreed upon by the Russian and Serbian Presidents, Dmitri Medvedev and Boris Tadic, Dacic underlined that everything has been arranged and that over the next several months all projects will be completed. So far only $200 million has been used of the total amount of $1 billion, he added.
Serbia is interested in investing these funds in railway infrastructure, specifically the construction of a Belgrade railway hub and the Valjevo–Loznica railway, Dacic recalled.
It has been agreed with Russian representatives to accelerate works on the reconstruction of the Djerdap 1 power plant, as part of the settlement of a clearing debt of the former Soviet Union to Serbia, he noted.
Overall and political relations between Serbia and Russia are exceptional, Dacic remarked, noting that their economic cooperation could be raised to a higher level.
Implementation of the energy agreement is very important for Serbia and we want it to continue. The Serbian oil industry Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) is doing well and may become a leader in this sector in south-eastern Europe.
As previously agreed, we are working on the realisation of the South Stream project, and Srbijagas and Gazprom are cooperating on the construction of the underground gas storage facility in Banatski Dvor and other projects.
Dacic recalled that Serbia signed a Free Trade Agreement with Russia and that in line with it, more customs tax is being revoked every year. This year, the customs tax will be revoked for producers of furniture, TVs, carpets and floor coverings.
He recalled that in the meantime, a similar agreement was signed between Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia, which means that Serbia now has a free trade agreement with a market of over 800 million people.
These countries include the EU, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Turkey, CEFTA and EFTA countries and others, Dacic remarked, noting that there is a possibility of Serbian and Russian companies cooperating in third markets.
In the first eight months of 2010 foreign trade between Serbia and Russia stood at $1.7 billion, Dacic observed, adding that this year’s trade volume will exceed last year’s and will double in the years to come.
It was also agreed at the meeting to conclude the formation of a regional humanitarian centre for response in emergency situations, which is to be set up in Nis.
The Serbian delegation in Moscow also included Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic, Minister of Energy and Mining Petar Skundric and Minister of Infrastructure Milutin Mrkonjic.
Jeremic: Russia endorses Serbia in international arena
29. October 2010. | 07:52
Source: Emg.rs
Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic stated in Moscow that today’s session of the Intergovernmental Russian-Serbian Committee for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was very successful and that Russia will keep endorsing Serbia in the international arena.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic stated in Moscow that today’s session of the Intergovernmental Russian-Serbian Committee for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was very successful and that Russia will keep endorsing Serbia in the international arena.
Jeremic underlined that Russia is one of Serbia’s four pillars of foreign policy and one of its closest allies in the world, stressing that their political relations are outstanding.
There are no unresolved issues between us and Russia will keep supporting us in the international arena regarding all issues for which we need its endorsement, Jeremic remarked.
He noted that the session of the Intergovernmental Committee went extremely well, which will help to bolster the cooperation between the two countries.
Jeremic is in Moscow as part of a Serbian delegation, led by First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic.
He will also meet with a Special Representative of the Russian President Georgy Poltavchenko and President of the State Duma Committee for Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachov.
Serbia and Russia to expand cooperation in energy
Michael Roberts - 29.10.2010
Minister of Energy and Mining Petar Skundric stated ,following a meeting of the Intergovernmental Russian-Serbian Committee for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation that there is a need to expand cooperation between Serbia and Russia in energy.
Skundric outlined that it was agreed to step up cooperation on the realisation of projects in the energy sector, as part of the oil and gas agreement between Serbia and Russia.
He observed that the Intergovernmental Committee has endorsed the proposal to speed up the overhaul of the sixth generating unit in the Djerdap 1 hydroelectric power plant in order to complete the renovation of the remaining five units on time.
The Minister remarked that the Committee declared that the reconstruction of the oil industry of Serbia NIS is going as planned, as well as the South Stream project and the construction of the Banatski Dvor underground gas storage facility.
Source Serbian Government
Russia carries out another successful test launch of Bulava missile
06:44 29/10/2010
A test warhead from a Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile successfully hit its target on the Kura test range in Russia's Far East Kamchatka region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.
The missile was fired from underwater from the Dmitry Donskoy nuclear-powered submarine in the White Sea at 5:10 Moscow time (1:10 GMT).
This was the 14th test launch of the Russian ballistic missile. Seven of the previous test launches failed due to various technical reasons.
The previous test launch of the Bulava ballistic missile was carried out on October 7 and was also successful.
The Russian military expects the Bulava, along with Topol-M land-based ballistic missiles, to become the core of Russia's nuclear triad.
The Bulava (SS-NX-30) SLBM carries up to 10 MIRV warheads and has a range of over 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles). The three-stage ballistic missile is designed for deployment on Borey-class nuclear-powered submarines.
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
Bulava test-fired successfully
29.10.2010, 08.55
MOSCOW, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- The 14th test firing of a Bulava sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missile was successful. The warheads reached the Kura ground on Kamchatka at the planned time on Friday.
On October 29, at 05:10 Moscow time, the heavy strategic-purpose nuclear-powered missile submarine cruiser Dmitry Donskoi under the command of Captain Oleg Tsybin carried out the successful launch of the latest ballistic missile Bulava from the White Sea area. The missile was launched from the underwater position in accordance with the state missile test programme. The trajectory was followed as planned. The warheads were delivered to the planned area of the Kura range on Kamchatka, a source at the Russian Defence Ministry's press service and information department told Itar-Tass.
Bulava missile test failures caused by assembly problems
12:01 29/10/2010
The second successful test launch in a row of a Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile has proved out that poor assembly technology is likely to be the reason for the previous failed tests, a source from the state commission overhauling production system of the missile said.
A test warhead from a Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile successfully hit its target on the Kura test range in Russia's Far East Kamchatka region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.
This was the 14th test launch of the Bulava missile. Seven of the previous test launches failed for various technical reasons.
Three samples of the troubled Bulava missile where built in order to establish the reasons for the failures of previous Bulava test launches, and a state commission has overhauled the whole production system of the missile.
"Therefore, we can make a preliminary conclusion that the test launches failed because of the [missile's] assembly technology," the source said, adding that final conclusion will be made after one more test launch which is set for the year end.
"Immediately after the Dmitry Donskoy submarine [which conducted the last test launch] returns to its base, the commission will examine the data from the 14th launch and will schedule the date of the next, 15th launch," the source said.
"This will be the last test launch in 2010."
The Russian military expects the Bulava, along with Topol-M land-based ballistic missiles, to become the core of Russia's nuclear triad.
The Bulava (SS-NX-30) SLBM carries up to 10 MIRV warheads and has a range of over 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles). The three-stage ballistic missile is designed for deployment on Borey-class nuclear submarines.
The ballistic missile will enter service when it is 98-99% efficient, Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin said on October 26.
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
October 29, 2010 11:56
Russian Navy hopes Bulava will enter duty in September 2011 - source (Part 2)
MOSCOW. Oct 29 (Interfax-AVN) - The new strategic missile system Bulava may enter duty in the second half of 2011, a source in the Russia Navy's Main Headquarters told Interfax on Friday.
"The two previous successful Bulava test launches inspire the hope that the testing program will have been completed by August 2011 and that the missile system will enter duty in September," the source said.
In the estimate of the Navy's Main Command, the Bulava system's previous failures were over a flawed assembling technology, not missile design, he said.
"The measures taken by the Defense Ministry and the industry to tighten control over Bulava production have brought about positive results," the source said.
"The Bulava's full-scale serial production and its delivery to the advanced nuclear submarines of Project 955 Borei, have been set for the end of 2011," he said.
"The lead submarine of this project, the Yury Dolgoruky, is to go through the final stage in the trials on November 12, and it is prepared already to accept the new missile system," the source said.
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Russia's fleet to receive long-range frigates
|Oct 29, 2010 09:54 Moscow Time |
| | |
The Admiral Sergey Gorshkov frigate, a forerunner of the Russian Navy, is to be launched at St.Petersburg’s shipyard today as part of a project to supply the Russian naval fleet with ships designed to execute long-range strike, anti-submarine and escort missions in far ocean zones.
The Admiral Sergey Gorshkov is Russia’s first long-range frigate to set sail after a 15-year break.
Long-range frigates are to go into service in 2011.
Russian sailors stranded in Vietnam turn for aid to Medvedev
10:16 29/10/2010
Seven Russian sailors from the Phu Hai-1 ship who are stranded in Vietnam because of a months-long delay in salary arrears have turned to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to help them receive their pay and return home.
The sailors also said they would go on a hunger strike starting Monday, Nikolai Sukhanov, chairman of the Russian Sailors' Trade Union said.
The vessel is docked in the port of Vung Tau in southern Vietnam. The company's management is not fulfilling its contract obligations and the sailors have not received their salaries for a period of between five months to two years.
The fishing vessel's crew said in a statement that a "long-term absence of financing" made them "involuntary hostages of the company" and that their relatives "have been left without sustenance."
The vessel belongs to Antel Investments Ltd., according to the sailors. The company's president and cofounder live in Moscow.
VLADIVOSTOK, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
Major terror attack thwarted in Russia’s south
28 October, 2010, 21:18
Russia's Security forces have thwarted a major terror attack in the country's south.
The head of the FSB, Aleksandr Bortnikov, told President Dmitry Medvedev that terrorists planned to strike in the city of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region.
“On Tuesday a group of militants planned to carry out a terror act in Pyatigorsk,” Bortnikov said.
“During the special operation two of them were killed and four of them arrested,” he added. “More than 200 kilograms of explosives were seized. Essentially a makeshift explosives lab was found. This group is linked to the August blast in Pyatigorsk.”
The August terror attack left some 30 people injured when a car exploded outside a cafe on a busy street.
The attack is believed to have been organized by Chechen terrorist Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the Moscow metro bombings in March that killed 40.
Umarov is thought to have links to Al Qaeda and is wanted for terrorism in Russia and abroad.
Medvedev closes approval rating gap on Putin - paper
09:52 29/10/2010
The approval ratings of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are almost level for the first time in history, possibly as a result of the recent sacking of long-standing Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the Vedemosti papersaid on Friday.
Medvedev's approval rating has grown 3 percent since September to 76, while Putin's remains at 77, according to a survey of 1600 people, conducted by the Levada Center.
After holding the presidential post for two terms from 2000 - 2008, Putin picked Medvedev as his successor and took the position of prime minister for himself.
Medvedev, who has faced criticism for being "all talk and no action," showed off his presidential powers in late September by sacking Luzhkov after the two had a series of disagreements.
"Medvedev has been far more active recently than Putin and has done things that the public wanted, such as firing Moscow's mayor, attempting to reform the police and fighting corruption," Deputy Director of the Levada Center Aleksey Grazhdankin said.
The gap in which figure the public would vote for in a presidential election has also tightened, with 24 percent supporting Putin and 21 percent backing Medvedev. Previously there has always been a 9-11 percent difference.
"A general trend can be noted in the approval ratings of the two leaders: during 'peaceful times,' when there are no terrorist attacks or armed conflicts, people ascribe more qualities to Medvedev, but in extreme situations, they ascribe them to Putin," Grazhdankin said.
Putin and Medvedev have hinted that one of them, but not both, will run in Russia's 2012 presidential elections. Whoever wins, will be in office for 12 years, as a result of the extension of the presidential term.
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
Medvedev’s Rating Matches Putin’s for First Time, Vedomosti Says
By Paul Abelsky
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s approval rating reached a statistical tie with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s for the first time after the ouster of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Vedomosti reported.
Seventy-six percent of Russians approve of Medvedev’s handling of his Kremlin role, compared to 77 percent for Putin’s work as head of the government, a difference that’s less than the margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, the Moscow-based newspaper said today, citing a national Levada Center poll.
Putin’s lead over Medvedev averaged 5 points to 6 points last year, Vedomosti said. Twenty-four percent of respondents said they’d vote for Putin if presidential elections were held today, versus 21 percent for Medvedev, according to the survey, which was conducted Oct. 22-25. Putin’s lead on the presidential question varied between 9 percent and 11 percent until now, Vedomosti said.
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Last Updated: October 29, 2010 00:35 EDT
At Yury Luzhkov’s expense
The approval ratings of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have leveled, for the first time in the history of the Levada Center’s observations. The rise in popularity of the president could be linked to the dismissal of Moscow mayor’s, Yury Luzhkov.
By Maksim Glikin and Natalia Kostenko
The approval rating of the work of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has almost leveled with the rating of the chairman of the government, Vladimir Putin, according to the latest survey conducted by the Levada Center (on October 22-25, 1,600 people were surveyed). The president is approved by 76% of the population, and the prime minister by 77%; their work is disapproved by 22% and 20%, respectively: the difference is smaller than the error margin (3.5%).
Read more
The gap has narrowed due to a rise in Medvedev’s ratings: in September it was 73%, and Putin’s rating was the same as today, 77%. In 2009, Putin was ahead of Medvedev by 5-6%.
The gap in the conditional election ratings of the president and the chairman of the government has also narrowed to the margin of error: in October, to the question of who the respondent would vote for in the presidential election, 24% said Putin and 21% Medvedev. Until now, the gap between the two Russian leaders equaled 9-11%.
The reason for this is most likely the fact that the types of Medvedev’s acts that have recently been covered in the media are those that meet the expectations of the Russian citizens, says Aleksey Grazhdankin, deputy director of Levada Center. They include Medvedev’s dismissal of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, police reform, and the fight against corruption in general – all of which has been covered in the news. The public associates the last point more with Medvedev than with Putin, says the sociologist.
However, as to the question of what type of president Russia needs, respondents most often answer as follows: a leader capable of directing the work of the state bodies with a firm hand (51%); and the less common answer (39%), a leader capable of working with all social and political forces, including the opposition.
Whether or not the leveling in the ratings of the Russian leaders is a stable trend could be determined in only three months, says Grazhdankin. For now, only one thing is clear: in “peaceful times,” when there are no loud terrorist attacks and armed conflicts, qualities which the public attributes to Medvedev are more in demand, and in extreme conditions the public seeks qualities which it attributes to Putin. Thus, the current period could be considered a time of peace.
One official from the Presidential Administration believes that the rise in support for Medvedev is linked to the fact that in recent months, the president started to actively address issues that closely affect the population: food prices, utility tariffs and pensions.
In June, while speaking at Stanford University, Medvedev named two conditions under which he would agree to run for a second term: “If the plans which I had formulated begin to be realized, and if I have the people’s support.”
Certainly, ratings should be monitored so as to understand the public’s assessment of the president’s actions, but completing the set tasks is no less important, Medvedev’s press secretary, Natalia Timakova, commented on the Levada Center’s findings.
“The biggest mistake would be to subject the current work to the interests of the future election campaigns,” Putin responded when asked last December whether he follows the ratings. The prime minister promised to make his decision regarding the 2012 election in accordance with the efficiency of his and Medvedev’s work.
Medvedev, who was initially perceived as a dependent figure, is starting to establish his own personality, says Evgeny Minchenko, a political scientist. Luzhkov’s dismissal has demonstrated his strength and decisiveness; the president more frequently communicates with the people regarding the questions that concern them, just as the prime minister does. Moreover, Medvedev has simply held the highest position for a fairly long time. When it is time to decide on the 2012 question, Medvedev’s high ranking could tilt the balance toward his second term, concludes the political scientist.
The opinion surveys are taken into consideration by the government, says Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, but the question of how they will be considered when deciding on who will run in the 2012 election is premature.
According to a person close to the Presidential Administration, there are several “parties” that exist within the elite which have varying ways of solving the 2012 problem: Putin returns to the presidential post; Medvedev gets reelected, and Putin retreats completely; the tandem remains as is. The last option is the most popular, says Vedomosti’s interlocutor. Liberal Medvedev is well perceived in the West, which unties the hands of Putin and his entourage in domestic affairs.
Read the article on the newspaper's website
England withdraws complaint from FIFA as Russia apologizes
04:16 29/10/2010
England's 2018 World Cup bid team withdrew its complaint from FIFA against rivals Russia after the Russian side apologized for disparaging comments about London, Reuters reported on Friday.
England's bid team lodged the complaint with FIFA on Tuesday after Russia 2018 chief executive Andrei Sorokin was quoted as saying that England had the "highest crime rate" and the "highest level of alcohol consumption among young people."
Sorokin later said his comments were lost in translation. On Thursday, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko officially apologized for the row.
"Mr. Mutko approached the England 2018 bid team with a genuine apology in an honorable manner. We of course accepted this apology and appreciate the gesture. We now wish to move on from this matter," a statement from England's bid team said.
FIFA has strict guidelines for bidding candidates that outlaw any criticism of opponents.
Apart from England and Russia, joint bids by Spain and Portugal and Belgium and the Netherlands are also in the running.
Under a FIFA rotation policy, the 2018 event will most likely be held in Europe, with Russia a serious contender after the Kremlin pledged billions of dollars for infrastructure work ahead of the tournament. England last hosted the World Cup in 1966.
FIFA will appoint hosts for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on December 2.
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)
Moscow remembers victims of Stalin repressions
Oct 29, 2010 04:00 Moscow Time
Moscow today remembers victims of Stalinist repressions.
The action is organized by the Memorial society, and is held at Solovetsky stone on Lubyanka Square.
For several years now, human rights activists have been arranging the event on the eve of October 30 - Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. From 10 am to 10 pm they will be reading the names of those who were executed.
On this day people bring to Lubyanka Square flowers, candles and photos of victims of the Stalin purges. According to Memorial, in 1937-1938 alone over 30 thousand people were executed in Moscow.
Volcanic eruptions on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula cease, airspace open
By Associated Press
2:09 a.m. CDT, October 29, 2010
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's Emergencies Ministry says two volcanoes that erupted on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, forcing flight diversions and blanketing a town with dust, have all but ceased spewing ash.
Ash clouds from the remote volcanoes that erupted Thursday billowed up to 33,000 feet (10 kilometers) and had spread east across the Pacific Ocean, officials said.
The ministry's website reported Friday that insignificant amounts of dust coming out of Eurasia's highest active volcano, the Klyuchevskaya Sopka, while the Shiveluch volcano, 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast, had ceased all activity.
Visibility in the region is restored to 7 miles (10 kilometers) and no flights are being diverted, the website said.
It added that nearby schools and kindergartens remain closed due to ash buildup.
Warning after Russian eruptions
(UKPA) – 8 minutes ago
Two volcanoes have erupted on Russia's far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, tossing massive ash clouds miles into the air, forcing flights to divert and blanketing one town with thick, heavy ash.
The Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Eurasia's highest active volcano, exploded on Thursday along with the Shiveluch volcano, 45 miles to the north east, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's branch in Kamchatka said, adding that flights in the area had to change course.
Ash clouds from the remote volcanoes billowed up to 33,000ft and were spreading east across the Pacific Ocean, vulcanologist Sergei Senyukov told Rossiya 24 television. Streams of lava flowed down the slopes of Shiveluch.
Russian Press at a Glance, Friday, October 29, 2010
08:33 29/10/2010
POLITICS
A police reform bill, submitted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the lower house of parliament on October 28, has been criticized for doing nothing more than changing the name of the country's police force from 'militia' to 'police.' (Kommersant)
The Council of Europe has recommended that Russia return to direct elections of city mayors and regional governors.
(Kommersant)
BUSINESS
Carmaker Renault-Nissan is in talks with Russia's biggest private investment bank, Troika Dialog, on the purchase of Troika's stake in the country's largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ. The stake will allow Renault-Nissan to increase its share in AvtoVAZ to 50 percent.
(Vedomosti)
CRIME
The Moscow City Court sentenced a 22-year-old Muscovite to life in jail after he was found guilty of 15 racially motivated murders.
(Vremya Novostei, Kommersant)
OIL & GAS
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a session to outline the priorities for the development of the Russian oil sector until 2020.
(Vremya Novostei, Kommersant)
SOCIETY
A recent survey carried out by the Levada independent polling agency shows that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoy equal popularity among Russians.
(Vedomosti)
DEFENSE
Russia may set a new record in the export of military equipment and hardware in 2010. Total income from this year's military exports is estimated at $10 billion.
(Vremya Novostei)
Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov approved new regulations for the provision of housing to military servicemen. All officers awaiting their housing allowance were listed in a single electronic database.
(Rossiiskaya Gazeta)
MOSCOW
New Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin put forward strategies for solving Moscow's notorious traffic problems. One solution is to increase the number of parking places in the Russian capital.
(Vremya Novostei)
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who picked Sergei Sobyanin to replace Yury Luzhkov as Moscow's mayor last week, said he would personally oversee the effort to resolve traffic problems in the Russian capital.
(Kommersant)
CULTURE
The film Silent Souls (Ovsyanki) by Russian film director Alexei Fedorchenko, which was awarded the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize at the 67th Venice Film Festival, has been released in Russian movie theaters.
(Kommersant)
October 28, 2010
It’s the Gas, Stupid!
By Tai Adelaja
Russia Profile
Can High Gas Prices Test the Fragility of the Warm Relations Between Russia and Ukraine?
Despite attempts by officials to put positive spin on the latest trends in Russian-Ukrainian relations, one nagging question continues to rear its ugly head: can Ukraine get cheaper gas from Russia and can Russia get cheaper gas transit through Ukraine? Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, delivers about 80 percent of Russian gas exports to Europe through Ukraine, and Russia has long said that it wants a stake in Ukraine's pipeline system. Ukraine, which also depends heavily on Russian gas imports for its own consumption, wants Russia to decrease the price it charges for gas supplies.
Gas issues were conspicuous again during a one-day working visit by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Ukraine on Wednesday. On the eve of Putin's visit Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov once again questioned the legality of gas trade agreements entered into by the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and called for their revision. “We are talking about bilateral relations and the fact that the agreement that the previous government signed with our Russian counterparts is unfair and should be revised,” Azarov told Bloomberg earlier this month in Brussels. “Definitely Russia doesn’t want to revise it,” Azarov said. “The question is why. The answer is, perhaps, because it’s profitable for them. Why do we want to revise it? Because we believe this is an unprofitable agreement for us.”
Ukraine and Russia signed a ten-year agreement on gas supplies in January 2009 after a price dispute between the two neighbors left the European Union without fuel for two weeks amid freezing temperatures. In April, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to cut the price Russia charges Ukraine by $100 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas. In return, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych agreed to extend Russia’s lease on a naval port in the Black Sea. But according to Troika Dialog analysts, while European customers paid an average of $307 per 1,000 cubic meters in the first quarter, Ukraine paid just $2 less, even though it buys gas at the border and doesn’t pay transit fees. Ukraine’s price dropped to $236 in the second quarter after the $100 discount. Azarov said his country expects “a civilized, market-orientated definition of price,” adding that Ukraine is ready to extend guarantees for years ahead that it is “a reliable transit country for Russia for any volumes of gas.”
Russia, on the other hand, has been making a series of trade concessions to maintain its good-neighborly status with Ukraine. In April Russia agreed to an extension of an agreement on duty-free imports of Ukrainian pipes to Russia till the end of this year. Trade and bilateral relations between Ukraine and Russia have reached new heights since Yanukovich took over from Viktor Yushchenko in February. Trade turnover between the countries has grown by almost 80 percent to more than $22.2 billion, compared with same period last year, Putin told his hosts on Wednesday. Russia's exports to Ukraine spiraled 89 percent to $13.8 billion, while imports from Ukraine shot up 59.7 percent to $4 billion, the biggest trade turnover between Russia and any other CIS state.
Wednesday’s visit by Russia’s prime minister also occasioned the signing of some landmark accords between Russia and Ukraine. One such deal was signed by Russia’s joint venture TNK-BP for the exploration of shale gas in eastern Ukraine, a region experts say contains potential for shale gas bearing formations similar to the hugely successful shale gas discoveries in the United States and Canada. A June report by RIA Novosti said that alternative sources of natural gas extraction, such as coal-bed methane and shale gas, have become popular lately. Russia, Qatar and Iran, which account for about half of global natural gas reserves, have been reluctant to admit foreign companies to their gas deposits.
Before Wednesday’s accord, Ukraine had unveiled plans to sign contracts with U.S. companies to produce coal-bed methane and shale gas in Ukraine by the end of this year, Yuriy Boiko, the country’s fuel and energy minister, said in June. "I am sure that we will formalize the agreements by the end of this year,” Boiko said on Ukraine's Inter television channel, RIA Novosti reported. “We have very good perspectives for production of shale gas, but better perspectives for coal-bed methane production."
But many analysts said that the TNK-BP memorandum for shale gas exploration could become a game changer with potentials to reduce the reliance of Ukraine on gas imports from Russia. It is also a win-win for TNK-BP, which already owns a refinery in Ukraine and has been seeking to diversify its business with a view to increase its exposure to natural gas. TNK-BP Executive Director German Khan told reporters ahead of the signing that his company hoped to begin exploring for gas in eastern Ukraine, and the company could invest up to $2 billion in the project over the next 25 years. The Russia's fourth-largest oil producer is also planning to extract five billion cubic meters of gas within five to seven years, Reuters reported.
Other accords signed during Putin’s one-day visit include a deal by Tvel, Russia's nuclear-fuel state producer, to set up a joint venture to build a uranium processing plant in Ukraine. The plant could start operation in 2013 and will have the capacity to process 400 metric tons of uranium per year, according to a statement from the Russian government. In other deals, Ukrainian plane maker Antonov agreed to create a joint venture with Russia's United Aviation Corporation, a holding company for aircraft makers.
But despite this streak of successes, gas issues continue to overshadow the positives in the countries’ bilateral relationship. Ukraine’s leadership has been drumming up support domestically for its call on Russia to lower the price of its gas. Azarov reiterated this position on Tuesday, stressing that the existing agreement is not satisfactory because "market realities have changed," since Ukraine has joined the European Energy Charter and adopted a new law on the gas market. "[As a result], the international legal and internal legislative base, which was taken into account during the signing and fulfillment of agreements on gas supplies and transit, has changed. The agreement signed by the previous government does not comply with the current legislation," Azarov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying during a recent Ukrainian Cabinet meeting. At the same time, the Ukrainian prime minister all but ruled out Putin's proposal of a merger between Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukraine's national oil and gas company Naftogaz made in April, saying that such a step would lead to a takeover. "When two companies have incompatible capitalization or, to be more exact, are incomparable with each other, a merger is called a takeover, rather than a merger," Azarov said on Monday, RIA Novosti reported. "No country possessing a gas transportation system, gas and oil refining capacities would agree to such a merger."
Kiev's posturing, analyst said, could eventually strengthen Russia's resolve to expedite work on the South Stream pipeline, an alternative route that could bring Russian gas directly to the southern parts of Europe. “Ukraine is in a very difficult situation because it has nothing to offer in return for the concessions it is demanding from Russia,” Maxim Moshkov, an oil and gas analyst at UBS, said. “It is understandable that whatever Moscow asks Kiev to pay for gas can bend or break the Ukrainian economy, and with local elections fast approaching, Kiev has come to see a reduction in gas prices as paramount to its political survival. The problem, though, is that Ukraine has removed Naftogaz from the negotiation table, leaving no alternative bargaining chip.”
The Ukrainian prime minister, however, sees things differently: “We have several Russian-Ukrainian projects underway and we believe that Russian-Ukrainian relations should be developed,” Azarov said. “This doesn’t mean that, having these improved relationships, we should still be taking this highly unprofitable gas agreement for granted and we shouldn’t try to revise it. The faster we renegotiate, the better the perspectives for further cooperation in other sectors.”
October 28, 2010
On the Source
By Tom Balmforth
Russia Profile
Thinly Veiled Threats From the FSB Aside, WikiLeaks Still Faces Challenges in Credibly Leaking Classified Information on Russia
A Russian secret services expert on Tuesday warned WikiLeaks that the “right team” of people could simply shut down the whistleblower Web site forever, but denied that WikiLeaks poses a threat to Russia after its founder revealed that Russia is next on its hit list. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday warned that “Russian readers will find out a lot of new things about their country” through his Web site, which has left Western governments red-faced after reams of classified documents were published on the Internet.
“Preliminary analysis shows that there is no threat posed to Russia by Julian Assange’s resource. You have to understand that if there is the desire and the right team, it’s possible to shut it down forever,” an expert from the FSB’s Center for Information Security was quoted by Life News as saying on Tuesday.
Links between hacker cells and the FSB made in the past lend credence to this thinly veiled secret services threat. In his recent book on Russia’s secret services, investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov details how the Russian FSB “maintain a sophisticated alliance with unofficial hackers, such as those who carry out cyber attacks on the Web sites of enemies of the state,” drawing attention to hacker forums such as Informacia.ru.
Given Russia’s notoriously malleable extremism legislation, which Wikimedia (despite its name, not affiliated to WikiLeaks) recently fell foul of, it is hard to imagine that classified information on Russia from WikiLeaks could pass as anything short of “extreme.” Indeed, a Gazeta.Ru editorial yesterday pointed out precisely this contradiction in the claim that WikiLeaks is “no threat posed to Russia.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told the Izvestia news daily that he has already amassed “kompromat” on the Russian “government” and “businessmen,” although he admitted it is “not as much as I’d like” in an interview on Monday, two days after his site published almost 400,000 classified U.S. military field reports from Iraq.
Both the British and the American governments have urged the whistleblower to stop publishing reams of classified documents because they claim it is undermining the war effort and putting the lives of civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk, charges which Assange denies.
Speaking to the Kommersant daily on Monday, Assange and his assistant Kristin Hrafnsson said the whistleblower Web site plans to publish 15,000 more documents on the war on Afghanistan, and then turn its full attention to Russia and China. According to Assange, “the despotic regimes of Russia, China and Central Asia” were the original focus of his project when he was pitching it to potential investors four years ago. “We’ve spent a lot of time working on the Afghanistan and Iraq dossiers, but as soon as we’re done with them we can get started on different regions,” Hrafnsson told Izvestia. “I think the Russian readers will find out a lot of new things about their country.”
Language barrier
While Assange did admit that there are problems with obtaining intelligence in foreign countries, his professed collaboration with the “Americans” will likely worry the Russian security establishment. “The fact that the majority of your sites post information only in Russian limits our capabilities. However, the Americans are helping us, they are giving us a lot of material on Russia,” Assange told Izvestia.
Any role played by American officials in publishing secret Russian documents – whether real of perceived – would certainly shake the still unsure foundations of the Washington-Moscow reset. But at the same time, obtaining Russian secret documents through the Americans would undercut the credibility of that intelligence.
“Clearly there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence to show that the WikiLeaks about the U.S. armed forces are genuine. They come from someone within the armed forces, from someone who had access to them,” said Anatol Lieven, the director of war studies at Kings College London. But Russian secrets, on the other hand, leaked and then passed to WikiLeaks through the United States, would not have that same cache of being genuine. They would easily be seen through the old Cold War prism, which would obstruct any serious public discussion of the documents because their authenticity would constantly be in question. “And even if the material was genuine, I can easily see how the Russian government would be able to say ‘look, come off it. It’s obvious the Americans have just cooked this up this stuff’,” said Lieven.
No country for discussion
Speaking to The Christian Science Monitor yesterday, Andrei Soldatov said that the problem for WikiLeaks would not be actually leaking information on Russia, but rather that leaking that information would not stimulate any public discussion in Russia’s muzzled media.
Soldatov drew attention to a Web site that in June published what it claimed was leaked FSB correspondence detailing intelligence operations in the CIS, including in Turkmenistan and Ukraine. The site called , hosted in the United States, has since gone offline, but during its three-week existence won no media attention. Because of what Soldatov blamed on the lack of media freedom in Russia, the FSB correspondence was never authenticated through public discussion, precluding the possibility of analyzing its claims. “It is no accident that I am not quoting details from these documents. The point is that there is one big difference between these documents and the WikiLeaks collection. Unlike the American reports, the FSB correspondence, although it was put out on the Internet, never did land in the public sphere,” Andrei Soldatov wrote in an August article posted on his Agentura.ru Web site.
Lieven said that discussion in the mass media of WikiLeaks dossiers on Russia was unrealistic, although it was more possible in the print media, which has comparative freedom within certain boundaries. “The problem has always been direct attacks on Vladimir Putin or Dmitry Medvedev, or those directly compromising state security. I’m sure if you started leaking stuff about the Russian armed forces similar to what’s been leaked about the American armed forces, I think something very nasty might happen to you,” said Lieven.
Public discussion of meaningful security leaks in Russia’s closed media climate seems unlikely, despite the smattering of speculative debate taking place in the print press this week. A Foreign Policy blog post yesterday optimistically suggested that the rising use of the Internet in Russia could mitigate the paucity of traditional media discussion. It will, of course, also depend heavily on what the documents are.
Russia itself waded into the WikiLeaks debacle today when its Foreign Ministry spokesman publically urged Washington to investigate the rights abuses carried out by U.S. military personnel detailed in the leaks. For the time being, at least, WikiLeaks are a problem for the American and British governments.
MOSCOW BLOG: Shadow boxing and squawking chickens
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Ben Aris in Moscow
October 29, 2010
The art of Kremlinology is back. In the old days, foreign correspondents wanting to know if there was some crisis in play would drive down Novy Arbat in central Moscow to see if the lights in the Ministry of Defence were on after 6pm.
In other words, cut off from any creditable source of information on what was happening inside the Kremlin, correspondents were essentially clueless about what was really happening. Twenty years on and not that much has changed.
Much has been made of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sacking of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and it has widely been taken as Medvedev's first independent action that made him look presidential. bne has followed this line too, as he really did look presidential, especially in his comments to the press after the announcement, when he dropped his "I have lost confidence," bomb on the Beekeeper.
However, there is another explanation that fits the facts equally well. I am not sure if it’s true, but certainly some in Moscow believe it, and it does answer a key and unresolved question: why was Luzhkov ousted now?
Since 2004, Moscow mayors are no longer elected, they are appointed. Luzhkov's term was due to expire next year so really there was no need to sack him now; far simpler and less disruptive to wait a bit and simply not reappoint him.
Of course, many have said that Luzhkov badly miscalculated, pushing Medvedev into a corner with his strident comments on how he would never go. According to this theory, Medvedev was forced to act or loose all face.
However, another explanation is that Medvedev was already in trouble following Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's summer PR high jinks, including a road trip in a yellow Lada Kalina through Siberia. The stunt worked brilliantly, but the side effect was to weaken Medvedev, who tried to follow up with a lame copy of the stunt, driving classic cars across the Ukrainian border with Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych a few weeks later.
Most people (Russians included) believe that Putin remains in full control, but if Medvedev loses all creditability as a president then he becomes useless, especially in relation to his mission to oversee the "modernisation" of the country. A better explanation of the whole Luzhkov episode then, is that Putin engineered it to shore up Medvedev's image, and restore his creditability through the next 18 months before the next presidential elections.
This explanation actually fits the facts very nicely. As opposition leader Boris Nemtsov pointed out to bne in a recent interview, "what has Medvedev actually done while in power?" The answer is: almost nothing.
He has changed the constitution to extend the president's term to 6 years; he swapped an extension of the Black Sea Fleet’s lease on the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol for a $40bn gas price discount; he recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia as countries; and he sacked Luzhkov.
You could add "police reform" to this list, but there aren't really any results there. Indeed, Medvedev himself admits that this is not working. Not really a very impressive record given all the modernisation talk.
Although Medvedev does seem sincere about deepening Russia's civil society, and believes in what he says, the bottom line is that at the moment he looks a bit like a squawking chicken’s head separated from the body politic, which is running around in its own direction.
For the record, I believe that this is actually part of the plan. When Putin was choosing his successor, the option was between his younger liberal colleague Medvedev and old-school hard-line Sergei Ivanov, who is also a personal friend. Putin doesn't make impulsive choices, and as he clearly has a plan that runs to 2020, I cant believe that he plumped for Medvedev without having worked out in detail how the following four years to the 2012 elections would go.
I believe that providing the country is growing, society is quiet, and things are more-or-less going according to Putin's plan, he will stay on as Prime Minister, and leave Medvedev as president. Real political reform won’t be seen until the after the presidential election, but once they’re resolved there’s a fair chance things will start moving a lot more quickly. The Luzhkov affair then could viewed as fine tuning to maintain Medvedev's role in the plan.
Ironically much of the same thinking can be applied to Yanukovych. He was widely seen as Russia's man when he took over, but the Ukrainian president has gone out of his way to woo the EU. The trouble is Brussels has done nothing to accommodate Ukraine, which has taken the pragmatic option of getting into bed with Russia, which is offering real money and real deals.
However, some people in Kyiv believe that Yanukovych's whole EU alliance rhetoric is a pose designed to give give him a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia. Yet, as the relationship with Europe doesn't actually exist in any meaningful form, Yanukovych is in an extremely weak position.
The bottom line is that he really is Russia's man, in the sense that he believes Russia is his only real partner in Europe, and all the talk is purely for show. The fact that he has given away several important mining assets to Russian oligarchs as part of the gas deal, at the cost of local business leaders, makes this a more likely fit than the picture of a "pragmatic Ukrainian nationalist" he is trying to paint.
The Irish Times - Friday, October 29, 2010
Russia's bullet train a runaway success with all but rural citizens
MOSCOW LETTER: Middle class Russians can afford to use the train but its impact on outlying communities has been to deepen their isolation, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
VLADIMIR LENIN returned from exile on one to foment revolution; Anna Karenina threw herself under one and her creator, Leo Tolstoy, died after disembarking from one at a wayside station.
Trains have a special place in Russia’s history and literature and in the psyche of its people. They allowed the tsars to conquer central Asia, helped the Soviets tap the treasures of resource-rich Siberia, and carried millions to the oblivion of the gulag.
The enormity of Russia seeps into the traveller as the old train trundles for days through the taiga or the steppe, and it doesn’t take long for Moscow to feel very far away, for its power to weaken and slip. Cash dispersed by the capital dwindles to a trickle in the regions, and the Kremlin’s proclamations and pep talks quickly fade to a whisper.
Russia’s leaders now talk boldly about modernising the country, fostering investment and innovation far from Moscow, and they have a fitting symbol for their project.
Sapsan – Russian for “peregrine falcon” – is a bullet train that halves the standard journey time between Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, and may soon whisk travellers to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
In buying the sleek grey, red and blue trains from Germany, Russia has leapt more than 50 years in rail technology in a single bound.
Gone are steaming samovars, clinking vodka bottles and the gentle sway and creak of slow-moving carriages, replaced by a sound-proofed 250km/h streak through the Russian countryside, replete with western-style trolley service, high-speed wireless internet access and TV.
The train competes strongly with the airlines that fly between Moscow and St Petersburg, making the trip in four hours but without the hassle of security checks and airport traffic jams.
The rail and air fares are comparable, meaning middle-class Russians can afford them. But the train has not been welcomed by the villagers who flash by its windows in a blur.
The Sapsan has struck and killed several people on its dash between Russia’s biggest cities, and forced the cancellation of many minor rail services that criss-crossed its path, deepening the isolation of rural communities.
In response, locals have cut the overhead power lines, hurled rocks and even aimed shots at the train that for them symbolises the urban elite’s neglect of Russia’s regions.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin, who during a decade in power has done little to improve Russia’s ailing infrastructure, sought credit this summer for the somewhat belated completion of the first paved road across the country. He admitted, however, that for long stretches – with just two lanes, a thin layer of asphalt and no lighting or service stations – it was more like decent farm road than a motorway.
It is president Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin in the Kremlin when he moved to the prime minister’s office in 2008, who portrays himself as Russia’s moderniser-in-chief.
He maintains a blog, champions the creation of a “Russian Silicon Valley” at Skolkovo outside Moscow, and is depicted by allies like business leader Igor Yurgens as the man who can turn Russia from an oil- and metals-breathing behemoth into a high-tech trailblazer.
“We need a modernisation leap. Such a leap is associated with Medvedev, both in the West and inside the country,” Yurgens said last week, when encouraging Putin to allow his protege to run unopposed for a second term as president in 2012 elections. “Vladimir Putin is more popular among conservative voters who like stability, discipline, order. Medvedev is popular among liberal voters who like change, progress, movement forward.”
Medvedev wants to be associated with landmark projects like Sapsan. But its passengers know that the train is a dismally rare example of the modernisation that he craves.
“We are good at creating symbols like this but not so good at making sustainable changes. This should be the standard Russian train like it is in parts of Europe. We should have had it 10 years ago,” said Sergei (40), a business consultant travelling to St Petersburg.
Russia’s entire infrastructure needs renewing, from industry and power generation through things like transport and agriculture to housing, healthcare and education.
But Russians have well-founded fears that, having failed to invest when oil and gas revenues were at record highs, their leaders will now focus on headline-grabbing events like the 2014 Winter Olympics and a mooted Formula One grand prix in Sochi rather than overhauling the creaking systems that 140million people use each day.
“Some people may be nostalgic for the old trains, the samovar, the tea in glasses with nice metal holders,” said Sergei. “I’m not. It still takes a week to get to Vladivostok, so there’s still plenty of time for all that.”
Have Kalashnikov - will travel
Russians want to fight abroad
By Aleksandr Artemyev
The State Duma is preparing a bill that will allow Russia’s security firms to work abroad, armed. This will allow for better protecting the interests of Russia’s businesses in conflict zones, as well as vessels from piracy, deputies say. Companies admit they can work with the Russians. Meanwhile, the work of private security companies in Iraq and Afghanistan had caused a number of scandals.
The State Duma is preparing a packet of amendments to the 1992 law “On Detective and Security Work of the Russian Federation.” The new law will allow private security companies to better arm their employees, escorting marine cargo for protection from pirates, as well introduce the security work of Russians abroad into the legal field.
Read more
The initiative is being carried forward by a deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party, Andrey Lugovoy, who is wanted by London as a suspect in the murder of Aleksandr Litvinenko, and is one of the leading representatives of the private business lobby in the State Duma. It is also being pushed by a member of the Just Russia party and the Security Committee, retired security officer and deputy Gennady Gudkov.
In particular, it is proposed to expand the list of firearms allowed to be carried by private security officers, Gudkov said in explaining the main essence of the amendments. Today, by law they are allowed to carry only smooth-bore and short-barreled rifled firearms with low-power cartridges.
The need to rearm security guards is linked to the situation that has developed around Russian vessels traveling through waters with Somali or Indonesian pirates, explained the deputy.
“In the international waters, these vessels are extraterritorial, and the laws of the Russian Federation apply; therefore, the people accompanying the cargo cannot effectively repel the pirates, who are often very well armed,” the deputy told Gazeta.Ru. Increased security may be needed by not only commercial, but also fishing, vessels, as well as oil platforms, he says.
“If we are talking about the protection of vessels, then this would clearly be a necessary measure,” said United Russia member and First Deputy Chairman of the Security Committee Mikhail Grishankov, who supports the amendments. “Assigning a platoon of paratroopers for each ship is simply physically impossible; besides, it is not the job of the army.”
The idea to use private security companies abroad is also being considered, says Grishankov.
“The practice of providing private security to, say, diplomatic missions, exists, but we need to look at these ideas when they are presented concretely,” he said.
“Security changes at every border” with the transfer of industrial materials or cultural valuables, explained Gudkov. A problem with the provision of security in facilities belonging to Russian companies abroad, or that are serviced by them, also exists.
“They are protected by either the local private security enterprises, or specially attached police units,” said the deputy.
It will be difficult for Russian private security companies to enter the market of private security firms working in conflict zones. Without corresponding international agreements, it will be impossible for them to work.
In particular, this was stated by representatives of Lukoil, which in December 2009 won in a bid against the Norwegian Statoil for exploration rights of the Iraqi West Qurna-2 oil deposit. The company’s spokesperson told Gazeta.Ru that it only uses the services of “armed formations of the South Oil Company, an Iraqi state oil company.”
In Russia, Lukoil works with the security firm Lukom-A; the company could work with the “tested” companies abroad as well, but Moscow sees difficulties.
“They will need to get licensed, and we don’t know if other countries will agree (to allow the Russian security companies to operate on their territory – Gazeta.Ru),” he said.
Rusal, a major Russian investor in Africa that owns aluminum and bauxite companies in Guinea and Nigeria, has similar fears.
“This law could come into conflict with the legislation of the host countries, and as a result, put businesses into a difficult situation, as security in the host country is usually part of the competence of the country’s state agencies and is regulated by law,” the company’s official spokesperson, Vera Kurochkina, told Gazeta.Ru.
If Russia’s private security companies decide to enter the international market, it will not only come across legal problems. According to Oleg Valetsky, a Ukrainian military expert and former fighter with one of the Western private paramilitary companies, “this market is mainly dominated by the American and British companies, and less so by companies from South Africa and Australia,” and they are not interested in welcoming new players.
Revenues of major international private paramilitary companies such as DynCorp and Xe Services LLC (formerly Blackwater) are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There is a misconception that, somewhere, Russian military specialists are wanted, but there are already more than enough people. Western clients don’t have any special demand for Russian private security companies,” Valetsky told Gazeta.Ru.
The number of fighters with private paramilitary companies in Iraq was at its peak in late 2006, and amounted to up to 100,000 people – their presence in the country was linked to numerous cases of violence against civilians. The most egregious case was the shooting of 17 peaceful civilians by Blackwater fighters in September 2007, after which the Iraqi state-issued license was revoked from Blackwater and the company, in an effort to avoid damage to its reputation, was renamed Xe Services LLC. In Afghanistan, a ban on foreign paramilitary security companies will come into effect in December, although earlier it were these companies that provided security to President Hamid Karzai.
Read the article on the website
National Economic Trends
October 29, 2010 11:34
GDP growth might equal 1.5%-2% in 2011 under pessimistic scenario – Dvorkovich
MOSCOW. Oct 29 (Interfax) - Russian GDP growth in 2011 might equal 1.5%-2% under the negative scenario for global economic growth, presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich told journalists on Friday.
"The bracket might be 1.5%-2%," he said, adding that the probability of that happening was less than 50%.
The government and the Central Bank assume that GDP growth in 2011 will be near 4%, Dvorkovich said in an address at a conference organized by Alfa Bank (RTS: ALFB).
"We are proceeding based on the average scenario that GDP growth will be in the neighborhood of 4%. Under the less optimistic scenario for global economic growth, it could be lower. Higher - quite unlikely," he said.
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Russia's central bank leaves its interest rates unchanged
11:50 29/10/2010
MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian central bank left its key refinancing rate unchanged at 7.75 percent and maintained its other operating rates as inflation eased, the bank said on Friday following its board meeting.
"Consumer price inflation growth has slowed down in the first 25 days of the month to 0.5 percent compared with 0.9 percent in the same period in September, which shows a gradual weakening of inflationary expectations, spurred by a price shock for some food groups," the regulator said.
The regulator cut its refinancing rate several times in 2010, slashing it to the record 7.75 percent from 13 percent at the beginning of 2010. On Friday, it left its interest rates unchanged for the fifth consecutive time, in line with analysts forecasts in a RIA Novosti poll.
Russia Leaves Rates Unchanged as Recovery Stumbles (Update1)
By Maria Levitov
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Russia’s central bank left its main interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive month on concern the country’s economic rebound may be losing steam.
The bank kept the refinancing rate at a record-low 7.75 percent, as forecast by all 17 economists in a Bloomberg survey. Moscow-based Bank Rossii also left the repurchase rate on one- and seven-day loans unchanged at 6.75 percent. The regulator last cut rates on May 31.
Economic growth in the world’s largest energy producer may fall short of the government’s official 4 percent target for this year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Oct. 20. Citigroup Inc. cut Russia’s 2010 economic expansion forecast to 4.1 percent this week from 5 percent after retail sales lagged behind economist estimates last month, adding to evidence domestic demand may be weakening.
Increasing the refinancing rate is unlikely “right now,” First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev told reporters on Oct. 5. If economic growth becomes “risk free, stable, while price stability gets disrupted, this would create conditions for raising the rate.”
The central bank is trying to shift policy to an inflation targeting regime from its current mandate to support a stable currency. The ruble has gained 4 percent against the dollar since a June low.
The ruble kept its declines versus the dollar, trading 0.4 percent weaker at 30.7950 against the U.S. currency.
‘Anomalous Weather’
Russia’s annual inflation rate may meet the government’s 8 percent estimate, Kudrin said this month. The rate was 7 percent in September. Consumer-price growth won’t exceed a monthly 0.6 percent in October, Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters on Oct. 25. Prices rose a 0.8 percent last month, according to the Federal Statistics Service. Retail sales growth slowed and inflation accelerated in September after the summer’s “anomalous weather,” according to Nabiullina. The country suffered the worst drought and wild fires in a decade, sending grain prices higher and fueling inflation. The central bank has indicated it won’t raise rates to offset the price shock triggered by the extreme weather conditions.
The central bank is unlikely to raise interest rates as the government increases its debt sales, needed to finance the budget deficit. The administration of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is trying to keep yields low even as issuance increases.
“Growing producer costs and the acceleration of money supply growth will add to inflationary pressures from the end of 2010 and into 2011,” Moscow-based economists Elina Ribakova and Natalia Novikova wrote in an e-mailed note on Oct. 27 “However, we expect the central bank will remain under pressure not to increase rates in order to support a greater issuance of government bonds.”
‘Not Too Fast’
The economy is on a recovery path that is “not too fast, but more or less sustainable,” Ulyukayev said in an interview in Moscow on Oct. 5. “We are in a balance between our economic growth and inflation,” he said, adding the regulator isn’t “in a position to cut rates now.”
Russia’s central bank is set to keep the refinancing rate unchanged for the rest of the year, according to a survey of analysts from banks including Credit Agricole SA, Trust Investment Bank and BNP Paribas SA.
That puts the country’s regulator in line with East European central banks such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which probably won’t raise rates until next year as a global economic recovery stalls and inflation remains in check, last month’s Bloomberg survey of nine economists shows.
To contact the reporter on this story: Maria Levitov in Moscow at mlevitov@
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Willy Morris at wmorris@
Last Updated: October 29, 2010 02:58 EDT
Russian recovery boosts Central Asia and Caucasus - IMF
bne
October 29, 2010
The Central Asia and Caucasus region will grow by a forecast 5.75% this year, up from 3.5% growth in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This is driven both by the recovery of the Russian economy, and by the stimulus packages launched by governments across the region.
The increase in oil prices has also benefitted the oil-exporting countries in the region - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
“The outlook for the region is broadly positive, although in some countries it will take time for per capita disposable income to return to pre-2009 levels,” David Owen, deputy director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, told a press conference in Almaty.
However, there are significant variations between countries. Among the oil producers, Turkmenistan is expected to show the strongest growth - 9.5% - this year, more than double the expected 4.5% increase in GDP forecast for Azerbaijan.
Among the oil and gas importers, both Armenia and Georgia are expected to return to growth after seeing a contraction in their GDP in 2009. Growth of 4% is forecast for Armenia, and 5.5% in both Georgia and Tajikistan. Due to the Russian recovery, all three economies are expected to grow by between 4% and 5% in 2011.
The April 2010 revolution and continuing political instability in Kyrgyzstan are expected to result in a 3.5% contraction in GDP this year. However, the IMF forecasts a strong rebound in 2011, when growth of 7% is forecast.
The IMF report points out that inflation has fallen compared to pre-crisis levels, although the recent increase in the cost of wheat and other foods is creating inflationary pressure.
Other risks are also present. “In particular, a weaker-than-expected recovery in Russia would adversely affect trade and remittance flows to the region,” says the report. “Slower-than-expected growth in advanced economies would also weaken economic activity in the region, mainly through a drop in demand for oil and gas. And continued banking sector weaknesses could hold back credit growth and weigh on the economic outlook.”
Only VTB to be privatized in 2010, official says
RBC, 29.10.2010, Moscow 10:57:43.Russia does not plan to carry out any other privatization deals apart from the privatization of the government's stake in VTB before the year-end, Presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich told journalists today. "A total of 15 major government shareholdings are being prepared for privatization. The government will present a report on the matter to the president, and then the schemes for selling those stakes will be defined. In some cases, it will be a direct sale of shares, and in others it may be IPOs," the official explained.
Dvorkovich also announced that the government would prepare a list of enterprises that can act as organizers of the state-owned stakes in Russian companies. "The sale of these shareholdings will be carried out by professional companies, and the list will be ready by the end of November. It will include the leading financial institutions, and Alfa-Bank is one of them," Dvorkovich said.
Russia not to become the net-importer of grains in the current season
10/29/2010 09:58
According to estimations of Russian Grain Union, in the current season grain imports to the Russian Federation in the current season will total nearly 2-2.5 mln tonnes.
Taking into account the fact that before imposition of the grain export ban, Russia exported 3.7 mln tonnes of grains, the organization expects that Russia will not turn into the net-importer of grains, declared Alexander Korbut, the Vice-President of Russian Grain Union.
At the same time, the expert marked that the growth of grain import scales to the country is almost obvious, however, the structure of grain imports is more significant issue.
As a reminder, in own October review the United States Department of Agriculture once again lowered the forecast of grain production in Russia, and increased the import index.
The Department of Agriculture of the USA increased the forecast of grain imports to Russia in the current agricultural year to the level of 3.9 mln tonnes as opposed to 3.7 mln tonnes in September review. At the same time, the Department increased the index of feed grains imports from the level of 1.7 mln tonnes in September to 1.9 mln tonnes in October. The forecast of wheat imports did not change, and stayed at the level of 2 mln tonnes.
Previously, during his presentation at Ukrainian Grain Congress in Kiev, Andrew Sizov, the General Director of the company "SovEcon", declared that in 2010 Russia may believe to become grain net-exporter. According to his estimations, the import volumes will total nearly 6 mln tonnes.
What's ruffling the rouble?
Renaissance Capital
October 28, 2010
The world is searching for commodity currencies to maintain value against competitive devaluation. Fortunately, Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural resources, running a current account surplus of $60bn YtD. Yet, despite this, the rouble is about the only currency globally which has significantly depreciated against the dollar. Since 1 Aug 2010, the rouble lost 0.5% vs the dollar and 4.3% against the dual-currency basket.
_ Speculativecarry trade flows are centre stage in other commodity countries at the moment. The question arises then as to what is frightening short-term investors away from Russia? When searching for an explanation, the current business climate seems to be the easiest 'scapegoat'. Some would speculate that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's dismissal, and former Yukos oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial could be scaring away potential investors. However, we believe that factors such as these are not the reason.
_ Theoretically,rouble 'carry' is attractive because long-term OFZ yields are at 7%+ levels and rates in funding currencies (dollar, euro) are close to zero. There is therefore no reason to blame the business climate because unpredictable foreign exchange (FX) dynamics destroy the value in carry-trade strategy. Market participants prefer to stay away from investments into rouble 'carry', in our view, and to rather invest in Brazilian real or Australian dollar denominated ones.
_ For quite a significant period of time there was a widespread market perception that the worsened current account could be the main driver behind rouble weakness. This, we believe, is a myth. The current account surplus was $2bn in August and around $3-4bn in September. The pressure on the rouble appeared due to capital account issues. In 2005-2008, we could ignore the effect of capital flows on rouble dynamics (it was off-set by the current account), however, at present this is a reality and this factor should therefore be included in the ex-one-factor rouble exchange rate model.
_ According to the Central Bank of Russia's (CBR) preliminary data, the capital account moved from $8bn in surplus in 2Q10 to a $4.4bn surplus in 3Q10. We estimate that the pure capital outflow was around $7bn in 3Q10, indicating that official statistics underestimated FX funding shortages, which were around $5.5bn. On the back of this, the rouble depreciated from RUB34.70/basket in September to RUB36.25/basket in October.
_ New FX intervention mechanisms suggest that the floating corridor would gradually adjust to the changes in the 'equilibrium' rouble rate, meaning that the CBR is unwilling to prevent both rouble appreciation and depreciation, if it is fundamental. Another significant step towards a floating exchange rate regime has therefore been made, but the regulator has only recently increased the number of interventions. Sergey Shvetsov, a member of the CBR's board, announced that the CBR had already sold $3.3bn as of 21 Oct 2010 against the rouble weakening.
_ According to our estimates, the Russian banking sector would receive an injection of up to $12bn from the CBR, current account and international investors by the end of November. This amount should be enough to cover all FX needs in the banking sector; hence, we do not think that the current levels of the rouble exchange rate at RUB35.8-36.0/basket are sustained in the near term.
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
AvtoVAZ, Norilsk Nickel, Rosneft and Transneft: Russian Preview
By Jason Corcoran
Oct. 29 (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 less than 0.1 percent to 1,506.60 at the close in Moscow. The dollar-denominated RTS Index added less than 0.1 percent to 1,583.44.
OAO AvtoVAZ (AVAZ RX): The Renault-Nissan alliance is in talks to raise its stake in Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ by purchasing shares from Troika Dialog, the Moscow brokerage that’s trying to sell its 25 percent holding. AvtoVAZ advanced 3.8 percent to 34.71 rubles on the Micex Stock Exchange.
OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel (GMKN RX): The country’s largest miner is expected to report its third-quarter production results. Norilsk Nickel climbed 1.1 percent to 5,570.51 rubles on the Micex Stock Exchange.
OAO Rosneft (ROSN RX): Russia plans to prolong tax breaks for Rosneft’s Vankor oil field in eastern Siberia for four months, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a government meeting in Samara yesterday. Rosneft, the country’s largest oil producer, fell 0.1 percent to 213.85 rubles on the Micex Stock Exchange.
OAO Transneft (TRNFP RX): The country’s oil pipeline monopoly plans to invest 77 billion rubles ($2.51 billion) next year, the Russian pipeline monopoly’s Chief Executive Officer Nikolai Tokarev said yesterday at a meeting with Putin in Samara. Transneft declined 1.4 percent to 36,866.96 rubles on the Micex Stock Exchange.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Corcoran at Jcorcoran13@
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@
Last Updated: October 28, 2010 22:00 EDT
Russia Polymetal eyes $1 bln London listing-paper
Fri Oct 29, 2010 5:13am GMT
MOSCOW Oct 29 (Reuters) - Russian precious metals miner Polymetal (PMTLq.L) is seeking to boost liquidity and secure cheaper funding via an up to $1 billion UK listing through a new London registered parent company, Kommersant reported on Friday.
Russia's biggest silver producer (PMTL.MM) has been considering various options but Chief Executive Vitaly Nesis told Kommersamt business daily it has now decided against a simple secondary share placement (SPO). [ID:nLDE68S012]
Now, the Russian company plans to hand over its shares to the Cyprus-registered PMTL Holding Ltd in return for shares of Polymetal International Plc, which was registered in London on July 29, a source told Kommersant.
In the second stage, Polymetal International will hold a public additional share issue worth up to $1 billion on the London Stock Exchange in the form of global depository receipts (GDRs). Minority holders of Russian Polymetal shares will then be made a buy-out offer, as prescribed by local legislation.
The company was not immediately available to comment to Reuters. (Writing by Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Anshuman Daga)
Russia's VEB plans $1 bln Eurobond in Nov –sources
12:30pm IST
MOSCOW, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Russian state development bank VEB plans to issue around $1 billion in Eurobonds in November, financial market sources told Reuters on Friday.
One source said VEB has mandated Calyon, JP Morgan, Citi and HSBC to organise the issue in November, and another source said the placement was likely in the middle of next month.
Bank chairman Vladimir Dmitriyev said last month VEB could place up to 30 billion roubles ($977.8 million) in bonds by the end of this year as part of a previously announced 190 billion rouble borrowing programme. [ID:nLDE68H07D] [ID:nLDE66R2FR] ($1=30.68 Rouble) (Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva; writing by Maria Kiselyova; editing by Toni Vorobyova)
Magna Opens Kaluga Factory
29 October 2010
By Irina Filatova
KALUGA — Canadian auto parts maker Magna on Thursday launched its new plant in Kaluga, which the company said demonstrated its belief in the strong potential of Russia’s automotive market.
The facility, whose total production area is 15,000 square meters, will manufacture bumpers and front-end modules and will assemble radiator grills and instrument panel-beams.
The company said it was against corporate policy to disclose the volume of investment in the project.
Magna, which already has plants in St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, chose Kaluga to start the new factory because its major customers — the world’s biggest carmakers — are located in the region, said Hubert Hoedl, the company’s vice president for corporate marketing and business development in Europe.
Among the carmakers that the Magna plant will supply are Volkswagen, Skoda, Renault and Peugeot Citroen.
The plant, which now operates at 25 percent of capacity, is making bumpers for three car models — Volkswagen’s Polo and Skoda’s Octavia and Fabia.
The plant’s chief executive Georgy Rotov said they expect to reach full capacity of 150,000 to 170,000 auto component kits per year by 2012.
The plant will also start supplying auto parts for the new Volkswagen Tiguan and Renault Duster next year, he told reporters during the plant tour, adding that Magna also has orders from Peugeot and Citroen, and is in talks with Mitsubishi.
Manfred Eibeck, president of Magna Russia, said at the opening ceremony that the plant was “a clear indication of our belief in the Russian automotive market and its perspectives for future development and sustainable growth.”
Kaluga Governor Anatoly Artamonov also participated in the opening ceremony and said Magna’s presence confirmed that the region’s economic policy was right.
The Kaluga region, which offers tax breaks to investors, has attracted several leading foreign companies. French automaker Peugeot Citroen and Japan’s Mitsubishi opened a joint enterprise in April, and French cosmetics maker L’Oreal launched its first Russian plant there last month.
Artamonov said he hoped that Magna’s enterprise would contribute to “creating a full-fledged automotive cluster” in the region.
At the end of the ceremony, Artamonov and Magna’s executives signed the first Volkswagen bumper produced at the plant that was later presented to the automaker.
Dietmar Korzekwa, chief executive of Volkswagen Russia, had a careful look at the bumper, saying its quality was “very good” and expressing hope that the components supplied by Magna in future would be of the same quality.
Magna’s executives said they considered Russia a strategic market, which has good potential for growth.
“The automotive market in Russia plays a significant role in our overall global growth strategy of developing business in key growth markets,” said Erwin Winkler, president of Magna Exteriors and Interiors Europe. “As original equipment manufacturers focus on global expansion, the expectation is that their global suppliers are positioned to support them in all regions of the world,” he said in a statement.
Hoedl said Russia’s automotive market was “catching up very fast” and the company believed that the trend would continue in the coming years.
He also said the number of cars per 1,000 people in Russia doesn't exceed 250, which is low compared to Europe, where the figure is 500.
“So there’s some room to grow,” Hoedl told reporters after the opening ceremony.
Magna has already invested up to 250 million euros [$347 million] in Russia,” and there is more to come,” he said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers said earlier this week that car assembly in Russia would recover to the pre-crisis level next year and reach 1.7 million vehicles.
Meanwhile, Magna is facing significant structural changes, with co-chief executive Siegfried Wolf moving to billionaire’s Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding next month.
Wolf will be appointed board chairman at Russian Machines, Basic Element's automotive division, where he will be in charge of strategic business development.
Speaking in an interview with The Moscow Times after the opening ceremony, Wolf said, “After 16 years of successful work with Magna you can believe it was not an easy step for me. … It was a great time.”
Wolf also said that it was “an ideal time” to move to GAZ Group because of Russia’s stable economic growth and “strong political leadership."
He said he expects to bring his experience to GAZ, adding that he hopes to “build up a very competitive company” in cooperation with Deripaska.
“That’s what we are working on already,” Wolf said.
Russian service providers call Skype 'parasite'
29.10.2010
Russia's major cellular operator MTS supports the concerns of its two competitors about Skype in Russia. An official spokesman for the cellular giant said that Skype does not invest in the telecommunication infrastructure and provides cheap services to subscribers, which means that it parasites on alien networks, causing damage to the income of traditional communication operators.
The legal status of IP telephony (VoIP) has to be specified in Russia, participants of the round-table discussion about the issues of the market of alternative services of voice communication in Russia and the world concluded.
The discussion took place at Russia's Federation Council. Vyacheslav Novikov, the chairman of the subcommittee for natural monopolies of the Federation Council, stated that the flaws of legal regulation of IP telephony services, particularly Skype, lead to a number of problems. For example, when Russian subscribers use Skype's paid services, they find themselves legally unprotected because Skype does not hold Russian licenses, nor does it have any contracts with its subscribers. Therefore, the subscribers have no right to lodge service quality claims against the company.
Such problems are typical for not only Skype, but for other IP-telephony services in Russia as well. In most of such cases, an IP-telephony company is registered abroad, and its central server is located outside Russia too. The Russian division of such a company acts as an independent legal entity, not as a communication operator, and serves as an agent selling foreign company's services. Therefore, such operators neither receive Russian licenses, nor execute lawfully authorized electronic surveillance requirements for their networks as they should do in accordance with Russian laws, Prime Tass reports.
Pavel Roytberg, the head of the department for the development of products and services of MTS cellular communication operator, urged to look into Skype's activities in Russia from the point of view of anti-monopoly and communication legislation.
According to him, VoIP parasites on the networks of traditional service providers since they gain profit from inexpensive services without investing anything in the construction and exploitation of communication networks, as well as subscriber servicing. As a result, traditional operators suffer considerable losses, which affects their network investment opportunities.
According to the official, the market needs to elaborate regulations for Skype and other VoIP services in Russia. Roytberg referred to the practice of Vodafone, which either blocks access to VoIP operators in its networks or provides it separately at extra charge.
Long distance operators do have reasons to be concerned. Georgy Voronkov, an analyst with Investcafe, told Bigness.ru that Skype's services were considerably cheaper than those provided by Russia's Big Three operators (MTS, Vympelkom and Megafon). For comparison, a call on Skype to a cell phone in any country of the world costs 2.2 cents per minute (plus Internet traffic charges). A call from Russia to, let's say, Ukraine costs 1.18 euros at Vympelkom and 1.4 euros at MTS. Any calls inside Skype are free of charge globally.
"Such tariffs are not always positive for Skype itself. The company finished three of its four recent years with losses. In the meantime, monetization of video communication would help the company improve its condition. In 2009, people across the globe spent nearly 2 billion hours communicating with each other on Skype-to-Skype video calls. If a minute of such calls cost just one kopek, the company would have returned the profit of $40 million," the expert said.
The oppression, which traditional voice operators experience due to the development of VoIP services, is a global trend. In 2007, VoIP services took only two percent of the world Internet traffic. In 2008, the index increased by ten percent and may reach 20 percent in 2010.
In Russia, the share of VoIP services will overcome the mark of 20 percent already in 2010. Next year it will climb over 30 and in 2012 - over 40 percent.
Skype sticks to a different point of view, though. Jean-Jacques Sahel, Skype's European director of government and regulatory affairs, who also took part in the above-mentioned discussion, said that service providers can benefit from both direct partnership with apps and content developers and from the growing demand on network access on the part of consumers. Internet economy is a symbiotic ecosystem, where every member has an opportunity to succeed, the official said.
For the time being, there are three operators in the world that conduct active cooperation with Skype. They are Hutchison 3G (trademark "3") in Britain, Verizon Wireless in the USA and KDDI (trademark "au") in Japan. Skype officials claim that such cooperation helped Hutchison attract new subscribers and increase profit. Seventy-nine percent of Skypephone users are new clients of Three network. Thirty-six percent of new customers subscribed to Three to be able to use Skype on their cell phones.
EkaterinaEvstigneyeva
Bigness
For the Record
29 October 2010
Danone said Thursday that it completed the sale of its 18.4 percent stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods for $470 million.(Bloomberg)
Russia agreed to buy an additional 2 million tons of corn from Ukraine this year, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said Thursday. (Bloomberg)
Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ Group transferred half its stake in a Montenegro bauxite mine and aluminum smelter to the local government, the company said Wednesday. (Bloomberg)
Yandex search engine signed an agreement with Facebook to integrate posts from the social network with its front page, the two companies said Thursday. (Bloomberg)
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
Russian govt considering proposals on privileges to oil projects
29.10.2010, 01.01
NOVOKUIBYSHEVSK, Samara region, October 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian government is considering additional proposals to provide incentives for projects of the oil industry, which can not be accomplished without support from the state, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday as he addressed a conference on the general pattern for developing the oil industry.
"I can tell you we’re now now considering additional proposals for improving the tax burden on projects which can not be implemented without government support", - Putin said.
According to him, the case in hand is a system that will minimize the tax burden in the initial phase of field development, and subsequently will help repay debts to the state and get the benefits when the reserves of the field are exhausted.
Putin demanded that the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Energy "find a neat balance between the needs of oil companies for investment and sustainable goal of filling the budget."
10:13
Existing fields will sustain oil production until 2020 - Shmatko
Extraction and refining the focus as industry mulls taxes
29 October, 2010, 10:54
Maintaining oil extraction is a priority for the government, which is also looking to increase the tax take from refiners. They say this may make some downstream operations unprofitable.
Tatneft spent $5.5 billion to build a state of the art oil refinery in Central Russia. In terms of efficiency in the Russian oil industry it is unique, making usable product from 97% of the crude coming in.
Analysts warn such expensive projects may stop making economic sense, if the government increases export duty on refined products up to 90% of the tax on crude.
Aleksey Kokin from Uralsib says the government is thinking about the country's deficit and which areas of the oil industry it most wants to develop.
“They might be just looking for the sector, that it’s not yet taxed enough and that is generating cash. So what they see, what they are observing is that there is a lack of cash for reinvestment in the upstream. So perhaps the burden could be shifted off the upstream segment.”
At the moment the average export duty on refined products, such as petrol and kerosene, is about 55% of that on crude.
The Prime minister says there are about 250 of oil refineries in Russia producing a very low quality product, but making a lot of money on preferential taxation. Putin wants the government to introduce a new tax regime for the oil sector by the end of this year. But Kokin warns against an indiscriminate rise for refiners.
"The best way to encourage complex refining to boost secondary capacity would probably be to increase it slightly, so that companies producing too much heavy fuel oil will be penalized."
The biggest problem for the oil sector is the lack of new oil field projects and massive underinvestment in extraction. The government wants to ensure there's no tailing off in the country's crude output, even if that is done at the expense of refiners.
The Russian government has unveiled its proposed General Plan to develop the oil industry until 2020.
Speaking at a conference in the Samara Region, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stressed the need to increase oil extraction to maintain current levels.
“The main potential lies in the increasing the efficiency of oil extraction, as well as the development of small and medium sized oil fields, especially as many of them are located in already developed areas. As a result of increasing reserves and the development of new fields and improving the efficiency of old and existing oil fields we can anticipate that the current level of oil extraction of 500 million tonnes of oil per year will continue for the next 10 years.”
Tax to fall to 2/3 of Russia oilco sales in '20-oilmin
Thu Oct 28, 2010 5:55pm GMT
SAMARA, Russia Oct 28 (Reuters) - Russia wants to cut the tax burden on its oil companies to around 65 percent of revenues from the current 73 percent with a view to encouraging investment, its energy minister told reporters on Thursday.
"One of the goals of today's meeting was to show that despite the importance of help in greenfields exploration, it is more important from a fiscal point of view to invest in older fields," Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said after a government meeting on energy strategy.
Russia's mature fields, mostly in West Siberia, are on the decline and require investment to maximise their output at a time when oil companies also face heavy investment needs in East Siberian greenfields.
Shmatko said mature fields would still account for 70-80 percent of output in 2020.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; writing by Melissa Akin; editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)
Putin sees oil cos drafting upgrade plans worth 780 bln rubles
MOSCOW, Oct 28 (PRIME-TASS) -- Russian oil companies are expected to draft refinery upgrade programs with a combined cost of 780 billion rubles for the period until 2020, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday at an official meeting devoted to the government’s oil industry plan for the period until 2020.
Meanwhile, Russia’s oil industry needs total investments worth over 8.6 trillion rubles in this period, he said.
Russia’s oil output is projected to remain at around 500 million tonnes per year over the next 10 years, he said.
Putin also instructed government agencies to discuss proposals on a new taxation system for the oil industry by the end of 2010 and submit them to the State Duma sometime in June–August 2011. The State Duma is the Russian parliament’s lower house.
Additionally, he asked the government to speed up Russian oil companies’ transition to international financial reporting standards, including standards related to oil resource audits.
Commenting on the government’s efforts to promote oil trading on exchanges, Putin said the government had approved requiring oil companies to sell up to 15% of their crude and oil products on commodity exchanges.
Speaking about other issues, he voiced support for Russian oil companies’ plans to expand abroad.
(30.5682 rubles – U.S. $1)
End
28.10.2010 20:54
Lukoil to provide natural gas to Turkey
bne - 29.10.2010
Russia's oil major Lukoil is being considered to provide natural gas to Turkey, the country's minister of energy and natural resources Taner Yildiz told reporters, according to the Prime-TASS Business Newswire.
Turkey, which annually imports around 36bn cubic meters of natural gas, plans to allow private companies, including foreign companies, to supply around 6bn cubic meters of gas per year in order to increase competition and decrease gas prices on the Turkish market, Yildiz said, adding that Lukoil was among those companies.
Lukoil is already negotiating on the issue with Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which is currently the main gas supplier for Turkey, a source familiar with the situation told PRIME-TASS.
Speaking about its assets in Turkey, Lukoil's President Vagit Alekperov said that the company plans to invest around U.S. $100 million in the development of its oil and gas projects in Turkey within two years.bne.
| |
Transneft may speed up Pacific oil pipeline start
Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:46pm GMT
SAMARA, Russia Oct 28 (Reuters) - Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft (TRNF_p.MM) may commission its Pacific link, by one year earlier than planned, the company head Nikolai Tokarev said on Thursday.
The completion of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean-2 pipeline is scheduled for 2013-2014.
Russia started exports of ESPO crude in December last year, by shipping the oil hundreds of miles by rail from Skovorodino to the Pacific port of Kozmino, near Vladivostok, where it is loaded onto tankers for shipment across the Pacific basin.
Transneft is planning to ship some 50 million tonnes of oil per year to Asia by 2013, three times the current volume.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Melissa Akin)
Gazprom
Naftogaz owes Gazprom $1 billion by Nov. 7 for October gas imports
Journal Staff Report
| |
|KIEV, Oct. 28 - Naftogaz Ukrayiny, Ukraine’s national energy company, will have to pay about $1 billion to Gazprom of Russia |
|before Nov. 7 for gas imported in October, Yuriy Kolbushkin, deputy chairman at Naftogaz, said Thursday. |
| |
|This is the largest monthly gas bill that Ukraine has had to pay Gazprom so far this year, indicating that imports of Russian gas|
|have been growing ahead of the upcoming winter. Ukraine’s average monthly bill so far this year was about $700 million. |
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